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Sermon Summary: Blessing and ReconciliationScripture References:

• Genesis 33

Key Themes:

1. God's Sovereignty and Blessing:

   • God's promises to Abraham and his descendants.
   • The importance of God's blessing in one's life.
   • God's choice of Jacob over Esau, highlighting His sovereignty.

   • Jacob's Character and Growth:

   • Jacob's deceitful nature and pursuit of blessings.

   • His encounter with God and subsequent transformation.
   • The gradual nature of spiritual growth and change.

   • Reconciliation and Forgiveness:

   • The powerful impact of reconciliation between Jacob and Esau.

   • The role of forgiveness in healing relationships.
   • The importance of letting go of past hurts and grievances.

Sermon Overview:

Karen began the sermon by discussing the significance of understanding God's character and our identity in light of Him. She emphasized that knowing God is essential for a fulfilling life.

To illustrate the theme of blessing, she used the biblical story of Jacob and Esau. She highlighted how Jacob, despite his flaws, persistently sought God's blessing. Karen encouraged the congregation to likewise pursue God's blessing for their lives, recognizing that it may involve wrestling with God and enduring challenges.

The sermon delved into the concept of reconciliation, focusing on the powerful moment when Jacob and Esau reconciled after years of conflict. Karen emphasized the transformative power of forgiveness and the importance of letting go of past hurts. She also highlighted the gradual nature of spiritual growth, emphasizing that even flawed individuals can experience God's grace and blessing.

In conclusion, Karen reminded the congregation of God's sovereignty and His ability to bless beyond human understanding. She encouraged listeners to trust in God's promises and to seek His blessing for their lives.

TranscriptionMorning everybody, Jules said will you be moving around a bit and I said what do youthink Jules?So we're going to look at Genesis 33 in a minute but I'm going to do a little shoutout for the book club.So I stopped working quite as much in theory in July and I thought oh I'll do other thingsso I joined the book club and this is the latest book that we should have finished reading.I haven't quite finished it but it is certainly the first part relates very much to what we'redoing in church at the moment in that it talks about the beginning.But I'd like to read various bits of it to start with because initially the author talksabout why he's written this book and he says A. W. Tozer once claimed what comes into yourmind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.We agree identity, behavior, purpose, meaning, everything flows from what we believe aboutGod.It's that important.If we miss God we miss everything.If we know God we gain everything.The God story before it is anything else is God's way of telling us who God is and whowe are in the light of God.So I'm not saying you should join the book club a good book to read but feel free tojoin the book club but sometimes just small sentences and phrases hit you don't they?Everything flows from God.If we know God we gain everything.And part of going through Genesis is learning about God and about the beginnings of Israelbut also about understanding ourselves and knowing ourselves more.So my first illustration demands some strength.For those of you that don't know I've been a teacher for 40 years and I remember I thinkit was Alice said to me not that long ago mom now you've stopped teaching can you stopbeing a teacher please?And I said I've been doing it for 40 years Alice give me another 40 and I might haveforgotten how to do it but that's unlikely.So in teaching one of the things that you do in your lessons is always you always recapwhat's gone before okay.So I need one, two, three volunteers please if you'd like to come to the front.No not you Evie you're all right sweetie if that's to be a gentleman.So just okay so if we think about Genesis and we think about the story that is the beginningof Israel we start with Abraham.Abraham was blessed by God.He was blessed in his life.He was blessed with children but he was also blessed by God in that God said from you therewill be a nation a great nation.When Abraham died he passed that blessing on to Isaac because tradition said that whateveryou had you gave to your first born son Isaac.Well perhaps not his first born son but his favorite son.And then Isaac then had two children Jacob and Esau okay.Now if we think about that who was the first born?Okay so is that what happened?It isn't isn't it?Well that's a bit annoying isn't it?So sorry Esau would you like to?So Jacob would you mind being Jacob?Now Jacob's a bit of a one isn't he?Even in his mother's womb and as he's being born he's grabbing a hold of Esau as if tosay don't you think you're coming out without me mate because I want what you should have.And he gets Esau's blessing.But this guy throughout a lot of his life fights for that blessing but he will not giveup.He wants God's blessing and he wants all that that brings okay.So when I was thinking about this message and I know it's entitled something very differentto what I'm actually going to be talking about sorry Nick is this idea of blessing becauseAbraham was blessed by God.He passed not only everything he owned but that blessing onto Isaac and then it was passedrightly or wrongly onto Jacob not Esau but that blessing was passed and what a blessingit was.Thank you boys well done for holding a piece of string.Okay so what's going to happen is I'm going to go through this particular chapter we'regoing to pick things out and whenever I ask God what do you want me to say and I'll tellyou something because Jonathan and I talked about this yesterday and last night and he'ssaying have you done it yet have you done it yet I'm working on it I'm working on it.I usually like to think right this is what I know God wants me to say to you and it'slike there are lots of little things this week so like we've already heard this morningso it's a bit different but the first one is blessing and I'll come back to that a littlebit later okay.So in this particular chapter it follows from what Jonathan said last week Jacob has a littlebit of a struggle with God he meets God and he holds on to God and he says you're notgoing to leave me until you've blessed me this isn't the first time he's met God andit won't be the last time that he's had an experience of God so the next thing I wantto say is I don't know about you I know about me and I know what other people have saidto me we have experiences of God and after that we think I'm going to be changed I'mgoing to be transformed I'm going to be this perfect person now I've had this encounterwith God and it doesn't quite happen like that does it because we are changed a stepat a time and Jacob is a very prime example of that happening and we see this as we gothat as we go through this chapter so if you wouldn't mind just putting the words of thisparticular chapter up there that'd be fabulous.So we know what happened in the previous chapter but just to remind you what God promised Abrahamfirst he said I will make you into a great nation I will bless you I will make your namegreat and you will be a blessing I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses youI will curse and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.Some blessings we don't see the fruit of this blessing was then passed on to Isaac shouldhave been passed on to Esau but wasn't was passed on to Jacob okay.Now the next thing Esau I don't really know about Esau you see earlier he's come backfrom hunting and he said to Jacob oh I'm starving and Jacob said well if you give meyour birthright I'll give you some soup he agrees to it and I'm like why would you dothat just because Jonathan said well he's hungry it's not really good enough reason is it.So and then it's a bit cross well I think it's okay to be cross when Jacob deceiveshim and his dad to get the blessing and he's really really cross so much so that Jacobdecides it's time to leave okay so years later Jacob's had this encounter this latest encounterwith God but we don't know what's happened with Esau do you know when you see films and the bookis better than the film because it gives you more information really upsets Jonathan he doesn't likewatching films that aren't don't follow a book and I feel like this bit about Esau doesn't giveus enough information and I'll come back to that in a minute so we're at a point where Jacob'sbeen told Esau's coming and he's got 400 men with him Jacob's had this experience with GodGod said I'm telling you I am keeping my promise I am going to bless you and you will be calledIsrael he's got that in his head there and over here he's got Esau coming towards him with 400men and he's also got all his servants and all his family to protect so what he does is he putsthe servants first he puts his can I say this lesser wife and then he puts his favorite wifeand son at the back not sure what I think about that but anyway the thing that strikes me here isI think the old Jacob would have quite happily stood stood amongst them but this meeting withGod means that he goes to the front to meet Esau he's put he's put them in order of if they'regonna get killed I know which wants to get killed first and which ones go last kind of thing buthe's still gone ahead of them and at this point this is what I don't get see Esau although he'dsort of not been that bothered about his birthright over a bowl of soup he was then very botheredwhen it was cheated out of him and he was very angry and this is their first meeting since thathappened now what Jacob has tried to do is I don't know you could say by his way back into Esau'sfavor by sending all these animals etc to Esau but he still doesn't know what Esau's response isgoing to be so he does what is a custom and he bows down seven times you know I'm really sorryno no I'm really really really sorry and all that kind of stuff but what does Esau do he holds himand he cries and it says and they both wept I don't know it frustrates me you can tell I don'tknow what happened between Esau being very angry when he'd been cheated out of his birthright untilthat moment we know what had happened to Jacob but was it that Esau thought well I've got everythingthat I thought I was going to get with that birthright so I don't need to worry about thefact I haven't got it or was it do you know what family comes first what does it matter now I don'tknow but the bottom line is at that point there was reconciliation for both of them and they bothwept never underestimate the power of tears to let out those feelings of anger unforgivenessfrustration and I think part of this would have been joy that actually after all this time they'dfinally been able to come together and Esau then says who are all these people you got and Jacobtalks about how he's been blessed and there is this thing that they talks about that these arethe things that God has graciously given so they've both been blessed now what is the differencebetween these two blessings Esau says I don't need what you're going to give me I've already got itall Jacob has got everything all these animals and wives but what is the thing that Jacob has gotthat Esau hasn't got God's blessing I don't know whether he thought even aware that that's part ofthe package that he got that Jacob got when he cheated Esau but there's the difference with theblessings okay so we've got a situation where there's forgiveness there's reconciliation andJacob is still insistent that Esau has all the animals everything that he wants to give himEsau says I don't want them I've got loads I don't need them what I wanted was this what Iwanted was this but Jacob says no I want you to have them why do you think Jacob said no I needyou to have these animals guilt he knew what he'd done was wrong he lived his life knowing that Ihaven't stopped him doing it and didn't stop him doing anything again but he knew that he'd donethe wrong thing so he said no please take these animals and Esau graciously did okay now this isthe I don't know this is the crux really in that then Esau says okay come back with me let's gettogether we'll all go back to my place together all of us and then what does Jacob do he deceiveshim again and I'm gonna say something that might sound a little bit weird I find that reallyencouraging you know why because however much God blesses us we still make a mess of it and ourcharacters do not change overnight we are changed from one degree of glory to another and Jacobstill hasn't quite made it so he deceives Esau and he says to Esau well do you know what we're all abit tired how about you go back to your place and and we'll rest and sit here for a bit and thenI'll come outright lie because he has no intentions of going that way now part of the reason he has nointention of going that way it costs of the promise that God has made to him that blessingthat went straight down the line God has told Jacob to go back to the place where Abraham wasnot where Esau is but where Abraham was I don't know why you couldn't tell Esau that informationwhy couldn't say well this is what God has said but then I think well was it still guilt becauseI've got what you should have had so he doesn't actually tell him so they go on their way andthey eventually now I have to get the name right because it's a weird word that I can't say theygo to Shechem I think something like that and then he makes an altar and this altar I'm notgoing to read what it says it's a translation is God the God of Israel so it's not just saying I'mmaking this altar for God I'm saying this is my God because God is calling me Israel yeah he builtan altar and called it God the God of Israel so if we think about what does this tell us about Godthis tells us that God blesses people what it tells us about the people in this storyespecially Jacob is Jacob wanted that blessing he fought with God he held on to him I won't let yougo until you bless me that's the last end of the last chapter and that blessing begins when he getshere because this is where a had put a tent down if you like but he didn't own it when Jacob getshere he buys that area so the step towards this nation becoming a reality is one step closer andwhen you see it if you read this book it gives you a very nice if you like coherent picture of theway it goes but Jacob was a man that wanted a blessing and it that challenged me I'm quitehappy to pray God bless somebody else but you almost feel guilty when you say God bless mebut sound quite right doesn't it but yet Jacob fought hard to get that blessing from God so mychallenge to you is you might like to think you know what it's not such a bad thing to ask forGod's blessing why can't I ask the blessing for my life and for my family and for who I am as muchas I asked for blessing for other people okay so there was the idea of blessing and then lastlybecause I'm not I don't think we need to talk for very long about this Jacob comes full circle itcomes back to the place where Abraham has sojourned if you like and it's it is important for us tounderstand that if we end up in a in a how can I put this sometimes you feel like things haven'tchanged I've gone back I've gone a full circle things in my life haven't changed but we haveto keep hold of the promises and the blessing of God and what God promises he will make happen nowthat piece of string wasn't very long was it but how long that took was hundreds of years and thena few thousand years before Israel became a nation and we are where we are now so the other thing thatI want you to hold on to is that when God promises you a blessing promises you something don't loseit because of time and that's hard it's hard and sometimes we have to wrestle with God over itand we might have to argue with him a bit and say I'm finding this really tough but if he's promisedyou something that piece of string can be a very long piece of string so my challenge to you thismorning there have been lots of them Jacob was a man that wanted something he wanted Esau's birthright he wanted God's blessing he didn't change overnight every time he encountered God he changeda little bit more but he was still a little bit rough around the edges a little bit of a deceivera little bit of a manipulator and you'll read later on what happens next but the bottom lineis God was for him despite who he was God was for him and it's interesting because these three peopleare mentioned a lot in the New Testament so then I thought well I'm gonna look up a few of thoseand this is the one that really struck me and this is my final point it's in Romans 9 and the writeris talking about the historicity of Israel if you like and he talks about I'll go from verse 10this son was our ancestor Isaac when he grew up he married Rebecca who gave birth to twins beforethey were born before they had done anything good or bad she received a message from God thismessage proves that God chooses according to his own plan not according to our good or bad worksshe was told the descendants of your older son will serve the descendants of the younger son inthe words of this scriptures I love Jacob but I reject Esau and I say was God being fair it'snot but God said to me will show mercy to anyone and I show compassion to anyone I choose and thatspeaks to me about the sovereignty of God and sometimes we miss that we make God this this I'mnot wishing to be offensive when I say this we make God this fluffy father and we forget howbig he is and we forget that he's God and if he's God he can bless us in ways that are far beyondwhat we even imagine so please in your relationship with God remember he's God but remember he lovesyou remember he wants to bless you and remember you're not the finished article quite yet okaythank you very much

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Sermon Summary: A Wrestling Match with GodBible References: Genesis 32

Key Themes:

• Encountering God: Jacob's encounter with God in the night is a powerful reminder of God's personal involvement in our lives.
• The Power of Prayer: Jacob's honest and heartfelt prayer demonstrates the importance of seeking God's help in times of trouble.
• Surrendering to God's Will: Jacob's wrestling match with God symbolizes the need to submit to God's sovereignty and trust in His plan.
• The Transformation of Character: Through his encounter with God, Jacob experiences a profound transformation, moving from a life of self-reliance to one of dependence on God.

Sermon Overview:

Jonathan begins by introducing the context of Genesis 32, where Jacob is preparing to meet his estranged brother Esau. Despite the fear and uncertainty, Jacob recognizes God's presence and seeks His guidance.

The sermon delves into Jacob's prayer, highlighting his humility, honesty, and reliance on God's promises. Jonathan emphasizes the importance of praying with both faith and humility, acknowledging our dependence on God while also trusting in His character.

A significant portion of the sermon focuses on Jacob's wrestling match with God. This encounter symbolizes the struggle between human will and divine purpose. Jacob's insistence on receiving a blessing from God before letting go underscores the transformative power of encountering God personally.

The sermon concludes by emphasizing the importance of submitting to God's will and trusting in His plan. Jacob's experience serves as an example of how God can use difficult circumstances to shape our character and deepen our faith.

Additional Points:

• The Role of Fear: Jonathan discusses how fear can motivate our actions but that it's essential to trust in God's provision and protection.
• The Importance of Reconciliation: Jacob's desire to reconcile with Esau highlights the significance of forgiveness and restoration in relationships.
• The Power of God's Name: The change of Jacob's name to Israel signifies a new identity and a deeper connection with God.

By exploring these themes, Jonathan encourages listeners to seek God's presence, trust in His promises, and surrender their lives to His will.TranscriptGood morning everyone.Still going through Genesis and today we're going to be looking at chapter 32 of Genesis.Now I'm reading from modern translation, Genesis' first book in the Bible, so it will be fairlyearly on if you're looking for it.But this version I'm reading from is the New Living Translation, so don't hold it againstme.Verse, chapter 32.As Jacob started on his way again, angels of God came to meet him.And when Jacob saw them he exclaimed, This is God's camp.So he named the place Mahanaim.Why can't this give it just a place like, you know, sort of our house or, you know.Never mind, it's another story.It means two camps anyway.And Jacob sent messages ahead of his brother Esau, who was living in the region of Seirin the land of Edom.He told them, Give this message to my master Esau, humble greetings from your servant Jacob.Until now I've been living with uncle Laban, and now I own cattle and donkeys and flocksof sheep and goats and many servants, both men and women.I've sent these messages to inform my Lord of my coming, hoping that you will be friendlyto me.After delivering the message, the messengers returned to Jacob and reported, We met yourbrother Esau and he's already on his way to meet you with an army of 400 men.Jacob was terrified at the news.Yeah, I bet he was.He divided his household along with the flocks and herds and camels into two groups.And he thought, If Esau meets one group and attacks it, perhaps the other group can escape.Then Jacob prayed, O God of my grandfather Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord,you told me, Return to your own land and to your relatives.And you promised me, I'll treat you kindly.I'm not worthy of all the unfailing love and faithfulness you have shown to me, your servant.When I left home and crossed the Jordan River, I own nothing except a walking stick.Now my household fills two large camps.O Lord, please rescue me from the hand of my brother Esau.I'm afraid he's going to attack me along with my wives and children.But you promised me, I will surely treat you kindly and I'll multiply your descendantsuntil they become as numerous as the sands along the seashore, too many to count.Jacob stayed where he was for the night.Then he selected these gifts from his possessions to present to his brother Esau.200 female goats, 20 male goats, 200 ewes, 20 rams, 30 female camels with their youngand 40 cows, 10 bulls, 20 female donkeys and 30, oh sorry, 10 male donkeys, that's my eyesight.He divided these animals into herds and assigned each to different servants.Then he told his servants, Go ahead of me with the animals, but keep some distance between the herds.It's going to be like the 12 days of Christmas this you see.He gave these instructions to the men leading the first group.When my brother Esau meets you, he'll ask, whose servants are you and where are you going?Who owns these animals?You must reply, they belong to your servant Jacob, but they are a gift for his master Esau.Look, he's coming right behind us.And Jacob gave the same instruction to the second and third herdsmen and to all who followed behind the herds.You must say the same thing to Esau when you meet him and be sure to say,Look, your servant Jacob is right behind us.Jacob thought, I'll try to appease him by sending gifts ahead of me.And when I see him in person, perhaps he will be friendly to me.So the gifts were sent on ahead while Jacob himself spent that night in the camp.During the night, Jacob got up and he took his two wives,his two servant wives and his 11 sons and crossed the Jabot River with them.And after taking them to the other side, he sent over all his possessions.This left Jacob alone in the camp and a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break.When the man saw that he wouldn't win the match, he touched Jacob's hip and wrenched it out of its socket.Then the man said, Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me.What's your name? The man asked. He replied, Jacob.Your name will no longer be Jacob, the man told him. From now on,you will be called Israel because you have fought with God and with men and have won.Please tell me your name, Jacob said. Why do you want to know my name, the man replied.Then he blessed Jacob there. And Jacob named the place Peniel,which means face of God. For he said, I have seen God face to face and yet my life has been spared.The sun was rising as Jacob left Peniel and he was limping because of the injury to his hip.Even today, the people of Israel don't eat the tendon near the hip socketbecause of what happened that night when the man strained the tendon of Jacob's hip.You don't have to win every fight or every argument to be a winner.See, Jacob had this uncanny knack of making people angry.It was something that had happened throughout his life. In the last chapter 31,we saw how angry his Uncle Laban had got with him and why he'd left in such a hurry.He'd left without saying goodbye.He'd wanted to get out of what had been a pretty abusive relationship for 20 years,where this Jacob, who'd arrived as a con man himself,who had been conned and tricked for 20 years by his Uncle Laban into working for this guy,not being paid properly, not being looked after properly,everything that Laban did to try to trip him up, God seemed to bless Jacob.He said goodbye. Well, he hadn't said goodbye, he just rushed off.But Laban had caught up with him and he said, look, we scarpered because I was scared of you.Thankfully, he kind of resolved his relationship with his uncle,but it was now out of the frying pan and into the fire,because he was going home in obedience to what God had asked him to do.You read that in the previous chapter.But in doing so, his past was going to catch up with him.He was returning to a place where things had gone wrong.He wasn't anymore escaping from a problem.He was going to have to face it face to face.God had promised him this land that he was returning to,but that promise included challenges as to how he would rebuild relationships that had been broken.We read in Genesis 27 that Esau, his brother, hated Jacob.Why? Well, you know, our family issues can be really challenging for all of us,can't they, at times? You know, family breakups.It's marvelous. And there's nothing that causes more problems in a family than a will.And when a will doesn't work out that somebody doesn't get something that they expectedand the other person has got it,well, what had happened is Jacob basically, with the help of his mum, had conned his brother,his elder brother, out of what was rightfully, as far as the way society worked, his.He'd done it by guile. He had received a blessing, you know, by default.He basically conned his way into a blessing rather than actually received it graciouslyand willingly and openly.He'd actually made something happen. Esau was so cross about this.He said, I'm going to kill him. Read the inscription. I'm going to kill him.Mum got word of this. Mum of both Esau and Rebecca.And she said these classic words that you can read in Genesis 27.She's told him to go to his uncle Laban's and she sent off with this message.She says, stay there with Laban until Esau cools off.And when he calms down, I'll send for you. Now 20 years have passedand she hasn't asked him to come home.He's had 20 years away from homeand he's not had a message from Mum to say it's all right now.You can come home. Everything's fine. He's calmed down.But God's told him to go back.In the midst of this family breakup, what do you do to mend a broken relationship?How do you build that reconciliation back?You know, Esau felt he'd been fiddled out of what was rightfully his.But God says, you've got to go home and you've got to face the music.Jacob may have grasped a blessing that was not necessarily his to receive.Isaac had meant to give it to his son Esau.It hadn't been given willingly or knowingly to Jacob.And Jacob really lived up to his name.The word Jacob means deceiver or displacer or supplanter.Somebody who takes something that's not necessarily theirs.What was Jacob going to come home to?A fight or a friendship?I desperately wanted a friendship.And he knew he couldn't actually change the past.The past is gone.You can't actually, you know, we're not time travelers.We can't go back there and undo what we've done before.He just knew that he had to do something about this situation.He sorted things out with Laban.He now needed to sort things out with his estranged brother.And he was face to face with his crisis.And what did he attempt to do?Well, Jacob was always quite cunning, crafty, had good ideas.He had cunning plans, a bit like Baldrick.He was that kind of person.And he attempted a strategy of appeasement, as we read in this chapter.Groveling and gifts, basically, I've called it.It's the way he was going to try to win it over.He said, I'm hoping I can get around Esau.I can buy his friendship.I can buy my way back into his good books.I can say the right things and do the right thingsthat will make him friendly towards me again.And then he gets this report that Esau was on his way to meet him,but with an army of 400 men.Now, you know, that's quite a big army in the context of this.This passage is quite interesting because fear is a major motivatorin Jacob's actions, in his prayers and in his plans.There's no doubt about it.And he seems to have forgotten something that started right at the start of this passage.Because when he actually obeyed the command of God,knowing what he was about to face with his brother, potentially,he has another one of these wonderful experiences with God,which, I mean, Jacob had so many of these encounters with the supernatural,it's amazing, where he suddenly sees a great host, an army almost, of angels on the road.And he says, because this is a great place right at the start of the chapter.This is a place of two camps.My camp's here.God's camp of angels is here.It's as if God's saying, come on, Jacob, you can do this.I'm with you.You can do the right thing.I'm alongside you.I'm there for you.I'm with you.And he recognized it.He had discernment.He understood that God's presence was there too.And it didn't stop him from being afraid.And Jacob's response is so typical of us as Christians,and I include me in this.We face a challenge.We wrestle with it.We struggle to find a solution or a plan or a way of getting out of it.We make our plans to try to make the best of a bad thing sometimes,and we fear in the worst.And yet all the time we're also praying.We're praying on the basis of what the Bible says, what God says,you know, the promises of God.We believe this because God has said this.Lord, you've said this.We can trust you for this.We're doing that.We kind of like pray on the basis of our great need.We say, help, Lord.God, deliver us.God, help us.God, be in this for us.While we're still doing our plans,we pray on the basis of God's character.You're kind, you're loving, you're all these things.And then we return to our plans.If you want to use a term that's often used in the House of Parliaments these days,now being used of Labour, was used at the Tories beforehand,he's flip-flopping.He's going from planning to praying to planning to praying to planning to praying.And he's, you know, he's caught in the tension of this fear of Esauand the consequences of going back thereand thinking I'm going to lose everything.We're going to be massacred.You know, my family's going to be destroyed.Everything's going to go down.I need to split the camp into two.So if he gets one half, the other half at least can survive.He's got that at one side and the promise of God.I'm not going back.I'm not going back to Labour.I'm not going back to what was.I'm going forward into what God has called me to do.I'm going forward into the promise of Godand going forward into what I've been asked to do.You've promised me God that, you know, my descendants are going to live.They're going to multiply.You've promised me a future and a hope.And yet he's struggling with the tension, isn't he, of the reality of a problemand the truth of what he believes about the Godwho is bigger than all those problems.It's this tug of war.And it's a tug of war that we all face at times.A tug of war that goes on in our hearts and our minds.And I think, you know, it reminds me of the dad of a very troubled ladthat we read about in Mark chapter 9 who came to Jesus.And Jesus said to him, you know, if you believe, everything's possible.And this guy said, well, I do believe that anything's possible.But help me overcome my unbelief.It's one thing to think God can do something.God will intervene.God will support me.God will protect me.God will do this.God will heal.God will deliver.God will strengthen.God will rescue.It's another thing when you're in the challenge of the battle itself to believeGod will do it for me.We can believe, all of us can believe that God can.The issue is God will, will God.Jacob is wrestling with real doubts and fearsbefore what he anticipates to be a struggle with his brother Esau.I just want to go back briefly to this prayer that's in the middle of this chapter,I think verse 9 onwards, isn't it, or something like that.Because I think it's just a lovely prayer.Despite all his struggles,there is something about the honesty and the rawness of Jacob's life.I think God wants from all of us.He's basically saying a very real way, an honest way.He says to God, look, you told me to come here.I'm here in obedience.I'm obeying you.I'm kind of trusting you in this.I'm here because you've made a promise to me about this landand about my descendantsand about this being the place you want me to be.I'm doing what you're asking me to do and I'm trusting you for that.I've not run away from it.I've not fled from this conflict from 400 armed men.And it's also prayed not from a place of entitlement,but a place of humility.I'm not worthy, he says,of all your unfailing love and faithfulness.Now I just want to say something about unworthinessor feeling not worthy.It's a great thing to be humble before our God.It's what God wants us to do, what humbly before him.It's an unhealthy thing to have an unworthy attitude that says,I am not worthy of the grace, the mercy, the favor, the love of God.Many of us miss out on what God wants to do in our livesbecause they think, well, we're not good enough.We'll never make it.We'll never get there.And there's a balance here in Jacob's prayer.He recognizes, yes, the grace of God.I am unworthy.I have messed up at times.But he understands somethingthat God doesn't just look on our unworthiness.He is a God of grace and mercy and loving kindness towards us,which is totally undeserved.He prays with humility.He prays on the basis of his act walking in obedienceand in the God's promise.And he also acknowledges the blessing of God on his life.He's saying, thank you.Without God, he said, I'd have nothing.All I'd own, he says in verse 10, is just my walking stick on my staff.That's all I'd have.And the irony you will see at the end of this chapteris that will become a mark of what God is going to do in his life.It's the one thing that will be a reminder to himof when everything else is stripped away.He's got something to lean on.Someone to lean on.And in the midst of this raw prayer, he's praying for rescue.Lord help, I can't do this.This is beyond me.And he's not just praying for himself.He's praying for his family, his kids, his wives.But he goes straight back afterwards.Flips, like so many of us to say.If I pray my cards right, this is not what in the Bible.If I play my cards right, I'm going to salvage something out of this.I can make something at least.I can get something out of this.He's still trusting God, but not totally trusting God.It's almost like the limited partial faith that we all have.The Bible says walk by faith, doesn't it?I think most of us limp by faith, but not because of what we're going to see happen with Jacob.But we struggle to actually put faith into practice in our lives.Jacob is wrestling with this problem and night falls.But he can't sleep.We know that because in verse 2 it says during the night he got up.He's tossing and turning, wrestling with the problem.What's going to happen tomorrow?What's going to happen when I see Esau?What's going to happen with my family?What's going to happen with my goods?What's going to happen to me?How is Esau going to treat me?And he gets up and he sends his family and his possessions that are with him to the relative safety across the river.And he's left alone with his thoughts considering what the next day is going to bring.But of course, he was never alone.God's camp was just up the road.He wasn't alone.God was there.You know, often we feel we're just alone in this problem that you face.There's people in this room think you're alone in the problem you face.I think God wants to say to you this morning,you're not alone.You're not alone.See, God was there.And God finally wants to get to grips with Jacob.Jacob had spent his whole life struggling and striving from birth with Esau,then with Laban, trying to get ahead of the game using his cunning and his wits.And tonight he was going to learn a wrestling move.He was going to learn to submit.I used to watch the wrestling on the TV, not this American stuff, you know,but the old ITV Channel 4 o'clock.Some of you are old enough to remember it, you know.And the next round, eight rounds, eight four-minute rounds, two submissions, two falls or a knockout.And in one corner we have Big Daddy.God, and the other one we've got, you know, like conniving little so-and-so, like Jackie Paolo, you know.So we've got Jacob in one thing, the Jackie Paolo,and we've got the Big Daddy God in the other one,and there's going to be a wrestling match.Submission.Jacob, well God knew that actually,Jacob needed to meet him before he met Esau.And God made it happen.God wants Jacob to submit to him, to learn what it is to lean heavily on him,to learn what it is to cling to him, to learn what it is,not to hang on to his own achievements and his own abilities,but to hang on to God, to know that this would be the place of real blessing in his life.A blessing that would be graciously given, not taken by guile,that would be given freely by God himself.After wrestling with God all night,Jacob could no longer rely on his own strength to fight his battlesbecause God broke him, crippled him, if you like, dislocated his thigh.And for all of you who've ever had dislocations, and I'm not one of them,you'll know how painful it is, won't you Leslie, and others.You know, this is before the days of hip joints and all the rest of it.This guy was left powerless and helpless to continue his struggle with God.Jacob, as he was going through this wrestling match,knew that he wasn't wrestling one of Esau's men or even Esau himself.And the more the struggle continued, the more Jacob's determined that this is God,and God's blessing on my life.He gets the point after his hips put out, you know, he's clinging on, clinging on, one leg, clinging on.You know, a bit like in a boxing match where they go into, you know, the hold.So just trying to have a breather, but he's clinging on to God.And he's saying, I will not let go unless you bless me.And all that mattered to him at that point, remember,he started this evening not being able to sleep worrying about Esau.Now all he's concerned about is that he encounters God in a way that he would know God's blessing upon his life.Suddenly Esau doesn't matter anymore.What really matters is his relationship with God and what's happening there and then in his life with God.He's no longer consumed by these thoughts that he was wrestling with, he's wrestling with God himself.The night had begun with him wrestling with his fears, wrestling in his mind about what he's going to do with Esau,and it ended with him having wrestled with God.And it was a night that he would never forget, because he realized in the darkness,he had been face to face with God.God leaves the scene before dawn breaks.There's this phrase in the Old Testament, no one can see God and live.And there's almost the grace of God in that, in actually withdrawing before the light comes.But you've got this little phrase that's used in the Bible that says, you know, about the sun rose.I think it says on one version of the Bible that we use, one translation.The sun rose upon Jacob.It's a new day.The lights dawned, and he limps away, not thinking about Esau, saying,I've met with God a changed man, because he submitted to God.Hosea has these words to say about this incident in Hosea 12 verses 3 to 6.Even in the womb, Jacob struggled with his brother.And when he became a man, he even fought with God.Yes, he wrestled with the angel and won.He wept and pleaded for a blessing from him.And in Hebrews 11 verse 21, that chapter of these champions of faith, we read of Jacob.That it was by faith that Jacob, when he was old and dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons,and bowed in worship as he leaned upon that walking stick, that staff.Jacob is a changed man.He's broken, he's bowed, and he's blessed.And as a result, or as in the past, he's not been a particular blessing to his family.He's now able to bless others.He's changed physically, but he's also changed spiritually.He not only leans on his staff now for support,but that is in itself a constant reminder that he needs to keep leaning on God.His limp is a constant reminder of his encounter with the living God.I was told years ago by someone, I can't remember who,always trust a man who walks with a limp.I was talking in spiritual terms.I think that means always trust somebody who leans heavily on God.Someone who's vulnerable.Someone who's aware of their own weakness.Someone who doesn't come across as some sort of super saint that's got everything sorted.And he's empowered and powerful and, you know, the super saint stuff that people are drawn to.The person who has encountered God, who walks with a limp,is broken and bowed in terms of humility and in terms of worship and blessed.And there's a character change comes out as a result.You see, the name of a person, particularly in Genesis in the Old Testament,actually meant something.And this is a mark of God's grace upon his life.No longer you are going to be called the heel, the displacer, the deceiver, the supplanter,whatever this word Jacob means.Now you are going to be known as Israel, the God persevera, the God striver.You have changed.You're a changed man.You're a changed person as a result of meeting me.You see, I always say this character really matters.And for all the great experiences that Jacob has had to this time,you think about it, Bethel and all the rest of it.There's amazing things that have happened in his life.There's still a lot in Jacob until this moment, which is all,I'm going to sort this out myself.I'll try to make it this work.I can do it in my own strength.You know, I believe in God. Thank you, God.Please help me, God. Please rescue me, God.But really, I'll try and wangle my way through it as I've done in the past.At this point,all he can do is that he's going to be limping towards his brother.He's not going to be going there with 400 armed men.He's going to be walking towards an army like this.You read what happens in the next chapter as a result at that time.And I come to a close.What I love about the stories in Genesis is that they're very real,thousands of years old,but they go to the heart of the human condition,the character of who we really are, the real us,the ones that aren't just turn up on Sundays and say our prayersand do our singing and say all nice things at the front,but the reality of life with the struggles that we face and encounter and how we live.And we are so much like Jacob.Well, if you're not, maybe not, but I am.Wrestle. We wrestle with life.We have struggles with life. We wrestle with people.We wrestle with our families.We wrestle and struggle with what God's will is in our lives.Doing the right thing in the right way.Many of us in this room have known and are aware of God's promisesand have had encounters with God and visions and dreams and words and experiences.I mean, I have. I'm sure you all have.But yet it doesn't stop us at times thinking.I'll try and plan this one out and God please help my plans.I'll try and work this out in my own strength.I'll still do that. You know, we start at the place where we ask God to bless what we're doing.And we try to get out the scripts we get into and the problems that we've made ourselves,you know, asking God's help in it, but we try to do our bit as well.The example of Jesus at Gethsemane is an example of brokenness,a bowedness and a blessedness.Not my will, but yours be done.God's will, you see, is not always going to be easy for us.At times it may be painful.But it is the way that we become a blessing to others.And we may know his blessing for ourselves.I finish with this, James 4 verse 7 says, submit yourselves to God.Resist the devil and he will flee from you.Andy used to often say in the leadership team to me,it's not about you. I never did think it was about me, to be honest.Remember, it's not about you. But I want to say, it's not about you.Politely. It's not about the leaders. It's not about Nick.Not about Erica. Not about Andy and not about any of us in this room.Not about me. It's about him.It's about him.Take this cup away from me.Yet not what I will. But your will be done.A meeting in a garden at night that Jesus had.An encounter at night that Jacob had with God.History changed. God bless you.Amen.

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Sermon Summary: God's Unwavering PromisesSermon Title: Relationships - Genesis 30

Speaker: Andy

Summary:

Andy's sermon delves into the intricate tapestry of Genesis 30, a chapter filled with familial drama, jealousy, and divine intervention. He draws parallels between the soap opera-like events depicted in the chapter and the complexities of modern life, highlighting how God's plans often unfold amidst chaos and human imperfection.

The sermon begins by summarizing the key events of the chapter: Rachel's jealousy of Leah, the birth of Jacob's children through his wives and their maidservants, and Jacob's struggle with Laban. Andy emphasizes the unconventional nature of these events, challenging our preconceived notions of a neat and orderly God.

He then focuses on Rachel's character, highlighting her jealousy, blame-shifting, and longing for children. Despite her struggles, Andy points out that God remembers Rachel and fulfills His promise by granting her a son, Joseph. This serves as a reminder that God's promises are unwavering, even in the face of human failings and disappointments.

Andy connects Rachel's experience to the challenges faced by individuals today, emphasizing the importance of maintaining faith in God's promises even when life seems unfair or chaotic. He encourages listeners to trust in God's timing and to seek His guidance amidst life's complexities.

The sermon concludes with a call to action, urging listeners to embrace God's forgiveness and to find freedom from self-criticism. Andy emphasizes that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross has removed the burden of condemnation, allowing us to live a life free from reproach and self-doubt.

Bible References:

• Genesis 30:1-43

Key Themes:

• God's unwavering promises
• The power of faith amidst challenges
• The importance of forgiveness and self-acceptance
• The transformative power of Jesus' sacrifice

Additional Notes:

• The sermon is delivered in a conversational and relatable style, making it accessible to a wide audience.
• Andy uses personal anecdotes and relatable examples to illustrate the concepts discussed in the sermon.
• The sermon emphasizes the importance of trusting in God's timing and His plan for our lives.

TranscriptYeah, I brought the gifts and offerings from the church at 146 this morningGood morning, everybodyGreat to see you. So let's openGod's Word together andcontinueThe soap opera that is GenesisOkay, as we heard Nick, I think used the analogy last week and compared chapter 29 toCoronation Street, I think as we get into chapter 30thatcoronation Street pales into significancecompletely andIt's I'm not going to read it all because we're beer from the rest of the morningBut but it's it's a fascinating chapterAll right, and a lot of these chapters are actually it's goodIt challenges our sort of preconceptions and I don't know for youMaybe as you look at this afterwards as you hear and listen to this now some of this, you knowWe get a conception that God likes things to be nice and orderedbut actually it's we like nice things to be nice and ordered and we think Christianity should be this and this and this andThis and God will work when this is sorted out and as we read these chaptersWe actually find the truth to be a long way from thatIt's fascinating. So last week we heard about LeahWho was Jacob's?Became Jacob's wife by deceit from Leah's dad andAnd we heard about having four children by Jacob and that even though Rachel Leah's sister was the one that Jacob wanted to marryThat actually he was deceived intoMarrying Leah and had four children by her and chapter 30Opens with Rachel being jealous of her sisterAnd actually not only jealous of her sisterBut then starting to blame everybody else for what's going on and pointing the finger at Jacob and saying wellYou know, this is your fault and Jacob gets angry with RachelAnd so Rachel tells Jacob but to go and sleep with her maidservantThis is soap opera and beyond go and sleep with her maidservantWho is called Bilhar and so he does that and then Bill hug his birth to Dan and Neftali these two boysAnd then guess what on seeing that LeahRachel's sister says aha Jacob go and sleep with my maidservant and have childrenYeah, so that happens Leah tells Jacob to sleep with her maidservant a lady called Zilpah and Gad and Asherare bornAll right, and then we get into the firstMe even more weird bitOkay, so if you remember last week the names of Leah's sonsThe oldest son was a chap called ReubenAll rightAnd then we read in this chapter chapter 30 that Rachel goes to Reuben and say give me some of your mandrakesThat's a plant right? I don't know the ins and outs of thatBut she asked him she asked Leah's eldest son for mandrakes and Leah hears this and intervenes and says noSo Rachel says, oh, okay. I'll let you sleep with Jacob if you let me have Reuben's mandrakesIt's all in here, right? It's all in here, okayAnd so Leah says yeah, okay, cuz Leah hadn't been able to have children after she'd had before she stopped having childrenSo Jacob sleeps with LeahAgain and Izzikar and Zebulun two sons are born and then Dinah one daughter is bornAnd then we get into the middle of the chapter and we read that GodRemembers Rachel and we'll get into what that means in a little bitGod remembers Rachel and Rachel conceives and she gives birth to JosephAnd that gives a bit of light at the end of the tunnel for us because we know that there's some stuff coming in laterChapters that we can really preach about without getting confusedRight and you we can all sing the songs and all that stuff. You know, that's coming. So that's good newsRight, but so then we get to the end of that bit and then the second half of the chapterThis is weird bit number two. Jacob wants to go back homeSo if you remember he had studied work seven years for Laban who is the dad of Rachel and LeahHe worked seven years so that he could marry Rachel andLaban tricks him and makes him marry Leah and it says you need to work another seven yearsIn order to have Rachel as your wife as well. SosoSo he's worked 14 years for laban and he goes to laban says I want to go homeYeah, I want to go home with my wives and family but laban says well hang on a minute while you've been working for meThese 14 years I've got really wealthy and things have gone really well for meI'd like you to stay Jacob name your wages and you can stay and work for meSo Jacob has a think right and he says okayI'll name my wages and I'll stay working for himMy wages are I want every speckled and spotted sheep and goat and every dark lamb that you haveOkay, you were this still. Okay, so so you'd be glad I've summarized it rather than reading it. So labor says yeahOkay, you're on and then the very same dayLaban runs around and gets every spotted sheep speckled lamb speckled goat and dark lamb and scurries them away from JacobSo he can't find themOkay, you can bear with this bow with this it gets betterSo then Jacob he goes around the trees that are poplar almond and plane treesGet some branches and strips the bark off them and then he puts those branches in the water troughsWhere the sheep come to drink and when his sheep come to drink from those water troughs and they mateGuess what? They give birth to young that are streaked and speckled and spottedHow about you can't wait to hear what we're gonna talk about thisRight and we read at the end of that chapter Jacob becomes exceedingly wealthyOkayI'm gonna I just thank God that when you want to prepare sometimes I feel okayThere's a few few key verses in here that I really want to bring out and that's what we're going to be doing this morningBut with that summary you think why is going on?What is happening here because of all this crazy stuff happening, you know, this is this is the nation of IsraelThis is the people of God. This is God's chosen people his holy nation and there's like there's four months to all of themAnd they're conceived in sort of chaosbut I tell you that's why God works because when all that mess is going on all that complexity of human interaction andStuff that a lot screwed up stuff that doesn't make sense and people making mistakesWe're gonna see a little bit more in a minute God's plans and God's purposesContinue to move forwardAnd I tell you that is such good news because that says when there's so much mess in my lifeGod's plans and purposes for me continue to move forward when there's so much mess in the churchGod's plans and purposes for the church continue to move forward when there's so much mess in this nationIn this continent in this world todayGod's plans and purposes are continuing to move forwardBecause it's not all nice and neat and boxed up, you knowAnd actually we think about it the story we've had so far is you knowRemember God spoke to Abraham about his promises, you knowand our Abraham's gonna have children as numerous as the sand on the seashore and there's theStars in the sky and Abraham tries to make it happen himself and give Ishmael arrives and Sarah laughs at God and says I can'tHave children and lo and behold. Guess what? She does have the one and then Isaac. He doesn't seem to want to get marriedSo, how is he going to carry on the promise?But eventually he marries Rebekah and then we have the stories of Esau and Jacob and the deceitWith their mum Rebekah in order that Jacob gets the blessing and without all of that and now that same sort of messHe's just carrying onYeah, and we shouldn't be surprised that we're living in a place of messBut what we should be doing is in that place of mess saying God, what are you doing?What are you saying I want to tune into what you are doing and what's happeningLast week. We looked at Leah and we saw how God brought her to a place of praise and freedomFrom what everybody else thought about her, you knowWe heard how she won that was unattractive that she was the the cast off that her dadSkeamed to give her away to her husbandand the challenge of that for her obviously but God brought her through that to a place of freedom from what people thought and aplace of praise and worshipTo God this week. We're going to home in on her sister RachelAnd and just talk a little bit about that in the next few minutesYou see Rachel Rachel was the attractive one as we heard last week and when you read about line chapter 29Rachel was the one that Jacob wanted to marryThe one he was prepared to wait seven yearsBefore he could have her as his wife and then agreeing to work another seven yearsAfterwards, you know, that was the value of that man placed on that woman and there's a sermon or two in there about valuesBetween men and women which we're not going to get into but you can get the pictureHow highly he respected her and thought of her and now at the start of chapter 30 we read this in verse 1When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children. She became jealous of her sister. That's LeahWho by this time had four children? So she said to Jacob give me children or I'll dieJacob became angry with her and said am I in the place of God who has kept you from having children?So Rachel is jealous at the outset of this, you knowLeah is having all the children to Jacob and she hasn't had any and you kind of start thinkHow must that have felt?to her how much she you've handled that how painful andDifficult that must been must have been not only just naturallyBut we've gone from the promise of God to Abraham like like I said the promise of God came to AbrahamYour children are going to be that numerous and he has one sonRight. His children are going to be as numerous as the sand on the seashore and the stars in the skyAnd he just has one son and it's like the promise of God is hanging by a threadOne son and then Isaac marries Rebecca and yeah, they have two sons, but the promise and blessing of God is to Jacob onlyOne son so for two generations this massive promise of God is like he's hanging by a threadJust one sonJust one son and now we get to Jacob and suddenly it's like the children of the promise are popping up everywhereYou know Leah's had four by this time already and they're in the promise and the blessing of God, but there's RachelAnd she must be thinking what's going on? How could this have happened? She is not involvedShe is the one missingoutAnd I think we probably all know a little bit about how that feelsI remember when I was aYoung man of 18 so probably like a lot of us. I went through schoolwe had a group of mates who hung out together and when I got toI did a levels with these guysand when the results came out all the all of them got the grades to go off to college except for me andAnd I remember at the time thinkingWell thinking quite a few things. I remember I remember them on the dayThe results came out then trying to console me that doesn't work. Does it? You know, they've got the gradesThey're off into itIs that at that time people always went off to new towns and cities and whatever and they were offAnd they were excited and they tried to console meBut it doesn't work does it like that when when you're the one feeling left out of all these other peopleIf all these other people try and console it, it doesn't really workI remember the school throwing a book of courses at me and say have a look at that and that was the sum of their wisdomAnd I remember the walk home to my parents house and feeling this sense of failedExpectations, you know, it's not a statement about themIt's just my insecurity in the way that I processed it at the timeBut the biggest thing I think I remember more than anything else was that everybody else they had successEverybody else was getting on everybody else was now leaving the hometown where we'd grown up and was off to something new and excitingAnd I was missing outAnd you know that feeling when everyone around you is in on something but you're notYou're missing out, you know for those of us Christians of a certain age and era would remember when you knowJohn Wimber came in the 1980s when the Toronto blessing so-called happened in the 90s and so manyConversations around then when God was doing stuff in people's lives if you weren't feeling it you felt you were missing outAnd it just exposed our insecuritiesActually that we feel why isn't that happening to me?God mustn't love me as much as he loves them and all that sort of tosh, right because it's just bringing out our insecuritiesThat's all it's doing and so here for Rachel wishes. She's missing outThat's what it's like for her. IThought this was gonna happen GodBut it hasn'tNot only not only is what I thought was going to happen to me not happening it's happening to themLeah is the one getting blessed in the story, but I thought it was me. I thought Jacob loved meI thought the blessing of God was going to come to meI thought I was gonna have children but it's not happening and not only is it not happening to meIt is happening to that person over thereIt's not fairGodWhy is it like this God?in lifeIn the churchin our own pursuit of JesusIs this resonating a bit?That's goodCertainly does with me and we do what Rachel does in the storywe look for things and we look for people to blame and point the finger atJacob this is your fault. She says, you knowI'm when we feel like that and that jealousy and anger is in usWe might not use those words but often what it boils down to we look to point the finger away from usAnd blame somebody or something else. We thought this was what God had promised surelyThis was the will of God. I thought the church was going to do thisI thought revival was going to happen in the 1980s or whatever and it didn'tWe thought this is what God had promised and instead of being in a place of a place of praise like her sister LeahWe get into a place of anger andJealousy sure we might hide it from time, but we might suppress it. We might get really good at putting the mask onSo it doesn't so but from time to time guess what it bursts outWe can't help it because it is in there because of the frustration ofWhat of our understanding because of the disappointment that this has happened to them and it hasn't happened to usBecause the anger is so deep-seated and so eats away in our quiet momentsHow can God do that with them? Leah isn't even the one that Jacob wanted to marryIt's so unfairHow come this has happened in my life? IThought God was leading me onBut now I haven't got a clue what's happeningAnd you know for Rachel it's it's childlessness or that word we often read about in ScriptureIt's that sense of feeling barren and maybe for you this morningBut this is resonating a little bit and and you're feeling a sense of barrennessYou know that sense of desert of where is God? Why has this happened Lord?Or maybe it's just a sense of sickness or desperation or loneliness or isolationIsThe killer question as I think about this isWhat is Rachel lost sight of at this point in the passage at this point in the story?she's lost sight of God's promises are true andHe is faithful and loving to all he has made I walked in and we're singingIsWaymakerPromise keeper miracle worker probably the wrong order, but you know what I mean, right? We sing those songs, right?We sing those words and because it's a great tuneWe might even sing it with gustoBut the reality is have we got a hold of that in our lives because scripture teaches us that notDarlings these or Bethel or whoever our favorite worship guy isYou know because scripture teaches that what God is have we got a hold of that and a learning to apply thatin the nitty-grittyEarthy really annoying things that happen in our day-to-day livesAnd not just reserve it for a moment on a Sunday morning because that's what this is aboutThat's what Jesus wants to do with usHe wants us to get a grip of his word and apply it into our hearts and work hard to make it change our livesAnd our lifestyle because he's got freedom for us. OhGod that's what he wants to doAndYet, I guess just like RachelThere's a great pressure to try and fix it ourselves because we want it nowWe don't want to wait for anythingYou know the pressure in the world around us is if you've got to wait for anything move on to the next thingDon't wait, you know we used to preach ages ago must have been 1980s or 90sWe talked about instant foods instant coffee instant tea is you know the pressure on smashed you remember smash?HeyWe're all old. I know right and the need for everything instantYou know now. It's just it's just got to be a few clicks awayOne click away one swipe or whatever and he's there in front of us and all so many things in lifeThat will bring that pressure of instantness to us, but anything that is of valuetakes timeParticularly when it comes to relationshipsParticularly when it comes to and I'm talking about relationships husband wise parents and childrenFriends in the church, but of course especially with Jesus, and it takes that investmentIt takes that build up of trustAnd so although Rachel tries to manufacture it herself and let Jacob sleep with her maidservantThat doesn't really cut it for her sure she gets two kidsBut as we'll see in a minute that doesn't address the root issue of what's going on in our lifeAnd for you and me we can do that as we get frustrated thinking we're waiting for God. I'll give him a handRight yeah, and I'll try and do something myself, but at the end of the dayThat doesn't cut the mustard it doesn't doesn't address. What is going on?So he stays like that for RachelAs I say and it's interesting just like her ancestorsYou know Abraham tries to make it himself and as Ishmael there's a bit of shenanigans going on withRebecca and Esau and Jacob and now she tries to have a go and all along alreadyWe're only in chapter 30 of the BibleThere's an awful lot more chapters to come yet, and everybody's trying to make you up and do it themselvesInstead of learning this God who was promisedThis is a God who is going to act and do it in his time in his wayUntilWe get to verse 22Which I'm so glad is in here not just because of the rest of the chapterBut because of what it teaches us today and what Rachel can teach us today, so we get to verse 22And we read thisthen Godremembered RachelHe listened to her and opened her wombShe becamePregnant and gives but gave birth to a son and said God has taken away my disgrace and she named the son JosephIt's just a few things about this first of all so when he says God remembered Rachel, it's really importantWe don't think that actually yeah, God's really busy. He's sorting out JacobMaybe he's even gone to what Esau's doing and he's seen some other people around the rest of the world and they goRachel I forgot about Rachel quick was that RACHEL or RACH8ELI can never remember. It doesn't mean that okay when we read that God remembered RachelIt's not like he had a senior moment, but I would now I'm just forever telling me to write listsSo that I remember, but then I've got to remember to look at the list so so but you knowIt's not like that God hasn't got a great long list and he's gone way past the Rachel item and he's down here nowAnd he's got to go back. It's not like that. He doesn't forget in that sense, okay?But this is the third so we go back to scripture to try and figure out. What does that really mean then?Well, this is the third time already in the Bible that we read this phrase in chapter 8 and verse 1 of GenesisWe read God remembered NoahBut that time Noah was in the arkIt was bobbing around on the waters and then we read God remembered NoahAnd he dries the waters out and the ark settlesAnd then the next time is in chapter 19 of Genesis just before he's about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and we read and GodrememberedAbraham and rescued Lot from Sodom and Gomorrah in other wordsThis is a phrase used to indicate that God is about to take action on behalf of that personfor their goodGod is about to do itIndicates a turning point that what I've been the status quo before that what I've been what life was about beforeBut what I've been the norm and what I got used to and expectedGod was suddenly going to do something and change all of that. So that was no longer the caseSo for Noah the ark was going to land and all the animals are going to come outIt was a turning point for AbrahamLot his nephew was going to be rescued from those cities and now for Rachel we see there's a sudden changeAs she moves from being barren to being childless and anybody who's gone from having no children to having one childWill understand the massive turning point that is in lifeBut there's much more to it than simply having children here in this passage for usYou see God had not forgotten Rachel his promises and his plans and his purposes are not upset by ourDisappointments by our screw-ups by our what the Bible calls sin sure we may think they are from our perspectiveBut he does not forget his promises and plans and purposes remain trueHe is a Heavenly Father who loves his people. He had made a covenant with AbrahamThat's a big strong word for a prompt were you've way beyond the promiseHe made that to Abraham and he was going to fulfill it and now the promise of God was onRachel and that was not going to change no matter what else happened or had happened to herThePromises of God over us are not affected by family rouse and argumentsThat's so good to know in itThat is so good to know and they're not affected by how long that we have to waitAnd so what what was the effect of this? I?Just want to end bring this to an ending with this bitWhat was the if you guess she had a son she had Joseph of course?But there's this little phrase in the NIV it says thatThough she said God has taken away my disgraceI just want to change that slightly in most other versions. He says God has taken away my reproachand actually when I looked it up theSounds arrogant. I don't say the original Hebrew. I looked it up in a bookI'll just write and actually the word the word is better translated reproach, so I looked up reproach in a dictionaryAnd it said in the dictionary reproach means to criticize someoneEspecially for not being successful or not doing what is expected?You see if all the ladies had turned up in unit two yesterday at one o'clockAnd there was bare tables and there was eight lads sat on the chairs playing cards togetherErica would be totally justified in reproaching meThat will be fully done it means you know you tell you criticizing someone for not being successful or notDoing what is expected, but notice the what she says God has taken awaymy reproachSo in other words Rachel is criticizing herselfEspecially for not being successful and not doing what is expected of herShe is criticizing herself. She's thinking whatever she she's thinking. What is everybody else saying about me?What is everybody else thinking about me, and she's a result of that. She'scriticizing herself andthen suddenly God comes and acts andTakes that awayBut I just how common is that amongst us in fact the moreI think about this the more I think we're all like this right we all get hang-ups and start thinkingWhat does so-and-so think about me? What do they think about me? You know I wish I was like themBut I'm not like them. I'm not as successful as them. We might not use that languageBut we criticize ourselvesAnd so we have this reproach if you like to ourselves you think if only I was like themWe use language likeWell, I'm not a successI've I've not got a levels. I failed my a levels. I'm not a successI can't do that IWould never be like them. I could never be like themI'm a failure IDon't belongYou know we use language if you use language like thatJust in here you may not even tell people about it, but in hereThen that is you are approaching yourself, and you are criticizing yourselves for not being successful or doing what is expectedAnd we do that don't we and it and it's such a crippling thing it really is it's such a crippling thing thatThat that constrains and restricts and limitsAnd as we focused on it limits what God can do innocent through usWhen as we're going to see he's won the freedom for us to be to not have to live like that. You see RachelStop worryingWhat other people thought about her?She stopped viewing herself as the loser as an object of ridicule of beingSecond best her approach was taken away by GodEnabling her to have a child and in a kind of ironic twist of scripture this same fatherGod takes away our approachThrough the death of his only childon the cross at CalvaryHe's done it. He's done it. We don't have to live in that place where we are critical of ourselves all the timeWe don't have to live in that place where what we do is so conditioned by everybody else around us because that's what we're botheredThinking about he has won freedom for us on the cross not to have to live like thatPaul writes in fact Paul writes in his letter to the to the Colossiansbut Jesus has taken it away and nailed it to the cross ifYou're stuck in a place this morning where you are critical of yourself because of what other people have or haven't said and you've got falseExpectations of yourself because it's driven by what other people have done or said or thought about youJesus says I've nailed that to the cross we can be freeGoodSome of us are getting it we can be free and we need to come back to the cross and find that place and sayJesus I need your forgiveness. He writes Paul writes again in Romans 8 there is now noYeah, get it see now that is classic isn't it that's a verse that we know and love because we're good ChristiansRight, but the trick is applying that to our lives day by day in our thought lifeYou don't have to be critical of yourself. You don't have to stand accept the stand there say I'm a failureI'm no good because Jesus says no there is no condemnation for anyone who is in ChristWe have to get a hold of that and apply it to our livesThese scriptures are here to set us free and to bring us truthNot just simply to memorize but that is a step on the way, right?But here to set us free and we need to get a hold of this word and let it change our lives because this tellsUs what God is all about this tells us what God has got a plan for you and a purpose for youThis tells us how we need to live and discover who this Jesus really is and that he is alive todayAnd it can change livesJustTo come back to so it's a my little story when I was 18 and that sense of feeling, you know a lossLate, so it's just like Rachel. Nothing changed straight away. But later that year I had an interview at what was then called Sheffield PolytechnicAnd I remember going back on the train home from that interview and it's one of those really old trainsNot steam trainOne of those really old trains were those carriages that have got six seats in only, you knowThe sliding door and there's three seats thereAnd I had that compartment to myself on the way home and for the first time I didn't really use this language thenBut for the first time I had this sudden sense that God's hand was on what was going onand that switchedMaybe even at that point or soon after and I wasn't bothered that my mates had gone away and off doing their thingSuddenly there was something far more significant on the sceneGod's hand God's plan God's purposesAnd so I finish with this and I do come back to this this issue of reproachAnd maybe as we sing at the end, I want to encourage you to respond to Jesus about this because you knowMaybe the starting place is actually to ask for forgivenessMaybeMaybe the starting place is to say, Lord, I'm sorry to think like thatI bring this all to you Jesus and if it's helpfulI encourage you just to come and kneel at the cross and the sun and just do business with GodBecause he longs for us to be free from this. You don't have to live like thatanymore because Jesus died on the cross and is alive today to change your heart change your mind and change your life andThose patterns those thought patterns can be transformed by the power of the cross and I just encourage you as we worshipIn a minute to respond to him. Like I said come and kneel on the floor and worship and give it to himHe is the one who can do thisYou see when God breaks into your lifeThere's a reevaluation of what truly matters and as we encounter a living God aLoving father who has called us by name who has chosen us who says you are mineWho has watched over us from before we were conceivedWho has very great and precious promises for us and who ultimately gave us his only son for youAnd for me the more we live in that space the less we worry about what has happenedWhat others think and the more we live in the goodness that our reproach is taken awayby JesusAmen

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Sermon Summary: The School of Hard KnocksSermon Text: Genesis 29

Sermon Summary:

In today's sermon, Nick delves into the challenging narrative of Jacob's journey in Genesis 29. He explores the themes of deception, blessing, and the unexpected twists and turns life can take.

The sermon begins by recounting Jacob's deceitful act of stealing his brother Esau's blessing. This deception leads to Jacob's flight from his home and his subsequent journey to Paddan Aram.

As Jacob arrives at Paddan Aram, he encounters Rachel, Laban's daughter, and falls in love with her. He agrees to work for Laban for seven years in exchange for Rachel's hand in marriage. However, on his wedding night, Jacob is tricked by Laban and married to Leah, Rachel's older sister.

Despite this setback, Jacob continues to work for Laban, eventually marrying Rachel as well. The sermon highlights the contrast between Jacob's love for Rachel and his indifference towards Leah.

Nick then shifts the focus to the concept of "the school of hard knocks." He suggests that Jacob's experiences, filled with challenges and disappointments, are a form of spiritual training. The blessing that Jacob received from his father, while significant, did not guarantee a smooth and easy life. Instead, it set him on a path of discovery and growth.

The sermon emphasizes that the blessings in our lives may not always manifest in the ways we expect. It's through the challenges and hardships we face that we truly learn and grow as individuals. Nick encourages the congregation to view their own struggles as opportunities for spiritual development, rather than as setbacks.

The sermon also highlights the importance of perseverance and trust in God. Even in the face of adversity, Jacob's faith in God remained steadfast. His story serves as a reminder that God's plans for our lives are often greater than our own.

Bible References:

• Genesis 29

Key Themes:

• Deception and its consequences
• The nature of blessings and their unexpected manifestations
• The concept of "the school of hard knocks"
• Perseverance and trust in God
• The importance of spiritual growth through challenges
• The unseen blessings and purposes within life's hardships

Conclusion:

The sermon concludes by encouraging the congregation to embrace their own "school of hard knocks" as a path towards spiritual growth and a deeper relationship with God. It reminds them that even in the midst of challenges, God's love and faithfulness remain steadfast.

TranscriptWe're on Genesis 29, by the way, racing through. We are in the middle of coming into a collectionof passages that are challenging, to say the least. I knew someone some years ago who,they went to prison, actually, and while they were in prison, they didn't have anythingto read, so they decided to read the Bible. It was the first time that they'd really engagedwith the Bible, and so they read it over and over and over again. And he got really fascinatedby these passages in Genesis, and he said, well, and his honest assessment of it was,it's like Coronation Street. So much going on, and so many things that you think, well,what's going on there? You couldn't write this stuff, do you know what I mean? But obviouslysomebody has. But my title this morning is The School of Hard Knocks, and we're dealingwith Jacob, who has stolen the blessing, if you like, or taken an opportunity to get ablessing that wasn't actually rightfully his, and yet he conspired with his mother to getthat blessing from his father, and then as a result, as we've heard over the weeks, hashad to flee away from his brother, who wants to kill him for what he's done. And so he'son this long, hard journey that has been reflected many times, doesn't actually looklike the blessing he was expecting. This is challenging stuff. And so, in Genesis 29,we've got Jacob arriving at Paddan Aram, and I'm going to read it, we've got a little bitof time, I'm going to read it, because I know we can do a synopsis and we can, but unlesswe actually read it in the Scripture, we don't always grasp what we're talking about. I couldstart talking about something and think, where did he get that from? So it's good that weroot what we say in the actual passage.So then Jacob hurried on, finally arriving in the land of the east. He saw a well inthe distance. Three flocks of sheep and goats lay in an open field beside it, waiting tobe watered, but a heavy stone covered the mouth of the well. It was the custom thereto wait for all the flocks to arrive before removing the stone and watering the animals.Afterward, the stone would be placed back over the mouth of the well. Jacob went overto the shepherds and asked, where are you from, my friends? We are from Haran, theyanswered. Do you know a man there named Laban, the grandson of Nahor, he asked. Yes, we do,they replied. Is he doing well, Jacob asked. Yes, he's well, they answered. It's fascinating,isn't it? Look, here comes his daughter Rachel with the flock now. Jacob said, look, it'sstill broad daylight, too early to round up the animals. Why don't you water the sheepand goats so they can get back out to pasture? Lots of detail. We can't water the animalsuntil all the flocks have arrived, they replied. Then the shepherds move the stone from themouth of the well and we water all the sheep and the goats. You get the gist. Jacob wasstill, beginning to choke on it, Jacob was still talking with them when Rachel arrivedwith her father's flock, for she was a shepherd. And because Rachel was his cousin, the daughterof Laban, his mother's brother, and because the sheep and goats belonged to his uncleLaban, Jacob went over to the well and moved the stone from its mouth and watered his uncle'sflock. Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and he wept aloud. No comment about what Rachel did. Heexplained to Rachel that he was her cousin on her father's side, the son of her auntRebecca, so Rachel quickly ran and told her father Laban. As soon as Laban heard thathis nephew Jacob had arrived, he ran out to meet him. He embraced and kissed him and broughthim home. When Jacob had told him his story, Laban explained, you really are my own fleshand blood. After Jacob had stayed with Laban for about a month, Laban said to him, youcouldn't work for me without pay just because we are relatives. Tell me how much your wagesshould be. Now Laban had two daughters. The older daughter was named Leah, and the youngerone was Rachel. There was no sparkle in Leah's eyes, but Rachel had a beautiful figure anda lovely face. Since Jacob was in love with Rachel, he told her father, I'll work foryou for seven years if you'll give me Rachel, your younger daughter, as my wife. Agreed,Laban replied. I'd rather give her to you than to anyone else. Stay and work with me.So Jacob worked seven years to pay for Rachel, but his love for her was so strong that itseemed to him but a few days. Finally, the time came for him to marry her. I have fulfilledmy agreement, Jacob said to Laban. Now give me my wife so I can sleep with her. So Labaninvited everyone in the neighbourhood and prepared a wedding feast. But that night,when it was dark, Laban took Leah to Jacob, thank you, and he slept with her. Laban hadgiven Leah a servant, Zilpa, to be her maid. But when Jacob woke up in the morning, itwas Leah. What have you done to me, Jacob raised at Laban? I worked seven years forRachel. Why have you tricked me? It's not our custom here to marry off a younger daughterahead of the firstborn, Laban replied. But wait until the bridal week is over, then we'llgive you Rachel, too. Provided you promise to work for another seven years. Laban's ontosomething here, isn't he? So Jacob agreed to work seven more years. A week after Jacobhad married Leah, Laban gave him Rachel, too. Laban gave Rachel a servant, Bilhar,to be her maid. So Jacob slept with Rachel, too, and he loved her much more than Leah.He then stayed and worked for Laban the additional seven years. When the Lord saw that Leah wasunloved, he enabled her to have children, but Rachel could not conceive. So Leah becamepregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said the Lord has noticedmy misery and now my husband will love me. She soon became pregnant again and gave birthto another son. She named him Simeon, for she said the Lord heard that I was unlovedand has given me another son. Then she became pregnant a third time and gave birth to anotherson. He was named Levi, for she said surely this time my husband will feel affection forme since I have given him three sons. Once again Leah became pregnant and gave birthto another son. She named him Judah, for she said, now I will praise the Lord. And thenshe stopped having children. Amen? You can see why they say, when we've got the rotorgoing forward about who's going to speak on a Sunday morning, of all the series, thisis the one that gets people flicking through the Bible reading. Where's my passage? What'sit going to be about? I know Andy's already researching for the next one. The school ofhard knocks, focused on Jacob. I mean, Jacob, I mean the mind boggles. I'm not sure whatwas in his mind or what he thought the blessing would mean, but clearly things weren't workingout as he planned. Here was Jacob the trickster, the one who had conspired to get the blessing,and suddenly he finds what goes around comes around, and he's in the middle of a situationwhere somebody else has double-crossed him. He's thinking, this isn't fair. This isn'tthe way it's supposed to be. This isn't what happens to blessed people. This is something,you know, I'm Jacob. I'm the big man. I carry the blessing of my father, and yet thingsweren't working out as he planned. They do say, be careful what you wish for, and ifJacob thought that the blessing he received meant a passport to an easy and trouble-freelife, then he was mistaken, sadly mistaken. For him, I suppose, at the outset, the blessing,that moment where he said to his father, give me the, or he sort of put himself in the placeof his brother to receive that blessing, he thought that would be it. That would be allhis problems solved. That would be all he needed in life, that moment of blessing, layingon of hands, you are blessed, go forward. But in actual fact, from God's perspective,he was only signing on for a lifetime of training. He was signing on for a lifetime of discoveringwhat it means to carry the blessing of God on your life. He was signing on for trainingthrough the school of hard knocks. And we do need that perspective on our lives as wego forward. It's so difficult sometimes to come to terms with the challenges of life,and yet if we can understand that actually we carry the blessing. Jacob didn't lose theblessing. The blessing didn't slip from him, and he had to keep going back to find it andlook for it again. He carried the blessing permanently, but yet the lifestyle that heled him into was challenging and frustrating and disappointing. It made him angry. It madehim upset. It cost him. It was painful. There was all of that that he had to go throughin order to discover what it means to be somebody who carries the blessing of God on his life.And if we can have that perspective, we are blessed. Ephesians says you have been blessedwith every spiritual blessing in Christ. You have been blessed. We carry it all. And yetwhen we look at our lives, we think, well, this actually looks a little bit less likea lifetime of blessing and a little bit more like the school of hard knocks.Jacob's blessing was assured. No one was going to take it away from him, but it went waybeyond just receiving it in that moment on that day. He had to discover what it was tobe a child of God. And God has goals for our lives that are way higher than anything wecan think of for ourselves. Probably our aim is to have as little challenge as possibleand to go through life avoiding challenges and obstacles. That would be natural. Takethe path of least resistance. Nobody wants trouble and difficulty, do they? And so whenthey come, it's easy to get frustrated, it's easy to get angry, it's easy to even becomebitter. But it was actually the school of hard knocks that was shaping and guiding Jacobin the direction God wanted him to go. He was becoming the father of the nation of Israel.There was a promise given to Abraham, but Jacob was the one who was beginning to seeit come into reality. His children were the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel. The wholeof world history was unfolding from this man's life. And yet, things weren't workingout from his perspective, they weren't working out as he hoped and as he expected. What doesyour life look like from the inside out? As I stand here and look out on you, I can seethat you're all, you've all got it. You're all just serenely moving on in the life offaith. There's no trouble here, is there? There's no challenge. There's no difficulty.Nothing makes you anxious or worries you. There's nothing that makes you scratch yourhead and you think, what on earth is going on here? None of that for us, is there, atMCF? No, no, no. So, but maybe from the inside out, you think actually, if only you knewthe half of it. If only you knew what I wake up with and what I go to bed at night thinkingabout, then you'd know that actually life is challenging and life is difficult for me.Things haven't worked out as you thought they might. You might be worried or anxious, disappointed,angry, confused. You thought, well, maybe for somebody that is blessed like me, maybethings would have been easier for me. Maybe I could have expected to have a few more answerswhen I pray. Maybe some of the situations that I pray for, maybe some of them wouldhave changed a little bit, except they haven't. And yet the perspective says, actually, weknow that we are blessed people. We know that God hasn't forgotten us. We know that theblessing hasn't slipped from our shoulders. And so maybe our perspective can change andsay, actually, that is, maybe this school of hard knocks that we go through is the verything that will shape us, that will squeeze us, that will mould us, that will turn usinto the children of God that God wants us to be. It's very difficult to give a messagelike this because this is the sort of advice that nobody wants to get, is it? You don'tsay, it's all right, it's the school of hard knocks, God's making you a better person.What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and all of that stuff. And nobody, yeah, thanksa lot. I remember reading a book by Bill Bryson called A Walk in the Woods, and he was discoveringall the things that were to be frightened of on the Appalachian Trail. And one of thethings was bears. And there was advice to hikers saying that if, and he was readingthe guidebook, he said, and so when confronted by a bear, don't panic, stay calm, and standstill. And he said, you just know that that was written by somebody sat behind a keyboardand not stood in front of a bear. And his comment was, thanks a lot, professor. Andthat can be the danger when we give this sort of perspective on life. You can lookat me and say, thanks a lot, professor. But you don't know how hard it is, you don't knowhow difficult it is, and the truth is I don't. There are many things that people face. Iwouldn't even pretend to comprehend how challenging and how mountainous the things look like thatare in front of people, even in this room. Things that we're wrestling with, things thatwe go through. But yet, we can't get away from the perspective of the Word that saysif we take a step back, we can actually see actually we are blessed people, we are secure,we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we belong to God through faith in Christ. And so therefore,we can trust God through the school of hard knocks, through the difficulties, throughthe challenges that we go through. It's just a question of what we think blessing lookslike in our lives. At the end of it all, what we know about God will not be downloaded ina prayer. I'm fully for that moment when somebody says, could you pray for me? Or I'll receiveprayer and we look to God to do something in our lives in that moment. We trust Godfor that. We trust God for miracles and miraculous intervention and all of that. But at the sametime, it's not just about downloading something in a moment of time and say, now all my problemsare gone. In actual fact, sometimes it's just the beginning. As we receive that impetusfrom God, that touch from God, we then go forward in life and everything happens tochallenge what God has done. I remember somebody saying, when I prayed for patience, God senteverything that wound me up and made me impatient. Carl Beach is coming in a few weeks' time.He'll tell you his own story, but he's had his troubles with health and he's very openabout the fact he's had young onset Parkinson's disease. And he told me, one prayer I had,he said, being a public speaker, one prayer I had was, Lord, don't let it affect my voice.And it's the very thing that has been affected. And yet, as you follow his journey, you seehow God is using that, not only to teach himself about God, but how he's helping thousandsand thousands of other people through something he's invented. He'll probably tell us allabout it. That through the struggle, through the hard knock of God giving him the oppositeof what he prayed for, he's discovered more about God.Erica spoke about Jacob meeting God in a certain place, not an obvious place, not an easy place,but a certain place. And we know that God can be met in every certain place. And youcould say, genuinely and with justification, you don't know my situation. And I don't.And you don't know mine. But we have that ability to meet God in the certain place.Nothing is wasted in our lives. Nothing is wasted. Nothing can separate us from the loveof God, trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword,height nor depth, death nor life, angels or demons. Nothing can separate us from the loveof God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let it be our prayer. I want to know you Lord. I wantto know you Lord. And many of us, some of us, we had baptism last week, wonderful time.People embarking out on a life of faith. We pray for people and bless them as they enterinto that. And some of us old timers can sit back and think, oh, you know, this is a longtime since I was baptized. There is a prayer that we need to pray every single day, everysingle week. I want to know you Lord, whatever that takes. I want to know you Lord, but ourhearts need to be prepared for what that might be like. It's an opportunity to know God.One of the most helpful bits of advice I ever heard was, let's meet everything with calmness.I'm not very good at that, meeting everything with calmness, but it's a good reminder thatactually we can afford to meet everything with calmness because God has got us in thepalm of his hand. There's a nice little bit of artwork that somebody did once of somebodyhanging from a rope and God sort of holding onto the rope like this and the hand of Godwas holding it and they were doing their best to cut through the rope and then obviouslythe inference was they were going to drop. And then as you pan out from the picture,the other hand of God is underneath the catch. There's safety in the hands of God to thepoint that we can trust him whatever happens to us. Meet everything with calmness. Becauseif we take the long view, then our testimony will be, God, you'll do all things well. Maybeyou can't understand something in this moment in time, cannot understand it. What are youdoing, Lord? What is going on? What is happening to me? But that calmness says, just wait.Just wait. Keep walking. Keep moving. Keep going. Keep embracing. Keep trusting. Becauseat the end of it all, we'll say, God, you do all things well.The main character of the story is Jacob. Probably, if you were asked to assess theother, the female lead might be Rachel. And somewhere in the background there's Leah,the older sister. What a sad story. Treated and mistreated by her father, by her husband,by everybody. She's totally disregarded. She's just a name. She had no sparkle in her eyes.Even the Bible says that. Rachel was really beautiful, but it's Leah. No sparkle. Whata way to be remembered. But like in all things, if we go to the margins, if we go to the excluded,if we go to the forgotten, that's often where we find God. And she's thrown into a situationthat she wouldn't have chosen for herself. She's been given to a man to marry who didn'twant her and didn't choose her. And what we see is that God's focus was on her. In fact,more than anyone else. In verse 31, it says, when the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, heenabled her to have children. The Lord saw that she was unloved. There's no grace inthe description of her life or the value of her life that was given before that, but theLord placed value on her life. He enabled her to have children. She was lost in thesystem. She was a very small cog in a large machine. Not second choice, but no choiceat all. And God saw her in her distress. One of the most moving things I heard one timewas when we were in Zambia and sat with a family that had been through, they'd had areally successful business, and they'd gone through such turmoil, and they'd lost everything.And they were ill, and they were struggling, and they were suffering. And we had some moneyhad been given, and we went to see them just to help them. And they realized that whatthey could do with it was they could pay their telephone bill, because their telephone wasbeing cut off. And this was a family that had really prospered and done great things.And then as we sat with them and gave them this gift and prayed with them, the lady said,Now I know that God sees. And I think, wow, that's really, really powerful, because Godsees us in our distress. You don't have to be loud or in the forefront for God to seeyou, for God to move on your behalf. You don't have to be the popular ones, the talentedones, the noticeable ones, because God blessed Leah through the circumstances she went through,through her own school of hard knocks. And she started, even in the middle of all ofthis, gave birth to four children for Jacob. He wasn't that bothered about marrying her,but he still didn't mind her giving birth to four children for him. And she gave birthto a son and named him Reuben, for she said, The Lord has noticed my misery, and now myhusband will love me. What a sad prayer. The name Reuben is related to the Hebrew wordfor see. I don't know Hebrew. I've looked it up. She poured all of her pain into thenaming of her child. The Lord has noticed, and now my husband will love me, because whatshe saw the movement of God in her life as a key to actually her getting what she wanted.If God blesses me, then he'll give me what I want. Sadly, it didn't happen. She thoughtif only, like we do, if only we had, if only things were different, if only circumstanceswere changed, then if only because of this, maybe now God has seen us, so God will nowdo what I want him to do. But there was no breakthrough. Reuben was one of the headsof the twelve tribes of Israel, but she didn't know that. She was just thinking about hersituation. She saw the hand of God and wanted him to change her circumstances. Why do weworship God? Why is it just a means to an end? Lord, if I worship you, if I give toyou, if I pray to you, will you give me what I want? It's like a, like a, you know, putour money in the slot and pull the lever and see if we can get what we want from God. ButGod didn't, and God doesn't mind leaving us, scratching our heads and wondering what isgoing on, because he has a higher purpose in mind for our lives. Her second son, Simeon,she said, the Lord heard I was unloved and has given me another son. She's working itout. Oh, I've got another son because the Lord has blessed me. In her world, the handof God, God was just concerned about her situation, and we can find ourselves in that frame ofmind very easily. Simeon is related to the word here, indicating she was really fixedon her need for God to hear her pain. She now had proof that God had heard her, andtherefore he was going to do what she wanted and what she needed him to do. Her problemswere going to be solved. She was connected now to God. She knew that God had heard her.Problem over. No breakthrough. Nothing changed. A third time, she became pregnant and gavebirth to Levi, saying, surely this time my husband will feel affection for me since Ihave given him three sons. I deserve something back for this because I have given him threesons. God will now bless me. My husband will feel affection for me. Levi is related tothe word attach, longing for her husband to be attached to her. She disregarded all thatwas going on in her life, focused on her need for God to do something about her pain.And finally, she gave birth to Judah, and something changed in her at that moment. Idon't know what it was, but something changed, and she said, now I will praise the Lord.She didn't mention her husband anymore. She didn't mention her pain. She didn't mentionher bitterness. She didn't mention her need for things to change. She looked at her fourthchild and said, now I will praise the Lord. She acknowledged and praised God. Judah isrelated to the word for praise, and she was finally free of her anxious pursuit of herhusband and freely praised the Lord. This was her breakthrough. This was her freedom,and actually this is our freedom as well. And I hesitate, and I'm nervous to put itthrough because I know how difficult it is. When somebody comes and says, actually, putaside your worries and just praise the Lord, you think, thanks a lot. It doesn't reallywork like that. Sometimes we like worry. Sometimes I can find that worry is a comfort.If you think, people say, don't worry about it. You say, well, what am I going to do thenif I don't worry about it? Jesus himself said, don't worry about this life, what you'll eat,what you'll wear, all the very things that we worry about, problems that could happen,catastrophizing situations, going to the end of the line and saying, oh, if this happensand this happens and this happens, then we're all going to be destroyed and everything'sgoing to be finished and it's all going to be hopeless, and I don't even know why weeven bother praising God because it's just not going to work out all right.And yet the freedom that Leah found, the freedom that we will find, will be the freedom wherewe started this worship service. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Give a sacrificeof praise to God, unconditional, unattached, no strings attached, whatever. Lord, you havebeen good to me. And many of us have prayers that we've carried for a long time and Godis leading us to a moment where we can lay them down and lift up empty arms to God. Givethat sacrifice of praise. It's so hard to do, but so liberating to do it. And you knowwhat? The reason why we don't like the advice, the reason why we don't like the people likeme coming along and saying, well, it's all right, just praise the Lord, is because itdoesn't work like that. Like I've said, it doesn't happen in a moment, a moment of blessing,a moment of revelation, a moment of inspiration. It took Leah four children. How long is that?Quite long. It's more than four times nine months, isn't it? It took her years to getto that moment. And she didn't even know the process she was going through. She didn'teven know she was on a slow transformation. She was being squeezed like that Play-Dohmachines, where you put them in and you squeeze them and something comes out a different shape.You know what I'm talking about. So she was being transformed and she didn't even know.And yet she ended up at this moment when Judah was born and she said, now I will praise theLord. And you see what God can do, that the milestones in her painful journey, the childrennamed after her pain actually took their place in the history of the world. Reuben, Simeon,Levi, and Judah. Levi and Judah. Levi was the head of the tribe of Levi, which was thepriestly tribe, the whole tribe that would minister to God and would minister on behalfof the nation and would minister to the world. And Judah is the royal tribe from whom cameJesus, the lion of the tribe of Judah. And so Leah in many ways was the mother of thetribe of Judah. And she had no idea. All she could think about was her pain and her difficultyand whatever. And yet she got through to the end of the process. She said, now I will praisethe Lord. And yet in the meantime, it doesn't mean nothing is wasted. All those childrenbefore when she was in bitterness and pain and anxiety and distress, they still tooktheir place according to the purposes of God. And God will work out his purposes in ourlives, not only what he does in us. All she wanted was her husband to love her. God wantedmore from her. And sometimes all we want is one thing that we're fixed on, and yet Godwants more from us. And God will produce more from us. And he will establish more in usif we will go through that process. And in actual fact, he puts us through that processwhether we choose it or not. Leah didn't, she wouldn't, she didn't respond at a conferenceand said, now I'm going to go through this transformation. She was just put on the schoolof hard knocks. And she got through it, and she ended up in a good place, in a free place,in a healthy spiritual moment where she said, now I'm going to praise the Lord. And lo andbehold, all her children, and she even had more later on, that's for somebody else todeal with, you know, there was all these tribes of Israel. But what a testimony that Judah,Jesus' own tribe, she was the mother. She had been squeezed by bitter circumstancesinto a woman who learned to praise God and put her faith in him, and in the process Godwas not only working his purposes for her life, but for the whole world. Remember, nothingis wasted. And sometimes we won't even know until we look back at eternity what it's allabout. But we're going to have the stories to tell. It's not about a moment of blessingand God did this and that and the other. And sometimes we can be discouraged by victoriousthings. You know, we say, oh, it's all great, everything worked out, because we actuallyare all going through the school of hard knocks. But over the long period, the long process,God does all things well. Amen. Good. Yeah. Let's praise God.

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Sermon Summary: "The Cleansing of Naaman"Sermon Summary:In this sermon, Andy Armstrong uses the biblical story of Naaman, a Syrian commander who was healed of leprosy by the prophet Elisha, to illustrate the concept of spiritual blindness and the importance of humility. He compares Naaman's physical illness to our spiritual ailments, highlighting how our outward struggles can often mirror deeper, internal issues.Andy begins by discussing the concept of colorblindness, using it as an analogy for spiritual blindness. He explains that just as a colorblind person may be unaware of certain colors, we can also be blind to the depths and extent of our own sin. He then introduces Naaman, a powerful and respected man who was afflicted with leprosy. Naaman's journey to Elisha for healing becomes a metaphor for our own spiritual journeys.The sermon delves into Naaman's inner brokenness, which is revealed to be pride. Despite his outward success and status, Naaman's pride blinds him to his need for God's help. Andy emphasizes that God often uses humbling experiences to challenge our pride and bring us closer to Him. He highlights how Naaman's encounter with Elisha, who treats him with humility and disregard for his social status, serves as a powerful lesson in humility.The sermon then explores the cure for Naaman's leprosy and its parallels to our spiritual healing. Andy emphasizes that the cure is simple, free, and exclusive. Just as Naaman needed to wash in the Jordan River seven times, we must repent of our sins and believe in Jesus Christ for salvation. He highlights the importance of accepting God's diagnosis and surrendering our pride to Him.The sermon concludes by discussing Naaman's response to his healing. Andy emphasizes that Naaman's experience is a model for our own spiritual journeys. Just as Naaman was transformed by his encounter with God, we too can experience profound change when we humble ourselves and submit to His will.Bible References:2 Kings 5:1-17Key Points:* Spiritual blindness can prevent us from seeing the depths of our own sin. * Pride is a common obstacle to spiritual growth. * God often uses humbling experiences to challenge our pride. * The cure for our spiritual ailments is simple, free, and exclusive. * We must humble ourselves and submit to God's will for our lives.

TranscriptWow. Is my mic on? Are we good? Can you hear me okay? Great stuff. Such a privilege tobe here, guys. I'm dumbfounded by your worship. I just really, really enjoyed that. Reallyenjoyed that. I thought it was never going to end, which I was glad about. It's justbrilliant. Absolutely brilliant. So we're going to be delving into the Word today. Hopeyou've got your Bibles with you. Don't worry if not because I've produced a PowerPoint.It's great. Okay. I'm going to time myself so I don't overrun, which is a good thing.Okay. So the first slide, if you could put that up. Now many of you or some of you mightbe colorblind. I'm not so sure. So the way you know is you look at a particular imageand you can see whether you can see numbers in those images. So it might be up there.Don't worry if it's not. Okay. But if you're colorblind, you cannot appreciate a child'scrayon drawing. Or maybe you don't really appreciate a sunset. But you never know thatthere is an issue because you don't really know what a sunset looks like. And you maybe completely unaware of this. So have a look at those. See if you can pick out the numbersin there. So it's more serious, isn't it? It's more serious if you can't distinguisha red stop light when you're driving. Or a green for that. Okay. So maybe some of youget in revelation that you're colorblind today. I was testing myself while I was producingthis. See, colorblindness is a great analogy for spiritual blindness. And we might say,well, I'm born again. I'm not spiritually blind. But actually, we can all still haveblind areas in our spiritual walk. So someone who suffers with colorblindness can get onfine in life and you don't actually miss those colors that you've never seen. But you'remissing vital parts of obvious things around you. And sin is the same. We can be blindto the depths and extent of our internal sin. Yet others can see it. And that's a beautifulthing about being married. My wife sees my sin better than I do. I'm blind to it in manyrespects. And we're all blind in different extents, aren't we? I want to talk about aman in just that condition. Okay. In the Bible. Now this man, you might think, is this a manwho would be chosen by God? So this guy was a soldier. He was a violent man. He committedmurder and he kidnapped people. Is he a prime candidate for salvation? Possibly not. Let'slisten about it. Let's read about him. Okay. This is 2 Kings 5 verses 1 to 17. Now Naamanwas a commander of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master andhighly regarded because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiantsoldier, but he had leprosy. Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and taken captivea young girl from Israel and she served Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, which is reallynice of her when you think about it, if only my master would see the prophet who is inSamaria, he would cure him of his leprosy. So Naaman went to his master and told himwhat the girl from Israel had said. And the king said, by all means go. I will send aletter to the king of Israel. So Naaman left, taking with him 10 talents of silver, 6,000jackals of gold, 10 sets of clothing. Can you imagine what that was, getting the sizeright and everything? The letter that he took to the king of Israel read, with this letterI'm sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy. As soon asthe king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes. He was upset. Am I God, he says?Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be curedof his leprosy? See how he's trying to pick a quarrel with me. When Elisha, the man ofGod heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message. Why haveyou torn your robes? Have the man come to me. I love this boldness. And he will knowthere is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped atthe door of Elisha's house. Elisha sent a message to say to him, go, wash seven timesin the Jordan and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed. But Naaman wentaway angry and said, I thought, isn't this hilarious, I thought he would come out tome and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cureme of my leprosy. Are not Abaama and Parfa, the rivers of Damascus, better than all ofthese waters of Israel? Couldn't I wash in them and be cleansed? So he turned and wentoff in a rage. Naaman's servants went to him. Remember it's the servants who have the wisdomin this story. My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would youhave not done it? How much more then when he tells you, wash and be cleansed? So hewent and he dipped himself in the Jordan seven times as the man of God had told him.And his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy. Then Naaman andall his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, now I knowthere is no God in all the world except in Israel, so please accept a gift from yourservant. The prophet answered, as surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accepta thing. And even though Naaman urged him, he refused. If you will not, said Naaman,please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for yourservant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other God but the Lord.Isn't that an amazing story? I just love Elisha's ministry and what he gets up to. He just saysit like it is and does things which are incredible. So, what are the points we are going to bringout from this? So we are going to look at what Elisha's sickness was. We are going tolook at what is the cure for his sickness and we are going to look at what was his response.What was Naaman's response? What was Naaman's sickness? What was his cure? And what washis response? I think we can learn a lot today. Have we got our ears open? Great stuff. Okay,so what is his sickness? I find this fascinating because it is obvious what his sickness is,isn't it? He has got leprosy. He has got a major skin disorder which is obvious for everybodyto see. But if you know your Gospels well, you know when Jesus walked around in Israel,he would speak to blind people and others and they would say to him, Lord, heal me.And Jesus would come up to them and say, what can I do for you? Isn't that interesting?Isn't it obvious? I want to see. But Jesus doesn't see things the way we see our things,isn't he? He sees internally why we might see externally. And sin is the real paralysis ofthe heart. All of our brokenness is due to sin. Sin we have committed. Sin committed against usand being part of a sinful world. Now, in this story, the outer brokenness of Naaman,his leprosy, becomes the occasion to deal with his inner brokenness. So, what is Naaman'sinner brokenness that is destroying his life? He looks strong, doesn't he? He looks rich.He is successful. He is very good at what he does. Look at the story. But time and time again,in this amazing story, through Elisha, Naaman is ignored and humbled. Have you noticed,he goes to Elisha's house. How rude is this? This amazing, famous man goes to Elisha's houseand Elisha won't even come to the door. But he sends a servant to him with a message.He's treated completely the opposite of how he should have been treated.Maybe that's you today. Maybe you, in some context, are being treated the opposite ofwhere you think you should be treated and you're insulted. I want us to look a bit deeper today.It's so insulting for Naaman and he was insulted. And at that time, Naaman would have been one ofthe most important people in the world, arriving with hundreds, literally hundreds of thousandsof pounds worth of gifts and he's treated shoddily. But God arranges this treatment.Isn't that interesting? God arranges for Naaman to be insulted.Because God, I don't know whether, I'm sure you know God so well, but he is so infinitelywise, he knows how to get you to have a glimpse of yourself. You know that? See, Naaman's innerbrokenness is pride. He's proud, he's self-sufficient, he believes he can buy anythingand his status is good enough to get anything. So, like many of us in the West, that's what webelieve. I can get anything, I can do anything. It's kind of inbuilt in us, isn't it, as we'reyoung. And God knows this man and how to deal with this man. His outer leprosy was an opportunity forhis inner leprosy to be dealt with. He was colorblind to his pride, but this was his timeand he didn't know it. His outer condition was far less dangerous than his inner condition.Leprosy was a terrible disease and still is, but especially in these days, there was no cureand it was awful. And Naaman knew his days were numbered, but he didn't recognize what was goingon on the inside, which was far more serious. His inner leprosy is pride and the treatment for prideis humility. So, again and again, Naaman is humiliated. Now, what do you do when you gethumiliated? I don't like humiliation, I'm sure you don't like it. And what happens to me is I get hot.I start to get hot from the bottom up and I get angry, just like Naaman gets angry.But would we start to learn to look for God's teaching in each and every situation?We all grow up, don't we, saying or being taught, I know what's best, I can handle life,I know the right way. But when we start to learn about God, if you belong to God, what you'll havenoticed is he starts to bring things from the outside to come and expose our blindness forour good and his glory. Each one of us from our youngest years have to protect that image that wethink we are in control, don't we? It's hidden insecurity due to our sin and God wants tochallenge it for our good and it's a good thing even though it heats us up and it feels awful.So, what is the cure? What is this illness? Pride. What is the cure? So, God brings an insultto us all. Tim Keller, one of my heroes, says these words, that we are far more,I'm sure you've heard this, that we are far more sinful than we ever imagined. That is over allof humanity and many people in my wider family are insulted by that. That we are far more sinfulthan we ever imagined but, and it's that but which turns it on its head, but also that we are farmore loved than we can ever dream of. Isn't that great? One, an amazing insult to the human race,but it's true. The other one, an incredible blessing of pure grace and this can be a lifelongrevelation. I've been saved now for possibly 30 years and I'm just starting to get revelationof just how sinful I am, what goes on in my inner man, yet how incredibly loved I am by God.Are you receiving that? Are you learning that from God? But like Naaman, can we agree withGod's diagnosis over us? We have to agree with him, he's always right. Or pride will rise upin anger and we'll walk away. Naaman nearly walked away from his healing and yet he wasgoing to be healed of something far greater. See, the message of the Gospel works on all ofour inner leprosy. It works in three ways. See, let's have a look at the story again. The cureis simple. What is the cure for Naaman? Just wash. Don't do anything magnificent, just be obedientand wash in this particular river. It's not sensational or elaborate, it's just like theGospel. What is the Gospel today? Repent and believe. It's just the same, cure is simple,just wash and now the Gospel is repent and believe. And yet for us humans, we love to getbusy, don't we? We love to perform, we love to receive wages because I've earned them.Free gifts are viewed with a bit of suspicion, aren't they? And many of us struggle to receivea gift at Christmas, especially a big one, because we think, oh, have you spent that much on me?I suppose I better up my gift giving next year and spend the same on you. Because we like topay our way. So that at the end, why do we like to pay our way so that at the end we say,I'm not in any debt to anybody, I'm in control. But God has to show us we are in deep debtto Him. The cure not only is simple, the cure is free. This is not what Naaman expected to gowhen he came to Israel. He'd come with a whole load of money and some fine clothes because hewas willing to pay his way. So he brought huge amounts of money. He didn't want, he didn't needcharity. He brought a royal letter. God would have to heal him. He was placing God in his debt.Just wash is insulting. You know who I am? He was saying. And we believe we have to do somegreat thing for God to be saved sometimes, don't we? But Elisha was directing Naaman to do somethingany person could do. Just wash. It was as if Elisha didn't know who this great man was. Hewouldn't even get out of his chair in his front room while he was watching the television.All of it as exploits. All of this man's reputation made no difference. He was playing itperfectly for Naaman to be rescued. He was treating him like any old person. Anyone could do this.Nothing about Naaman mattered. And that's the same with us today. Nothing about any of our pastmatters when it comes to the Gospel. We can come to him and have that free salvation of his andbe obedient to him and say, Lord I want you. Thank you for your salvation. We agree with his diagnosisover us. Romans 3 says all have sinned and fallen short of the Gospel of God. All have sinned. Allhave sinned. Amazing isn't it? That's the diagnosis over the human race. But the cure is simple.Repent of your sin and believe the good news of Jesus Christ that he has paid your sin, paid foryour sin upon himself. He became sin for you that you might be rescued. But Naaman was angry.So the cure was simple. The cure was free. And the cure was exclusive. This is something for ourculture isn't it? The cure was exclusive. You see Naaman was offended. And we can be offended.Especially if you go into the center of Sheffield today. I'm sure if you said that Jesus is theonly way, people would be offended. How can he be the only way? There's many ways to God.But Naaman was offended. Hey there's many rivers, there's nice rivers here in my country. There arebetter rivers than that dirty one there. Just like today there are many gods, many ways to God.Don't tell me this one way is right. Yet our Gospel is exclusive because it's simple and free.And because it's simpler and free, it's exclusive. If people say good and generous, loving people getto heaven, then that isn't inclusive. Because I'm not good and simple and free. I'm not a goodperson. So I won't get to heaven if you're just excluding good people. What about me or the personwho has wrecked their life or who's morally disabled? Can they not get to heaven becausethey're not good? But rather our Gospel is free and available to all. So far from being exclusive,it's incredibly inclusive. We all know that some great thing has to be done to win us back to God.And we know that God is holy and great because he has to be. But so often we believe we are the oneswho can achieve for God. We don't realize we're so sinful to the core, full of pride.We're colorblind spiritually. It takes God to come to us like Naaman and show us. But thenhow do we respond? I do hope you've responded to God over this. The initial response is to say,Lord, please come and save me. Rescue me for myself. But then as we go on as Christiansthrough the decades, sin rises up again. We see ourselves. We can walk in the flesh. We can makewrong decisions. How do we respond then? Do we respond like Naaman and say, oh no, I want to bein control. What do we say, Lord, you are the Lord of all. I surrender to you. I agree withyour diagnosis over my life. Suddenly we see that someone has done that great thing for us on ourbehalf. Through Jesus our inner leprosy was placed upon him. Isn't that good news? But what is ourresponse as a last point? What was his response? What was Naaman's response as an example?Instead of achieving, of which he wanted to do, he decided he was just going to receive.And what happened? He did exactly what Elisha told him to do. God directed him to go and bathein that river, to do exactly that in that particular river, specific guidelines, and he did.What happened? His skin was made new like a child's skin. Can you imagine how much joy that man had?And then suddenly his inner man understood he was born again. It's just like when wereceive the gospel, isn't it? His pride was being dealt with at that moment and would have beencontinually being dealt with. His thinking had changed. His worldview had changed. Wow,amazing. Can you remember the day that happened? Some of you do. Some come slowly into the kingdom.But some of us come fast into the kingdom, don't we? Where there is massive change immediately.His worldview changed, and this is becoming a Christian. We are at the beginning of a totalinner transformation. Suddenly he sees, and as we continue to follow the Lord, we continueto discover more perfect sight. Our color blindness is healed. And so he says the words,your servant suddenly. God is now his master, just like that. He's not after a God who's a partner ora butler. And we can do that, can't we, as Christians? We can say that God, yeah, God is my Lord,but we treat him as if he's my partner. He will help me out when times are bad. He will docertain things for me. I'm sure he'll give me that promotion. But what if he doesn't? Are you goingto walk away from him? And Victoria got bouts of cancer when her granddaughter had a majorheart issue and had to go in for surgery at such a young age. God came to me kind of and came toVictoria and it was as if he was saying, okay, what are you going to do now? Are you going to walkaway or are you going to stay with me and let me take you through this? But what a privilege to gothrough dark times with our God. Then we get to know whether we follow him as a butler or whetherwe follow him as our master. I'm sure you've had those times too. It's where the rubber hits theroad, isn't it? God can ask us for anything and we should say yes. It depends who we think he is.Is God your master today or is he your housekeeper? He also says when he's going back to his city,he's going to take the gospel, this is his name, I'm going to take the gospel back to his fellow menbecause God is now his real God. God is now his Lord. So he goes back with loads of earth. Itsounds strange, doesn't it? It goes like loads of earth that he's going to pray on in his home city.Basically he was going back as adding yeast to the bread. He was going to transform that place.I'd love to know the rest of the story of what happened to Naaman. What happened in that citywhen he went back? This man of influence and there are men and women of influence in this place herewho are also going to get saved and they're going to go back into those blocks over thereand those houses and they're going to change their areas because of what you say to them and how youlove them. See the gospel, if allowed, will affect our entire life. Is it affecting your entirelife today? I'm sure you're allowing it to happen. If not, please do. There's nothing like the gospelof Christ. His Holy Spirit in you can change everything. Can you hear me today? He can changeevery area of your life. If you allow him to. You see he's a gentleman. The Holy Spirit is agentleman and he will only do what you allow him to do. He will knock on your door but you have tolet him in to every area. Okay? So as believers we can refuse to accept the diagnosis. Is theresomething in your life today that you long to be free of? Like Naaman. Maybe it's a physicalcondition. It was for the apostle Paul. He had a thorn in the flesh. Didn't he join his ministry?There was troubles. He longed to be free of it but God kept it in his life to give him humility.What is it for you today that God might be keeping in your life to bring humility? Maybe it's aperson. In the church would you believe? Maybe it's a boss. You can be so frustrating. I lovebeing self-employed because I can only answer to myself. But then God comes along and speaks to methrough Victoria and I suddenly wake up to myself. But if you've got a boss, if you work with otherpeople, man it must be difficult. But God will use that. He will use that to mature you, to makeyou more like him. He can, you know, God just doesn't dwell in this room, you know. You knowthis. He is where he's, sometimes he's more where you work than where we worship because he wants,he longs to impact your work colleagues so much. Maybe your school teachers. He longs to impactyour school and the frustrations that are in that school. He longs to do powerful things amongst youin the five days of the week. So if you belong to God he may very well be leaving you in thisvery thing in your life for your good and his glory. Is that good? Well it's not good is it?But it is good ultimately because he is so, he is so good. He is so good and he wants toilluminate the real issue, our hidden blindness to our own sin. He is so glorious he's able to dothis by his Holy Spirit. If we let him, can we agree on something todaythat we allow him to have access to all of the rooms of our heart, all the parts of our life?Can we just close our eyes and just imagine our lives? You know what you do on a day-to-day basis.You know as you drive to work, you know maybe the thoughts that come across your mind.I want you to invite him into those thoughts. I want you to invite him into your struggles atthe moment. Maybe you're struggling with debt. Maybe you're struggling in your marriage. Maybeyou're lonely. I want you to right now invite him in just even say this the simple words ofLord come into my pain. He wants to make that difference. He wants to transform that thingthat has seemingly been there for so, so, so many years. It all tracks back to our humility justlike it was for Naaman, just like it was for him. I'm going to read to you one last verse,one of the greatest verses I think in the Bible if I can find it. Keep your eyes closed and thenyou won't be exposed to my losing my notes. There we go. Ephesians 1 verses 17 to 19. What a powerfulverse this is. Let me pray this over you. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,the glorious Father may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation. That's what he gave Naamanso that you may know him better. Does anybody want to know God better in this room?I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know thehope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people andhis incomparably great power for us who believe. Let's just, I don't know whether the band wantsto come up, but let's just keep our eyes closed for a minute. Last night I couldn't sleep.Basically, I did mention it yesterday, but our neighbors can be quite troublesome andsometimes the guy who lives next door has his girlfriend over and she's got a son who's gotsevere autism and incredibly enough they go up to the top room and put music on really loudand then their son goes in the room downstairs and he gets a bit distressed by that music sostarts kicking the wall. So, one o'clock in the morning the wall feels like it's coming down lastnight and I wake up. Obviously, I'm a light sleeper and I'm so frustrated and I pray forthat boy, but obviously it doesn't stop. But then I think, okay, let's turn this into prayer. Lord,what do you want to pray about? And then this preach comes up and I think, oh Lord, have I gotthe right preach for this church today? And I sense the Holy Spirit say yes and he says why?And I start, okay, talk to me, Lord. This is beautiful. You're taking a terrible situationand make it into a good one. This is good. Basically, I think what the God wants to sayto you as a body of people is he's so pleased with what you're doing that you're open-hearted,that you're doing such wonderful work in the community that you are breaking ground on thisplace in Jordan thought. What an incredible thing. What incredible worship this morning.So, so, so beautiful. But he wants you to be aware that as you go out, as you start thatother building, as you do other things, as you find the money coming in, as you break forward,what's going to happen is, as what happens so, and we've seen it in our church, so happens withchurches, is that this unity starts to come out. People yearning for their voice to be heard.People grabbing and pushing. People arguing and saying, I want a piece of this. I should be heard.I should this. I should that. This is why God brought this word to you today. It's becauseit's about humility. I want to pray over this church that you stay in a unified heart.Can you agree with me today? I know it's a tough thing, but in the years ahead, as God does amazingthings, and he's going to do amazing things with this church, I'm so impressed. My goodness, I'mso impressed. But please be careful. I want you to respect your leaders. Please respect your leaders.They're here for your good and your blessing. Please respect them. They want your good.You might disagree with them sometimes, and that's fine, but pray for them.And you leaders, it's a tough job. Have patience with the congregation, with those you lead. Havepatience with you. Pray for your congregation so that the Holy Spirit might have incrediblefreedom in this place. He wants to do so much, but the one thing that will block the blessingflow of the Holy Spirit is disunity. We know that. We've seen it time again in the churchthroughout history. Disunity breaks the power of the Holy Spirit. So that's right. Amen.Father God, we pray that those of us in here who maybe havea heart that complains, pray, God, would you just touch them right now?Father, would you touch them right now, Lord, that it may be again a little bit like the storyof Mary and Martha. One was always doing. One was receiving. Let us be people who receiveand then do. Not do, do, do, and then get frustrated with everybody else. I've seen it in my churchyears ago, and I was one of the culprits. Don't do it, please, guys. Let's stay in the flow of theSpirit. God's going to do great things. Okay. God's going to speak more, I think, through Victoria,but let's worship, shall we?

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Sermon Summary: God's Blessing in the OrdinarySermon Title: Unraveling the Tension: God's Blessing and Our RealitySpeaker: EricaScripture References: Genesis 27-28Erica began the sermon by reflecting on the hymn "On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand," connecting the imagery of a solid rock to the concept of God's unwavering faithfulness. She acknowledged that many people feel like they are standing on sinking sand, far removed from the stability and security that God offers.Drawing from the story of Jacob in Genesis, Erica highlighted the tension between God's blessing and our often chaotic realities. Jacob, despite receiving a divine blessing, faced numerous challenges and uncertainties. Erica emphasized that God's blessing is not always immediately evident in our circumstances and that it often operates beyond our perception.The sermon delved into the true nature of God's blessing, which is rooted in His faithfulness rather than our circumstances. Erica explained that God's blessing is a gift that is not dependent on our outward successes or failures. She used Jacob's experience as an example, demonstrating how God remained faithful to him even in the midst of adversity.Erica also discussed the concept of God's presence in ordinary places. She emphasized that God can reveal Himself to us in the most unexpected and seemingly insignificant moments. The story of Jacob's encounter with God at a certain place serves as a powerful illustration of this truth.The sermon concluded with a call to action, encouraging listeners to recognize God's presence in their own "certain places." Erica urged them to name their current situations as "Bethel," meaning "house of God," and to worship God in the midst of their challenges. She emphasized that God is accessible and faithful, and that His blessing is available to all who seek Him.Key Points: The tension between God's blessing and our reality. The true nature of God's blessing: rooted in His faithfulness. God's presence in ordinary places. The importance of recognizing God's presence and worshiping Him in our circumstances.Bible References: Genesis 27-28 John 1:51 TranscriptThat song reminds me of that old hymn, On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand. I can onlyremember the chorus. On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand, all of the ground is sinking sand,all of the ground is sinking sand. What's the rest of the song?Nothing less, Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not toss the sweetest frame,but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand,all of the ground is sinking sand, all of the ground is sinking sand.You sound really beautiful, we're going to sing it again. On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand,all of the ground is sinking sand, all of the ground is sinking sand.What a great hymn. And just as I was singing that, I just felt that there are some peoplethis morning and that's exactly how you feel. You feel like you're standing on sinking sandand this thing, this experience of standing on a solid rock just feels like somethingthat is a million miles away from where you find yourself right now. And I want to encourage youwith our passage this morning that actually where we find Jacob today is in a very similar situationhow you might feel this morning. Last week we explored Genesis chapter 27 and Andy if you getchance to listen to it again please do because it was very, very clear. I went away with a wordthat was going round and round in my head all last week was leaning into the sovereignty of Godand trusting. And there have been so many things that have come up in my mind this week where I'vejust had to say Erica you need to lean into the sovereignty of God. You don't have to understandeverything or work out how to fix everything because I'm a fixer or work out all the analysisof it all. You just need to lean into the sovereignty of God and trust Him. And that waswhat I picked up from last week. So we saw Jacob in Genesis chapter 7, the younger of these twobrothers. Remember we've been following the story of this quite amazing but slightly bonkers familyand quite similar to my own. We see Jacob the younger brother and with the help of his motherRebecca they come up with a plan to deceive the older brother Esau out of his blessing.And at the end of the chapter 27 we see how Jacob now receives the blessing that was rightfullymeant for the older brother according to culture and tradition. He receives the blessing and insteadof it doing him good his brother is now furious with him, his brother now wants to kill himand rather than being safe and lovely and comfortable he then has to run away.And that's where we find Jacob now. Rebecca is sending Jacob telling him to run away,you need to flee for your life, you need to go to my brother Laban, find a wife, get on with yourlife, you cannot stay here, it is too dangerous. And that's where we find Jacob this morning andwe're going to read, Heather is going to read from us Genesis chapter 28.So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him, then he commanded him do not marry a Canaanite woman,go at once to Padan Aaron to the house of your mother's father Betharoth. Take a wife foryourself there from among the daughters of Laban your mother's brother. May God Almighty bless youand make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples.May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham so that you may take possessionof the land where you now reside as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham.Then Isaac sent Jacob on his way and he went to Padan Aaron to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean,the brother of Rebecca who was the mother of Jacob and Esau. Now Esau learned that Isaac hadblessed Jacob and had sent him to Padan Aaron to take a wife from there and that when he blessedhim he commanded him do not marry a Canaanite woman. And that Jacob had obeyed his father andmother and had gone to Padan Aaron. Esau then realized how displeasing the Canaanite womenwere to his father Isaac. So he went to Ishmael and married Mahalath the sister of Nebaiathand daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham in addition to the wives he already had.Jacob left Beersheba and set out to Haman. People wanted to laugh at that point.I could hear the little sniggle that went around the room. Carry on, sorry.In addition to the wives he already had. Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haman.When he reached a certain place he stopped for the night because the sun had set.Taking one of the stones there he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dreamin which he saw a stairway resting on the earth with its top reaching to heaven and the angels ofGod were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord and he said I am the Lordthe God your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you in your descendants the land onwhich you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth and you will spread out tothe west and to the east to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed throughyou and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go and I will bringyou back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.When Jacob awoke from his sleep he thought surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware ofit. He was afraid and said how awesome is this place. There is none other this is none otherthan the house of God. This is the gate of heaven. Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he hadplaced under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that placeBethel though the city used to be called Luz. Then Jacob made a vow saying if God will be withme and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothesto wear so that I return safely to my father's household then the Lord will be my God and thisstone that I have set up as a pillar will be God's house and of all that you give me I will give youa tent. Jacob has just received his blessing but um I don't know how blessed he actuallyfeels with the situation he finds himself in. I'm not sure that he does feel all that blessed.He's deceived his father, he's angered his brother to the point of murderous rageand now his brother mother is begging him to flee for his life. There is nothing about thissituation that would turn up on the Facebook post that would say hashtag blessed and yet he'sreceived the blessing but there's nothing about the situation that would say that he even remotelylooks like he is blessed and before we get into the scripture I want us to have a quick look atthat the tension that we need to understand between God's blessing and our reality and oftenthe two don't meet and if I were to ask you that question this morning do you feel blessed?How many of you would have the confidence to raise your hand? Do you feel blessed this morning?How many of you would be confident to say actually I don't feel blessed?Thank you Alan and Christie at the back there. Thank you very much because there were othersin the room but we all know that that's not the Christian thing to do is to put our hands up andsay actually I don't really feel blessed but that's the tension that we have to live with.We have to recognize that God's blessing doesn't always immediately align with our outwardcircumstances and this was certainly true for Jacob this day so that Jacob had received theblessing of God and yet almost immediately his life seems to unravel almost immediatelyafter receiving this amazing blessing. How many of you have felt like that here's the blessingof God and the next minute you wake up and suddenly everything feels chaotic and slightlybonkers around you so he gets this amazing blessing and immediately he has to flee his homehe has to leave everything familiar behind and now his future looks nothing like certain at alland I wonder if there was a question mark in his mind that said was it really worth it?Was it really worth it? The tension between God's promises and God's blessing and our presentreality is something we all experience at times and often it feels miles apart from each other.Our reality can be messy, our reality can be chaotic, our reality can make us feel uncertainand afraid and yet if we belong to God if we belong to Jesus we are still blessed.Whether you feel it or whether you don't feel it we are still blessed and that's the tensionthat we are living with all the time. So when I was thinking about that today I wanted to thinkjust really briefly for a moment what is the nature of God's blessing because the world outthere will tell you that the blessed life is the comfortable life the life where everything isworking in your favor where you have everything you need you lack nothing that's what the worldwill tell you all the photographs on Facebook are photoshopped to make it look like the perfectrelationship the perfect bunch of children the perfect life and yet we all know that under thesurface that's not always the reality of Allah. Are you with me? So what is the true nature ofGod's blessing? The blessing Jacob received from Isaac was real and it carried divine significance.If you look at the story of the Bible you can see the divine significance of the blessing on Isaac'slife but the immediate consequences didn't look anything like the blessed life that we mightexpect. Instead of comfort and favor Jacob faced fear and isolation and uncertainty. I want tocheer you up all this morning as Jonathan would say cheer up folks. God's blessing often operatesbeyond what we can see or feel in the moment. Blessed be the name of the Lord. That's hisprerogative. Sometimes it doesn't look blessed but I think it's this understanding that actually Idon't need to feel it in order for something to be true. So God's blessing often operates beyondwhat I see or feel in the moment. The other thing that we need to understand God's blessing is isnot dependent on my circumstances. Outwardly Jacob's life didn't look blessed at all he was runningand yet God was still at work and you see that play out as his life goes on. God was stillorchestrating something far greater than Jacob could see at the time and when we may this morningfeel far away from blessed when life gets difficult but that doesn't diminish the realitythat God's blessing is still in our lives and in actual fact often God's purposes unfold inour struggle. That's his prerogative. Blessed be the name of the Lord. The blessing of Godis always rooted in his faithfulness. That gives me a great sense of reliefbecause if it was rooted in my faithfulness then it would come and go depending on the weather inthe morning. God's blessing is rooted in his faithfulness and Jacob sees this. The blessingof God is anchored in God's faithfulness regardless of what was going on around him.So even as he fled even as he ran away even as he went away from the certainty and the familiarityand the relationships he knew God still went with him and in Genesis 28 verse 15 you see thisincredible verse that God says over Jacob as he's running away as his future is uncertain God saysto him I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. Yes Lord but I don't know whereI'm going. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. Yes I know but my brother wantsto kill me. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. I know but I don't know where I'mgoing. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. This is the wonderful certaintyabout belonging to God and God sends Jacob on his way and says actually Jacob whatever you areand whatever you do I am faithful to you and I want to encourage you this morning that whereveryou are and whatever you do and wherever you find yourself today God is faithful to you. Yes I knowbut I've messed it up and I've made mistakes and I feel far away. God is still faithful to you.That's the nature of his blessing. I'm sure we've all experienced relationships that haven't quiteworked out. I certainly have and times when things haven't looked right and times whenthere's been a parting of company I've experienced that in my own life and yet one thing I know isthat even when I have offended God or been unfaithful to him he has stayed closer to methan a brother. He is never far away. He is always close. He never says I'm done with you.Fine. Always faithful and that's where Jacob finds himself this faithfulness of God.So I want us to look at Genesis chapter 28 10 to 11 particularly this morning. That was justlooking at the nature of God's blessing. You're expecting all of your life to work out all theit won't but one thing is certain is that God is with you and he will walk with youand he is unfolding his plans and his purposes in your life even if you don't feel it.Is it warm in here? Is it me? So Jacob is running away. The story tells us that he cameto a certain place and he stops for the night and taking one of the stones there he puts it underhis head and he goes to sleep. There is nothing famous or significant about this certain placethat Jacob finds himself in. Nothing about it that says that this is a special place. It wasan ordinary unremarkable place. It was not famous or important. Jacob hadn't arrived anywhere specialhe had just arrived at a place. It was in this very ordinary unremarkable insignificant unimportantplace this certain place that God chose to reveal himself to Jacob in a powerful way.I want to encourage you this morning that God doesn't need special placesin order to meet with us. We don't have to go on the pilgrimage to Lourdesto find our savior. We don't have to go on the pilgrimage to the latest women's conference orany other conference. We don't have to go to a special significant place. We can find Godright in the middle of our place that we find ourselves right now.It was just a place. It was ordinary insignificant unimportant and this is where God chose to revealhimself to Jacob in a powerful way. To the woman at the well her certain place was a well.To Zacchaeus his certain place was a tree. To the woman with the issue of blood her certain placewas a crowd. To the world God chose to reveal himself to us in a certain placea lowly stable. I'm giving you prepared for the countdown to Christmaswhen we start singing it apparently is only what 95 days or something ridiculous.We could start singing carols now couldn't we?God meets us anywhere even in the most unexpected or seemingly insignificant place he can show upin your mundane. He can show up when you're running away when you have no faith and everything isagainst you. You don't know where to find God when you are feeling disappointed or where everythingis going on well in your world. God can meet you in your certain place. He is good at finding yourcertain place and meeting with you there. God's presence and blessing aren't tied to thesignificance of our surroundings or even the people around us. The Bible tells us that Jacobwas alone so you whether you're in a high point in life or in an ordinary or even uncomfortable placewhere you feel like you're sleeping on a rock where your rock is a pillow God can meet usthere. I find that really exciting.Yes, why is it reassuring?Just to know that when you're on your own and all the volume is turned down in the world and youare on your own and all the songs aren't being sung from the front to just there.God can meet us.So what happened that night as Jacob slept at this certain place with a rockas his pillow and if you felt like last night's sleep you were sleeping on a rock as a pillowbecause of the thoughts that were going on in your head. He has a dream and in this dream heisn't a fugitive on the run and he isn't on the receiving of a telling off, this receiving endof a telling off. This is the incredible vision of a stairway from earth to heaven and the visionis of angels descending up and down this stairway and the Lord is standing above it and he speaksdirectly to Jacob in this dream and he's reminding Jacob of who he is and the blessing he carries.God made a point of reaching out to Jacob in this very low moment to remind him of the blessing thatwas his. Now the stairway, it symbolizes a connection between heaven and earth.It represents a bridge and not a divide. The way I was thinking about it, if I was running away fromsomething, if I was fearful for my life, if I know that I had stooped through a level of deceptionand what I got had not potentially been rightfully mine or anything else, I would imagine that therewas this divide between me and God. But what God showed Jacob that day is a bridgebetween the heavenly divine realm and the realm of broken mankind and dysfunctional humanity.And the angels coming up and down on this stairway symbolizes its interaction between the spiritualworld and the human world. In other words, what God was saying to Jacob is that you're not faraway. Heaven is closer to you than you think. There is a bridge between me and you and therealm between heaven and earth is not thick like we imagine it to be. Actually it's paper thin.Isn't that beautiful? And he's encouraging Jacob with this and he's saying it's paper thin.You have access. There is a bridge between me and you. This is the first time in Jacob's life thathe has a revelation of God and he doesn't have a revelation of God when all his ducks are in a rowand his life is perfect and everything is fine and God says, right, you are perfect now. Now you canhave a revelation of me. His life is broken and all his ducks aren't in a row. In fact, one of theducks is a pigeon. His life is imperfect and yet that is when God chooses to show him thisincredible revelation where he says, Jacob, I am with you. There is a bridge between me and you.And what is Jacob's response? Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware of it.I want to encourage you this morning to say God is present in all the certain places of our lives.Even when you can't see him, he is still there. There's that great song that says,even when I can't feel it, you're working. Even when I can't see it, you're working.You never stop, you never stop working. Great song and that's what God was confirming to Jacobin that moment. Even when you haven't got everything set out as you want it to be,I am still there and it opens Jacob's eyes. Surely the Lord is in this place.John chapter 1 verse 51, Jesus himself says this, he says he is the ultimate connectionbetween God and humanity. You read the scripture in John chapter 1 verse 51,you see almost a replica vision where Jacob sees the ladder and the angels ascending indescender and God says I am with you. In John chapter 151, John is describing,Jesus is describing his relationship. He says I am the angels and you will see heaven open andthe angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. In other words, he is declaring thatJesus is the fulfillment of Jacob's vision. Jesus is the ladder, the symbol of the connectionbetween heaven and earth. In Christ, that connection is fully realized. Jesus is thebridge. He is our encounter with God. If you know Jesus this morning, there is a bridgebetween you and him that has already been established and his name is Jesus. Isn't thatbeautiful? If you don't know Jesus, you won't understand the fullness and the joy of that orthe security of knowing that. Jacob's ladder was a shadow. What Jacob saw in his vision wasa shadow of who Jesus actually is, the fulfillment of this connection between us and God.What a great revelation. Early the next morning, if we go back to Genesis verse 18,sorry, Jacob, let me start again. Verse 18, early the next morning after his encounter with God,Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on it.I found this really interesting actually because when you read earlier on in the passages,I don't know if you noticed, but there were lots of stones in that area, lots of them. And I alwaystry to think to myself if something is in scripture, it's in there for a reason,something that God wants us to see. So I was thinking about Jacob, he arrives at his certainplace and he looks around for a rock and he takes it and he lies down and he uses it as a pillow.Do you think he used a rock as a pillow at home? No? Well, not likely. What was he likely to haveused? A blanket, a coat, a cloth, some sheepskin, something. Any of you opt for a rock as a pillow?No. So there's something interesting about this particular thing. There are lots and lots ofstones and for me the way I want to imagine it, and you can correct me if you think I'm wrongat the end, but I think it's almost symbolic of where he was at that time. He was in anuncomfortable place. This was an uncomfortable pillow. It was in a place of vulnerability.So there's that kind of symbolic thing going on. It's interesting, after he has this visionand he sees the bridge between himself and God and suddenly heaven feels more accessibleand God feels more close, the Bible says he takes a rock. Which rock?The same rock. Don't you find that interesting? Because I do. I think out of all the rocks hecould have chosen to then put as a pillar and anoint with oil, why was it that he used the rockthat had been under his pillow, under his head? Why was it that one? Might think I'm wrong,but I'd like to suggest that he took his vulnerability and he took his pain and he tookhis uncertainty and he took all the stuff that was going on in his head and he'd had this encounterwith God where heaven seems really close and God is somehow accessible and he gathered thisparticular stone and he took it to his certain place and he put it there and he poured oilover the top of it as a symbol of worship. That's what I think happened, as a symbol of worship.The vulnerability, the pain, the insecurity, the difficult time, whatever that certain place,he takes it all and he puts it down and he says because of what I've seen of you, God you areclose to me, I see that heaven is now accessible, you have made a bridge, I can now hear from you.He creates a place, a place of worship. He takes it all and pours oil over itas a symbol of worship and dedication. Transforms his certain place into holy ground,into a place of worship and encounter with God. The Bible tells us that Jacob names this placeBethel, which means house of God. From an ordinary place with no name, this certain place,he now says I see God, this is the house of God and he takes all the mess, this is my imagination,he takes all the mess and the negativity of the situation, he says God is here, Bethel,how awesome is this place. Do you think that's what he'd said the day before when he arrivedat his certain place, having run for miles thinking ah where am I going, who's going tolook out for me, what's going to happen? Do you think he said wow Bethel, how awesome is this place?No, yet an encounter with God in his certain place transformed this into a place,this is the house of God. Nothing about his situation had changed, nothing had been fixed,nothing had been sorted, nothing had been put back the way it used to be,but the situation hadn't changed, but Jacob's perspective had. That's amazing.I'm so challenged by this, I would love to say that at every season of my lifeI've always approached it with the perspective God is here.I have to be honest and admit that often the perspective I've adopted in situations has notbeen the perspective of God is in this house. Sometimes my certain places, those times of mylife that I've found particularly challenging or tough, rather than God is in this place I havenamed it bitterness and frustration. Any of you with me on that or is it just me in this room?Thank you for your honesty, where I focus so much on the problem or on the lack that that has becomethe center of my attention. And God was challenging me, I've been even thinking about it today,to use the language of God is in this house, God is in the middle of my ducks and my pigeons,God is right there. Sometimes I've named the certain places isolation and despair,I've chosen not to see God, I've chosen to feel abandoned and isolated, believing that somehowI'm disconnected from hope and from God. Maybe that's how you feel this morning,I have to admit I have done this so many times.Bethel, God is in this house. Sometimes I've named my certain places, I've not seen God is in thishouse and isn't it wonderful, wow this is an amazing place, rather it's been dominated byfear and anxiety. Anybody in that or is it just me? Thank you Alan. Alan and I are on the wavelengthhere Jack, thank you. Dominated by fear and anxiety, I've not found assurance in God'spresence because I've allowed fear to take over and I've lost peace. And I've not had theperspective that surely God is here. Sometimes I've named my certain place, reliance, self-relianceand pride. Anybody else? Thank you, thank you. These two guys are laughing here. Put your hands up.How many of us, that in the middle of what's going on, what we rely on is our own strengthand wisdom. Yes, we all do it. Isn't it funny how we think we're wiser than Godor we think we have the better strategy. I do this and that's what I've done. I've not lookedat everything that's going on and I've not said actually God is in this place. I've actuallydecided that I'd better fix it and I rely on my own strength and wisdom and the path ofself-reliance and prize causes me to miss what God is doing. And you know what happens when wedepend on self-reliance and pride? That we end up facing burnout because we have to pedal faster.And we end up feeling disappointment because if we don't get it right somehow,we end up feeling like failures. God has revealed Himself to us, those of us that know Jesus.He has revealed Himself to us. He is the fulfillment of Jacob's dream. He is the bridgeby which we encounter God and I have encountered God in my life. I know the time and the day whenit happened. I know Jesus. So I get to choose the perspective and decide what to name thecertain places of my life. And I don't have to wait to feel it. I can choose as Jacob did.This certain place I'm in right now is my house of God, my Bethel.So think about your certain place just for a moment.Close your eyes just for a second and imagine where you're at right now.Identify your certain place because we've each got them.For Jacob, it was a wilderness, a place of uncertainty, fear and discomfort.Maybe for you that certain place that you are imagining in your life right now is a difficultseason. It's a tough season. It's a hard season. It's a confusing season.Maybe that's your certain place this morning.Maybe your certain place is that job that feels mundane. It doesn't feel like it fits you.You feel like a square peg in a round hole. You feel unfulfilled. Maybe that's your certain place.Maybe your certain place is a strange relationship.Maybe that's your certain place right now.Maybe your certain place is a personal struggle. Maybe you're feeling isolated, disappointed.Maybe you're not sure where God is or your faith feels dry.The wonderful thing about Jesus is we can be honest with Him about where we are atright now. We struggle to be honest with each other because that's not the Christian thingto do, but we can be honest with God. He knows your certain place.Maybe your certain place is a health issue. Maybe you feel like you're carrying a weight.Maybe you're one of the people this morning that actually your certain place is a good placeand you feel like all is well,that you're running a million miles trying to maintain it and control it.Whatever that place may be, it may feel ordinary or hard or insignificant, but that doesn't meanGod isn't present. And just as Jacob didn't expect God to meet him there,we often don't expect to encounter God in our everyday struggles.Rather than saying, if only I wasn't here, then I would be able to meet God.Maybe we can turn things around like Jacob did and take that pillar that has been the stone underour head and bring it to God as worship and say, God, this is Yours. Meet me here.I wonder if you can be bold to say that, God, this place is Yours. Meet me here.God, this place that I'm in, this season of life that I'm in, this job that feels mundane that I'min, this strained relationship that I'm in, this personal struggle or feeling of isolation thatI'm in, this health issue that I'm in. God, this place is Yours. Meet me here.Meet me here.And then as we choose to worship, we say, this is where I'll meet God.I'm not going to wait until things change. I'm going to meet God right here.One of the biggest phrases that I hear or have heard over life is, where is God in all of this?I've even said it, where is God in all of this? Rather than this is where I'll meet God.I wonder if you have the boldness this morning totake hold of your certain place and say, God, this place is Yours. Meet me here.And then have the boldness and the courage to say, God, I'm going to meet you right here.You are in this place.On Christ the solid rock I stand.On other ground is sinking sand.On other ground is sinking sand.On Christ the solid rock I stand.On other ground is sinking sand.On other ground is sinking sand.Lord, I take the rock from under my head, the symbol of my vulnerability,the symbol of my struggle, and I take it and I pour oil on it as an action of worship,believing that You will meet me in this place. But I'm trying, I want to change the circumstances,and I think that if I change it, if I fix it, if I make it different, that's when You'll meet me.But God, I believe Your word to us this morning is that You will meet us right where we're atright now. That we don't have to change anything or be anything or say anything or fix anythingor do anything. Just come with expectant hearts and say, God, meet me here. Meet me here in thisplace. Meet me here in my vulnerability. Meet me here in my frailty. Meet me herein this, my certain place. And I give it to You as worship this morning, pouring oil on it,knowing that You are faithful, knowing that Jesus, You are the bridge toward with my encounter withGod. Thank You that You are accessible to us and Your blessing is on our lives whether we feel itor whether we don't. Thank You, Jesus, that on Christ, the solid rock we stand, end of,full stop, that's it, bottom line. Thank You, Jesus. And Father, I want to pray for those thismorning that don't know You, Lord Jesus, feel like they're being buffeted from one thing to the next.Father, I thank You that You wanting to have an encounter with anyone here that doesn't alreadyknow You. You want an encounter this morning. So thank You for that Holy Spirit. Thank Youfor touching our hearts. Thank You for being who You are. Amen.

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Sermon Summary: God's Unwavering PromisesScripture References: Genesis 27Key Themes: God's sovereignty, His faithfulness to promises, the importance of pursuing His calling, and the availability of His mercy.Summary:The sermon begins with a reflection on the tumultuous family dynamics depicted in Genesis 27. It highlights the contrasting favoritism between Isaac and Esau, and the deceitful actions of Jacob and Rebekah to secure the coveted blessing. Despite the chaotic events and human shortcomings, the sermon emphasizes that God's plans and purposes remain steadfast.The sermon delves into the cultural context of the time, where the father's blessing was a significant inheritance passed on to the firstborn son. It underscores the importance of understanding the cultural nuances to accurately interpret biblical passages.God's Unwavering Promises: Sovereignty: God's plans and purposes are not hindered by human actions or mistakes. He remains sovereign, orchestrating events according to His divine will. Faithfulness: God's promises are unwavering. He is faithful to His word, and His promises will be fulfilled, regardless of human failures or attempts to thwart His plans. Mercy: God's mercy is available to all, regardless of their shortcomings or past mistakes. Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross provides a path to salvation and reconciliation with God.Pursuing God's Calling: Passion: The sermon encourages listeners to passionately pursue the calling God has placed on their lives. It emphasizes the importance of stepping out of comfort zones and embracing the challenges that may arise. Purpose: God has a unique purpose for each individual. By actively seeking His guidance and following His call, individuals can discover their true potential and contribute to His kingdom.Conclusion:The sermon concludes with a call to action, urging listeners to accept God's mercy, pursue His calling, and trust in His unwavering promises. It emphasizes that God's love and grace are available to all, and that by surrendering to His will, individuals can experience transformation and fulfillment in their lives.TranscriptOkay, we're in Genesis 27, and I've asked Kathy, she's going to come and read the chapterfor us.It's a long chapter, but it is important to kind of read the whole thing to get a pictureof the story together.So Kathy's going to read it for us, all right?Here you go, Doug.When Isaac was old and his eyes were so weak that he could no longer see, he called forEsau, his older son, and said to him, my son, here I am, he answered.Isaac said, I am now an old man and don't know the day of my death.Now then, get your equipment, your quiver and bow, and go out to the open country tohunt some wild game for me.Prepare me the kind of tasty food I like and bring it to me to eat so that I may give youmy blessing before I die.Now Rebecca was listening as Isaac spoke to his son Esau.When Esau left for the open country to hunt game and bring it back, Rebecca said to herson Jacob, look, I overheard your father say to your brother Esau, bring me some game andprepare me some tasty food to eat so that I may give you my blessing in the presenceof the Lord before I die.Now my son, listen carefully and do what I tell you.Go out to the flock and bring me two choice young goats so I can prepare some tasty foodfor your father just the way he likes it.And take it to your father to eat so that he may give you his blessing before he dies.Jacob said to Rebecca, his mother, but my brother Esau is a hairy man while I have smoothskin.What if my father touches me?I would appear to be tricking him and would bring him down a curse on myself rather thana blessing.His mother said to him, my son, let the curse fall on me.Just do what I say.Go and get them for me.So he went and got them and brought them to his mother and she prepared some tasty foodjust the way his father liked it.Then Rebecca took the best clothes of Esau, her older son, which she had in the houseand put them on her younger son Jacob.She also covered his hands and the smooth part of his neck with the goatskins.Then she handed to her son Jacob the tasty food and the bread she had made.He went to his father and said, my father, yes, my son, he answered, who is it?Jacob said to his father, I am Esau, your firstborn.I have done as you told me, please sit up and eat some of my games so that you may giveme your blessing.Isaac asked his son, how did you find it so quickly, my son?The Lord your God gave me success, he replied.Then Isaac said to Jacob, come near so I can touch you, my son, to know whether you reallyare my son Esau or not.Jacob went close to his father Isaac, who touched him and said, the voice is the voiceof Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.He did not recognize him, for his hands were hairy like those of his brother Esau, so heproceeded to bless him.Are you really my son Esau, he asked?I am, he replied.Then he said, my son, bring me some of your game to eat so that I may give you my blessing.Jacob brought it to him and he ate, and he brought some wine and he drank.Then his father Isaac said to him, come here, my son, and kiss me.So he went to him and kissed him.When Isaac caught the smell of his clothes, he blessed him and said, ah, the smell ofmy son is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed.May God give you heaven's dew and earth's richness, and an abundance of grain and newwine.May nations serve you and people bow down to you.Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you.May those who curse you be cursed, and those who bless you be blessed.After Isaac finished blessing him and Jacob had scarcely left his father's presence, hisbrother Esau came in from hunting.He too prepared some tasty food and brought it to his father.Then he said to him, my father, please sit up and eat some of my game so that you maygive me your blessing.His father Isaac asked him, who are you?I am your son, he answered, your firstborn Esau.Isaac trembled violently and said, who was it then that hunted game and brought it tome?I ate it just before you came and I blessed him, and indeed he will be blessed.When Esau heard his father's words, he burst out with a loud and bitter cry and said tohis father, bless me, me too, my father.But he said, your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing.Esau said, isn't he rightly named Jacob?This is the second time he has taken advantage of me.He took my birthright and now he's taken my blessing.Then he asked, haven't you reserved any blessing for me?Isaac answered Esau, I have made him lord over you and have made all his relatives andservants and I have sustained him with grain and new wine.So what can I possibly do for you, my son?Esau said to his father, do you have only one blessing, my father?Bless me too, my father.Then Esau wept aloud.His father Isaac answered him, your dwelling will be away from the earth's richness, awayfrom the dew of heaven above.You will live by the sword and you will save your brother, but when you grow restless,you will throw his yoke from off your neck.Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him.He said to himself, the days of mourning for my father are near, then I will kill my brotherJacob.When Rebekah was told what her oldest son Esau had said, she sent for her younger sonJacob and said to him, your brother Esau is planning to avenge himself by killing you.Now then, my son, do what I say.Flee at once to my brother Laban in Haran.Stay with him for a while until your brother's fury subsides.When your brother is no longer angry with you and forgets what you did to him, I'llsend word for you to come back from there.Why should I lose both of you in one day?Then Rebekah said to Isaac, I'm disgusted with living because of these Hittite women.If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these,my life will not be worth the living.That's one passage there, isn't it?But it's really important to get our heads around the whole story of what we're doing.Let's just pray a minute.Father, we just want to thank you for your word that is living and active and sharp andcuts to our heart and divides between joint and spirit, and we pray, Lord, come and speakto us this morning, come and challenge us, come and encourage us, come and move us onin you.In Jesus' name, Amen.Amen.So, what is this all about?It's interesting, isn't it?When we go through Genesis, as we have been doing, it's kind of like a bit of a rollercoasterride, isn't it?Some weeks, it's that we're up here and it's a great story and it's full of faith and we'restirred like the stuff we heard last week, and we think, yeah, we get this, we're forit.And next week, you're into a chapter which is, my word, what are these guys doing?You know, family, huh?What a family.I don't know what your family is like, if it's anything like the one in this story here,or maybe your family is great, I don't know.But when you read a chapter like this, you think, what is going on?How is this?How can this happen?And we're reminded how fickle human character is, and yet how God continually uses ficklehuman characters like you and I to bring about his plans and his purposes.And just the context of this passage, if you're reading it thinking, what really is goingon here, is in the culture and society of that day, it was the custom for the fatheras they were nearing the end of life to pass on this blessing to their firstborn son.A little bit like, I guess, you might pass on all of your will to the firstborn son.It's that type of thing that's going on in the story here.And yet behind that very practical, earthy thing is the sovereign purpose and promiseof God, that we'd seen him speak to Abraham through the earlier chapters, and now passingon through Isaac to the next generation to Jacob.And yet today's passage is a bad story for everybody involved.Back in chapter 25, we read how Rebecca loved Jacob, but Isaac loved Esau.Favoritism never ends well in families, never ends well in families.And we see that in the story today.We see Isaac trying to go against the plan of God that God had spoken to Rebecca whenshe was pregnant with the twins.We see Esau break his oath that he'd made to his brother Jacob in chapter 25 and endup wanting to murder him.We see Jacob and Rebecca lie and cheat and act deceitfully to get what they want.We see Jacob running away so that his mother, and she's the one, he's the one she loves,his mother never sees him again.And although Jacob and Esau make up by the time we get to chapter 34, their descendantsare at each other's throats for generations to come.This is better than EastEnders.Who needs soaps when you've got the Bible, right?And yet through all of this that's going on, yet through all of this, the plans andthe purposes of God are unfolding.How on earth can that happen?What is that all about?You see, God's promise to Abraham about his descendants being as numerous as the sandon the seashore, we saw he spoke that to Abraham, and Abraham had to wait 25 years for Isaacto be born.And then when Isaac's born, he remains a bachelor for 40 years.That must be so frustrating for Abraham.He's thinking of the tension of how is God's promise going to be fulfilled?And then he's married to Rebecca, and then they have children, and then you think, right,it's going to really take off now.No, things still don't go so well.And that unfolding promise of God to Abraham passes to the next generation through thewords of a poorly sighted, aged old man who can't detect the difference between humanskin and goat hair.Don't ask me how that one works, right?And by a scheming mother and a scheming younger brother and a very angry older brother.And on the surface, it can seem like the purposes of God are being fulfilled via deceit, viacheating and other dubious practices.And yet, if anything, this chapter speaks volumes about no matter what mistakes youand I make, no matter what naughtiness we get caught up in, no matter what dodgy dealingswe have done or schemings we get involved with, God can not only use you, but fulfillhis plans and purposes for your life through you, despite all of that.Hallelujah.That is good news.Right?And as we've seen already, we're only at chapter 27 of the first book of the Bible, and we'veseen that carry on so often.We've seen Adam and Eve think they can hide from God as he walks in the garden with them.We've seen Noah rescue, not Moses, but Noah rescue all the animals in the flood and savemankind and then as a bit of an issue of alcohol.We've seen Abraham lie and cheat and pretend his wife is his sister and try and manufacturethe promise of God.And now we see Isaac and Rebekah caught up with the same sort of shenanigans as theydo.Where do people get the idea that God only calls and uses people once they've got everythingsorted out?Why do people look at the church and think, oh, they're goody-goodies, they think theirlife is sorted out?It's tosh.It's wrong.Right?And actually, maybe we should be more transparent about how messed up we are, and then the worldwould see and realize this is where God works.He doesn't work in the people who have got it all lined up and nicely, neatly boxed off,but he works in the mess and the chaos and the distractions of life that goes on aroundus.The promises of God, his plans and his purposes are not stopped by the mess and chaos of ourhuman lives, which is good news, isn't it?In fact, they sometimes seem to be the very catalyst that brings about those things.Four things briefly from this chapter, I promise quickly.I just want to say in passing, it's really important when we read passages like thisthat we get our head around the fact of the culture in which we live today and how webring that when we read a passage of scripture and this tension of, does our society andour culture tell us how to interpret scripture, or does scripture tell us how to interpretthe society and culture round about us?What I mean by that, you can read this passage and feel really sorry for Esau.Oh, come on, be honest, as you read this passage, that's right.I mean, he's just the older brother who's naturally gone to his dad and asked for theblessing, right?And then he's deceived and cheated by his own mum and his younger brother, and we couldeasily read this and feel sorry for that.And that kind of difficulty is heightened when we look in the New Testament.You know we've got to use scripture to interpret scripture, right?So when Paul talks about this passage in Romans 9, and he's quoting, actually he's quotingMalachi, but he talks about this passage, he says, God says, Jacob I loved, but EsauI hated.How do we work that out?That doesn't fit very well with our nice Christianity, does it?How can God say something like that?And then he goes on and describes how God will have mercy on whom he will have mercy,and he will have compassion on whom he will have compassion.And they remind us, those verses and this passage remind us that there are times inour lives when we need to lean back into the sovereignty of God, that we do not understandeverything.And leaning and recognising that God is sovereign might be a problem for some of you, mightbe a problem for someone here this morning, but that is such an important part of howwe read a passage like this.You know, we all have fallen short, all of us.All of us deserve the judgment of God, and it's only because he is merciful to us.He has chosen to be merciful to us.We do not deserve his grace by definition.We talked about that when we looked at Sodom and Gomorrah, and it's resurfacing again inthis passage here.Here we have a passage where God says mercy and grace to Jacob and not to Esau.Now we've got the rest of eternity to kind of discuss that with him, and ask him whatwas going on, right?But at this point in time, in our lives here, we need to lean back into the sovereigntyof God and trust his good and perfect plan.And the point I'm just making, it's really important when we read scripture that we recognisethat and take that approach rather than taking what is a common approach in the world todayin the society and culture we would live, which is godless at the end of the day, andhumanistic and secular, and would come up with a different rationale of how to readthat.How to come up with the truth of scripture, learn how to handle it, and interpret thetimes in which we live through the lens of scripture and not the other way around.So that's the first thing.The second thing I want to talk about is God will fulfil his promises, his word will cometo pass.Isaiah 55 tells us that the word of God leaves his mouth and does not return until it hasaccomplished what it set out to do.Full stop.And we see here the word of the Lord came to Rebekah, you can read it in chapter 25verse 23, that when she was pregnant, the word of God came to her to say that the olderwill serve the younger, that the blessing of God will come primarily to the youngerchild.And although Isaac and Esau tried to change that in the story we've read today, they weren'tgoing to do that because God has spoken.And on the surface it may look like human scheming going on but behind that is the orchestrationof God's sovereign plan and purpose, that when God speaks his word it will be fulfilled.Abraham had had to learn that, Isaac had learned that in his life, and now Jacob is beginningto learn that in his young life.You see it's not like when you and I make a promise, you know, because circumstanceschange for us, don't they, and we reason ourselves out of something we previously promisedand say why we've changed our mind about something.Circumstances change, you know.The frivolity of life today reduces the sense of what a promise is, and when we read passageslike this we think, oh yeah, God's making a promise, but no, his word will not change.It's not like I observe, maybe this is just the younger generation thing, they go on Facebookto events.Have you seen events on Facebook and you can say whether you're going or whether you'reinterested or whether you're not going.And I remember chatting to our daughters about this, they say they're going, but they don'tgo.And they're actually not even intending to go really, but they still say they're going.This is not the kind of promise God makes, all right.He doesn't say, I'm going to say this, but then I'm not really bothered about it.There's not that frivolity.And the problem is the politicians say one thing and do another, as we know really, reallywell.The characters have a media appearance of what they present through the media, but inreal life they are very different so often, and there's challenges going on, and we seethat in the news almost week after week, right.And we live in a culture and a society where people's words and people's promises rapidlybecome meaningless.Nice.That's great.That was obviously the key part of the message.Even in our own lives we change our priorities, so we've just started having our granddaughterthree days a week, which is kind of a challenge, and I'm rapidly learning that the list ofstuff I thought that we had to do, suddenly the priorities of it all changed because there'sthis dynamic two-year-old in our life for eight hours a day, and you can't do the thingsthat actually I thought we could do, and we've had to change it all.Not so with God.He's trustworthy.He is committed to his word.He is committed to you and I.He is trustworthy.In Joshua, at the end of Joshua, in chapter 21, after they had gone into the PromisedLand and they'd won all their battles and they'd taken it all over, we read this.So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their forefathers, and theytook possession of it and settled there.The Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn through their forefathers.Not one of their enemies withstood them.The Lord handed all their enemies over to them.Not one of all the Lord's good promises to the house of Israel failed.Everyone was fulfilled.God keeps his word.When he speaks, it will happen.That starts in Genesis 1 when he speaks and says, let there be light.Guess what?There was light.And he hasn't stopped speaking since, and when he speaks, what he says will happen.Paul says the same thing when he writes to the church in Corinth in 2 Corinthians chapter1.He says this, but as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not yes and no.For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothywas not yes and no, but in him it has always been yes.Well no matter how many promises God has made, they are in Christ, absolutely.And so through him there are many spoken to us, the glory of God.The promises of God are yes in Christ.He is not a God who has changed his mind elsewhere, Paul writes.He's not a man that he would change his mind, but his word is true and faithful and it willcome to pass.And we need to get a hold of that in our lives, and I'll just bring that in personally.God has doubtless spoken over your life.Words about his love for you, his passion for you, words about his plans and his purposesfor you.Maybe like Rebecca in our story today, that was a long time ago that you heard God speaking.Maybe like Abraham, you've heard God speak and you've tried to make it happen yourselfand somehow it hasn't.Maybe you think that you've lost it through getting things messed up in your life likein the story today.So many things can snatch away the promise of God over our lives.The busyness of life, right, can just snatch away what God has spoken into you years, decadespreviously.The busyness that can snatch, the mess of life.You can start to doubt, did God really say that to me?It just seems really daft and unusual.We can drift away from, we lower the bar of faith in our own lives and we settle for aplace of faith and living out our Christianity that actually is where we are just comfortablebut it is not where God intended us to be.And he spoke a word to us years ago that actually we've let drift and we no longer respond tothat.I'm here to say this morning that what God has promised to you, he will do.I am confident that he who began a good work in you will carry it through to completionuntil the day of Christ.Hallelujah.That God is true, his word is true and it will be fulfilled.Maybe for you this morning it's a little bit like you've got those embers of God in yourlife like coals glowing red.They're not raising fire anymore but they've dwindled.Maybe one or two of those coals are black but one or two of them are red.I want to tell you this morning, God is ready to get down with you and start going, I'mblowing on those embers in your life for his word to spring up and start to grow againand new shoots of the Holy Spirit to get a hold of you and transform your life and moveyou into the plans and purposes that he's got for you.Number three, passionately pursue the calling of God on your life.Because his promises are true, because his word over you will be complete and he willfulfill it, the encouragement to us from this passage is that we should be men and womenwho passionately pursue what God has called us.On the face of it, we would not condone the scheming and the deceit we see that Rebeccaand Jacob do in this story and just to be clear, we don't.And there are plenty of passages in the New Testament where it makes that very clear.However, if we take a step back, what's going on here?Well perhaps Rebecca is remembering the word of God that came to her when she was pregnantall those years previously, that God had spoken and said the blessing of God will cometo Jacob and the promise of God that started with Abraham will continue through Jacob.I'm kind of intrigued, this is a bit of a side conversation, I'm kind of intrigued thatwhen we look at Abraham and he tries to manufacture the promise of God by Ishmael, that's clearlywrong and not on and yet what we seem to have here, interestingly enough, it looks a littlebit like Rebecca is trying to manufacture the promise of God and make it happen andswitch through Jacob.I'll leave you to take that one away and discuss in your groups.But on hearing of what Isaac is about to do and bless Esau, she is stirred to take actionand an action that is going to cost her, big time, because she will not see Jacob again.But just think for a minute, if she hadn't taken that action, you know, maybe the blessingwould have gone to Esau.Maybe Jacob would have just lived out a life as a home bird, counting down the years, anordinary life, you know, where the highlight of his life would be Strictly Come Dancingevery September and that was it.Maybe he would just be ordinary, he would have missed the blessing of God on his lifeand my cry this morning is I do not believe Jesus wants you to miss the blessing of Godon your life.Today, this week, next month, next year, at all, but he wants us to have it all and totake it all and he is passionate about that and the change in Jacob, whether he endedup just being this home bird guy and just flitting away his life or whether the promiseof God came to him and whoosh, he was off, it all hung on Rebecca's determination andpassion to do something about it and I want to say this morning, Jesus is that passionateabout you and about me that we get a hold of the word that he has for us and that weget a hold of the life that he has for us to transform us.Have you ever been faced with that awkward situation of where there's something you wantto do and you kind of don't want to do?You know, you're kind of, it's exciting to do it and I really ought to give it a trybut I'm actually scared at the same time.There's a few people in this room who know I once went white water rafting, yeah, onceand never again.That's one of those things.I do want to do it, I don't want to do it, I do want to do it, I don't want to do it,you know, because it sounds really exciting and it's thrilling and I'm going to get wetbut, you know, and it's difficult and in the end you do it because you don't want to backdown in front of your mates but that's a different story, right, but that kind of tension iswhat is going on here, that actually Jesus is calling you and I to something far greaterthan just living out three score years and ten or a little bit more and just eking outan existence and then we die and that's it.He's calling us into the purposes of God, that one day Jesus will return for a churchthat has made itself ready and you and I have been caught up with that and you and I havebeen given a place and a part to play to help God fulfil his purposes, not just to leanback and just eat through life.You see, here's the deal, do you want to see God's plans and purposes for your life happen?You want to see what he will do in you and through you if you dare to believe.We have the same choice that faced Rebecca here and Jacob here.We can choose just to mooch along in life existing surviving or we can choose to passionatelypursue Jesus and his call on our lives instead wherever that takes us across the world oracross the street.Last week we weren't able to be here but we prayed for Roland as he went off to Zambiaand he's arrived, as we've heard, which is great news but Angie and I remember Roland,we go back to about 1982 when we first knew him and we used to chat about stuff then andhe had no idea of any of this but he is a guy who has chosen to passionately followJesus as best as he is able to understand it and work it out and pursue it.If we talked to him in 1982 and said Roland, one day you're going to go to Zambia to helplaunch a massive radical education system to reach some of the distant tribes in thatland he would have, I don't know what he would have done, he would have said we're very sillyat the very least, you know, had no idea, you do not know where the plans and purposesof God are going to take you once you make yourself available to Jesus for him to useyou and get a hold of you and like I say that may be across the world, it may be acrossthe street but you're doing it with Jesus and seeing what he will do through you andin you.Hallelujah.And for some of us it's a little bit like Jesus is a firework, alright, and he's a fireworkthat we've got in the box and we take it out of the box and we read the instructions andthen we put him back in the box and we think, ooh, they're a bit dangerous, aren't they?It might go wrong, it might topple over, it might explode, you know, we have to standat least 200 metres away when we light it, you know, it's dangerous.And Jesus is here this morning to say it's time to light the firework and to let hisHoly Spirit ignite you to bring the purpose of God for your life into focus and to geta hold of what Jesus wants to do for you, to say to God, your will, not mine, whereverthat goes, whatever that means and I particularly want to say, you know, for a younger generationand bear in mind I'm 62, so make of that what you will, but to a younger generationhere this morning, what are you wanting to do for Jesus?What is Jesus speaking to your heart about to stir you up for him, to give you passionfor Jesus, for his church, for his mission?Maybe even you're sat here and think, yeah, actually I do feel I've had something of thatbut it sounds daft to talk about it or embarrassing to talk about it.And I daren't talk about it because it just sounds so out there and it's so not me.But actually Jesus is here this morning to stir your heart and to agitate and to giveyou and to eyeball you, say this is what I'm calling you to do.And you know, years ago, she reminded me that, and when I say years ago, we were talkingabout 1980, something like that, we're in a meeting where there's a guy speaking calledAlan Vincent and he was talking about passing the baton on to the next generation, to ayounger generation.And at that time, 40 years ago, that was us.Well, now it's another generation.This is a story about passing on the baton.This is a story about Isaac passing it on to Jacob and despite the mess around Jacob'slife that actually it happens.And so here we are again, you know, there's a baton passing needing to take place to youngerpeople in this room and in this church and even in 146, that actually Jesus is passingon.Will you take up the mantle?Will you take up the baton for him, for his church and for his mission?And that is stirring us up.It's time to step up to the plate, to not be passive.The question is, what is he calling you to do?And finally, I just want to talk briefly about God's mercy for today, because what we seein this passage and throughout the Old Testament is the mercy of God shown to specific undeservingindividuals like Jacob at set times.And Jacob goes away from this chapter carrying the blessing of God on his life, not becauseof anything he had done, not because of his character, but simply because of the mercyof God.And the good news now is that the mercy of God is here for all people, because Jesus,the Son of God, came to this earth 2,000 years ago, lived, was tempted in every way as youand I are, yet did not sin or slip up once.He was crucified on false charges, but actually he was killed taking the punishment that youand I justly deserve.He took it for us all, for you and for me.And three days later, God raised him from the dead, and he now sits at God's right handwith all power and authority.And now because of that, the mercy of God is available to all of us.But we have to want it.We have to take it.In the words of Billy Graham, we have to get up out of our seats and walk down to the frontand receive it from Jesus.But it does mean no one can sit here this morning and say, I'm so undeserving.How could I possibly do this?Because you're absolutely right.We are all so undeserving.There is nobody more undeserving than anybody else.We're all in the same boat.You can't say and sit here and say, but what I've done is so bad, how could Jesus acceptme?Because he took the full consequences of what you have done that is so bad on the crossand those nails pierced his hands and his feet, and he died for you and for me.To take that away.To win freedom and open the way for God's mercy to transform our lives.We've talked about the promises of God this morning, and some of those promises as youcome to him are the things that mess up our lives, that trip us up.We can be free of them.Hallelujah.And this morning, maybe Jesus is knocking on the door, but to be in the good of that,you need to ask him in.You need to turn over the running of your life from you to him.Amen.Amen.Amen.

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Sermon Summary: "Pressure Points"Speaker: NickScripture Reference: Genesis 26Summary:Nick's sermon, titled "Pressure Points," delves into the life of Isaac, the son of Abraham, as a lens through which to examine the power of God's blessing and covenant. He emphasizes that God's blessing is not contingent on human worthiness or righteousness, but rather on His unwavering faithfulness and determination to fulfill His promises.The sermon begins by highlighting the parallels between Isaac and Abraham, particularly their experiences with famine and their dealings with the Philistines. Nick points out that both men faced similar challenges yet received God's blessing in extraordinary ways. He emphasizes that God's covenant with Abraham extends to Isaac and his descendants, demonstrating God's faithfulness across generations.Nick then discusses the concept of "faith in the face of pressure." He notes that Isaac, like many of us, faced moments of doubt and fear, yet he ultimately chose to trust in God's promises. Nick encourages listeners to remember that God's blessings often come in unexpected ways, even in the midst of trials and hardships.The sermon also addresses the importance of staying in God's will. Nick uses the example of Isaac's decision to remain in the land of Gerar, despite the famine, as a reminder that God's plans may not always align with our own. He emphasizes that it is crucial to listen to God's voice and follow His guidance, even when it feels counterintuitive.Nick concludes the sermon by emphasizing the power of God's blessing. He highlights how Isaac's obedience to God led to abundant blessings, both material and spiritual. Nick encourages listeners to trust in God's goodness and to seek His blessing in their own lives, no matter what challenges they may face.Bible References:Genesis 26:1-11Genesis 26:12Genesis 26:24-25Genesis 26:26-31Genesis 26:35Additional Notes:The sermon is delivered in a conversational and engaging style, making it accessible to a wide audience.Nick uses personal anecdotes and examples to illustrate his points, helping listeners connect with the message on a deeper level.The sermon emphasizes the importance of faith, obedience, and trust in God's promises.The sermon provides encouragement and hope for those facing challenges in their own lives.TranscriptionMy man, thank you Roland. Thank you everybody. Morning again. Genesis 26 we'reon today. Genesis is a game of two halves you could say and we're enteringin the second half. We've got all the way through. I was excited when I saw Genesis26 come up because about ten years ago I did a whole series on this chapter,series about four or five sermons, so we only get one week per chapter here atMCF. We're rapidly going through Genesis but I called that Strange Maths. That wasthe nice catchy title I had for that series then and this one has got a titlePressure Points but we'll just leave it there. We'll see if what I sayrelates to the title or not. I want you to be honest when it comes to assessingyour spiritual life, when it comes to your feelings about what it is thatattracts the blessing of God to our lives, how many of us actuallydisqualify ourselves, write ourselves off, think well the blessing of God is forother people, people that are more worthy, better quality of faith, more righteousperhaps, more faithful, more gifted. Welcome to the book of Genesis becausethis is where all our assumptions go to die and we've read through the story ofAbraham and all that has gone on there. We see the relentless determination ofGod to bless his people according to his nature and his covenant rather thanaccording to what we are like. And you see constant faith. I just love it everytime the Bible holds Abraham up as just an absolute hero of faith, neverwavered in his faith. That's just the blessing of God because you read it youthink actually it doesn't actually match up. He did waver in his faith. There wereall sorts of things that he did wrong. There are all sorts of things that hedid that might disqualify him in our eyes from the blessing of God and yetGod was relentless and ruthless in pursuing him with his blessing anddetermined to bless him not only during his lifetime but beyond even up to todaythe blessing of Abraham is being played out. So there is a covenant of God thatstands forever and the greatest accounts of the faithfulness and the blessing ofGod can be set against the most desperate examples of weakness andfailure. Amen! That's good news isn't it? Wonderful examples of human frailtymagnify the incredible power and faithfulness of God. So we shouldn't beafraid when we feel weak. I mean we know the Scriptures don't we? When you areweak then he is strong. Blessed are the weak, blessed are the poor, blessed arethose who mourn, blessed are those for whom everything has gone wrong and whohave got nothing together at all. You are blessed because in you can be seenthe glory of God. If you've got it all together we're not going to worship Godwe're going to worship you. And so it's wonderful to see. So we've got this we'vehad this with Abraham all the episodes of Abraham's life up till todayup till this this moment and now we're going to another generation. Isaac thechild of promise and we see the same things played out again and again butfirst in Genesis 26 from verse 1 it says a severe famine now struck the landas had happened before in Abraham's time. So Isaac moved to Gerar where Abimelechking of the Philistines lived. The Lord appeared to Isaac and said do not godown to Egypt but do as I tell you. Live here as a foreigner in this land and Iwill be with you and bless you. I hereby confirm that I will give all these landsto you and your descendants just as I solemnly promised Abraham your father. Iwill cause your descendants to become as numerous as the stars of the sky. Iwill give them all these lands and through your descendants all the nationsof the earth will be blessed. I will do this because Abraham listened to me andobeyed all my requirements, commands, decrees, instructions. So Isaac stayed inGerar. I just love the way the two paragraphs meet together and it goes onin verse 7. When the men who lived there asked Isaac about his wife Rebekah hesaid she's my sister. He was afraid to say she's my wife. He thought they'llkill me to get her because she's so beautiful but sometime later Abimelechking of the Philistines looked out his window and saw Isaac caressing Rebekah.Immediately Abimelech called for Isaac and exclaimed she's obviously your wifewhy did you say she's my sister? He said because it runs in the family. Because Iwas afraid someone would kill me to get her from me Isaac replied. How could youdo this to us Abimelech exclaimed one of my people might easily have taken yourwife and slept with her and you would have made us guilty of great sin. ThenAbimelech issued a public proclamation anyone who touches this man or his wifewill be put to death. So it's like this is a chapter of two halves. I mean theblessing of God the covenant blessing I will bless you I'll be with you Isaacyep and then he just flipped straight into character and does exactly whatAbraham did with his wife and Isaac's mother pretending she was his sister.Just amazing just the way God is just doesn't try and pull the wool over oureyes does he just like it's all so laid out there he was trying to impress usthis wouldn't be the book to do it but he's doing it and we see the glory ofGod manifest against the background of human weakness. So a severe famine hasstruck the land just as it did in Abraham's time and Abraham in his owntime made the decision to go to Egypt it was a sensible decision it was areasonable decision it was a logical one let's go to Egypt because there wewon't suffer in the same way and we'll have what the crops that we need and thepeople will be safe and everything will be good and so he went down to Egypt forthe sake of himself and all those that he was responsible for. So naturally justas Isaac is quite good at taking note of what his dad did with his wife he alsotook note of what he did during the famine and thought well actually sincewe're suffering in this way we're going to go to Egypt. His instinct was the sameit's how we are wired aren't we follow the path we know follow the things thathave been played out before do what has been done before because that in that iscommon sense it seems safe and wise and responsible. Isaac is living out his lifeand making his decisions much as we would be inclined to that's how weoperate we have a frame of reference don't we but then into the middle ofthis frame of reference steps the Lord God and says do not go down to Egypt butdo as I tell you live here as a foreigner in this land and I will bewith you and bless you I hereby confirm that I will give all these lands to youand your descendants just as I solemnly promised Abraham your father and itcounts when God intervenes and God speaks those are the things that can cutright across our common sense our understanding our history our precedentsthat have been set we have to be those who are able to hear the voice of Godbecause sometimes he will say something contrary to what we expect and theywon't actually ask us to walk on the well-worn paths as Terry Vogue to useTerry Vogo's phrase but to actually cut a new path according to what he's sayingto us and that's really difficult to do but it really counts because no matterhow many years we have in the bank no matter how much experience and wisdomwe've notched up for us as individuals and for us as a church we need to learnto look at every new challenge in every circumstance with an ear turned to Godbecause it's the only way sometimes things will just play out normally andsometimes there will be something that God wants to do that is actually not inline with what we expect not in line with what we want not in line with whatmakes us feel comfortable not in line with what is sensible but actually whatis according to his word and so the Lord appeared to Isaac and said do not godown to Egypt but do as I tell you live here as a foreigner in this landand I will be with you and bless you have you noticed that our usualcriteria for assessing what God is saying to us is what somebody has termedreally helpfully felt led poisoning we can be felt led into all sorts of thingsbut usually we're felt led towards what makes us comfortable we're felt ledtowards what we want we're felt led towards the decision that actually makesus feel best and that's the criteria I think bit well because because it makesmakes sense to me because this is what I want because this is actually what Iwant to achieve in my life I believe God has spoken to me very rarely do you findsomebody saying actually everything that I want to do is taking me in thisdirection but I've heard the Word of God and he's pulling me back in thisdirection along the path of sacrifice along the path of suffering along thepath of difficulty or trouble or whatever it is those things don'tusually add up in our minds to God speaking to us should this life we werejust singing bring suffering Lord I will remember what Calvary has brought for mebut often when this life brings suffering we think oh what dear what'sgone wrong and so careful reading of Genesis reveals how our criteria are notalways reliable Isaac would have been wrestling with his emotions his ownunderstanding his fears and his insecurities he'd have been looking atthe people who are looking to him they want food and he's saying sorry guys theLord has told us to stay in the famine not a good way to become a popularleader God was establishing Isaac the understanding that his promises standand even the most severe challenges of circumstances don't change what he wantsto do or what he's able to do and so he promised to Abraham that he was going todo this and now he's saying to Isaac right now you're in a famine youeverything is against you your life is at threat and I want you to stay hereand trust me according to my promises not according to the circumstances thatis a real challenge that can be brought right up into the present-day sentencehe's talking about his promises that stand for generations Abraham was gonebut the promise still stands I saw a meme at the other day on the internetthat said ladies when your husband says he'll do something he'll do it you don'thave to keep reminding him every three months which is quite funny and true butwith God there's a strong vein of truth in that when God says he'll do somethingyou don't have to remind him every thousand years he's gonna kid he's gonnado it he's gonna establish it even through generations he will do it Isaacwould have had a strong streak of self-preservation what are we gonna do toget food on the table what are we gonna do to bring safety what are we gonna doto look after our animals what are we gonna do what are we gonna do what arewe gonna do nose would have been the questions in his ears from people whatare we gonna do and God wanted him to put all his trust in him and hispromises rather than being driven by what he could see and feel and right upthere in the challenges we face whether as individuals or as a church that isthe challenge we have but interestingly though we've looked at the you know thisis what God said and this is what he did with Rebecca and all of that and we'retalking about human failings in it all there was a streak of faith because he'sin the right family there's a heritage of faith the Lord appeared to Isaac andsaid don't go down to Egypt stay where you are and in verse 6 it simply saysthis so Isaac stayed in Gerar whatever the pressure whatever the difficultywhatever the challenge Isaac stayed and to us in our lives that can be the mostprofound and difficult challenge in our lives and the question will you stay isthe one that we need to answer because we can face our own famines can't we wecan face our own challenges we can face our own pain we can face our own griefwe can face our own fear we can face our own lack and God says will you stay andtrust in my promises will you start running around to Egypt thinking if wego there we'll be more comfortable if we go there that will solve our problems ifwe do this this will this will put everything right or will we actuallyhold on continue to speak the language of faith will we pray will we praiseeven in the middle of it all we're not talking about being a hero of the faithIsaac clearly wasn't getting it all right all the time it's not about alwayshaving the right response but it is about the disciplined decision to staywhere we are to stay I often refer to it the time when the disciples all thepeople left Jesus and they ran in different directions and Jesus said tothem are you gonna leave me as well and they said well where else can we go it'snot a ringing endorsement is it but he's like well but sometimes that is the lifeof faith where else can we go people run off people backslide people run indifferent directions people go after what it you know in inverted commas theblessings of this world or whatever but for those who have received thecovenant promise of God the genuine question is where else can we go thereis nothing it might things might be going wrong the wheels might be fallingoff there might not be any answers to our questions this pain might not goaway but where else can I go and I'll stay I will stay here I will staylooking at you Lord I will stay listening to you Lord I will staybelieving in you Lord because there is nowhere else for me to go I will stayand that's the challenge that we have in our lives like I said straight afterverse 6 we get another account of Isaac doing exactly what Abraham did inpretending his wife was his sister didn't make him a superhero didn't takeaway his fears or his insecurities or his or situations that put him underpressure didn't stop him making mistakes but he was in the right place as aresult of the decision he'd made he's better off there making his mistakes andhe was if he'd gone to Egypt because if he'd gone to Egypt he'd have given up onthe promises of God because God was saying actually if you stay here I willbless you do not go don't keep marking yourself out of ten to see if you thinkGod's going to approve of you because you're always going to fail that testbut do make sure that you're in the right place do make sure that you'refacing the right direction do make sure that you're holding on to the promisesof God because it's so important because that's what will mark us out asthe people of God and in verse 12 as we go on when Isaac planted his crops thatyear according to the Word of God he harvested a hundred times more grainthan he planted for the Lord blessed him that's the strange maths so in the landof famine so where nothing's gonna grow and you'll reap a hundred times what youplanted he sowed in a land of famine he did what he knew how to do and Godblessed him and sometimes that's all we've got to sow in a land of faminestay where God puts us sow seeds on the hot dry barren land well it looks likethere's no sense nothing's working it just doesn't feel it just feels it justfeels horrible but I'm gonna trust you Lord I'm gonna sow in this famine andthe promise of the Word of God is that God is able to and God will bless useven in the famine can be really comfortable with the idea of Godwithholding can't we without we understand that you know if there's ifthey've got withholds up from us if he tests us if he challenges us we think ohyeah that that's that's what we expect par for the course with God but what weread here is that God also blesses God blessed Isaac as a result of hisdecision to stay and we do have twisted teaching that has become known as theprosperity gospel and all of that you know where if you like God is a heavenlycash machine if you if you do this this and this they will just pour out cash onyou and that's and that's the blessing of God I saw some videos online theother day of a guy who's boasting about how many private jets he'd gotten howmany watches he'd gotten it was all the blessing of God and it's just alluglier stuff but don't let all of that divert us from the fact that God is aGod who blesses God is a God who pours out his best on our lives someone oncesaid God will always bless you more than you would bless you because he's richerthan you and because he loves you more than you love you God loves you morethan you love you God is interested in God is committed to you more than you'recommitted to your future God wants you established I remember having theweirdest thoughts this is not a confession time this is just that justthere was just an unfortunate break as I said that sentence when we came backfrom Zambia to England in order to go to Zambia we'd sold our house we had a housein the south of England in the days when houses there it was a big boom in houseprices and we we invested all of our resources in going to Zambia and in andin the life that we had there and so by the time we came back we needed amiracle in order to come back and get we God made it possible for us to buy ahouse in Mexico but we had very little left there was like that sense of wellwhat do we do now well we can we've got a roof over our head but you know willwe eat and all of that sort of thing and I remember thinking a weirdest thoughtwell we have spoons in our house will we have a fridge and all this sort of Iknow I'm not doing it for sympathy because we do have we did have a fridgeand we had a lot of spoons but the point was there was a friend of mine NormanBarnes he shook his head at me like so they said why would God give you lesshe loves you you know there is there is a there is a heart of God to bless yousometimes we really struggle with that because we look at our famine and welook at our second we think well maybe blesses other people but not me but Godsays if you will trust me even in your famine you will see the better yourblessing might look different to somebody else's blessing but God willbless us and how all could we find it talking about the physical blessing ofGod there's so many different situations even in this room this morning so manydifferent stories to tell so many different objections maybe to what I'msaying oh yes it's all very well for you but what about what about this situationbut we have to lean on the promises of God to be faithful to us all of ourlives our circumstances can be our starting point and we get discouragedbut we need to look up and look out and remember where our help comes from trulyour help comes from the Lord Greg was sharing you know about the situation inEmmaus there were people then in a very real human situation there were peoplethat were struggling with what was going on they did not understand and yet Godwas able to give them the grace to open up their eyes and to see the situationthat they were in even in the middle of that all that that grief and those andthat uncertainty and that confusion they were able to see the blessing of God theblessing of God on Isaac was so profound that it caused fear andjealousy amongst the people around and he was ordered to leave the area as youread on in the passage all of his wells were filled in by the Philistines theydidn't like it they didn't like the fact that he was blessed and he moved withhis people and in the process this is a very in a very short nutshell started toopen up the wells again but every step of the way there was a dispute peoplearguing over the water and Isaac was someone who through tough experience hadlearned that his future wasn't dependent on a well of water he was able to moveon time and time again until finally they opened up a well where there was nodispute which he named Rehoboth saying at last the Lord has created enoughspace for us to prosper in the land and as we walk on in life and practice thejourney of faith we should have it make it our ambition to shake off everythingthat we think will give us comfort don't start looking in this life lookingaround what's gonna what do I need what do I need to get what do I need toachieve what do I need to own what do I need to if I just had this if thesecircumstances were was different then my life would be different and we need tothat's like looking for the well of his disputes here and there and this wateris not good enough and that and somebody else claims it and all of that but heIsaac eventually got to that point where he said now what finally the Lord hasgiven us room and we will prosper in this land and God wants to lead us to aplace of peace and tranquility and space and security and freedom away from thegrasping of this world that says actually if I just have this then mylife would be better and in fact what we need just as God said to Abraham himselfhe said I am your shield and your very great reward God is our reward the Psalmssay he makes me lie down beside still waters leads me in green pastures andthat's what God wants for our lives not fighting for everything along the waybut God will lead us in those green and spacious and peaceful areas the blessingof God brings favor King Abimelech who chased Isaac away when his wealth grewnow came to him and said we can clearly see the Lord is with you wanted acovenant relationship with him there's a difference between chasing the blessingof God in whatever form we think that takes in our lives that's why the wealthpreachers and all the people say if you just do this God's going to fill up yourbank with money and all of that it's it's a deceptive so it's a misleadingbecause that's not where we find our peace that's not where we find our joybut living and abiding in the constant blessing of God and receiving that tothe extent that it is seen by other people they will look at and say well Ican clearly see that God is with you remember that being my experience when Ifirst encountered Christians there was something it the people were sayingstuff that I didn't really understand they were trying to explain they've givenme books to read and and you know understand this and talking about Jesusand the cross and all of that I didn't understand all of that stuff but I didsee the blessing of God on people's lives I did see the favor of God did seethe peace of God did see the prosperity and the joy of God in people's lives itwas just so delightful to see and we can live and abide in that constantblessing of God even when we face the famine there's an aroma an atmospherearound the people of God remember we'll finish up in them just a second we werein some of some people know the story of our time in Zambia we lived in Zambiafor six years from 2010 until somewhere else no no we came back in 2010 I've noidea when we went yeah anyway we went in Zambia sometime in the in this centuryand we were we went through with a great I mean I'm not trying to encourageRoland here but we weren't with a great sense of anticipation and excitement andwow we're gonna take the world by storm God's world changes and we went and itdidn't work out exactly as we as we'd hoped and there were real challengesreal real challenges that felt like a famine it was like all that we'd hopedfor and it was just like dry and barren and fearful and uncertain and what havewe done to our children and and all of that happened and we were really afraidas head and uncertain and there was a time when people were thinking wellmaybe maybe they could come back and there was a possibility of a job in achurch in in High Wycombe and it was really appealing it was like a nice wellthat we could have looked at there was nice schools for the children there wasa reasonable salary there was a house to live in all the things that we didn'thave were there and there was a there was a possibility that we could havebeen offered that as an opportunity and yet against all of that we had thatniggling feeling that actually this is not what God has called us to do and Iremember driving in the car one time and listen to the that song Eye of the Tigercome on you're Rocky Eye of the Tiger and it came and it said something like Idon't even understand what it means but it made sense to me that I said said youexchange your passion for glory and something about that just dropped intomy heart said don't exchange what God has put in you for something else don'texchange don't just look for the well don't just look for the peace don't justlook for the good but look go for God and he will give you all that you'researching for and I remember thinking at the time you know everything that wetried to to build I remember even saying to myself probably said it to otherpeople great you know statement of faith oh it's dead there's nothing leftthere's nothing going on and yet in that famine in that dead famine God blessedus and here we are today we're talking about seeker we're talking about Lord'sWay we're talking about the growth of the ministry there and it's exciting tosee but one thing that happened was there was a time when we were reallyunder threat and a friend of mine who lived down the road the immigrationpeople so it's a long story though we haven't done anything wrong but therewas this like the whole thing came and they came to him and they said somethingvery intimidating like can you give me one good reason why we should notdeport that man meaning me and and he gave them some reasons which was nice ofhim and and they listened and they said okay we'll give him 48 hours to geteverything in place and and make the application and we did we did everythingin 48 hours made the application they granted us a permit and we stayed andGod blessed us in that land of famine and there was a time when we were thewhat was going on in the church and the things that you know were being becausewe were you know being foreigners and everything else there was investigationand people they're like saying nothing wrong that was done but it was just avery intimidating situation and so there was a time when people got involved inall of that and then by the time we came to leave having stayed and seen theblessing of God by the time we came to leave we had some senior governmentpeople from our local town actually came to see us off we left our place at sixo'clock in the morning and these people came to to say bye to us and one mantook me aside and he said we know what has happened we know what's been doneagainst you we know all of that and we know what you've done in this countrysaid and I just want you to know that this country is your country it's yourhome but wow how have we come from it's all dead and buried it's all finishedthere's nothing there's nothing left he might be deported all of that to the tothe very same people saying actually we want to thank you and we want to blessyou and that can only be the blessing of God manifested and demonstrated in ourlives anyway that was a long convoluted story but it's so that's the pointIsaac had no reliance on his physical circumstances but total reliance on Godand God showed himself strong in his life so it doesn't matter who you arewhat challenges you face what background you have what your sin looks like youcan sow in a place of famine and see a return a hundred times bigger and theblessing of God can attach itself to your life in such a way that you findthe space and the peace of God and others will see and will testify nowwe've seen the work of God in your life and so as we consider that and as weconsider what God is saying to us as I prepared that something the one thingjumped out and it was that question will you stay and I just think I just believethat there are people here that are struggling with their own faminestruggling with pain struggling with disappointment struggling with fearstruggling with lack struggling with whatever it could be you know what it isand you're thinking this is this gospel is not all it's cracked up to be becauseI thought you know things were going to be easier than this and the question iswill you stay will you stay and will you trust will you believe will you turnyour heart to God will you actually say all right Lord though the fig treedoesn't blossom though there be no cattle in the stalls though the olivecrop crop casts its fruit and the rest that I've forgotten yet I will rejoicein you Lord yet I will trust in you yet I will pray yet I will pray will you willyou sow in the land of famine will you sow will you take a decision on thebasis of your your the things that have made you want to give up the thingsthat have made you want to grind to a halt the things that have drained youof your energy in the middle of all of that will you actually say all rightLord I'm gonna sow something here I'm gonna I'm gonna believe I'm gonna praiseyou I'm gonna thank you for what I've got well what have I got try the thingsto thank God for thank God for our very life the fact that we're up and we'rebreathing this morning thank God for his blessing upon us thank God for ourhistory thank God for how far he's brought us thank God that up till todayhe has sustained us thank God that he has our best interests at heart andthank God that he loves you more than you love you and is determined to blessyou more than you would bless you so that faith and trusting God that in themiddle of your famine you will see his blessing upon your life you'll see hisbreakthrough and that will look different to you than it does to me notselling a package here that says you could you know this is this is whatyou'll get this is what you get for your investment be between you and God butthe question is will you study and I just want there maybe if the worshipteam could come and if you've got something first I just want us to toclose as we close to think about that and to make some decisions perhaps inour hearts to yes I'm gonna stay yes Lord you've proved yourself faithful yesI'm gonna trust you I have nothing I have no reference point but I'm gonnabelieve you Lord it's painful to think about blessing because I don't feelblessed but I'm gonna trust you and as we worship and as we pray on just wantjust to turn our own thoughts today and it may be that you know that that wordis for you and that there is there is real benefit sometimes there's realbenefit in physical response in actually stepping forward and I you know we'renot gonna quiz you or whatever but if you want as part of your statement toGod to say Lord I'm gonna stay in this family I'm gonna sow my faith I'm gonnasow my thanks I'm gonna sow my my my trust in you and I'm gonna believe youfor a for a blessing in my life and for a breakthrough if you want to make thatdeclaration to God then I just ask you just to step forward just to comeforward here and we can pray together there'll be space here just as a worshipteam leaders but please do that just as we just as we start don't even hesitatedon't even waste any time just come forward and we believe God will meetpeople here

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Summary

Summary of Sermon: Finding Your Own Faith
This sermon explores the story of Abraham's servant finding a wife for Isaac (Genesis 24) as a metaphor for developing a personal relationship with God.
Key Points:

Don't rely on the faith of others: The sermon criticizes the idea of "piggybacking" on the faith of leaders or prominent figures in church. We are all called to develop our own relationship with God.
Faith is a journey: The servant in the story starts with doubts but finds his faith growing throughout his mission. Our faith journey may start unsure but can become stronger with experience.
Taking action is important: Faith is not just belief; it requires acting on that belief. We should respond to God's promptings in our daily lives.
Prayer is a conversation: The sermon encourages us to talk to God directly, share our doubts and questions, and ask for help.
God works in unexpected ways: We shouldn't be discouraged if our prayers aren't answered in the way we expect. God may have a different plan.
Start now: Even if you feel inadequate, God wants you to come to him. There's no need to wait until you feel "worthy" enough to pray.

Biblical References:

Genesis 24: The story of Abraham's servant finding a wife for Isaac.
Judges (mentioned but not specified verse): The story of Gideon and the fleece.

Applications:

The sermon encourages listeners to:

Pray more regularly and authentically.
Seek opportunities to encounter God in their daily lives.
Develop their own faith journey, independent of others.
Thank God for his blessings, big and small.

Transcription
Morning everyone. It's nearly afternoon by the way but cheer up. Often when you're
running out of time in things like this the first thing a preacher will do is not read the Bible
and just go into their notes because obviously what we have to say is far more important than
scripture. It's the big mistake we make. I'm going to read, this is the, I've been given,
you'll be pleased to hear, one of the longest chapters in the Bible to speak on today.
So I'm, it is but it's a story so it's great. It's a very well-known story about an arranged
marriage. It was a love match, a match brought together by God of Isaac and Rebecca and I'm
just going to read quite a chunk of the 67 verses to you and then I'm not going to bother much with
my notes and just try and wing it a bit based on the time we've got left. So this is Genesis chapter
24 as we're going through Genesis and this is my newer version of the Bible because my NIV became
a loose leaf version when I was preaching at a church recently and Ephesians ended over here
and Revelation over there and a bit of Genesis I've never seen since so I had to, I had to pick
up another Bible and I had this copy and I'm not sure what version it is but it's not a paraphrase,
you'll be pleased to hear but it is a modern version and here we go. Genesis 24. Abraham was
now a very old man and the Lord had blessed him in every way. One day Abraham said to his oldest
servant, the man in charge of his household, take an oath by putting your hand under my thigh
and swear by the Lord the God of heaven and earth that you will not allow my son to marry
one of these local Canaanite women. Go instead to my homeland, to my relatives and find a wife
there for my son Isaac. The servant asked but what if I can't find a young woman who's willing
to travel so far from home? Should I then take Isaac there to live among your relatives to the
land you came from? No, Abraham responded. Be careful never to take my son there for the Lord
the God of heaven who took me from my father's house and my native land solemnly promised to
give this land to my descendants. He will send an angel ahead of you and he will see to it that you
find a wife there for my son. If she's unwilling to come back with you then you are free from this
oath of mine but under no circumstances are you to take my son there. So the servant took an oath
by putting his hand under the thigh of his master Abraham and he swore to follow Abraham's
instructions. Then he loaded 10 of Abraham's camels with all kinds of expensive gifts from his master
and he traveled to distant Aram Neharaim. There he went to a town where Abraham's brother Nehor
had settled and he came to the he made the camels rather kneel beside a well just outside the town.
It was evening and the women were coming out to draw water. Oh Lord God of my master Abraham
he prayed please give me success today and show unfailing love to my master Abraham.
See I'm standing here beside this spring and the young women of the town are coming out to
draw water. This is my request. I will ask one of them please give me a drink from your jug and if
she says yes have a drink and I'll water your camels too let her be the one you have selected
as Isaac's wife and this is how I'll know that you have shown unfailing love to my master.
Before he finished praying he saw a young woman named Rebecca coming out with her water jug on
her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel who was the son of Abraham's brother Nehor
and his wife Milka. Rebecca was very beautiful and old enough to be married but she was still
a virgin. She went down to the spring filled her jug and came up again running over to her
the servant said please give me a little drink of water from your jug. Yes my lord she answered
have a drink and she quickly lowered her jug from her shoulder and gave him a drink
and when she'd given him a drink she said I'll draw water for your camels too
until they've had enough to drink. That's 10 camels that's a lot of water.
So she quickly emptied her jug into the watering trough and ran back to the well to draw water for
all his camels and the servant watched in silence wondering whether or not the lord had given him
success in his mission. He is so alike us we'll come to that in a minute. Then at last when the
camels had finished drinking he took out a gold ring for her nose and two large gold bracelets
for her wrist. Whose daughter are you he asked and please tell me would your father have any
room to put us up for the night. I'm the daughter of Bethuel she replied my grandparents are Nehor
and Milka. Yes we've plenty of straw and feed for the camels and we've room for guests.
The man bowed low and worshipped the lord. Praise the lord god of my master Abraham he said the
lord has shown unfailing love and faithfulness to my master for he's led me straight to my
master's relatives. The last verse verse 67. Isaac meets up with Rebecca as she comes back
with him and Isaac brought Rebecca into his mother Sarah's tent and she became his wife.
He loved her deeply and she was a special comfort to him after the death of his mother.
Now on the surface of this story of course it's a great love story.
There's a there's a program on the tv which I haven't watched I might call the Never Meets
which is about people who meet online and then suddenly decide they're going to meet together
and and this love story that they've met online they'll meet and see what each other are like
and I mean honestly for the little bits I've seen it's a complete and it's a car crash. I mean
totally. At the heart of this there is this arranged marriage arranged by god actually
that end up ends up as a true love match but at the heart of this chapter is the story of faith
and I would say in particular how a servant discovered faith for himself. He spent his life
serving Abraham and here he was called on a mission where he had to trust god for himself
and the question I'm going to place with us and where I'm going to finish today
and what I felt god wanted to say to us is you know there'll be people in this room that have
the faith of Abraham that I'm going to talk about in a little while. There'll be others who might
have the faith of a Rebecca but the vast majority of us have a faith like this servant
where we're not really sure you know what god can do is this is this possible that this can happen
and and even when god does something we're not really sure if it's god or not and we kind of
like stumble our way through a journey of faith and I want to talk about that because he discovered
something about god through the process of a journey through the process of asking god's help
that he would never have discovered if he just spent the rest of his life in the shadow of his
master's faith there are people in this room you rely far too much on the faith of other people
in this church far too much on the faith of leaders far too much on on other people's faith
you know we've just said communion there isn't two types of communion one for a superior christian
who knows god and he's empowered by god and equipped by god and others for just those lot
who are hanging on there and living in the shadows and living under the blessing of other people's
blessing we're all come before the lord in need of his grace and mercy we all receive god's spirit
we all know his salvation we all have the ability to know god for ourselves and this journey of
faith is really important for you as much as is important for me you know we say we need a problem
need to go and ask someone to pray for me about this we need to discover what it is to pray to
god ourselves in situation and find the surprise of god actually answering our prayers one of the
values of this church is encountering god it's not about coming here it's not about sitting under
people's ministry it's about us as individuals as couples as families knowing god for ourselves
and finding god for ourselves in the challenges of life and what i want to say to you today we
all stand equal before the cross each one of us and if you're waiting for the superheroes you
read genesis you look at the the mess that abraham made of things you look at the mess of some of the
other patriarchs there's no one who's superior before god we all stand equal before him we can
all know god for ourselves in the challenges we face in life come out of the shadows
come out from underneath stop piggybacking on somebody else's faith
learn to find god for yourself and the way you're going to do that is by asking god
so here we've got this scene sarah's died about three years before isaac is still this mummy's
boy he's 40 he's living at home do you remember that that sort of um ronnie corbett you know
sort of with timothy at home still at mum and dad's place he's still pining for his mum he's 40
it's time he grew up um abraham is coming to the point of understanding he's old
and when you get older you start to reflect on what happens next
but abraham might have become frail in body but he was sound in spirit his faith remained strong
for all the ups and downs of his life he had walked by faith and the bible says he in verse
one he was being blessed in every way that god could bless him here he still had a conviction
that god was going to give him descendants that outnumbered the sands on this on the shoreline
or the dust in the mud depending on what version you've got um you know he was going to have
multitudes of kids but he had a 40 year old bachelor who's pining in his mum's tents and
and wondering about the future he knew that something needed to happen so he gets his most
so he gets his most trusted servant and asks him to make a vow and he does so in a very delicate
way and this is where we you know censor it a little bit thankfully we don't make vows like
this today but essentially um you know the servant is asked to hold hold abraham's crown
jewel shall we say and make a vow because that's the source of life that's where this promise had
come from isaac right on on this on life i want you to promise that you will find a daughter
sorry a wife for my son and uh wow it's a big place to be and he says two things he said look
this this wife is not coming from these local people i mean look at the mess that lot got into
he's not going to come from this kainite people where he assimilates the culture local culture
and picks on the local habits of people um he's gonna he's gonna come from my family back home
about 400 miles away in what is they'd moved to harren which is in turkey area they moved away
from erring the coldies which is in iraq they'd moved to harren which is up in turkey and they
were still hundreds of miles away in a day an age when camels were your fastest form of transport i
mean about the same speed as british rail but that's another thing um and and actually you know
he's he's he's saying that's that's where we're going to go but you don't take eyes there because
i don't want him to get his eyes onto a more sophisticated urban sort of lifestyle as opposed
to this nomadic lifestyle here because god has given us this land the promised child has a
promise to fulfill in the promised land and and he and i everyone was absolutely clear
i don't want him to get his eyes off this but he had this conviction that god would find isaac
a wife and that the angel of the lord or god would guide his servant to this to to the right wife
that's a big ask i want you to go off on a long journey it's not a wild goose chase but it's a
long journey and you're going to bring a wife back now i mean the the the servant's thinking well
everyone knows that young girls are told not to get onto strange camels you know or to
or to spend time with strangers clearly strangers do give you gifts you know this would be a really
dangerous thing and so the the the servant is already hedging his bets and saying well look
okay i've made this promise but she won't come back with me can you let me off it
and abraham says yes but abraham's faith is strong he's convinced the god who has promised
him these descendants will obviously find a wife for his promised child so that these descendants
will be fulfilled at the end of this story you've got rebecca so you've got a tested proves faith
and experienced faith at abraham we've seen god at work in his life before and he's trusting god for
the future as well as the past and you've got rebecca who's basically on a faith adventure
it's all new to her and like so many new new christians you know we believe everything that
god can do everything and anything and will do everything and anything and she's up for the
challenge isn't she she's ready to go you'll find at the end of this story
i just want to say this see she didn't just go she was sent her family were involved in this process
and recognized god was doing it it wasn't just her going off on a whim and a prayer there was
a real sense that the family agreed with this laban her brother who you'll hear about a bit
later rebecca's rebecca's brother he plays a real key role in jacob's life a little bit later
the son of isaac and rebecca but that's for another week and and anyway he says well obviously
god's in this the family agree but in the end and i guess we've got people in this room who
felt called to go to other countries we've heard from fiona today lizard took communion
in the end she had to be willing to go on a one-way journey hundreds of miles from everyone
and everything she had ever known to marry a man she had never met she'd not even swiped left or
right on tinder she'd not written a love letter they're not exchanged pictures she had no idea
whether this guy looked like brad pitts or me she had no idea
but she said in verse 58 yes i will go
a different type of faith to abraham's faith which is based on a conviction of of what god
had promised and what god had done hers was going to be a faith adventure but she was willing to say
yes however the biggest part of this chapter is reserved to this servant who not only found a wife
for isaac but also found if you like a living faith in god for himself who was able to acknowledge
that the lord has led me in this way he's willing to obey to begin with if you read verse five
even though he's got no real faith that the outcome is going to be success
he's he thinks it's unlikely that she's going to come back with him
but he sets out on this journey he prepares for this journey and in this passage this chapter of
genesis 24 you see three acts of worship stroke prayer that he he he brings himself to he's always
referring to the to the lord of his master abraham rather than his lord and that's also a deference
because i believe this man had some faith don't get me wrong but what he hadn't done is tested
or proved faith in the way that abraham had and rebecca was going to for him he wasn't quite
certain it's like so many of us we hear the stories and testimonies of faith of other people
in this in this building and we think that's great but when it comes to our own lives or the
own challenges that we face or the things that we feel god's asking us to we're much more hesitant
we're much less confident we we lack that sense of thinking god wants to use us
and he's in the shadow of abraham's faith throughout this but he prays this prayer
when he arrives at the scene he says oh lord god of my master abraham there is again
please give me success today and show unfailing love to my master abraham
this is my request wow i'll ask one of the one of the girls please give me a drink from
your jug and if she says yeah you have a drink i'll water your camels too then she'll be the
one you've chosen this is how i'll know you know that you really are a god with unfailing love
covenant love towards abraham okay it's what christians often call putting out a fleece based
on the story of gideon that you can read in the book of judges but what he's really asking for is
a sign god show yourself in this god you need to show yourself to me you need to reveal yourself
to me do you know it's never wrong to ask god for help you don't have to be a you know a strong
christian have a strong faith have a strong belief system to invite god into the situations you face
in life and say god help me and this servant was going to learn a journey of faith by actually
saying god help me and even you know i mean actually looking for a sign can be a very dodgy
thing if ever you've read it's an old book now showing my adrian plus you know uh looking for
a new car basically and how many how many cars had seen that day which was a sign that god was
asking him to buy that type of car you'll know that this is open and fraught to real danger
however god says sometimes in a different place prove me prove me in this
find out for yourself discover for yourself that i am the living god discover for yourself
through the circumstances in your life that i am in alive that i am involved
ask me ask me jesus said ask and keep asking and we've got to get to a place where we don't feel
reluctant about inviting god into the circumstances we find ourselves in in life
this all felt too much for this guy where do i start looking it's not like a beauty contest
they're all there with the jugs of water they're all there you know drawing water for their own
animals and this that and the other who do i pick where do i start you know um he needed god's help
and he asks for a sign
and we read that before he'd even finished praying and actually it says a bit later on
in this chapter that he prayed in his heart he wasn't praying out loud it was what he was
thinking sometimes we feel a bit cautious about saying things but you know god hears our thoughts
too so we can pray them in thoughts when he finished praying before he finished praying
this answer came rachel turned up and he did what a lot of us think is this a coincidence
is this god
actually it's not a term i've coined for myself but the truth is it's a god incidence
it's god involved in life it's god interacting with you and me in our day-to-day it's us being
aware that god meets us in the day-to-day places where we ask him and invite him in
is it a coincidence that when i prayed about this i found an answer is it a coincidence when i ask
god for helping that that i received an answer no we're inviting god into our lives into our
circumstances and we don't need the pastor or the preacher or somebody you know whether we think in
high regard to do that for us we need to learn to do it for ourselves we need to encounter god for
ourselves by inviting him into our lives he started to ask god to help him to guide him
to enable him to do the task he'd been asked to do and he gets this answer
he discovers that rebecca is from abraham's family and the next thing we read in in verses
26 to 27 the first prayer is is verses 12 to 14 it's thanksgiving a prayer thanksgiving
he says thank you to god it's just polite to say thank you to god when he answers your prayers
it's just it's just polite but you know there's people who find you know we we sometimes asked
in in church you know to let's just all start to thank god for what he's doing in our lives
and there's people who've what do i thank him for you know where do i start what what should
i be thanking god for but if you've never invited god into the day-to-day of your life
and you haven't seen god at work in the day-to-day of your life then it's very difficult to thank him
for something that you don't think he's been involved in well the first thing is ask him
invite him into the situations you face and when you see god at work thank him
and this guy says praise the lord god's answered my prayers and the final thing that this man does
and there's a lot of toing and froing really with the family over over rebecca coming with them but
we read in verse 26 and verse 52 that he bowed low and he worshiped the lord
when we start to see god at work in our lives when we start to understand that that he's a living god
and that we're not just an act of worship being led by somebody at the front but i myself i'm
worshiping god because god is my savior he's my lord he's my helper
he's my guide he's my deliverer he's my strength he's my helper worship flows from seeing god at
work worship flows in that way it doesn't just become lip service it is something that is much
deeper in our lives thankfulness and worship flow out of the sense of answered prayer
the servant who set off thinking well you know how am i sure this is going to work and will you
let me off if it doesn't work has become a worshiper of god through the answers that he's
seen that god has brought into his life and actually he discovers something else not only
he's got a testimony that he's able to give to the family where he declares the lord has led
me and he's emphatic if you if the original language is very emphatic i know you know i'm
convinced i for myself know the lord has led me today i have a testimony of god's grace in my life
in this situation just as you have rebecca just as abraham will have a testimony of his faith
being uh you know being seen to be proved right in this situation i myself have a testimony of
god at work and laban declares over him you are blessed oh gosh we need to know we're blessed
god wants to bless us god wants to bless you who think you're in the shadows of somebody else
who thinks you're just serving somebody else just doing things for the church just doing my
little bit because i'm not really worthy and i'm not really anyone and i'm not really anything
but god says i want to bless you i want to bless you so what can we learn from this passage as i
close obviously we learn that god will fulfill his promises and work out his purpose through
actually the weakness frailty and vulnerability of us human beings with all the mistakes abraham
made with all the mistakes sarah made with all the mistakes even you know that that the rest
of the patriarchs made god worked out his promise and his purpose but what does this servant say to
me i i wish you know i think the older you get you do get convinced don't you you've seen the
goodness of god in your life jeff and pauline you know you can look back with the confidence
that god has led us this far will lead us on in the future there's many of us in that place in
this room today there's others that you're just starting out on a journey of faith and you're
willing to go for anything for god but you need to know that you have to have a more than just your
your ideas you need to have a group of people around you who is going to say
yeah we'll send you off with a blessing because they sent rebecca off with a blessing
there was a sense of not doing their own thing but actually being involved in something bigger
than themselves but the servant's faith it reminds me that faith is not just an acknowledgement of
god's existence but that faith is something we have to act upon in our daily lives it
requires each one of us in this room however weak your faith may be to say things and do things as a
response to what god is asking of you it's an active doing word and god wants each one of us
in here to discover a walk of faith for ourselves to encounter him and his presence and his spirit
to not just piggyback as i said on someone else's faith i'll have a second hand or a second rate
experience of god to not live in the shadows of somebody else's faith but to encounter god for
ourselves we've got to get thinking beyond the fact that our prayers aren't good enough
or strong enough we need somebody else to do all the praying for us
that actually i need to be in a better spiritual place before god will listen to me you don't
god wants you and me to start asking him the bible is full
of god asking his people to ask him ask for help ask for guidance ask for his will to be done
and you will discover if you start asking god and inviting god into the the situations you face
each day i'm not saying you will always see the answers you want to i'm not promising you a blank
check of blessing in in in every situation that i asked for this and god didn't answer it
what i am saying is you will start to see god at work or you'll either have to say it's a
coincidence or or it's god you're going to have one of those choices to make and you will have
something to be thankful about and it will it will actually enliven your worship of god too
because god is real in my experience too when we start to prove our faith test our faith
our relationship with god grows it's not just an abstract concept it's about how we live each day
there are no superior christians we all have access to god through jesus
however unqualified or inadequate you might feel today the word of the lord over you is to start
asking god to start coming to god and bringing your life to him amen

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Summary of Roland's Sermon: Coping with death (Genesis 23)
This sermon focuses on Genesis 23 and explores the themes of faith,

God's promises, and perseverance even in the face of difficulty.
Context:

Follows the story of Abraham being tested by God, where he was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac (Genesis 22).
Chapter 23 bridges a 20-year gap with little explanation of what happened during that time.

Key Points:

God's faithfulness: Even though there seems to be a pause in God's plan, He is still working behind the scenes.
Abraham's faith: Despite loss and unanswered questions, Abraham continues to trust God's promises.
Sarah's legacy: Though not perfect, Sarah plays a vital role in God's plan as the future mother of nations. (Galatians 3:29)
The importance of faith: Examples of Abraham and Sarah's faith are given to illustrate the importance of believing in God's promises, even when things seem difficult. (Hebrews 11:11)

Abraham's purchase of the field:

Symbolic of claiming the promised land, even though it wouldn't be fully his in his lifetime.
Demonstrates his belief that God would keep His promises to him and his descendants.

Death and the Christian Hope:

Death is not the end for believers. (1 Corinthians 15:54-57)
Christians have the hope of eternal life through Jesus Christ. (John 3:16)

Core Message:

God is faithful and keeps His promises, even when we can't see how.
We are called to live by faith, trusting in Him even in the midst of life's challenges.

Bible References:

Genesis 18:14
Genesis 22
Genesis 23
Galatians 3:29
Hebrews 11:11
John 3:16
1 Corinthians 15:54-57

Transcript
Is that better? I agreed to do this a few months ago and then
I looked at it, I just gulped and I thought, well, it's probably one of the shortest
chapters in Genesis, Genesis chapter 23. And it's basically the death of Sarah, that's
Abraham's wife. Then Abraham buys a field with a cave in it and then he buries his wife.
And that's it. I think there's a little bit more to it than that and we're going
to find out. I do like the scriptural accounts of people in the Bible because it just tells
you everything about them, the good points, the failures, the difficulties. And we have,
I think chapter 23 in my mind is a bit of a transition chapter because it's all about
Abraham and Sarah. And it's all about God's promises to Abraham. And of course his main
promise is that Abraham and Sarah would have a son called Isaac and through Isaac all the
nations of the earth would be blessed. We're going to come to look at that in a moment.
Chapter 22 is from what you heard last week from Andy was about Abraham being tested,
God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. And it's difficult to get your head
around this. The promise of God is that he would give them a son, Isaac, and the covenant,
that agreement that God had made between himself and his people would be that Isaac
would be the means of the blessing of God upon the earth. And yet he asks him to sacrifice
his son and he went through all that yesterday. We come to chapter 23 and in effect there's
a leap forward in time. There's about 20 years gap. There's nothing said what's happened in
that 20 years. It's estimated that Isaac would be in his late teens and then it goes silent.
What is happening? Has God gone off for a nap, a break? Has God gone away? And it just
struck me that whilst there are gaps, life goes on. God is still at work whether you see it or
not, whether you feel it or not, even though it feels like you're not working is working. Yeah,
even when we don't see that you're working is still working. And chapter 23 in effect is a bit
of a transition as I've said. It's from Abraham and Sarah and now with Sarah's death there is
going to be a transition from Abraham to Isaac. We'll read in that in the next chapters. Very
little is said about the nature circumstances of Sarah's death. Sometimes death comes unexpectedly
through accident or some other cause or through a period of prolonged illness and decline. But
we're not told anything about that. The scripture is very, very scant on that. It simply says in
chapter 23, we'll read chapter 23 and then we'll get into this. So it says this, Sarah lived to be
a hundred and twenty-seven years old. She died at Kiriath Abba, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan
and Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her. Then Abraham rose from beside his dead
wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some
property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead. The Hittites replied to Abraham, sir,
listen to us. You are a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None
of us will refuse you his tomb for burying your dead. It just struck me as I was reading this,
the choicest of our tombs. You know, the choicest of wine, the choicest of fair food.
The choicest of our tombs. Then Abraham rose and bowed down before the people of the land,
the Hittites. He said to them, if you are willing to let me bury my dead, then listen to me
and intercede with Ephron son of Zohar on my behalf. So he will sell me the cave of Machpelon
which belongs to him and is at the end of his field. Ask him to sell it to me for the full price
as a burial site among you. Ephron the Hittite was sitting among his people and he replied to
Abraham in the hearing of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of his city. No, my lord,
he said, listen to me. I give you the field and I give you the cave that is in it. I give it to you
in the presence of my people. Bury your dead. Again Abraham bowed down before the people of
the land and he said to Ephron in their hearing, listen to me if you will. I will pay the price
of the field. Accept it from me so I can bury my dead there. It's a bit of a to and fro negotiation
this isn't it? Ephron answered Abraham, listen to me my lord the land is worth 400 shekels of
silver but what is that between me and you? Bury your dead. Abraham agreed to Ephron's terms and
weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites. 400 shekels of silver
according to the weight current among the merchants. So Ephron's field in Machpelah
near Mamre both the field and the cave in it and all the trees within the borders of the field
were deeded to Abraham as his property. In the presence of all the Hittites who had come to the
gate of the city. Afterwards Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave in the field of Machpelah
near Mamre which is at Hebron in the land of Canaan. So the field and the cave in it
were deeded to Abraham by the Hittites as a burial site.
In Sarah's death in burial in the way that Abraham dealt with this
there is the promise of God there is faith in the promises of God
that God is happened through this bizarre situation as it were.
We're told that Sarah is 127 years old. Abraham is 137 years old and Isaac is about 37 years old.
They were living in Hebron in a place in Hebron near Mamre. Mamre is about 20 miles south
of what would become Jerusalem.
Not there yet but it's the promise it's the promise it's what is what they're seeing.
God plays them strategically to accomplish his plans his purposes over generations and over
hundreds and over thousands of years.
What are we told about Abraham's reaction? Again in verse
it's in verse two isn't it? And Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her.
There's quite strong words behind that when it says he went to mourn her and to weep over her.
There was a real sense of loss bereavement something part of him had gone.
It was a major blow a major loss but it was a time to reflect on all that they did
and all they had experienced in God.
I'm not quite sure why I've got this passage but I do really do believe that we need to look at
Sarah and Sarah lived a long life with many ups and downs and difficulties
and errors and things done wrong. Actually it's the same as you and me
and I'm so refreshed that God picks ordinary people not special people because they're good
and they've got it all sorted but because in the messed upness of life God can work.
It's interesting to note that I think I'm writing saying that Sarah her name
was the only female name that God changed. It was from Sarah to Sarah from my princess princess
and in God's plans and purposes there was something about God using Sarah as well as Abraham
to declare his promises and declare his covenant.
That Sarah would become mother of nations mother of nations yet to come.
All the nations of the earth are going to be through Isaac. Well at the moment it's Isaac
and yet she declared and it's declared over her that she would be mother of nations mother
of kings of peoples mother of a royal line of kings from king David from whom Jesus the savior
would come and I've been about just thinking for Christmas one of the Christmas carols once
in royals David's city stood a lowly cattle shed.
God's plans and purposes through his covenant with Abraham and Isaac then Jacob
runs throughout the old testament is all leading to Jesus coming
and Jesus being born in the situation where he was being born with his lineage
both through Joseph and Mary made him made Jesus to be of the line the lineage of David king David.
It's a covenant promise to Abraham and Sarah it's a it's a promise that is repeated to Isaac
through your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.
Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise.
Sarah's faith in God's promises
we've seen that twice Abraham had passed off Sarah as being his sister
which was half a truth because she was half sister twice that happened and in both situations
in the situation with Hagar Sarah's maidservant
she persuaded Abraham to take Hagar and to have a son
and Ishmael was produced but that was not God's plan that was not God's promise
God intervened in that situation when Hagar and Ishmael were banished they were sent away
again God intervened and although the although Ishmael was not God's plan
nevertheless God blessed him and said he would be the the source of a great nation
when the three visitors in chapter 18 declared that Abraham and Sarah would have a son in their
old age God was intervening Sarah be told laughed but it just says this in chapter 18 verse 14
she did she just declared when she laughed she says this is anything too hard for the Lord
and just going back there was a double whammy first of all she would
secondly she was well beyond the age of bearing children yeah and yet
yeah and yet the three visitors declared this time next year you're going to have a son
God can do anything
think about it God can do anything God is not restricted by physical limitations
God is not restricted by the the mess that the the the things that we do that bring about
shall we say disasters in some cases
but we believe he is a miracle working God
that out out of what appears to be disaster out of what appears to be chaos God can come in God can
can intervene as it were and I just want these are examples to us these were people of faith
if we are people of faith we should have that expectation that God can do and wants to use us
and it's not because we're really good people because we're not really are we
but it's because of his covenant towards us
God's heart is that he wants a people a people of his own a people called by his own name
and that's come down that's come down the the the generations and the years and the same applies
God today wants a people for his own a people by his own name
hey that's me and you cheer up could be worse could be worse
one act of believing faith can have long lasting impact and outworking
from Sarah's son Isaac came multitudes and nations and kings
he's the God
he's God who doesn't change he's the same yesterday today forever
what's the scriptural verdict on Sarah having a very much ups and down moments
we see there's a verse in Galatians 3 29 and the apostle Paul is simply talking about the sons of
God if you belong to Christ he's telling the Christians if you belong to Christ then you are
Abraham's seed not a natural lineage link but it's a spiritual link if we are in Christ if we
have accepted Christ spiritually in our hearts then we are of Abraham's seed and heirs according
to the promise to the covenant of God so by virtue of coming into Christ we are part of God's
great plan God's great purpose for the world that we live in
and the obvious one is in Hebrews 11 when it simply says this
by faith Abraham even though he was past age and Sarah herself was barren was unable to become
a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise
it wasn't because they could do it they couldn't do it themselves but God
caused it to happen and so from this one man
and he as good as dead
and nice well how are you feeling good as dead today good as dead good as dead came descendants
as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore
wow
that's the verdict yes she didn't get she didn't get everything right neither did Abraham
but God's promise is God's promise
even in the mess even in the mess up that we make God doesn't write us off
God is with us God helps us through God restores us
and we need to get hold of that because I believe I don't know what Sarah's thoughts were when she
saw eyes growing up and she was thinking back to Hagar and Ishmael I don't know she I expect
there would be a sense of guilt and shame actually in that
yet yet God was at work in her and she saw by faith something something by faith
that was just at that point a boy growing up to be a man
so
the next bit is about the field of Ephron very quickly the custom was that in these days that
when members of the family died you took them back to the ancestral home
and buried them in their lands
I guess in various conversations I've had with with Jeff and Pauline in India about
what happens if one of us well one of you don't die
and just as and just just just checking it's fun isn't it when you're traveling with people
what kind of things you discuss what what happens lots of people will bring the body home
to bury I think Jeff and Pauline have rather radical ideas
but he is where we drop amen
so if Abraham was going to do that he would have to go back to where did he come from
Ur of the Chaldeans wherever that was
it is it's a long way long way up north Pauline long way up north love he would have returned
to his country of origin however he negotiates a burial place in Canaan instead
his wife Sarah had died without seeing the full measure of God's promise
and he must be thinking well my time will be up soon
Abraham is walking by faith it's not always so happened to be here the beam is being brought
there by God Abraham is walking by faith and not by sight he is trusting that the same Lord who
brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans will also place the promised land into his hands and into
the hands of his offspring therefore he seeks to own just a small parcel of land as a pledge
of greater things to come and that's why this this negotiation we'll give it to you we'll give
it to you we'll give it to you no there's something about this is my land I want it
to be my land this is what is going to come to the people of God the promised land it starts here
it's interesting that they are in Canaan Canaanites from Canaan
the grandchild of Noah Canaan I think yes one of Noah's offspring
but it's also the area that would be known around Jerusalem in Israel
it was important that it didn't just have a piece of land but he had ownership of it
and in a sense he was saying that this plot of land is a deposit
it's a deposit that guarantees the full inheritance
so 146 you know I believe by faith we've got 146 whether it's going to be in my lifetime or not
it will be renovated I really believe that by faith by faith by faith but there's something
in Abraham that he's got hold of he can see beyond the immediate practical situations of life
immediate practical situations of life and everything that's happening he can see beyond
that and he can see that God has made a covenant and God's working out his covenant and who knows
what what part we've got to play in things the little parts that we get to play in but but we
need to have that sense of vision that sense of of knowing that you know it's bigger than us actually
it's bigger than me it's bigger than us together it's God at work God's doing something
and as we kind of get hold of that we begin to see we begin to do things and we begin to see
God work and and that's what I that's what excites me it's not the kind of things that
the programs we're putting on it's the things that God uses those things to reach people
we're in a baptism again and I think what the the great joy is is the last few baptisms is
it's been people who have come through into faith with Jesus and that's just absolutely wonderful
and it's ordinary people
some of them unlikely people who probably don't consider themselves anything special or significant
but they're the people God wants to reach God to to to show to show his love
too so the field of Ephron
Abraham knows that the whole land of Canaan is rightfully is due course and he's prepared to
pay the price 400 shekels of silver was an awful lot of money and elsewhere I think in Jeremiah
and and somewhere else in the old testament there are plots of land in that area sold one of them
was for 17 17 shekels of silver and the other one was for I think 40 silver so Ephron's generous
gift of 400 400 shekels of silver
Abraham said it's worth paying it's worth paying it's it's more than that just that piece of land
I want to say that 146 is more than just one it's what it opens us up to us
what God wants to do through that facility it's bricks and mortar folks
but God can use us and what we do in here out there out in the neighborhood
to make known Jesus to so many
John Calvin writes that Abraham bought the field in order that he might not possess a foot of land
by the gift of any man he did not want to be beholden to obliged to any man he bought it
for God I believe it was an act of faith I think it was faith it was God's promised land and that's
what he wanted and finally he simply says once once the sale had been signed and sealed
he then buried his wife Sarah in the cave in the field
we know as Christians that death was never meant to be part of the creative order it came in
through chapter three Genesis the fall of man
for Christians for those who believe in Jesus death is not a final tragedy
it isn't the end point it isn't the the finish
in in Hollybush when I was at Hollybush a few years ago helping out there they would use a term
this person that person they've been promoted to glory promoted to glory
is it salvation I'm sure they did they picked it up because because they were all getting old
anyway but apart from that it is it is the promise it is the faith they profess it's not
it's not I sometimes I listen to stuff on the radio usually radio 4 and there's all kinds of
twaddle quite honestly but you know there's still you know well we don't like to think that it's
it's that death's it that's it we don't like to think it no well that's that's true but some
people insist that that's it you're born you live you die end of end of end of that's not our God
that's not from God
God does things when he's thinking about thousands of years time
I don't know I don't know where we'll be as a church in 20 years time 30 years
time might be I might be around I don't know
but I'd like to think that we are part of something that we are seeing by faith as Abraham
did
when we deal with bereavement death
it isn't the final tragedy for us we find it a great opportunity to display our faith in God
when we are face to face with the grave
excuse me
and that Easter refrain
oh grave where is oh grave oh death where is your sting oh grave where is your victory
victory but thanks be to God in Jesus
in Jesus
there is eternal life for God so loved the world that he gave his only son Jesus
that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life
however good it is for you here on earth it's far far better in his presence
and from my little bit of knowledge of C.F. Lewis
I just remember one of one of the the chronicles where they talk about
heaven I suppose they're referring to heaven and it's like it's like the earth
but everything is brighter and sharper than what we see on earth
and yet so often what we see is what we feel is the reality the reality is we have a destination
we have a place we know where we're going to
and it will be far far far better there than it is here this is the glorious hope that we have
and whether whether we're around when Jesus returns come Lord Jesus quickly we pray
but if not then we by faith will rise when Jesus returns we will rise and we will join him in the air
it tells us so that's part of the promise that we have part of the covenant that we have
part of the covenant that we have
that comes through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and then through Jesus
a bit of a bizarre ramble through that chapter but there are lots of things in there
that simply talk about the promises of God and the fact that he is a miracle working God
that he uses ordinary flawed people like myself
for his glory and that's God's mercy and grace that's God's love and commitment
and all I do is say I need you Lord come to me help me
amen

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Summary of Sermon: Faith's High Point
This sermon, titled "Faith's High Point," explores the story of Abraham and Isaac from Genesis 22 and how it relates to trusting God.
Key Points:

The story is read from the perspective of 21st-century readers, acknowledging the strangeness of the idea of child sacrifice.
The original readers would have been shocked by God providing the sacrifice, not by the request itself.
We prioritize things in our lives and spend effort providing for them. This passage explores how God tests Abraham's priorities.
The test is not about Abraham's abilities, but about his trust in God.
The things God provides us in life can become more important to us than God himself.
When we die, only our trust in God goes with us.
The phrase "The Lord will provide" is significant and suggests sacrifice is involved in seeing God provide.
God himself provides the ultimate sacrifice - Jesus Christ - not to appease him, but out of love.
The question is asked: Do we trust God?
As we trust God, He provides purpose for our lives.
Abraham's obedience to God leads to blessing, not just for him, but for many nations.
Our obedience to God can bring blessing to others.

Passages Referenced:

Genesis 22

Additional Notes:

There is audience participation where the attendees name their priorities in life.
The speaker mentions the "Mothers and Toddlers" group and the "Impact" holiday clubs as examples of obedience to God impacting others.

Transcript
Morning, everybody.
So, I grew up in 146 this morning, so I just come from there,
greetings from the church at 146, to the church at Unit 3,
and we brought our gifts and offerings with us as well, so.
That's good. They did want to know if I was going to speak there,
and we were going to video it back to here.
So, I did get asked that question.
So, we're in Genesis chapter 22, if you're following this,
Genesis the first book in the Bible.
I'm just going to move this over here.
Can no PowerPoint today?
We've gone back to old school technology.
Put it there, sort of a better chance of it appearing on the camera.
Is that right, Mike? Can we see that?
Brilliant. Fabulous.
What? Let's pop that in there.
I'm probably going to kick it and knock it over.
Let's see how we get on.
So, Genesis 22, I'm just going to start by reading most of the chapter together.
If you want to follow along, I'm reading from the new international version,
and we read this.
Sometime later, God tested Abraham.
He said to him, Abraham, here I am, he replied,
then God said, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love,
and go to the region of Mariah.
Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.
Early the next morning, Abraham got up and saddled his donkey.
He took with him two of his servants and his son, Isaac.
When he'd cut enough wood for the burnt offering,
he set out for the place, God had told him about.
On the third day, Abraham looked up.
He did? I lost my place.
He looked up and saw the place in the distance.
He said to his servants, stay here with the donkey.
While I and the boy go over there, we will worship,
and then we will come back to you.
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering
and placed it on his son, Isaac,
and he himself carried the fire and the knife.
As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father,
Abraham, father, yes, my son, Abraham replied.
The fire and the wood are here, Isaac said.
But where is the lamb for the burnt offering?
Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.
And the two of them went on together.
When they reached the place, God had told him about Abraham,
built an altar there and arranged the wood on it.
He bound his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.
Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven.
Abraham! Abraham!
Here I am, he replied.
Do not lay a hand on the boy, he said.
Do not do anything to him.
Now I know that you fear God
because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.
Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns.
He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.
So Abraham called that place, the Lord will provide.
And to this day is said, on the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided.
The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said,
I swear by myself, declares the Lord,
that because you have done this and have not withheld your son,
your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky
and as the sand on the seashore.
Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies
and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed
because you have obeyed me.
Then Abraham returned to his servants and they sat off together for Bersheba
and Abraham stayed in Bersheba.
And then there's a bit of genealogy stuff about his brother, which we won't go through.
So chapter 22, what a fascinating story, right?
And if we've been following this well so far,
I think we're into about the 10th chapter of the story of Abraham.
And we've been following that, how God made a covenant, a promise to Abraham
of how he was going to bless him, of how that was going to happen.
We've been following how God promised that he would have a child and through that child,
all descendants of Abraham would be blessed.
And we've been following how during that time,
Abraham muffed it up a little bit.
He pretended his wife was his sister because he was scared of the people where he lived,
that he and Sarah together thought God's promises in coming,
let's try and help it along and do our own thing.
And his smell was born.
And so there's been ups and downs along the way.
And then we got to two weeks ago, if you can remember before,
partly on the precinct, we got to two weeks ago when Isaac was born
and the fulfillment of that promise after 25 years.
And now we get to this chapter.
God tests Abraham.
God response, Abraham responds to what God is calling him to do
and God provides this sacrifice.
So before we get into it, there's just a couple of things for us to think about
about how we read this chapter today.
Because reading this chapter with 21st century UK eyes,
it's kind of a bit odd, right?
We've got to be really clear, God isn't into child sacrifice.
That's really, really clear about that because in these days,
in the age you just never know, right?
But as we read this through our 21st century eyes,
we're drawn to that issue.
We think this is really strange.
Why would God, even at the beginning of the chapter,
put the idea of child sacrifice being something to do?
But for the original readers that read this, okay, way back when,
when they read what Moses was written here,
and they read the story, the idea of child sacrifice
was something that happened sadly in other religions.
And so that wouldn't have been the thing that shocked them so much.
But what shocked the original readers of this
is that God provided the sacrifice.
Because when you worship another God,
you provide sacrifices to them in order to get something back.
When you worship other religions, you give stuff up
in order to appease the gods or to get them on your side.
But here we see something completely opposite
that God himself is providing the sacrifice
in order to bless the person in the first place.
And we see that.
What an amazing thing is that now would have been a revelation,
something that would have shocked them.
And the second thing that would have shocked them,
and actually it's probably a question we could all ask,
why is God trying to sabotage his own plan?
Doesn't follow in Jesus sometimes feel a bit like that?
You think you've promised this?
And now this has happened, you know,
you promised that my descendants will be as numerous as the sand on the seashore
or the stars in the sky.
And you've given us this sun in our old age.
And now you're saying we should sacrifice it?
Why is God trying to sacrifice it?
It just makes no sense whatsoever.
And so it's confusing.
So that would have been the second thing
that would have shocked the original readers of that.
So if you can kind of do that,
you know, get our heads a little bit out of the 21st century
perspective and society around us
and think a little bit about how the original readers would have written it.
That helps.
The second thing to note here is this passage
like so many in the Old Testament,
they point to the main event in the New Testament.
This passage is a pointer to something about Jesus.
It's a pointer to ultimately God providing the sacrifice for you and me on the cross.
But before we get into the into the into a little bit more,
I want to ask you a question first of all.
This is why I've got the flip chart up.
And I want to ask first of all,
what are the things that we prioritize in our own lives?
Let's have a bit of audience participation.
It's always risky.
But so what are the things that we prioritize in our own lives?
Pardon?
Family, yep, brilliant.
Family.
Friends, yep.
What else?
Second?
Health, yep, sorry.
I need that.
South.
Oh, South.
Not health.
And health.
Health.
Okay, very good.
South, yep.
Wig.
Work, work, work, brilliant.
What about your home?
Does anybody prioritize something out of their home?
Yep, yep, there's a yes down here.
Hoovering, okay, we'll broaden that a bit.
Home.
Home.
Some say golf.
Okay, okay, we're pushing the boundaries a bit now.
So, but this is a good list, all right?
This is a good start.
So, these are the things that we prioritize
or some of the things that we all prioritize
in our own lives, right?
They're important to us.
And actually, rightly so.
Clearly.
But because we prioritize them,
we then spend effort providing for them, don't we?
Right, so if we'll spend time trying to work at our friendships
or spending time with people,
we'll spend time investing in our children
or our grandchildren as we just heard earlier.
We'll spend time working or making sure we can get our benefits sorted out
that we do in order to look after our home
and in order to have an income that enables us to do these things.
And so, we will work effort at providing for the things
that are the priorities of our life, right?
Agreed, yeah, we all do that.
Yeah, yeah, it's good.
Well, what I'm saying is, there's a consequence of that.
There's a point for all this, by the way.
There's a consequence.
There's relevant to the passage.
Right, there's a point of doing that is,
those two things together give purpose to our lives.
Right, so because we're bothered about these things,
we spend time providing for them,
and those two things together means our lives' purpose is often driven around these things here.
Right, that's the priority.
That's the, so that list of priorities is important.
Now, why have I said that?
Because in this passage that we've just read,
we see that Abraham, we see that God rather, is testing Abraham.
He's actually asking Abraham what are the priorities in your life, Abraham?
What is the thing that's most important, Abraham?
And we'll see this in a minute.
And he's asking him, what is it that is most important for you, Abraham?
And as we go through that, we see that ultimately,
when we'll talk about it in a minute, what that priority is,
that actually, with the priority that Abraham gets to,
it's God who does the provision.
God provides, not Abraham himself.
Right, remember, we said with this lot, these are our priorities,
we're spending time providing for them.
And what we're going to see is, God is the one who provides.
And the combination of that change leads to a purpose in Abraham's life
that is far greater than anything that you and I could get,
just by focusing only on these things together.
We'll see if this works. It's a little bit different.
So in the first five verses, we see that God sets out to test Abraham.
Now, I don't know about you, but I hated tests at school.
Clearly, Harrison is very good at them, as we've heard.
But I remember that when I reached that point in life where I thought,
I no longer ever have to do another exam.
Yes! What a fantastic feeling, that was good of you, you know,
is it's a great feeling that when you reach that point in life,
you don't have to do this, sitting down for three hours,
writing five essays, cramming revision at the end,
you know, your hand aches like mad at the end of the exam
because you're writing furiously and you're worried about how you're going to do
compared to your mates and all that sort of stuff,
all of that has gone, you know, and I hated tests.
And those tests that actually we all did, they were tests of our abilities,
tests of our performance, tests of our knowledge,
tests of our skills and our gifts.
But in this passage, Abraham isn't being tested on his performance.
He's being tested on his trust.
Does he trust God?
To see what is in his heart.
To see if this son of promise, this Isaac that they longed for for 25 years,
that God are provided for him, is something that actually will now remove his trusting God,
and he'll be more bothered about his son than he is about trusting God.
Now, now God knows the answer, he's not testing Abraham
so that God can figure out what his Abraham really liked.
He knows the answer, right?
But the testing for you and me always comes for that we may know truly what is in our heart
and that we may discover actually I'm passionate about Jesus
and that he's the one I want to trust.
Because the problem is for all of us is the blessing,
the good stuff that God provides in our lives can become the very thing
that we turn to and become more devoted to than we are to God himself.
They can become the things that can consume our time
and we focus on them and we prioritize them.
And this is important because there is an end game that we're coming to
when we get towards the latter part of this chapter that we'll see.
So what we've got over here, if I can just draw down here,
is that if we'll use a cross to symbolize God,
we used a little stickman to say here's Abraham down here,
and he's now got this son, Isaac.
But God has provided, and the question being asked,
does Abraham now trust, spend all his time and prioritize Isaac,
because Isaac now sits between him and God?
And the reason why that's important is because for us up here,
we might argue that God has given us these things,
and as we sit over here, we expend all our effort doing this
and we lose sight of God over here as a consequence.
And that's what's going on in chapter 22 here, as we read this.
And that's the challenge and the test that's happening.
And I'll say this now, I'm going to say it again,
but the issue is not God or this.
Right? This stuff's important.
Right? All of this is important in our lives.
The issue is, if we trust God first,
that affects all of these things.
And affects how we do this.
But if God is competing with these things,
if God is competing with Isaac for Abraham's trust and commitment,
that's going to affect how this works out.
Because ultimately, these things, as I said,
we spend time providing for these things.
But I tell you what, when we die, when our life ends,
when we go to glory, and we spend time with Jesus forever,
and worshiping forever, all the effort we've put into this
doesn't matter.
This irrelevant is finished.
But all the effort we've put into trust, God,
car is on, way beyond us leaving this world.
And that's the promise we get to the end of chapter 22.
So I'm getting ahead of myself.
So the God tests Abraham.
And then in the middle bit of the chapter,
in verses 6 to 14, we see three times this little phrase is mentioned,
the Lord will provide.
You know, and it's a significant statement in the chapter
that we're reading.
And I just noticed in passing, this is just in passing.
If we want to see God provide, if you want to see God provide,
we need to be in a place of worship and sacrifice.
You see, Abraham says, on the mountain of the Lord,
God will provide.
He'd gone to the place of worship.
He'd gone to the place of sacrifice.
There is sacrifice involved in seeing God come and provide for us.
I think we might be coming to that,
discover that for ourselves with 146.
There is sacrifice involved in seeing God provide for us.
As we want to see God move in the community,
cross Jordan, Thorpe and Batemore,
guys, there's sacrifice is going to be involved in order to see God
going to provide and do things that we long for and hope for.
There is sacrifice involved in seeing him provide for us.
But as I said earlier, like many Old Testament passages,
this points to some aspect of Jesus.
This points to a God that ultimately provides the sacrifice for you and I.
Not of a ram, but of his own son.
Not caught in a thicket, but of his own choice going to the cross
and dying for you and for I.
See, sacrifice in all of our religions was to bargain with God.
As I said earlier, it was to appease them.
It was to get them on your side to give something in exchange to get something back.
But there is no sacrifice to you and I can make to appease the Lord.
Well, there is no sacrifice to you and I can make and give to him in order to get something back.
Ever, and we need to grasp hold of that.
Otherwise, we end up going in a rabbit hole of law.
But there is nothing you and I can do to appease God.
But the good news of Jesus Christ is that God loved the world so much
that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish,
will not die just here, but will have everlasting life.
What is good news?
It's absolutely outrageous, isn't it?
You know, and that's why I think it's important to get our heads a little bit in the space of
those first readers to think about, hang on, there's a God here who we worship,
and he is the one who is providing the sacrifice.
And through that sacrifice brings blessing to you and to me,
and through that sacrifice brings purpose to your life and to my life.
God has freely provided the sacrifice.
So how does the fact that God has provided the sacrifice change everything?
He provided, but we could not.
Mercy and grace has come to you and me through Jesus Christ.
And then coming to him, God tests the motive of our hearts,
like he's doing with Abraham.
God is testing the motive of our hearts as we come to him,
as we look up on the sacrifice of Jesus on that cross.
And as we gaze upon that, the question it asks is,
do you, Andy, trust me?
That's all he's asking.
And the same question is to every single one of us this morning,
as we gaze upon the cross of Jesus.
He asks you, do you trust me?
In fact, in the language that I read the verse, I read it,
it uses the word, do you fear me?
Which is slightly stronger, and it's not fear, I said,
it's an old scar, it's fear as in a sense of a you in all of who this God is.
But he should provide a sacrifice of his own son in order for you to me,
to take the benefit of the good things that he's given for us,
and to take the purpose of that he has for you and me to be out working our lives.
We should be in all of who he is, in healthy respect of who God is.
As we own the sacrifice God has provided in Jesus,
as we gaze upon the cross and think about what he has done, the cost.
We consider him who endured the cross and despised it's shame.
We consider him who for the joy set before him endured the cross,
despised the shame and is now sat down at the right hand of God.
Of course, these things are important, right?
Is that a reiterate?
But the question we're discussing is what is the number one thing amongst all of this lot?
And the number one thing is to trust Jesus.
My response has got to be Jesus, it's you first, it's not my income, it's not my house,
it's not my stuff, it's not my benefits, it's not even my family, it's Jesus first.
See, he is worth it, right?
He is worth it to see lives changed, to see communities transform,
he is worth it, to see Jesus that work in the community,
to see baptisms that we have in this building and hear the lives of men and women
testify how Jesus has changed things around for them,
to hear the transformation that's going on in our 62nd Testaments and see God at work,
Jesus is worth it, to see lives surrendered, to see hearts changed,
to see men and women set free from addictions of drugs and alcohol and pornography and whatever
else that evil things are out there that grip people's lives today and then snare them.
Jesus is the one who sets them free, he is worth it.
Therefore we say, yes, Jesus, we will trust you, we will get a hold of you and we will fight
to have that you in our lives as the number one thing and see his kingdom transforming people's lives.
Okay, finally, in verses 15 to 19 we see what happens as a result of Abraham's test.
The end result of all of this, the end result of Abraham being tested and of God providing
the sacrifice is the blessing of God comes to Abraham.
It's a confirmation of the word God has spoken over the years to him,
it's a reiteration of the purpose that God has for him.
But what's happened is Abraham is saying, what is most important to me is that I trust you, Lord.
Yes, I've got to do all this stuff. Yes, we love Isaac dearly and he's our son and we're
passionate about him, but number one father is you and we trust you implicitly.
And as Abraham does that and God provides the sacrifice to enable Abraham to have that
relationship with God in the same way, God provides the sacrifice in Jesus to enable you and
I to have that relationship with him as those two things come together. God speaks purpose
into Abraham's life and as you and I resolve in our hearts to trust God first and foremost
and as we come to the cross and see how God has provided his own son Jesus for us,
as those two things come together, God will speak purpose into your heart and into your life.
Now, as I said, Abraham didn't love Isaac any less. It's not that this stuff is replaced,
but it's about where is God in the pecking order of those things of our lives.
But also want to just draw our attention to the size and scale of God's purpose.
He says to Abraham, all nations will be blessed because you have obeyed me.
How many nations are there in the world today? Anybody know? Roughly?
Loads, yeah. Loads, yeah. 240 ish, something like that, I think, yeah. So, you know, all of those
nations will be blessed because of one man's obedience to God. How many people in the world today?
Four billion is it? Six billion, yeah. The percentage of those people, and that's just today,
right? It's a less not go back from today all the way back to when Abraham was living, but all
nations blessed because of one person's obedience. One person said, I will trust God,
and there's a consequence that the impact of that, the implications of that rolling down through
the years is absolutely massive. You see, your obedience and my obedience to God
leads to the blessing of God. Yes, for us, but actually for many, many, many others beyond us.
That's why God blesses us. As we obey him, he blesses us for the benefit of other people.
Look at Abraham here. We are all here because we have been on the receiving end of the fact God
has blessed other people's obedience to him. Every single one of us in this room today.
That's the effect about whether we choose to obey God or not, and the effect that has on other
people. It's not just about me, and what God can do for me. In fact, that's a tiny, tiny, tiny,
tiny fragment of God's work in your life. It's for the benefit of other people.
I was thinking about this. We were chatting in grit the other day, and Mel was saying how they've
been running mothers and toddlers here for, I think, 15 years. Mel and Ruth faithfully weak him,
weak out, doing that for 15 years, and they're now seeing the children of the first toddlers that
they had when they started it coming through. The impact of their simple obedience to God and
getting on and doing it, and affecting other people down through the years, I think in
of Jill and Pete, running impact on holiday clubs for two decades now. The stories we hear of
grown-up people and teenagers still talking about when they came to it. The impact of that of
their obedience 20 years ago, plus now seeing today is it rolls on down through the years.
This passage reminds us that every single one of us has the gift of bringing God's blessing to
other people simply by our obedience to him. It reminds me of my granddad, right? He was
he was wounded in the First World War at the Battle of the Song, and the story my mum told is that
he was in a shell crater and a nurse went past him, and this nurse just so happened to come from
the next village to where he lived in Somerset, and she recognised him. And as a consequence,
she dealt with his wounds, got into a casualty clearing station, he was invaded out and this
started with honor from the army, and then he met my grandmother, and then they had children,
one of which was my mum, etc, etc. From that nurse's one action, the implications are incredible.
You have somebody else speaking this morning which you might prefer, right? But if she hadn't done
that, right? But the implications, and that's an example of what's going on here,
there's God works in your life and God works in my life, as you choose to obey God,
as you choose to say, Jesus, I will trust you in this, the implications of that, and not just about
you, it's about your children, and your children's children, and beyond that, and your friends
around you, and the neighbours in the street where you live, and the community around you,
and the people that you're up shoulders with, it's huge. It's absolutely huge. That's why grappling
with God's word is so important, that's why meeting up and encouraging each other is so
important, because the word of God in us has such a massive impact on so many others. It is not
about us, and so often we make it about us, but God's work in your life is to purpose that he
might bless other people. So to conclude, a couple of things, I just want to draw it into,
is I said at the start, this passage is a pointer to a future event in the New Testament,
and whereas God's son was spared, sorry, whereas Abraham's son was spared, God's son wasn't.
Romans 8 tells us that God did not spare his own son, but freely gave him up for us all.
Let's want to read a few verses from Hebrews 10, let's talk about the sacrifice of Jesus for us.
Hebrews 10 and verse 10 says this, when I find it, here we go.
And by God's will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once
for all. Day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties again and again,
he offers the same sacrifice, which can never take away sins, but when this priest, this Jesus
had offered for all time, one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,
since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice,
he has made perfect for ever, those who are being made holy. That's the word of God that's
truth to you this morning. You may not feel like it, that's irrelevant, because the one
sacrifice of Jesus is making you holy, it's changing you, it's changing me, it's transforming our
lives, and that's why we want to respond to who he is, that's why we want to come and kneel
at the cross and say, Jesus, we love you. Oh man, I want us to get a gripper that this morning,
maybe, you know, sorry, to walk in the good of that, to inherit the purposes for which Christ
I'm walking to the blessing of God for ourselves and other people, we need to prioritize Jesus,
and say, Jesus, you are number one, and now we mean it, and now we're going to change our life,
so it shows, and now we're going to adjust things so that that is worked out day by day.
Maybe for you, it's the first time you've never really tweaked that, and maybe for you,
this morning is an opportunity, the first time to come to Jesus, kneel at the cross and say, Jesus,
I want you to know, I trust you, and I want you to be number one in my life, and I'm going to
need your help to do it, that's fine, that's a great prayer. Maybe for you, you need to do it for the
umpteenth time, because like all of us, me included, from time to time, these things get a bit heavy,
don't know, in a bit intense, and there's times we have to just simply come back to Jesus,
because you know what, the door is open, and we need to come back to Him, and I want to encourage
you, if that's you this morning, come back to Jesus, say, Lord, I trust you, I want you to be
number one in my life, I'm struggling to make that happen right now, please help.
Or maybe for you, the issue is testing, my Abraham was being tested, you may feel you're being
tested by God at the moment, I want to come back to the fact that that is not a test of your
performance, not a test of your value, not a test of your gifts and abilities, it's simply a test
of your trust. All Abraham had to do was continue to take God at his word, and all the time when God
tests you and I that we have to do is to take God at his word. Amen.

View Details

Summary of Nick's Sermon: A Time for Every Purpose
This sermon is based on Genesis 21, which tells the story of the birth of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah.

Key Points:

God is Faithful: Even though it took 25 years for the promise of a child to be fulfilled, God remained faithful to his word.
The Importance of Holding On: We can easily get discouraged when our prayers seem unanswered, but the story of Abraham and Sarah reminds us to hold onto faith.
Laughter in the Midst of Difficulty: Laughter is a gift from God that can help us see challenges in perspective.
God Uses Our Mess-Ups: Even when we make mistakes (like Sarah suggesting Hagar), God can still work through them for good.
God Blesses Our Mess: We may regret our past actions, but God is gracious and can still bless us.
God Works Across Divides: While there is division in the world, God seeks to bring people together and show his grace to all.

Biblical References:

Genesis 21:1-7 - Birth of Isaac
Scripture about laughter (not mentioned but referenced in sermon): unreferenced

Additional Points:

The sermon references the story of doubting Thomas (John 20:24-29).
The importance of looking for God working in the lives of people from different backgrounds is mentioned.

Transcript
Thank you, good morning. Am I on? I think I am. Can you hear me yet? Great.
We are still in Genesis, you may be surprised to hear.
Genesis 21 already, and just been fascinated reading these passages, hearing what people have
said through different aspects of God's Word in Genesis, and it is God's Word. Let's remember that
when God gives us something on a Sunday morning it's because we need to hear it, and I need to
hear it. There are challenges for me in the preparation of this Word. We need to hear what
God is saying. It's quite a long passage, Genesis 21, it's quite involved, there's different elements
to it, and we're just going to take a wander, a wander through it, deeper than our feet could ever
wander. And we're going to, yeah, just have a table. The title on the screen is A Time for
Every Purpose. It's not there, it doesn't matter, but it seems like we've been following, we've
arrived, the subtitle in my Bible of Genesis 21 is The Birth of Isaac, and we've been following this
story of Isaac, it seems like, for as long as Sarah was. It's just been going on and on and on.
You know, God said, I'm going to give you a son, and then there's the whole Ishmael story,
and there's all of that, and then years pass into years, and I think we've said, wasn't it 25 years
from the time of the promise up to the time of the fulfillment, and yet we've arrived. Genesis 21,
the birth of Isaac. So much drama has been generated since God made that simple promise.
Like we've been on the edge of the fulfillment, week on week on week. It's around every corner,
it could even be today, but today, finally, the time has come, and there is a beautiful
rhythm to the first few verses of Genesis 21. I don't know what version I'm using here,
English standard version. It's quite good in places and quite old-fashioned in others,
but we're going to read it from here. The Lord visited Sarah as He had said,
and the Lord did to Sarah as He had promised, and Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old
age at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born
to him, whom Sarah bore him, that's true, in case we've missed it, Isaac, and Abraham circumcised
his son Isaac when he was eight days old as God had commanded him. Makes the life of faith look
very simple, doesn't it? The Lord visited Sarah as He had said and did to Sarah as He had promised,
obviously, but it's not that obvious, is it? Because we're 25 years into the story,
and there's been a whole load of stuff that has happened, and yet we come to this culmination,
simply the Lord visited Sarah as He had said. All the years of waiting, hoping, doubting,
trying to manipulate the promise, laughing at the prospect, it all came down to this,
the Lord visited Sarah as He had promised. Johnny reminded us last week that God is committed
to His promises, and here we see it, 25 years on, with every passing year their faith looked more
and more ridiculous. Sarah got older and older, I mean these are these are crackpot people,
you know there's a 99 year old lady or whatever she's saying, oh you know God's told me I'm going
to have a child, oh well okay, good luck with that. God visited Sarah as He had said. One of
the burdens of modern life, as you may well know, is being on hold to telephone call centers,
listening to a recorded voice saying, thank you for holding, your call is important to us,
and you know with every fiber of your being that your call is not important to them,
otherwise they would have answered it.
If you have any involvement with the Edge Center on a Thursday morning, you know that it's not true,
their call is not important, and so we can spend the best part of two hours waiting to talk to
somebody at Sheffield Council or whoever it is, no offense to Sheffield Council, didn't mean to
mention you on the recording, just scrub that bit off, artificial intelligence.
But even in the life of faith we can feel like we're in the waiting room can't we, all can feel
like we're on hold. How many know what it's like to believe God for something, how hard it is as
day runs into day to keep focused on what He has said, and not to be distracted, not to be
discouraged, and not to let doubt overcome us, and not to make us think, well did we really dream it
all up, did we have too much cheese one night, and we we really haven't heard God speak to us.
We don't know what is happening, how do we keep motivated, how do we keep believing,
you know your prayer is important to us, please hold on.
And Abraham and Sarah were no different, they were overcome with distractions and doubt,
but in the end the Lord visited Sarah as He had said, as He had said, that it's like it's almost
like well obviously that was going to happen, but clearly it wasn't obvious, Sarah, but
as He had said, God did it. And yet the church, the life of faith is littered with stories of people
that have given up, people give up on those on those holding, on those telephone things,
listening to the music over and over and over again, oh I've had enough. And the temptation
is to say I've had enough. It seemed so exciting when we started, it seemed so fresh,
it seemed so full of promise, it seemed like like it was going to, it was all going to make sense,
it seemed like it wasn't going to be this painful, it wasn't going to be this confusing,
it wasn't going to be this draining.
Remember the rhythm of those verses, the Lord visited Sarah as He had said, hold on,
despite the drama. Jonathan spoke to us yesterday morning about building a community church,
and one of the things that he threw in was a poster that he's seen at Hollybush where with
a little boy who with his head in his hands and the phrase was, it's always too soon to quit.
And I think the story of Abraham and Sarah tell us it's always too soon to quit,
because God does as He has said He will do, despite everything that goes on in the middle
of it. And I don't know what's vexing you this morning, what is troubling you, what is eating
away at your heart, what is discouraging you, what doubts are coming in, but let this word stand that
God is faithful, He's faithful to His word, He's faithful to you. Johnny said God is committed to
His promises and He's committed to His people, He's committed to you, it is worth holding on,
hold on, come what may. And as we go through and we get to verse 6,
it says that Sarah said God has made laughter for me, for everyone who hears will laugh over me.
Good laughter I'm sure. God has made laughter for me. At the end of it all there must have
been tears, there must have been pain, there must have been arguments in the Abraham and
Sarah household. There were a few big issues weren't there over the years.
But at the end of it all she could say God has made laughter for me.
Laughter is a gift of grace. Don't despise laughter, it shakes our hearts free.
Andy was talking earlier, it was about the pneumatic drill. Laughter is a pneumatic drill
that breaks up the hardness of our hearts and the unbelief that grips us. If we can laugh when we
get a grant for 20,000 and we lose one for 75,000, we can laugh because we've got the background of
faith, the background of the goodness and the faithfulness of God that we know. This story of
146 is bigger than our application to Veolia or what their trustees decide or any of that,
that God has showed us from the beginning that he has given us this and he's given us this land
and he's given us the future and he's given us the opportunity to be part of the extension of
his kingdom on this precinct, you know, subject to the decision of Veolia trustees. It's not is it?
We're thankful for them and we're thankful that we can go back to them in future and we can ask
them again, so think again. But we, you know, we can laugh. George MacDonald, I don't know who he is.
I think he had a farm.
He said, yeah, that was his dad, old MacDonald. His son George and his brother Ronald.
Yeah, he said E-I-E-I-O, yeah.
I thought we'd throw that in. I told you laughter was good.
He said, one day, it is the heart that is unsure of its God that is afraid to laugh.
It's the heart that is unsure of its God that is afraid to laugh.
And we are people who live against the background of the promises of God
and we shouldn't really be those who have our heads in our hands all the time.
And I'm speaking as somebody who people always say to me, what's wrong? What's wrong with you?
Why the frown? Why are you rubbing your head? I used to do that in Zambia, you know, it's like
I'd come out of the office and everybody was sitting laughing and chatting and I'd be going like this.
Rub our heads. I'm not really somebody who's always associated with laughter. Let's be honest,
there's full transparency. Kizak and Sammy call me jolly old Nick and it's an exercise in sarcasm.
But we shouldn't be those who have our heads in our hands and I have to learn this and we
have to learn to laugh freely and unreservedly. I never really understood being not one of nature's
laughers. I like making people laugh, but I don't always find it easy myself, but Toronto blessing.
People were laughing all the time. 30 years ago we had this outpouring of God's Spirit on the church
and there was one of them, there were lots of manifestations, some funnier than others,
but there was one, the hallmark of it was laughter. People were laughing uncontrollably
from nowhere and I was leading the church at the time and it was hitting our church
and there were things going on and we embraced it. We wanted it. We had the meetings. We went
to the prayer meetings, but I didn't get it myself in the sense of I don't know why people laughing.
Think maybe I was, yeah, I'm spiritual. Oh, there we are.
It started again. Yeah, so the...
I don't know what I was saying, but yeah, anyway, yeah. So, but recently, this is what happened
recently. About 30 years on from Toronto blessing, I was in a particular stressful situation. I used
to sleep all right. Whatever happens, however stressful things get, I annoy Erica because I
could just go to sleep. But one day I woke up early and started to chew over these things.
I was thinking about it. And I went downstairs and started to think and I didn't particularly
pray or have any particular encounter or whatever, but suddenly something like my perspective changed
and I just started to laugh about the whole situation and I couldn't stop laughing
about it and I just found what a liberation that was because what it was telling me was that
you don't know what to do. You don't know the answer. I haven't even given you the answer,
but God is in control and the people and one of the blessings of being involved in life in Africa
is the way people are so ready to laugh against the background of intense suffering because,
you know, because it's not flippant. It's not flippant laughter or just think of laughing,
bury a head in the sand and just laugh anyway. It's actually facing, fully facing the facts
that life is dreadful and there are so many challenges and there are so many unanswered
questions. There are so many, so many things that people will point and say where is your God now
and all of that is reality for people and yet the laughter is so near the surface. People will laugh
and celebrate. I mean Alex, our friend in Kenya, when we went to see him last year just before
I got sick and we were with him and he was just relaying some of the stories about the children
that they were trying to support in Kenya and some of the challenges they had and some of the
challenges he felt that he said I just pass them on to you because I don't have, you know, any
answers and he said, he said we just look at it and we don't know what to do and we just say well
Jesus is Lord and then just started laughing and laughing and laughing. Jesus is Lord, so he said,
you know, it's, who was it yesterday saying oh it's God's problem. It's not flippant humor,
it's laughing because we're confident in our God and as we learn and come to know the God who is
faithful and certain and never lets us down then the result will be the freedom to laugh.
It's a gift, you know, in the West we have so much even though we, you know, we look at our thing,
oh broken Britain and it's all falling apart and NHS and blah blah blah and all of that stuff,
we think, you know, we think we're hard done by but we have more than 99% of the entire world
and yet we laugh the least. We have, you know, if there's nothing you can add to our life,
if we don't have joy in the midst of our life, there's nothing you can add physically that will
give us joy because we've got it. We've got opportunity, we've got power, we've got choice,
there's money, people might feel like, oh I haven't got much money. No, you may not have
much money but in terms of the context of the whole world, we've got loads of stuff. Even when
people come on a Thursday and we try and help with, you know, with benefits advice, at least
there are benefits to get. You know, there's a whole load of stuff that we have and we have
the freedom and yet if we can't find peace in all of that, in the middle of it all, then we
have a problem. So we have to discover the God who gives us laughter. Sarah said, God has made
laughter for me. God has made laughter for us, not when our problems are solved. He's made laughter
for us today. What problems are you carrying today? What grief are you carrying today? What
sadness? What confusion are you carrying today? Because today God has made laughter for you
because he's in control. He's in control. And so we move on.
She said, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I was born in
a son in his old age. And then in the middle of it all, you see Abraham threw a feast to celebrate
because finally they say, oh yeah, oh it actually worked out. You've been in that position before
where you sort of celebrate like we're great people of faith. Abraham gets all the plaudits,
doesn't he? He was a great man of faith. The Bible says he never weakened in his faith. Really?
When you read through, God is so gracious. If he can say, it gives me hope for my judgment.
When he looks at me, oh he never weakened in his faith. No, that was me. Man of faith and power
for the hour. So he threw a feast and they celebrated because God had done what he said
he would do. And in the middle of it all, Sarah looked up and she saw Hagar's son, Ishmael,
laughing. Now it didn't say he was laughing at her, just that he was laughing because everybody
else was laughing. Sarah was laughing, but there was something in it that pricked her. She didn't
like what she saw. She didn't like the fact that he was there because he was a reminder
of other things. There was this celebration that God had done what he said, and yet Sarah
had actually been part of a big mess-up where they'd arranged for Abraham to have a child with
Hagar, Ishmael, because they thought, well maybe this is the way that we can do it. And in the
middle of it all, there is this reminder, probably I'm trying to get all confusing numbers, I think
14-year-old reminder of what she had done and what she'd been part of, and she didn't like it.
And she said, send him away and send her away, banish them. Even in our blessing, even when
we learn to love, there can be bitterness that controls our hearts. And she was bitter in the
middle of her blessing, and she said to Abraham, take her away, send her away. Abraham, it was her
who came up with the plan of course, but she didn't want him around, and Abraham was sad
because it was his son. Now I read these words that come strongly, what came strongly to mind
is like the link between these cross-references that come up in my mind, the link between doubting
Thomas and Sarah, that Thomas, when Jesus was resurrected from the dead, he said, actually I'm
not sure I believe it, but I want to put my hand in his side and my fingers in the holes in his
hands, and then I will believe. And so Jesus graciously offered himself to him and said,
here, put your fingers in here, put your hand in my side. And Thomas said, no, now I believe,
now I've seen. And he said, blessed are you because you have seen and believed, but more
blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. And Sarah was one of those who, yes,
she saw the goodness of God. God is faithful even when we are faithless. He carries us through,
but she marred her experience of the goodness of God because she messed it up in the middle,
and she had a constant reminder of what she had done. I mean, I've been in so many situations,
and we try and encourage one another with it, or when you think, when you see God is faithful
all the way through, and somehow you know that at the end of it all, we're going to be laughing,
we're going to be saying, well, God is great, God does all things well. And yet there's still
that angst in the middle, and there's still that question, you know, what's going to happen?
And there's a constant challenge that I bring to myself, so I don't really want to feel
foolish at the end of it all. God will always be faithful, but I don't want to feel foolish when
he is, when he shows himself good, and when he shows himself strong, and when he does what we
know that he always does. I don't want to say, yeah, but I let the side down in the process.
I got discouraged, I got fed up, I got impatient, and Sarah's joy was clouded by the memory and the
reminder of what she did. More blessed it would have been to hold on to the promises of God
relentlessly, and to see what he was able to do. The Lord visited Sarah as he had said he would do,
and yet she received it. God is good, but she messed it up in the process, and there was pain,
and there was bitterness as a result. God grants her request, and he said, you can read through
the passage later, he said, okay, he told Abraham to do it, tell her to go away, give her some water,
give her what she needs, and send her away into the wilderness. But he came to Abraham privately,
and said, don't worry, I'm still going to bless him because he's your son.
The grace and the kindness of God, even in our mess, God is able to bless our mess.
God didn't join in the battle and say, yeah, I don't like them either, get rid of them.
He said, I'm going to make him a great nation because he comes from you. Isaac is the child
of the promise, but Ishmael is your child, and I will bless him. And so Hagar goes into
the wilderness, and she gets to the point of giving up hope, and she even said, well,
I'm going to put my child under this bush, and I'm going to turn away because I'm not going to
look on the death of my child. She was expecting him to die there in the desert, and then God
heard them and spoke to them and said, up, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand,
for I will make him into a great nation. Sarah saw Hagar and Ishmael as a sharp reminder of what
had gone wrong. God used the opportunity to show grace in the middle of the mess. God is gracious.
Who has a track record that is perfect? No arms are going up. I presume that's because you're shy.
I know you're all very, very spiritual. God blesses our mess. We can all look back with
regret. We can all look back with uncertainty. We can all look back and think, I wish it hadn't
been that way. I wish I had maintained a faith. I wish I'd been stronger in my belief and in my
declaration of the praise of God. The songs that we sing say, I'll praise God in the goodness and
in the dark days. I'll praise God when things are going well, and I'll praise Him when they're not.
I'll praise Him when I'm healthy. I'll praise Him when I'm sick. It doesn't always work out that way,
does it? We like to have the results in front of us, and yet we can look back and we can see,
actually, there are times in our lives that we regret. We regret our response to God. We
regret the words that we've spoken. We regret the prayers we haven't prayed. We regret the
unbelief we've expressed. We regret it, but God blesses our mess as well as our success.
Historically, you know, Ishmael is the father of the Arabic nations, and there is a story right
up to the present day. You only have to turn on the news. See, there is enmity, there is division,
there is hatred between races and cultures, going all the way back to these roots.
In our election and all of that that's going on, there are people that will want to stoke
culture wars and divisions between any number of groups in society, whether it's between
Christian and Muslim, whether it's between black and white, whether it's between
rich and poor, wherever the division falls, people want to stoke that. And what we find
is that God is a gracious God, and we don't find Him taking one side or another of a culture war.
We find Him in the middle of it all, that God is able to say, I will bless Ishmael and make
Him a great nation. And it reminds us that in a world that is built on hatred and division and
separation, that Ishmael's descendants are our brothers. And so we must pray for them,
and we must pray for people. We must look for the grace of God that links across. We must find out
where He is. You know, I was brought up in a sort of a reformed tradition. I said, well,
not brought up, but the church that I joined was very much reformed in its theology. What that
means is that there was a very heavy emphasis on the Reformation, the Protestant tradition,
and all of that. And so there was a sense that there was nothing particularly good about
Catholic theology or Catholic doctrine or Catholic tradition. And we were brought up with the history
of the wars and things that had gone wrong. And so you sort of brought up that suspicion and that
uncertainty about things. And then I got into a meeting that I didn't intend to get into,
where there was a man from our local Catholic church, and he was talking about how he visited
a shrine where the Virgin Mary had appeared to different people, and they got healed of
different things. And it all just sounded really weird. I thought, I don't need to listen to this.
But as he got to speak and as he got to explain, and he talked about how he encountered God,
how he encountered Jesus in that place, and he said, and all the stories about Mary and everything
went to one side, and it ended up just glorifying Jesus about what he'd encountered there. And it
really challenged my mind and challenged my thinking to say, actually, in the middle of
where I think I've got God on my side, we find him crossing barriers and crossing boundaries.
And so in all the culture wars that we've got going on, whether it's to do with,
there can be anything. It could be, like I say, it could be where we come from, our background.
It could be the sexuality and gender issues. It can be abortion. It can be all of those things.
Yet what we need to do is look for God in the middle of all those things. If you read the
stories of the 24-7 prayer movement and the way that they've been able to connect with people
from every different background and every different lifestyle and every different thing,
they said they already find God already there in the middle of it all. And God is able to make
himself known. He doesn't wait for people to become like us in order to meet them or to speak
them or to deal with their lives or to show them grace or to show them mercy. I have one friend
who's a Muslim lady, and she's very outspoken, very gregarious, very funny. She lives in Zambia,
and she said to me that she, because the expatriate community in Zambia has a lot of
missionaries in it, and so she would come up again. She said to us actually, I think it was
a compliment, she said, you're the first Christians that I've met that don't want to argue with me.
And she said she had a problem. One lady came to her and said her opening gambit in conversation
was, you're going to burn in hell. And she said, oh, well, at least I won't be alone because you'll
be there with me. And that's the sort of humor that she's got. But as you get to know her and
as you get to talk to her, you find out there is a great pain and great suffering and great grief
that has gone on in her life, and yet she's able to articulate how she met Jesus in Bethlehem,
near Bethlehem, where she went. She's from Lebanon, and she went there with a Christian friend,
and she encountered the power and the presence of Jesus in that place. And she said her life has
never been the same again. She would not identify as a Christian. She would not say that she's a
Christian. She's a Muslim lady, but when you talk to her and you understand, you know that God
met her personally. God is able to cross barriers that we struggle to cross.
There are always treasures of grace to be found. Let's move on quickly.
The passage at the end of verse 22 through to 24 is about the treaty with Abimelech. I think,
again, read it. There won't be a tremendous benefit in us reading the details of it,
but Abimelech was a man who recognized the grace of God in Abraham, and the two men agreed to
conduct their relationship based on their reverence for God. It's a story of men being
fashioned and shaped by the presence of God in their lives and by their reverence for God and
their fear of God and manifesting righteousness and integrity in their dealings with one another.
And quickly, as we come to a close, what I'm getting from that is that God is not just
doing firework events. He's not just doing miracles in our lives, but He is slowly
revealing and manifesting His character through relationships and through society. And this is
the hope of revival that we have, that God would manifest Himself in our lives and our
hearts to such an extent that it affects all of our relationships, all of our connections,
all of our conversations, everything that happens. That's our prayer on a Thursday
morning when people come in that they will, yes, they will hear the words of the Gospel,
but they will also encounter the reality of changed lives and transformed lives,
and we're seeing people's lives now as they come in also being transformed
by the reality and the presence of God.
And that's what you see in this, in the outworking of this relationship and this encounter between
Abimelech and Abraham, two men that could have gone to war with each other, that could have fought
each other, that could have argued with one another, that could have that could have torn
each other to pieces, and yet they decided to deal with each other based on their relationship
and the reverence for God. And Abraham decided to commemorate the grace and the goodness of God
by planting a tree, a tamarisk tree, in verse 33.
And as we draw to a close, what I want to say about this is that the message was so strong
about the attitude we need when dealing with God's work in our life. He didn't throw a party or have
a feast. He planted a tree. Trees are for the long term. Trees are generational. Trees span decades.
When we first went to Zambia, and we bought the place that we still have there now,
there was a big expanse of land at the back, very nice open space, and it was roasting hot.
If you sat out there, it was like sitting in a wok, and there was just no shade anywhere.
And Erica's dad was with us at the time, and we were saying to him, the problem with the garden
is it's lovely, but it's just so hot. There's no shade. There's no whatever. He said, well, you could
plant a tree. He said, oh, don't be ridiculous. We need some shade now. I want to wait for a tree to grow.
But we did plant some trees, and now I will take you there. I just should have done it on here.
I'll take you to Google Earth. You can see those trees from Google Earth. They're huge and shady
and lovely, and he was a man of vision, and I wasn't.
But trees are powerful. Trees tell us of, you know, trees span generations. Trees span lifetimes.
They just, you know, whatever. And Abraham's moment to commemorate the goodness and the
grace of God was to plant a tree, and that tells us something. He didn't just put up a
banner or maybe it's not about him. There's that phrase, there's that quote that says we should
plant trees the shade of which we will never sit under, and that I believe is at the heart of this
church and the things that we talked about yesterday and the things that we're talking
about when we look at 146 and the projects that God has given us. We are actually planting trees
the shade of which we will not sit under. We're building for generations. We want to, there will
be stories that we will only hear in eternity about what will happen in this place, that it will go on
beyond any of us being here, and it's having that long view of the goodness and the grace of God,
planting a tree to say this is how I'll remember. We are planting trees. Plant trees in your life.
Don't just look for what is God going to do for me today. I think it's great when we do respond
and we do pray for one another and we have an encounter with God here in the moment, but it's
not about a here in the moment encounter that is going to change your life. It's going to be a tree
that is planted. If God plants anything in you today, let it be a tree that changes you in 5, 10,
15, 20 years time. Don't be a Christian partygoer. Be a tree planter.
And so God will do what he has promised to do. He gives us freedom to laugh. Always be grateful.
Give no space to ingratitude or bitterness. God is able to bless our mess. Look for God's grace
everywhere, even when you don't expect to find it. And don't throw parties,
plant trees. Those are the lessons today. God bless you.

View Details

Summary of Sermon: The Danger of Underestimating
This sermon explores Genesis chapter 20, a story where Abraham repeats a mistake from his past.
The key takeaways are:
Abraham's character: Despite being portrayed as a man of faith, Abraham acts out of fear, lying about Sarah being his sister to protect himself.
God's character: Even though Abraham makes mistakes, God remains committed to his promises. God protects Abimelech, the king who unknowingly takes Sarah, from further sinning.
God's faithfulness: The story emphasizes God's unwavering commitment to the covenant he made with Abraham, ensuring his offspring will bring blessings.
Here's a breakdown of the sermon:
Introduction: The sermon starts with an anecdote about accidentally popping confetti balloons and highlights the theme of underestimating situations.
Scripture reading: Genesis chapter 20 is read, detailing how Abraham pretends Sarah is his sister, leading to her being taken by Abimelech.
Connection to previous chapters: The story is linked to a similar incident in Genesis chapter 12, where Abraham makes the same claim about Sarah.
Abraham's behavior: We delve into Abraham's motivations, driven by fear for his safety in a foreign land.
God's intervention: God protects Abimelech from sinning further and reveals his commitment to the covenant with Abraham. Abimelech returns Sarah and is blessed.
Difficulties in understanding God: The sermon acknowledges the challenges in reconciling God's actions with our expectations.
God's unwavering promises: Despite Abraham's mistakes, God's commitment to his promises is the core message. This is reinforced by referencing Romans 4:18, which describes Abraham as the "father of many nations" due to his faith.
Conclusion: The sermon emphasizes the importance of reading the Bible critically, even when it challenges our understanding of God. It highlights God's enduring love and commitment to his promises, even amidst human flaws.
Biblical references:
Genesis 12:10-20
Genesis 15
Genesis 16
Genesis 17
Genesis 19:9
Genesis 20
* Romans 4:18-23
Transcript
Mm-hmm.
Can you all hear me okay?
Hello?
Yes, it's great.
Good morning, everyone.
Over in 146 as well.
Great to have you with us too.
Um, has anyone here ever made the same mistake twice?
You don't have to raise your hand.
So just this week I was helping doing some tidy up.
And there was a bit of a party going on around here this week.
And there were some balloons that needed tidying away.
I ended up helping out.
There were some a whole big pile of balloons
that were starting to look a little bit sad and sorry
for themselves.
And I was on the tidy up task and the easiest way
to tidy up a whole big like bin bag full of balloons.
Just get a pair of scissors and pop, pop, pop away.
And I was happily popping away going,
this is going to be such a quick and easy job.
This is so easy.
Unbeknownst to me, two of the balloons had confetti inside.
And I realized when pop, pop, pop, one of them
created a beautiful circle of little golden disks
that all just appeared around me.
And I thought, this job's not quite as easy
as I thought it might be.
And it was also around this time.
I noticed there was a second one.
And I thought to myself, when I pop the second one,
I'm going to be really careful this time.
Really careful, because this is just too much work, isn't it?
This is such a lot of effort.
I'm going to be sweeping all these up for the next five minutes.
So when I pop the second one, I'm going to be really gentle,
like really gentle.
I'm going to make the tiniest, tiniest hole
right near the top so that pop, it went.
It just exploded.
There was a second giant confetti circle around me.
As I was thinking to myself, this is going
to go way better than last time.
I had even more sweeping up to do.
And I had five minutes of sweeping up little golden circles
bits, thinking to myself, there's a sermon in Alginess.
Always, there always is.
I think I'm not alone in saying that I've
made more than one mistake.
And I'm also not alone in making the same mistake
more than one time.
We're working our way through Genesis.
And I'm going to read Genesis chapter 20.
And when you read it, you'll probably think,
haven't we read something like this before?
And the answer is yes.
So we will talk about that.
But we're going to be reading from Genesis chapter 20.
I'm just going to read through the whole thing.
And then we're going to get stuck into it.
Now Abraham moved on from there into the region of the negative
and lived near Kadesh and Shur, for a while he stayed in Garah.
And then Abraham, said of his wife, Sarah, she is my sister.
Then Abimalak, King of Garah, sent for Sarah and took her.
But God came to Abimalak in the dream one night
and said to him, you are as good as dead because of the woman
you have taken, she is a married woman.
Now Abimalak had not gone near her.
So he said, Lord, how will you destroy an innocent nation?
Sorry, Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation?
Did he not say to me, she is my sister?
And didn't she say also, he is my brother?
I've done this with a clear conscience and clean hands.
And God said to him in the dream, yes,
I know you did this with a clear conscience.
And so I have kept you from sinning against me.
That is why I did not let you touch her.
Now return the man's wife, but he is a prophet
and he will pray for you and you will live.
But if you do not return her, you will be sure.
You may be sure that you and all who belong to you will die.
Early the next morning Abimalak summoned all his officials
and when he told them all that had happened,
they were very much afraid.
Then Abimalak called Abraham in and said,
what have you done to us?
How have I wronged you that you have brought
such great guilt upon me and my kingdom?
You have done things to me that should never have been done
and Abimalak asked Abraham, what was your reason
for doing this?
Abraham replied, I said to myself,
there is surely no fear of God in this place
and they will kill me because of my wife.
Besides, she really is my sister,
the daughter of my father,
though not of my mother, and she became my wife.
And when God had me wonder about, sorry,
and when God had me wonder from my father's household,
I said to her, this is how you can show your love to me.
Everywhere we go, save me, he is my brother.
Then Abimalak brought sheep and cattle,
male and female servants and gave them to Abraham
and he returned Sarah, his wife to him.
And Abimalak said, my land is before you,
live wherever you like.
To Sarah, he said, I am giving you,
I am giving your brother a thousand shackles of silver.
This is to cover the offense against you
before all who are with you.
You are completely vindicated.
Then Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimalak,
his wife and his female slaves,
so they could have children again.
But the Lord had kept all the women in Abimalak's household
from conceiving because of Abimalak's wife, Sarah.
So it's definitely ringing some bells, I think,
for some of us.
And you've got to go quite a few chapters back
before you get a story that seems to line up
almost overlapping with this story.
If you go all the way back to chapter 12,
the chapter begins with God giving those first promises
to Abraham.
He is set out from his father's,
the land of his father's where he was born
and where he grew up.
He is traveling in tents with the rest of his family.
And out in the middle of nowhere,
God speaks to him and says, I'm gonna give these promises to you.
I'm gonna bless you.
I'm gonna give you children and through your children,
blessing is gonna come to all the nations.
And in that same chapter, it says,
that's the one that Jensen spoke on a few weeks back,
that at the same time, as soon as he arrived in this place
that God had promised that he would provide to him,
where he would receive these offspring,
he immediately has to leave.
As a famine in the land, they go down to Egypt.
And it's in Egypt is the first time we hear the story
that Abraham says of Sarah, his wife, he is my sister.
So we've definitely got a big, strong link
between these two passages that happened a long time earlier.
And yet, a lot of things have happened in between.
Real quick recap.
He left his family home in Genesis 11.
In Genesis 12, God spoke those promises to him.
And then he goes into Egypt, as we mentioned.
And he comes out of it really well off for those who aren't aware.
It pretty much works out exactly the same as this.
And then, as God moves on in the story,
God keeps reiterating those promises to him,
even though he doesn't have a child at that point.
In Genesis 15, God makes a covenant with Abraham.
He promises, I am going to make this happen.
I am going to give you a child.
You are going to be received that blessing
and it is going to be passed on through your children.
And then in chapter 16 immediately, after those promises,
that's when he sleeps with his female slave,
Hega, and has a son called Ishmael.
And that is the one that God says in chapter 17,
it's not going to be through him.
You're now going to be Abraham.
You're going to be the father of many nations,
but it's not through him.
You've got to keep trusting.
It is going to be through your wife with Sarah
and yourself that this blessing is going to come.
And so chapter 17 was all about circumcision
and that covenant of thinking to the promises,
trusting in those promises of God.
And so then we have that whole thing about the visitors came
and said, it's nearly time.
God appears to Abraham in chapter 18 and says,
you are going to have a son and it's nearly about to happen.
It's happening about less than a year's time.
When I come back, you will have a son.
And then the story of Lot in Sodom
and the destruction of Sodom happened in chapter 19.
And then here we are.
He's moving on.
He's still in that land that God had promised him.
He's still traveling, living in a tent.
And then he is somewhat retracing his steps.
The chapter starts by talking about him heading south.
He talks about him heading to the negative,
which is towards Egypt, where last time that was a famine,
and that's why he was heading.
It doesn't mention a famine this time,
but it says, this is what he does.
He sets out in this direction and he's heading down there.
One of the big differences is time.
So it mentions when he first sets out,
Abraham mentions in the story, he is 75 years old.
At this point in the story, he is 99, nearly 25 years of past
and he's retracing the same steps and his behavior.
The things that he does seem to repeat.
So way back in chapter 12, he set off and headed towards Egypt
and he said that Sarah was his sister.
And then he does it again.
He's heading south and it says all the details it gives us here.
In verse two, Abraham said of his wife,
she is my sister.
And the similar thing starts to happen.
So we're gonna look at Abraham's character a little bit
and then we're gonna look at God's character
because if you feel uncomfortable reading this passage,
that's great, that's really good.
I always want to say, if we're engaging with the Bible,
it's gonna bump up against what we think
and what we feel, what we believe and what we know.
That's okay, that's normal.
And there are plenty of people who only,
if they're reading through the Bible, get this far
and say, this is the second time this has happened.
Why would I wanna listen to a God who acts like this?
Because one way you could retell this story is,
Abraham turns up in a place,
he lies about something or doesn't tell the whole truth.
And as a result, God threatens this bloke
who's showing him hospitality and generosity
who he's living with.
God threatens this king of Bimilek
and says, things are gonna go real bad for you
if you don't turn your ways around
and their Bimilek says, but I'm innocent.
And then as a result, Abraham comes out of this ahead
in terms of money and possessions
and it's Abraham who's the one who has the bless of Bimilek
at the end of the chapter.
What's going on there?
First of all, let's look at Abraham.
Why is he acting this way?
So one of the things that, you know, we're,
and we're looking back to chapter 12,
but this is also immediately preceding chapter 19.
One of the first things I noticed that you can't see,
if you're studying it in English,
because it's hidden away in there,
is right at the beginning, it says,
Abraham moved from there into the region of the Dandeghav
and lived between K-dash and Shur.
And for a while, he stayed in Gharar.
Now, that word stayed is staying in a tent.
It doesn't mean he moves in.
It doesn't mean he gets an Airbnb.
It means he and everything he possesses,
everyone he knows, his whole family are together
and they're moving into this region.
And when they're staying there,
they're living in a land that other people live in.
There are cities and there are towns.
There are people who own this land.
There are people who live in this land.
And this word to stay in this land
or in other translations, it says stay as an alien
or a foreigner in this land is exactly the same word
that we just read in Genesis chapter 19,
verse nine, when the people of Sodom described lot,
they say, why should we, when lot calls out to them
and says, don't do this wicked and evil thing
that you're trying to do, they say to him, you're a foreigner,
you're just a journeying person living
into the month, min amongst us, why should we listen to you?
And this is exactly the same kind of situation
that Abraham is in, time and time and time again.
From that, from that beginning that we said,
he's now been living in a tent for 25 years,
hands up who's been on a 25 year camping holiday.
Anybody?
No, two weeks maximum, I think,
and then we're all ready for a solid roof over our head, right?
And central heating.
So he's been doing this for a long time.
And this chapter demonstrates he's repeating
the same kind of behaviors again.
The same things that he said back in chapter 12,
when he was 75, he goes into this land
and this is the thing, you have to wait until chapter 20
to get a real explanation from him
when he explains to him a bit more like at the end,
why have you done this?
He really starts to open up.
And he's motivated by fear.
Did you see that when we read from right towards the end,
Abraham replies to himself and he says,
I said to myself, there's surely no fear of God in this place
and they will kill me because of my wife.
When that comes right after the story of Sodom and Gomorrah,
you see how the way that Abraham feels
and the way that he's living, he sees a world
or at least he believes he is living in a place just like Sodom.
People do what they want and they take what they want
and he's scared and he's afraid.
And that is motivating his actions here.
And he says, this is why he said this thing.
It's culturally a whole rabbit hole to get down
to figure out why this is any better than what was going on.
But it's interesting that the thing that he describes
is also a pattern that's come through the Bible
right from the Garden of Eden up to now.
This is yet another story that it talks about
someone seeing something and wanting to take it.
That this becomes a pattern throughout the Bible
when people see what they want and decide to take for themselves.
That's a pattern that's established from the Garden of Eden
with Eve when the snake deceives her and tells her
and it says, as she takes the fruit,
it says she sees what she wants.
She desires it and she chooses to take it for herself.
And if you go back to chapter 12,
when Abraham goes into Egypt and the Pharaoh of Egypt
sees Sarah, Abraham's wife, it says he desires her
and it says his servants talk about how beautiful she is.
He sees her, he desires her, he takes her for himself
and that this is a pattern that comes throughout
and this is what Abraham fears.
He fears this kind of behavior
that he sees a world where people are living for themselves.
They're seeing what they want and they're taking it
and they don't care who they hurt on the way.
And that is why he's acting this way.
That seems to be what he's saying.
But interestingly, he tries to justify himself.
He says technically I'm not lying about that.
That we are related and yet the point is,
he does this thing and he is motivated by fear
and he's trying to conceal the truth
in order to preserve his life, to save himself.
Possibly also to save the rest of his household as well.
But he is motivated by fear.
So where is this man of faith
that we've been hearing about so far
that has been a recurring theme from Genesis,
chapter 12 all the way up till now.
He was a man of faith, where is that?
And also who is this God that we say that we love
and that we worship and that the Bible
reveals his character through it?
Why is he acting this way?
That the story says a bit more like meets this man
and this woman and is introduced
that they are brother and sister.
And in this culture, possibly because of political alliances
and things like this, intermarrying between families
was probably normal in order to maintain peace
when you guys are related, when you're a family together,
then you look out for each other.
In a world like we described in Sodom and Gomorrah
where everyone seems to be out for themselves
to take what they want and don't care who they hurt,
it makes sense to join together and to join forces.
And that this is potentially why all this
intermarrying thing and giving an exchanging wives.
This is why it seems like a bemaleck had multiple wives
in this story.
And this is why in this story, he seems to be a bemaleck,
sees himself as doing the right thing.
And we know that because he speaks in this dream,
we get this revelation of this dream
where God doesn't speak to Abraham in this situation.
He goes to a bemaleck and says to a bemaleck,
things are gonna go bad for you
because of the situation you're in.
And a bemaleck says, what have I done?
What situation am I in that I've done anything wrong?
He responds when God speaks to him in an incredible way,
but he also says, what have I done wrong?
He says, I am innocent in this.
And interestingly, this is where we start to see
a revelation of God's character.
It's a weird, isn't it, up to this point?
It's weird that God acts this way.
Why doesn't God speak to Abraham?
Why does he speak to a bemaleck?
Why does he say to a bemaleck,
you are in big trouble because you've taken this man's wife.
But a bemaleck says, he lied to me.
He didn't tell me he was his wife.
And yet, in this story from verse six,
we start to get this really interesting revelation
of what God is really like.
When God says in the dream, I knew that you had a clear conscience.
When a bemaleck says, I had, how has he described it?
He said, I had a clear mind and I had clean hands.
He said, I wasn't trying to do anything wrong.
And God says, I knew that about you.
And that is why I kept you from sinning
because he seems to be saying,
he may have taken her into a household
but he hasn't slept with me.
And that God has preserved a bemaleck's righteousness.
That a bemaleck says, I'm not guilty here.
And God says, I know that because I have protected you from that.
And yet he then, it makes it very, very clear.
This man, as this woman, is this man's wife.
That Abraham and Sarah are the ones
that God had made the promise their offspring
would bring about this blessing.
And God is committed to his promises.
That is something that this passage tells us.
God is committed to his promises.
And this is what he says, you have to return this woman.
Return the man's wife for he is a prophet
and he will pray for you.
And this is what he does.
He real, but the threat is, if he doesn't do that,
if he continues to live his own way,
sees what he wants and takes it for himself,
the consequences are gonna be dire for him
and for his entire household.
And so he responds.
He responds.
And interestingly, Abraham in the story
doesn't get a chance to respond like that, does he?
God doesn't speak to Abraham.
This all happens to a Bimlek, the other guy,
and he responds and asks Abraham to pray for him.
This is what happens at the end.
And the blessing that comes to Abraham as a result,
he gets possessions, he gets animals,
he receives slaves, he receives more silver
than you can carry in a backpack.
I can't remember if you figure out
how much a thousand shekels is,
but it's not change.
It's not going in your back pocket, that.
He's loading him up with riches,
as a result of this, who cover over his transgression
and to say, to prove to people that I am vindicated,
that is how he describes it and the NIV there.
And so we've got this really interesting examination
into Abraham's character, when we've seen him
described as a man of faith, and yet,
he seems to be still living in fear.
And then God is the one who he says,
cares for the downtrodden and the oppressed.
He cares about people who are innocent.
He cares about people who are mistreated.
And in the story, it seems to be a Bimlek,
the one who's being mistreated here,
and God is against him.
Well, it seems to be against him.
And yet, as we saw that glimmer,
that God still cares about justice.
God says to a Bimlek, I protected you in the midst of this.
But God is committed to his promises.
The reason why he cares about the situation,
the reason why God steps in and intercedes in the situation
is because even if Abraham is motivated by fear,
even if he's making wrong choices,
even if he's making the same choices he's been making
for the last 25 years, God is committed to his promises.
God's committed to God's promises.
And he is promised Abraham, he's gonna make him
into a great nation.
He's gonna blast the world through his offspring
between him and Sarah.
And it's not gonna come when Abraham thinks it's going to.
It's not gonna come in his own time and his own motivation
in his own way.
When he takes a second wife,
and they say, maybe this is the way to do it.
One of the other challenges about all this relationship
with his nephew, Lot, is probably,
Lot was his closest relative.
Maybe he thought Lot was going to be the way
that God was gonna keep these promises
through his descendants, through someone related to him.
And yet God keeps saying, you just have to keep trusting me.
And God is the one who's committed to this.
God is the one who commits to us.
God is the one who commits to Abraham.
And the Abraham, no matter how many mistakes he makes,
and if he repeats the same mistakes,
God is the one who's gonna work things out through him.
And it's interesting that as he goes on,
we see that revelation of the way that God keeps his promises.
God really commits to this.
And this is the thing.
Abraham, if you read the New Testament,
and we're gonna flick ahead to Romans,
I've lost my bookmark here, as I'm looking for it,
Abraham is described for the rest of the Bible,
throughout the Bible as a man of faith,
as a man who put his trust in God,
and that when push came to shove,
he believed God would keep his promises.
And we see him at one of his lowest points here.
He's repeating the same mistakes that he's made
before.
He's getting himself into hot water.
This is obviously not a great situation to be in.
It's not great for Sarah, it's not great for him.
It's certainly not great for Robimelec.
Either is it?
He's had this visitor turn up on his doorstep,
and then he gets these visions from God,
who's threatening his family,
and it also mentions towards the end of the chapter,
that he's, everyone in his family is struck with illness.
That means no one's been able to have children this whole time.
And so God,
is interesting to question that, isn't it?
Interesting question, what is God like?
And why does he continue to do this?
And what it really boils down to is God keeps his promises,
and that's what a covenant is.
We've talked a little bit about covenants
in some of those chapters,
but it's really interesting that the covenant of circumcision
that we hear about in chapter 17 is one that comes later,
but God makes a covenant in chapter 15 earlier,
and when he speaks to Abraham, and he says,
God says, I am the one who's going to make this happen.
Do you remember, there's that weird passage
where he splits animals in half,
and there's this whole ancient ritual of how promises work,
that two people enter into a contract together.
That's what a covenant is.
A promise where we're saying we're going to work together,
and we're going to achieve something.
And God's plan is to achieve blessing,
and restoring that Garden of Eden promise,
of God and mankind reunited,
and he says it's going to happen through you, Abraham,
through you and your children.
This is going to happen, but God is the one
who promises to make it happen.
That story is about God uniting himself,
and it's because of him,
he's committed to restoring broken people.
He's committed to restoring humanity.
He cares about us.
He cares about every single one of us,
and he always has, and he always will,
and this is why I think it's great reading Genesis.
You can see it right from the beginning,
even in these weird, bizarre stories
that don't really make sense the first time we read them,
it's there, his commitment to loving,
no matter what is there,
and his commitment to make the restoration
and those promises happen is there from the beginning.
He cares about those promises,
and we're just going to run through a couple of other quick things.
We're going to read from a Romans chapter four and five,
because this is where it talks about Abraham,
in quite a bit of detail, could do a whole other talk on this,
but we haven't got time.
But we're going to read from Romans chapter four, verse 18.
It says this,
against all hope, Abraham in hope believed,
and so became the father of many nations,
just as it is said of him,
so shall your offspring be.
And then in verse 23, it says,
the word it was credited to him,
credited to him as righteousness,
were written not for him alone,
but also for us,
to whom God will credit righteousness,
for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.
He has delivered over to death for our sin
and was raised to life for our justification.
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith,
we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have gained access by faith
into this grace in which we now stand.
God's made another covenant.
And one of the great things we're going to do together
is we're going to break bread together,
and that's what we're going to do.
We're going to remember the new covenant that God made.
And it's new and at the same time,
it's fulfilling those same promises that Abraham
God said, all the nations of the world will be blessed
through your offspring.
And this is why the offspring were important
because God was looking ahead to Jesus,
the one who would come and who would vindicate all of us,
who would die for all of our sins,
who would be raised to life,
to justify us, to bring us back to God.
He is the one that God was looking to when he promised
to stick with Abraham through anything
and to make those promises come true.
So what about us?
How does this apply to us?
How can we be people of faith like him?
Well, one of the trickiest things to do when we stop reading
right at the end of chapter 20 is to say,
this is a bit weird and a bit strange,
and Abraham seems to be at his lowest point.
But as we just said, when you read Romans,
that's not how he's remembered.
Abraham is not defined by his failures.
And neither are we.
Abraham refuses to let his failures define him.
He's a one who continues to keep walking,
keep journeying with God,
keep putting his faith in God.
Because that is what God requires of him.
He says, all I need you to do is trust him in.
And God is the one who makes it work out.
God is the one who will fulfill his purposes
and he demonstrates that in Jesus.
The one who is willing to die to take upon himself
everything that is wrong with this world,
to bring healing and restoration
and to give us the Holy Spirit
that we can have that power within us.
You see, when God looks at Abraham,
he doesn't see him as a failure.
In this story, this is why he acts his way.
He doesn't come to Abraham and judge him
or waggle his finger at him.
He knows that he is one who trusts.
That at the moment of trial, when it's really a test,
he is the one who will put his faith in God.
And he does.
And this is how God treats him all the time.
He always sees him like this.
And because of Jesus, that's the way he always sees us too.
He always puts his trust in us.
Because we're not defined by our failures.
We're defined by Christ's victory.
And we're going to remember that
as we shared break-break together.
Now Chris is going to come up.
And now, are we going straight into it?
Oh, that's all right.
All right.
Thank you, Johnny.

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Summary of the Sermon "The Significance of Sodom"
This sermon explores the story of Sodom and Gomorrah from Genesis 19,

focusing on the tension between God's love and holiness.
Key Points:
The passage in Genesis 19 is a difficult one, describing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness.
We should hold two things in tension about God:
He is loving (John 3:16).
He is holy (Isaiah 6:3).
His holiness makes his love meaningful.
If we only focus on God's love, we might think our actions don't matter.
God's holiness establishes boundaries and reminds us of our sin.
Why were Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed?
The sermon argues the sin wasn't just sexual immorality (though it is present).
They were also:
Arrogant (Ezekiel 16:49)
Overfed
Unconcerned with the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:49)
This focus on themselves led them to do "detestable things" (Ezekiel 16:49).
The Call to Action:
We should examine ourselves:
Are we arrogant?
Do we consider ourselves above others?
Are we too focused on ourselves and our possessions?
Do we help those in need?
The passage is a call to be more like Christ:
Let him transform our hearts.
Respond to God's love by helping others.
Other Points:
The story is also a reminder that God is just.
He has shown mercy to us, but there is a time limit on his patience.
We should pray for our nation and communities.
Bible References:
Genesis 13:10
Genesis 18
Genesis 19
Exodus 20
John 3:16
Isaiah 6:3
Ezekiel 16:49
Acts 17
Matthew 10
Matthew 11
Jude

Transcript
So we have reached Genesis chapter 19 this morning. It's actually
great if you want to put up the first slide, okay? So you get the drift, right?
So this is, by any stretch of the imagination, this is a very challenging
chapter of the Bible. It's one of those chapters that, and we'll
probably come to a few, depending on how far we carry on through the Old Testament,
that are a bit, kind of like, you know, x-rated, bit 18 rated in terms of the
content. And what I want to do is, I'm just, I'm not going to read it, I'm just
going to summarize it, and then when you get home, if you haven't read it already,
you can read it and see if what I've said is right or not. But in summary, so
you remember last week Chris was speaking from Genesis 18, and now the
second half of that chapter Abraham was chatting with the three visitors, and
actually he ended up debating with God and asking God, if you can find so many
people that are righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah, will you not save it? And there
was this ding-dong going on, and then God draws a line under the conversation at
10, and that's it. And so when we get to chapter 19, what we find is two of those
three people that were with Abraham are angels, and they go to Sodom, and they're
going to spend the night in the town square, and Lot comes out and finds them,
and says, no, no, don't spend the night here, come back to my house. And so he
gives them a meal, they have an evening meal together, and then after the meal we
read that all the men of the town, young and old, gather outside Lot's house and
say, bring out those men because we want to have sex with them. And Lot calls out
and comes out and says, don't do this wicked thing, instead here are my
daughters. Okay, I don't think laughing is quite appropriate, but it only calls
that out. And there's this argument, and the men of the town say to Lot, who are
you to tell us what to do? And the angels reach out through the door and pull Lot
back inside the house and rescue him just in the nick of time, and then they
strike the eyes of those outside the house with blindness so they can't see
and find their way. And then what happens is the two angels in Lot's
house tell him that God is going to destroy this city, it's time for you and
your family to leave. And so he goes out and he finds his two daughters are both
engaged to be married, and he finds the fiancees and tells them that God is
going to destroy this place, we've got to go, and they don't believe him, they
think he's joking. And so, and then they go to bed at night, and then in the
morning the angels say to Lot, come on, you've got to go. And Lot's kind of
dragging his feet and not really moving, so the angels grabs his hand, grabs his
wife's hand, grabs the daughter's hands, and rush them out of the town. And Lot
says, can we just go to this nearby town? So they go off to this nearby town, and
the angels say, don't look back because God is going to destroy this place. And
if you know the story, you know, Lot's wife looks back and she becomes a pillar
of salt. And then at the end of the chapter, Lot and his two daughters, now
on their own, leave that town and go and live in the hills, and the daughters
conspire saying that we're not going to have any children, let's get our dad drunk,
and we'll sleep with him, and we'll get children by him. And so that's what
happens at the end of the chapter. And in the meantime, Abraham is far away, and he
looks out over the plains, and he sees the smoke and the dust rising from where
Sodom and Gomorrah have been destroyed. So, that chapter ought to give you some
questions, right? We ought to have some questions about this. It's just
all sorts of things. Does God really do this sort of thing? Does he destroy
cities like this? Isn't this a different God in the Old Testament than the one
we read about in the New Testament? Hasn't this type of judgment disappeared
with Jesus in the New Testament? Were the crimes that carried on in
Sodom and Gomorrah that bad that it really necessitated God to act in that
way? So, how do we make sense of all of this and apply it in our lives in 2024?
Much of this is really about, sorry, to help us understand that, what I want is
just to think about for a moment, if you bear with me, is a lot of Christianity is
about holding different things in tension, right? A lot of following Jesus
is about holding different things we read in Scripture that on the surface
look to be different, but it's really important that we learn to hold them
in tension. Right, I'm going to try and see if I can operate this, Graham. It looks like
no, so could you do the slide for me? Thank you. Yeah, so for example, we know
that God is one. We also know that God is three persons. Have you figured that out?
How do we hold that? But it's really important that we hold that intention,
isn't it, and that we believe and act on both of those things. We know that Jesus
is fully God, amen, good, and we know that Jesus is fully man, amen, brilliant, but
we've got to hold both of those things in tension. We know that God is sovereign,
but we also know that we have a responsibility. When you and I became a
Christian, did we choose God or did he choose us? Hmm, well both, maybe, perhaps.
Right, and holding those things in tension is really important, right,
because if we overemphasize one side of that equation to the effect, to the loss
of the other, that's what tends to lead us down a little path that leads us into a
bit of error, perhaps sometimes, and ultimately into heresy and that type of
stuff. So if you think Jesus is fully God and you ignore the fact that he's fully
man, you end up with a Jesus that is unable to identify with us in our day-
to-day lives and the reality of what goes on. But if you end up with Jesus who is
just fully man and you ignore the fact that he's also fully God, you end up with
Jesus that's just a good person, and did he even rise from the dead, and what was
the point of his crucifixion? So it's really important, and there's
lots of these, maybe this is another sermon series, there's lots of these, I
think, as we seek to follow Jesus together, that it's good for us to get our
heads around. And so the one particular this morning that I want to just look
at, if we can do the next slide Graham, is how do we hold this in tension?
God is love on the one hand, and we've been singing lots of songs about that
today, but on the other hand, God is holy. Both of those things are equally true,
and both of those things is a key for us to understand. And holding this thing
in tension helps to begin to understand passages like the one that we are
reading about today. We need to embrace both of these things. We know and we love
verses like John 3.16, of course God loved the whole world so much. We've been
singing and praising God for his mercy and his love, and we absolutely should
this morning, that was a beautiful song Jax by the way, and so you know, fantastic
that it speaks from personal experience, what a wonderful thing that is. But
actually we also need to understand God is holy because that puts his mercy in
context. Otherwise if we just think about his love and his mercy and his
grace all the time, it becomes looking like that in a bit of a vacuum. But when
we hold it up against the fact this is a holy God as well, then actually we begin
to grasp more what his mercy and his love and his grace is all about. You see
if our focus is only that God is a God of love, and if we ignore the fact that
he's holy, it leads us down a road where God loves all people. So actually it
doesn't really matter what we do because God still loves me, and actually no
matter what I do I don't have to change because God loves me. And then it
leads us to a place where surely God accepts everybody because he loves
everybody, and then they go to heaven. And therefore there's no need to preach
the gospel because everybody goes to heaven. That is not true, just want to be
really clear. God is, and that's why we need to hold these things in tension,
that God is holy as well as the fact God is love. And when we look at the
holiness of God we see that there are boundaries, there are limits. We see, you
know, we saw that at the beginning of Genesis didn't we? You can eat from any
tree in this garden, not that one over there, but any tree. And what do we do? We
go and eat at the one that we're not supposed to eat from. And ever since
then we've just been loving to cross the boundaries that God has put in place to
protect us and to do us good. And yet this holiness of God is something that
is so traced through the whole of Scripture, it's so important that we get
a hold of it. We think of Moses when he wanted to see God, God says to him, you
cannot see my face and live. And so God lets him see the back of him as he
walks past. We think of Aaron, the high priest, as God gives instruction about
what the high priest should be like. He's allowed once a year to enter the
Holy of Holies in the temple in the Old Testament to make requests on behalf of
people to God, just once a year, and him alone. And because God is so holy and the
high priest is absolutely not, because he's just like you and me, they put bells
on the bottom of his cloak and a little rope around his waist. So as he moves
around in the Holy of Holies they can hear the bells ringing and if the bells
stop ringing that's bad news and they need to pull the rope and get him out.
God is holy. Isaiah cries out, doesn't he? Woe is me because I am a man of unclean
lips and I live in the midst of an unclean people and my eyes have seen the
glory of the Lord. Oh God, oh God, oh God. I think of Peter just as he's in
encountering Jesus and he's been fishing all night and catches nothing and Jesus,
who's not even a fisherman, tells him to put his nets down on the other side and
he pulls them ashore and catches such a massive load. What does he say? Away from
me Lord for I am a sinful man. Paul writing to Timothy at the end of the
first letter, Timothy says God lives in unapproachable light. Wow. And yet we
worship him and we honor him and we give him glory. God lives in unapproachable
light. I'm always struck when I see worship in the book of Revelation at the
end, if it's anything like describing what worship is like in heaven, there's
not many songs about the love of God. It's all worthy are you Lord. Worthy, worthy,
worthy is Jesus. Holy, holy, holy are you Lord. That's the songs that are in there.
Read it when you get home. That's what it's about. And so this holiness of God is
something that is so important that we get a hold of because it also sets up in
context the love of God. And this passage, like others we're going to come to,
make us feel uncomfortable. Does God do this sort of thing? And I think there's
two things that we lose sight of that we need to perhaps get a hold of. First of
all we need to remember that God has made us in his own image. He didn't need
to make mankind. God was completely fulfilled with Father, Son and Holy
Spirit enjoying themselves together in eternity before he created you and I. He
didn't create you and I in order to complete something that was missing in
him. He created us that we would give glory to him and he was fully complete
before that. He owes us nothing. We are his creation. He is the creator and we
are the created ones. And we have turned our backs on the Creator. We think we can
do better. We think we should be independent of him. The Bible calls it
sin. We have turned our backs on one who has created us and yet he is still
sovereign Lord over all the others. He's the one who in that encounter with Moses
when he only let Moses see his back he said to Moses I will have mercy on whom
I will have mercy. It's his divine prerogative to decide who he will show
mercy to. All the more why we sing the songs about mercy with gusto because in
his divine prerogative he's shown it to you and to me. And as we heard last week
as Abraham discusses with God about Sodom Abraham says shall not the judge
of all the earth do right. Abraham was spot-on. God is judge of all the earth
and he always does right. His is the divine prerogative. It's like in an
English court of law where when a judge hands down a sentence he has the weight
of the English law behind him and that is the sentence. There may be appeals and
that kind of stuff but ultimately that is the sentence and that is what is
going to happen. There's no because of the authority of that judge with the law
behind him. That is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny similarity to God is sovereign over
all the earth and he is the judge and he always does right. Second thing is he
never acts unjustly. God always acts in justice or in mercy and the thing about
this is I think particularly as Western Christians in this day and age we've
come a little bit to expect grace and mercy and we think that anything else
is unjust. We cry out it isn't fair. We expect God to be
merciful. There's sort of a picture I heard of this. In part of preparing for this I read a
book by R.C. Sproul called The Holiness of God which I recommend. Thank you
Jonathan's heard of it. Yeah very good. It's that old. It's that old. But he tells
the analogy that he's a lecturer okay in a college and he tells this story. He
says that he's got 200 students in the class and he sets them an assignment as
part of the course and he tells them you've got to have the assignment in on
that day. If you're a moment late you get a fail. No questions asked. So the
day comes and a handful of students don't hand the assignment in and they
plead with him about excuses and couldn't quite do this and couldn't quite do
that and he relents. He says okay I'll give you a few more days and they hand it
in and he marks them fairly as he marked everybody else. In other words he
showed them a bit of mercy. Right three months later the next assignment's due
and he tells them exactly the same. The 200. He says exactly the same. Hand it in
on that day. Anyone's late. It's a fail. No questions. Gets to that day and guess
what? Quite a few more don't hand it in on that day and start pleading with him
and asking him to you know give him a bit of grace and can we have a few more
days and he says okay and he does that. And then a third time it happens and on
the third time he says you know you've got to hand it in on this day
otherwise it is a fail. About half the class don't hand it in and they plead
with him and he says no I've told you these were the rules you know. You hand
it in on that day you knew and if you don't do it it's a fail. But they said
but you did it before but you did it for those people but you did it before and
we tend to get a little bit like that as we think about grace and mercy and we
come to expect it when actually for God it's a matter of justice. We deserve
justice. You might get grace and mercy but we deserve justice. We live in a
world of injustice don't we? That's 900 postmasters. You know there's
wrongs done to you and me every day by other people but no matter how much
injustice is done to me by other people I've never suffered the slightest
injustice at the hand of God. You've never suffered the slightest injustice
at the hand of God. Though people may mistreat us God never does. We can't
accuse God for the injustices done to me by other people. My sin and your sin
means that we are guilty before God and fully deserving of his justice and he is
never unjust. We often blame God for injustices done to us and harbour bitter
feelings towards him and we think we deserve more grace. But just think about
that for a minute. The whole point of grace is it's undeserved. We can't
deserve more grace. It's undeserved. It's like this. If ten people sin and God
punishes five people and shows mercy to five people has he been unjust? The answer's
no. He's always just. He's shown justice to five people and mercy to five people.
God is never unjust and so here in this passage God demonstrates justice acting
justly to two cities and the surrounding area and showing mercy to four people
and that is absolutely his divine prerogative. So justice falls and these
passages remind us that God sets limits to his patience with us and that someday
he will act with justice. It's like the Apostle Paul as he's going around we
read in Acts 17 he reaches Athens and he sees loads of temples to different gods
and he starts speaking to the Greeks there and he says in the past God
overlooked your ignorance. In the past God overlooked your sin. In the past God
overlooked the fact that you ignored him but now he commands all men
everywhere to repent. There is a time and there is a day when God says enough
is enough and so his justice falls on a society because the outcry to him is so
great. Their sin is so grievous as we read in the previous chapter last week.
Even back in chapter 13 we read that they were sinning, they were wicked and
sinning greatly and so God says this is enough but before we get kind of
smug and think yeah well what they were doing was so bad look at how other
writers of the scriptures use this story. Isaiah in chapter 1 talks about
hypocrisy in worship. He talks about sacrifices but we could just as well say
standing here on a Sunday morning of arms in the air singing our songs and
praying prayers and Isaiah talks about those who are hypocritical in their
worship doing that on a Sunday but for the rest of the week denying God having
any change in their lives it will be worse for them than it was for Sodom and
Gomorrah. Look at Jesus in Matthew chapter 10 he says it will be worse for
any town that doesn't listen to the gospel than it was for Sodom and
Gomorrah. It's just all in the book all right. In Matthew 11 he says it'll be
worse for Capernaum where miracles were performed because they didn't respond
to the gospel than it was for Sodom and Gomorrah and Jude right at the end of
the New Testament talks about the fact Sodom and Gomorrah is an example of what
is to come. So what was it in Sodom and Gomorrah that was so wicked? It's easy
to jump into the whole area of sexual sin that is kind of well understood
about what was going on there but as so often with sexual sin there's actually
something else behind that some emotional insecurity some identity issue
some some some issue around being totally self-absorbed as an individual
and Chris did this last week and I want us to bring us back to it there's a the
answer lies in Ezekiel in Ezekiel chapter 16 and verse 49 we read this now
this was the sin of your sister Sodom she and her daughters were arrogant
overfed and unconcerned they did not help the poor and needy they were
haughty and did detestable things before me arrogant overfed and unconcerned it's
like a trend that they were arrogant overfed and unconcerned and as a
consequence they didn't help the poor and needy and as a consequence they were
proud and did detestable things and it's kind of like a traceable thing in many
western cultures and societies today including our own but before we sit here
and point the finger and say yeah that's right those societies and cultures are
made up of individuals and we're some of those individuals so what does this say
to us because we're not exempt you know are we arrogant what does that mean do
we think we are more important than other people it may be not here maybe
here maybe not here maybe at home in your house in your family do you think
you're more important than other members of your family maybe at workplace maybe
on your street you know we have to watch ourselves you know we do we think we're
right so often and we're not interested in anybody challenging us and giving us
a different view do we use words like well it's my right all of those things
are tinged from a place of arrogance that we just need to be careful are we
overfed we live in a society that has plenty and I know some of us struggle
with things on a daily basis but actually a lot of us in this room can
easily say yeah we're overfed we don't have a big problem we can choose which
supermarket to go to we can choose which which where to get our shopping and even
when we're overfed we still have plenty left that goes to waste or are we
unconcerned about others are we so preoccupied with our own lives and
ourselves that we don't have time to worry or think about anyone else
Mother Teresa said a life not lived for others is not a life the clear call in
this passage is of being preoccupied with our own lives of lining our own
nest that my way is the right way and that becomes something that we just get
sucked into so much in the world around us because society and marketing and
media is sending you those messages every hour of every day all that time
you're on your social media and those things are popping up it's all trying
to suck you in that you are the most important thing this is about you you
can have this you can get that you can do this and there's a clarion call in
this passage that the heart of God is to help the poor and needy reminds us in the
New Testament Paul writing that religion God our Father accepts as pure and holy
is this to look after orphans and widows in their distress and keep oneself from
being polluted by the world a great example this morning Phil thanks for
helping the poor and the needy in Ukraine but even here on our doorstep we
can be we can rise to that as well as God works in our hearts and if we don't
engage with these matters then we become proud and we can be drawn into detestable
things how do we avoid that well he starts with Jesus right it starts at the
cross let him transform your heart and my heart he has called us out of the
world he has called us into being a new creation he has brought us into the
kingdom of light he has brought us into the kingdom of the Sun that he loves we
have been made alive with Christ we have received mercy so let God soften your
heart and my heart and mold it in his hands and massage it and bring it back
to a place where we are used by him and respond to that so how do we respond to
this in conclusion I just want to look at four people in the passage very very
briefly start with Abraham and really this is what borrowed this from last
week but Abraham what's he doing about the state of society that we're talking
about here he's pleading with God isn't he he's pleading for God to have mercy
you know and we did that earlier this morning didn't we we prayed for this
nation and we're called to pray for the nation we're called to pray for the
society around us and we need to do that on our knees there are loads of prayer
meetings throughout the week in this that we can be a part of or even on our
own even when you're sat on the loo we can be praying and interceding for this
nation because boy oh boy does it need it and if that's too big and too
grandiose you can pray for God to intervene in the local school in the
street where you live in your family in your place of work in your neighbors in
your lives like that but we need to be like Abraham on our knees interceding
God will you please show mercy in this nation because we desperately desperately
need it we need a move of God to change something and shift something and change
the atmosphere and change the way that this life is being lived at the moment
there are people crying out and when we're praying early I'm praying that God
would raise up a younger generation whose hearts will be gripped by his Holy
Spirit we'll have the fire of God in there in their bowels to move them to
bring about transformation in this land but their passion for Jesus would be
such that they mean yes it doesn't matter what the cost is it doesn't
matter what where I end up with Lord I want to follow you and I'm prepared to
bring you into this nation and into this society and bring your values your
integrity your holiness and your love to this place and then there's a lot what
can we say about a lot of it way back in chapter 13 actually this all started
them in chapter 13 of Genesis and verse 10 so Abraham and Lot they both got
loads of servants loads of animals and their servants were arguing with each
other and having argy-bargy and so Abraham and Lot decided they ought to
separate to create a bit of space between them and Abraham generously lets
Lot let's Lot make the choice of where he wants to go first and so Lot looks
up and we read in verse 10 of chapter 13 Lot looked up and saw the whole plain
of Jordan was well watered like the Garden of the Lord like the land of
Egypt towards Zohar this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah so Lot
has looked up and based on pure what reads like pure logic this looks to make
sense if I go there because the land looks good looks good to my eyes this is
gonna work well and he's made logic made sense but he's actually ended up in a
bad place I don't know we don't read I don't know maybe he didn't pray you know
clearly Abraham has got a good relationship with God going on the
through the through the chapters we're reading here maybe Lot wasn't but it
seems like he made a decision on pure logic on his own gifts and abilities and
skills rather than perhaps listening to what God might be saying and he's and he
thought he was doing the right thing he thought this would be good for him and
for his herdsmen and servants and family and so he takes them off down there and
he ends up in a bad place look at what has happened as a consequence his life
is affected by the sinful state of those he's ended up living with messing with
his head he was willing to give his daughters to men of the town he lost
prospective husbands for his two girls he lost his wife he has to flee and if
you bear in mind in chapter 13 the whole point of separating was because Abraham
and lots families and herdsmen and all the rest of it got too big together by
the time we get to the end of chapter 19 he hasn't got any of them there's just
Lot and his two daughters what a tragic mistake making a decision on what seemed
logical what seemed to make sense and ending up in such a disastrous place I
want to say today maybe for you in your life you've made a decision at some
point that seemed to make sense the signs seem to be right the logic seemed
to be there and you found yourself now in a bit of a mess I want to say to you
this morning today just as in our story there was mercy for Lot there is mercy
for you today in Jesus to bring freedom and rescue from that place whether
that's you this morning I want to encourage you to respond to him and then
there's a lot of sons-in-law they didn't take it seriously they thought Lot was
joking maybe as you sat here this morning maybe that's you you don't quite take
this God thing seriously you don't take the idea that maybe God is going to
exercise justice and judge this world one day you don't quite take it
seriously that maybe God is going to exercise justice and judge you one day
and the idea that you're a sinner before a holy God is not something you've
really grasped and the voices around have drowned out the clear message I want
to say today is the day of salvation for you this morning if you are here
don't leave this building without doing business with God today is an
opportunity and then there was lots wife we're not told much about her we're not
really told why she looked back so this did she look back because she was
hankering after something you know in leaving a life of where there was
wickedness and evil was there things actually were vaguely appealing and
maybe for you this morning God is challenging you about leaving a place of
sin leaving something that you know is bad for you but actually you also have a
sense of enjoyment and pleasure about it and God is saying it's time to leave
and you're looking back thinking oh but there's a sense of loss oh but it's so
good oh but but you know actually long for it I want to tell you that is a lie
in the name of Jesus that is a lie there is nothing good there there was
nothing good in Sodom and it's time this morning to press on and take hold of
that for which Jesus has taken hold of you and I close with this the the the
the violence that was exercised against Sodom and Gomorrah in this passage pales
into significance compared to the violence of an incident in the New
Testament where Jesus the Son of God hung on the cross and took on him every
single one of those sins that was going on in Sodom every single one of those
sins that were going on in Gomorrah that were going on in all the towns around
that area at that time every single one of those things that has been going on
ever since that time to the day he hung on a cross every single one of those
sins happened ever since Jesus hung on that cross to this present day and every
single one of those sins that will happen in the future Jesus took them all
on him on the cross and the wrath of God was poured out on him as God exercised
justice on his own beloved son that you and I could know the mercy of God in his
place and the cry this morning is that we would get a hold of that and that we
would get a hold of the mercy of Jesus that is there for the taking not to sit
there and evaluate and pontificate and think oh I wonder if this is true or not
what about other gods what about religious Jesus hung on the cross to
take away the sins of this world that includes everything about your sin in
the whole of your life hallelujah but more importantly he took the justice
that was yours the judgment that was coming to you and me was taken by Jesus
on that cross that you and I could walk free in the mercy of God and that is why
we sing hallelujah to those songs this morning that is we say yes Jax the
mercy of God is a fantastic thing that brings freedom it's not about just
making my life better and making it good because very often we doesn't we will
have trouble it is about being set free from the justice of a heavenly father
who is absolutely right to judge us for the way that we live our lives and the
sin entangles us but in the death of his son has brought freedom

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Summary of Sermon: Big Questions About God
This sermon explores the story of Abraham and Sarah from Genesis 18, focusing on the themes of faith, prayer, and God's character.

The passage: Abraham is visited by three strangers who turn out to be angels. They tell him Sarah will have a son despite her old age. Sarah laughs in disbelief, but God hears her and questions her lack of faith.

Key Points:

God's Immensity:
- We can't limit God by our understanding.
- Even when things seem impossible, God can do more than we imagine (Ephesians 3:20).
Truth and Grace:
- God desires truthfulness, but He also offers forgiveness (shown by Sarah's lie and God's continued presence).
Imposter Syndrome and God's Love:
- We may feel like frauds, but God's love is unconditional.
Prayer as Invitation:
- Prayer is a conversation, an opportunity to participate in God's plans.
- Like a parent including a child in a task, God invites us to be involved.
Abraham's Intercession:
- Abraham prays for Sodom and Gomorrah, arguing for justice and the preservation of the righteous.
- This act highlights the power of prayer and our ability to intercede for others.
God's Justice and Mercy:
- The story raises the question: Can God be both Just and Merciful?
- The sermon suggests the answer is found in Jesus, who satisfies both by paying the penalty for our sins.
Does Prayer Change God's Mind?:
- The sermon argues that prayer doesn't change God's ultimate plan, but it can change how He accomplishes it.
- In this case, God rescues Lot from Sodom showing a different, better outcome than Abraham anticipated.

*Ending*:
The sermon concludes with a prayer thanking God for His love and mercy,
acknowledging Jesus' sacrifice,
and asking for the continued work of God's word in the listener's life.

Transcription

I'm going to read the first part now then I'll talk about it and then she'll come back
and read the second part.
And I'm reading from the New Living Translation.
The Lord appeared again to Abraham near the Oak Grove belonging to Marmory.
On Sunday Abraham was sitting at the entrance to his tent during the hottest part of the
day and he looked up and he noticed three men standing nearby.
Well when he saw them he ran to meet them and welcomed them bowing low to the ground.
My Lord he said, if it pleases you stop here awhile rest in the shade of this tree while
water is brought to wash your feet and since you've honoured your servant with this visit
let me prepare some food to refresh you before you continue on your journey.
All right he said, do as you have said.
So Abraham ran back to the tent and he said to Sarah,
hurry get three large measures of your best flour, knead it into dough and bake some bread.
Then Abraham ran out to the herd and chose a tender calf and gave it to his servant who
quickly prepared it and when the food was ready Abraham took some yogurt and milk
and the roasted meat and he served it to the men and as they ate Abraham waited on them
in the shade of the trees.
Where is your, Sarah your wife the visitors asked. Oh she's inside the tent Abraham replied
and then one of them said, I will return to you about this time next year
and your wife Sarah will have a son.
Well Sarah was listening to this conversation from the tent and Abraham and Sarah were both
very old by this time and Sarah was long past the age of having children
so she laughed silently to herself and said, how could a worn out woman like me
enjoy such pleasure especially when my master my husband is also so old
and then the Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh?
Why did she say can an old woman like me have a baby?
Is anything too hard for the Lord and I will return about this time next year
and Sarah will have a son and Sarah was afraid so she denied it saying, I didn't laugh
but the Lord said, no you did laugh.
Thank you and let's have the first slide up about it, we can go on to the second slide.
I don't know if somebody said to you that the Lord had appeared to them
what do you think that might look like, what would you expect?
I'm guessing you might expect them to describe the experience and what they felt like
but this passage isn't like that at all, we're not told how anybody felt and in fact a big chunk
of what Anne's just read was full of the case study arrangements and it's very down to earth
and concrete and you might wonder what was going on but you know for me one of the things
that tells me it just it feels so authentic you know if you ask me can I remember anything I was
doing on the 22nd of November last year I would say I'm not close but I could look at my diary
couldn't have I have absolutely no recollection of that day whatsoever even only it was last year
but you know I couldn't remember where I was and what I was doing and what I was going to eat
and who said what on the 22nd of November 1963 even though I was only eight years old
why was that because that was that was when John F Kennedy was assassinated
and I can remember I can remember the where the when the what the how and it seems to be you know
Abraham and Sarah had the experience of God and so all these little details that would otherwise
inconsequential are imprinted on their mind it says in Hebrews that sometimes we
can entertain angels without realizing it but I think I think Abraham did realize something
and by the end he realized a lot more because he will have an experience of God
next slide
yeah so um Abraham and Sarah are old and you let's capture the scene as it was described in the
passage Abraham and Sarah is inside the tent and if you've ever been camping you know about being
inside you can hear pretty much exactly what's going on outside the tent but other people can't see
you so she's in the tent and she's listening and the three visitors are outside the tent talking to
Abraham and actually it says that they had their back to the tent and Sarah laughs but she doesn't
laugh out loud she laughs to herself so how on earth did they know how on earth did they know
and who does that remind us of who else do we read about in scripture who knew what was in
people's heart before they spoke and we think of a story like in John 1 about Jesus and Nathaniel
we think about it described elsewhere and it's from this point on in the passage that the
the main figure of the three described as the Lord because that's the point when they realized
only God himself could have known this and and the story begins with Abraham
but actually it's clear that the focus isn't on Abraham it's actually on Sarah it's on one
hurting woman and that's what the focus is on even when the spokesman when the Lord says to
Abraham what's going to happen doesn't say you know Abraham I'll be back next year and you'll be a
father is Abraham I'll be back next year and Sarah will hold the baby at her arms so he's
Sarah is in focus here and and and Sarah I feel for Sarah you know she's been through
a lot in life and in faith her life has not been easy she has longed to have a child and it has not
happened she has longed for prayer to be answered she's longed for the promise of God to be fulfilled
and it has not happened she has experienced failure you know she was the one with the idea about
the servant girl Hagar and that she experienced failure and disappointment and I've taken this
slide from reading from a translation of the Hebrew by Robert Alter Robert Alter is a professor
of Hebrew he's a Jewish actually a Jewish professor of Hebrew at the University of California in
Berkeley and I use his translation because he sticks very close to the original Hebrew and
it brings out the emphasis on the impossibility of this and also of how Sarah was feeling about
herself Abraham and Sarah were old advanced in years Sarah no longer had a woman's flow
she has post-menopausal she will not conceive and and Sarah laughed I've read in one book
that it's described as Sarah chuckle I don't think this is a chuckle I think this is a bitter
painful laugh you know she'd had all those hopes maybe once and now some some man has
showed up and reopened the whole thing again by promising her that she'll have a child again
and and and she's laughed inwardly and said after being shriveled shall I have pleasure
and my husband is old and Robert Oliver says the word pleasure kind of connotes sexual pleasure so
not only is she post-menopausal but I mean she's not in the sex with her husband successful sex
I'm not going to go into that but you know that's how she feels about this she is she is
hurting and in pain next slide
and the Lord said he's anything too hard for the Lord
that's a good you see Sarah Sarah had been looking at her own situation
and her analysis of her own situation probably wasn't wrong
but God is inviting her not to look at her situation but to look at him
and I think there's something something glorious in that these are words to hang on to
is anything beyond the law and we'll ask probably at least a couple of years
there's a verse in the New Testament I haven't been able to shake off
and it's in Ephesians 3 20 actually James said that in the worship referred to it
it says God is able to do immeasurably more than anything we can ask or imagine
so God is able to do so much more than we can ask or imagine
and I kind of want to hold on to that word and say God do in our midst things we thought impossible
do more than we can imagine and and reach out beyond our own situation to the greatness of God
next slide please
and Sarah lied and she said I didn't laugh and he said yes you did you laughed
you know God only deals in truth there is no white wash no spin no bullshit with God
he only deals in truth and I'm guessing this was painful for Sarah
and when God points out sin in our life that can hurt and I felt that pain
but you know it's wholesome too because it's truth and and hard truth is still better than the soft lie
next slide I love this and we're going to I want you to think about this
and cheer up you're a worse sinner than you ever dared imagine and you're more loved than you ever dare hope
I mean that's a very significant truth I mean take the first bit of it you know if you ever
start to feel one really not such a bad sort after all you are deceived and in a place of danger
so the truth about I don't think we should wallow in our sins I don't think we should think about
our sins more than we need to repent of them but nevertheless the truth that we have sinned grossly
is true about us but God loves us more than we ever thought possible and actually
we can put those two things together because they're not kind of opposites they reinforce
one another really put it this way have you heard of imposter syndrome so that's when
you feel you're a bit of a phony a fraud and you're concerned that you might be found out
maybe you think more that people just knew this or that about me they wouldn't they wouldn't think
so much of me and that might be true but you know the glorious thing about this truth is
that it doesn't wash with God God already knows all the truth about us the God who knows exactly
how bad we are also loves us more than we can ever imagine there are no disappointments there are no
things that can come out of the cupboard that are going to disappoint God
God loves us knowing us exactly for who we are next slide and we need you back
so we're now in Genesis still in 18 but 16 to 33
then the men got up from their meal and looked out towards Sodom and as they left Abraham went
with them to send them on their way should I hide my plan from Abraham the Lord asked
for Abraham will certainly become a great and mighty nation and all the nations of the earth
will be blessed through him I have singled him out so that he will direct his sons and their
families to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just then I will do for Abraham
all that I have promised so the Lord told Abraham I have heard a great outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah
because their sin is so flagrant I am going down to see if their actions are as wicked as I have
heard and if not I want to know the other men turned and headed towards Sodom but the Lord
remained with Abraham and Abraham approached him and said will you sweep away both the righteous
and the wicked suppose you find 50 righteous people living there in the city will you still
sweep it away and not spare it for their sakes surely you wouldn't do such a thing
destroying the righteous along with the wicked why you would be treating the righteous and the wicked
exactly the same and surely you wouldn't do that should not the judge of all the earth do what is
right and the Lord replied if I find 50 righteous people in Sodom I will spare the entire city
for their sake but then Abraham spoke again well since I have begun let me speak further
to my Lord even though I am but dust on ashes suppose there are only 45 righteous people
rather than 50 will you destroy the whole city for a lack of five and the Lord said
I will not destroy it if I find 45 righteous people there but then Abraham pressed his request
further suppose it was only 40 and the Lord replied I will not destroy it for the sake of the 40
oh please don't be angry my Lord Abraham pleaded let me speak suppose only 30 righteous people
are found and the Lord replied I will not destroy it if I find 30 then Abraham said oh since I have
dared to speak to the Lord let me continue suppose there are only 20 and the Lord replied
then I will not destroy it for the sake of the 20 well finally Abraham said oh Lord
please don't be angry with me if I speak one more time suppose only 10 are found there and the Lord
replied then I will not destroy it for the sake of 10 and when the Lord had finished his conversation
with Abraham he went on his way and Abraham returned to his tent thank you next slide please
how do you think of prayer do you think of prayer as a duty as something you do for God
supposing it's more like an invitation to participate an invitation to share with God
in his plans and purposes I see what I think I think prayers like um imagine a young mother
with a toddler and and she says um would you like to make some biscuits and so the toddler is very
excited about it and joins in the making of the biscuits now the truth is the mother is more than
capable of making the biscuits without any help from the toddler and in fact the task will probably
be easier and tidier without the child's help but she does it because she wants to involve them
because it's good to do things with your child and because it's good for the child to learn things
and develop skills and have fun and I think that's why God calls us to pray because he wants to
involve him he wants to share us in what he's doing next slide well actually no we're not next
slide what we're gonna say so and and there's something very charming about this conversation
that Abraham has with God um you know it's both respectful um Abraham is
you know he approaches God carefully doesn't he he's not he's not demanding he's not blustering
he's respectful and yet there's great intimacy it's almost like a conversation between two friends
and as well see Abraham is also very frank about what's bothering him so Abraham is kind of opening
up to God in this and we'll see that the invitation is not Abraham praying for Abraham
Abraham is standing before the face of God on behalf of others in truth Abraham is probably
particularly thinking about his nephew Lot who lives in Sodom and that's a great privilege you
know that we can stand before the face of God and pray on behalf of somebody who is precious to us
next slide we need to go back one so the Lord told the Abraham I have heard a great
outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah because their sin is so flagrant I am going down to see if their
actions are as wicked as I have heard if not I want to know and before we get on to Abraham's prayer
it seems to me there's another prayer going on there's a great outcry and prayer I think has
been rightly described as prayer is a kind of it's a raging against the things that offend the
heart of God you know it's a bringing to God the pain and suffering we bring it before God we rage
against this messy and broken world and there's an outcry going on here also I think tells us
something about Sodom and Gomorrah that what's happening in Sodom and Gomorrah isn't just people
having fun it's not victimless crime there is great suffering and people are being hurt
but even then notice you know it's a nice little touch God wants to see for himself
he wants to do the right thing he's not taking its second hand he wants to establish the facts
to know the truth next slide and do you recognize that picture been on the news a lot this is
Daniel and John in who is you know hacked to death by a nutter with a sword and you know
I think I'm going to imagine the outcry to God when we see pain and suffering in this world
will be read in Gaza or in Israel or in Ukraine or in other places around the world with this
great suffering we cry out to God on behalf of people who are going through terrible times
next slide
what was in the Sodom and Gomorrah and was it worse than everywhere else
yeah you might think that the answer to the first question is quite easy after all
the word Sodom has given its name to the word Sodomy which describes anal sex so you think
you might think you know the answer and there's a bit more to it than that was it worse than
everywhere else I think Sodom was wicked but if you look at how Sodom and Gomorrah described in
the New Testament there were worse places and it's an example and actually it's an example
of how God could save the righteous and will finally punish the unrighteous next
this is a verse that people don't always know but it's quite important
now this was the sin of Sodom she and her daughters were arrogant overfed and unconcerned
they did not help the poor and needy they were haughty and did detestable things before me
you know I just I suspect this sentence could be written about pretty much any Western nation
Sodom and Gomorrah wicked places but not uniquely so and I think that also explains
more of this outcry you know there's more to Sodom and Gomorrah and arrogant overfed and
unconcerned they did not help the poor and needy next slide
and Abraham says surely you wouldn't do such a thing destroying the righteous
along with the wicked why you would be treating the righteous and the wicked exactly the same
surely you wouldn't do that should not the judge of all the earth do what is right
and you see what I mean about frankness see Abraham is troubled by what he thinks God is about to do
but he brings his concern to God I think sometimes you know when we when we are struggling in our
life with what God is doing or not doing I think there's a temptation to kind of back off a bit
and we yeah we back off actually Abraham's is the better example he takes the stuff that's
bothering him about what he sees God doing or not doing and he takes it to God and he addresses God
about it he pours out to God what's on his heart his concern
shall not the judge of all the earth do right I think that's a beautiful phrase and
I think it's a phrase that helps us but what horrid things happen in this world we remember
shall not the judge of all the earth do right I think it also this may be an aside but it also
I think confirms to me the teaching consistently of the Bible that there will be a final judgment
she you've all heard the expression somebody says well life's not fair and the truth is if this life
is all there is then there is deep unfairness is that some good people suffer very badly
and some evil people enjoy trouble free lives so the promise of final judgment is also linked to
God's goodness the judge of the earth will do what is right and I think in situations where we
can't understand what's going on to it's good to hold on to this I think that Abraham's doing he's
basing his prayer on the character of God and I think that's a really good example you know
we pray to God because he is good because he loves us because he's interested in us and because he
wants to hear what we have to say we base our prayers on who God fundamentally is and that
gives us a respectful boldness to take to God whatever's troubling us next slide please
Abraham does not ask for mercy he's not asking for favors he's looking for simple justice
who are false it's true read that passage that's very clear he's he's concerned for
jump justice and Abraham's concern was that God was going to punish good people along with that
they were going to treat them no differently so his concern was that righteous people probably
thinking of his nephew love were going to be treated along with the wicked
but there is a flip side to this that we need to think about a bit and understand the issue it
raises clearly a good judge will not convict innocent people but wouldn't you also expect a good God
to convict the guilty so why is that not a problem for us or is it a problem next slide
now let me recognize this person
Paul indeed I think it's it's at a Natalie elfic so she's the MP for Dover and there's been
allegations in the press recently that she'd kind of tried to lobby I think justice secretary to get
her then husband's trial for sexual misdemeanor delayed and I don't know if she did it or not
you know that's not the point but you can see that actually kind of trying to interfere with
the process of justice on behalf of a close relative is seen as a bad thing
so how is it that I can pray to God on behalf of people who are precious to me how is it that I
can pray to God for mercy from me how does that how is that possible without offending the principle
that God is the judge of all the earth should do what is right
and I'm sorry if I raise the problem for people you hadn't previously had but nevertheless I think
it's I think it is there and I think the the answer to that of course is to be found in Christ
so Jesus is the answer to this but let's unpack that a bit often in the bible sin is described as
debt so in the law prayer we say forgive us our debts so imagine the situation you are dragged
into court and on account of a huge debt which you cannot afford to pay and and you're there in the
dock and and all the lawyers are lined up and everything else and the judge starts the proceedings
and said well how much does the prisoner owe and on the prosecution table there is a kind of
look at computer screens and a fumbling of papers and then one of the barters gets to his feet and
said uh your honor it appears that a third party has cleared the debt and the judge would then say
well I don't even understand why we're here and he turns to you and said you're free to go
justice is not offended in those circumstances that is not an unjust thing a debt may be paid by
somebody else and that's why we need Jesus Jesus paid our debts you know if God could simply say oh
yeah it'd be um Steve's a nice bloke I was going to forgive his sins but based on nothing else
then God would not be just and Christ would not have had to die Christ goes to the cross
in order that our debts would be paid in full and in Christ both the justice of God
and the mercy of God are fully revealed next slide does prayer change God's mind
this is this is actually quite a tricky question um and I read in one of the books I was looking at
he says well you know Abraham argues God down from saving Sodom and Gomorrah if he can find
50 righteous people to saving Sodom and Gomorrah if he can find only 10 and superficially at least
that does seem to be what's happening and it may even be what Abraham thought was happening
but but when we study the text more closely you see there's a bit more to this than meets the eye
first of all the concern that God would destroy the righteous with the unrighteous
and would destroy things even if there were 50 people around that originates from Abraham not
from God God didn't actually say that that was that was what Abraham's worried about but God
doesn't say that you also know that that what happens next is both different from and better than
Abraham had foreseen remember Abraham stops when he gets to 10 and if God had only done what Abraham
asked for Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot and his family would all have perished what God does is
different he rescues the righteous he takes them out of the situation it never seems to have occurred
to Abraham that that was a possibility so God does something different from what Abraham was expecting
and because he rescues even three never mind 10 God does something that is better than Abraham
asked for and nevertheless if I was to try and answer this question in a sentence
and sort of thinking about the kind of relative position of the parties like the mother with
that toddler making biscuits I would say yes prayer does change God's mind and it is essential
but only to the extent that God himself wants this desires it and calls for it
next slide
we'll pray now but I want to leave the first minute of prayer just for a time of quiet well
a minute silence and just just ask God about what you've been hearing and say to God anything that
you feel you need to see so we'll give a minute silence and then I'll finish with a few words
and we'll start that we'll start that now
Father we thank you simply that you are a good God and that you love us more than we can imagine
and all we do want to commit ourselves and those who are precious to your justice and mercy
and we thank you for Jesus Christ who died and wiped away our debts we thank you that the promise
of Christ to wipe away our debts is available to anyone who really wants it all we have to do
is to put our trust in Christ so Father we thank you for that and Lord if you've spoken to us this
morning and and we hope that you have spoken to us we hope that we have heard and discerned your
word may your word continue to work in us may it bless us and do us good in Jesus name amen
you

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Transcript

have the word. It's been hearing this weekend and reading online and the amazing things that are
happening. You know we talk about how bad the world is and how difficult things are getting
and how challenging they are and it's easy to get despondent but on the flip side we always,
in those moments, we've always got to look to see what God is doing and his power at work
is changing people and is doing amazing things and we do live in exciting times, challenging
times certainly and even as God moves more in power there'll be more challenges ahead
but we are seeing, you know, in our own lives, in our own community, in our own church what
God is doing and beginning and continuing to do and a few weeks ago, I'm going to take a break
today from our genesis journey and a few weeks or months ago at the edge on a Thursday morning
we had a visit from a whole team of people from Matasey Hall, Green Pastures, which is a community
of people. Some of you will remember Pete Kavanagh who came to preach here,
powerful word but funny guy, remember him? Yeah, but he's, I don't even know, maybe we'll find out
low, you know, he's involved in that. I don't know if he's in charge or whatever he is but he's,
and he brought a team over on a Thursday morning and we were just blown away by the life and the
faith and the energy and the excitement that these guys and girls had from very,
very difficult backgrounds and challenging situations and yet the power of God had changed
lives and they were just so full of the life and just, and you just see again, just renew, just the
gospel is a wonderful, wonderful thing that changes people's lives from the inside out.
And so what we said we'd do is we would invite some of the people from Matasey Hall to come and
speak on a Sunday morning and so that's what we've got. So I'm going to introduce them and leave them
to whatever they've got for us but we've got Darren and Wayne and Christina, that's right,
and I'm going to invite Darren to come and speak now. Darren is
one of the leaders of the whole setup and he'll be able to explain more clearly what he does
than I can and he's going to speak for a while and then Wayne and Christina are going to share
some of their story and trust that you're going to be really encouraged and blessed by what we
hear this morning. So thank you, now let me pray for you and we'll go. Father, we thank you that
your power at work is changing lives and we want to thank you for real life testimony and I want
to pray for Darren and now as he speaks, Lord God, I pray that you're filling with your Holy Spirit
for Wayne and Christina, give them confidence and boldness to speak all that is in their hearts,
all that they've seen you do, Lord God, and we just want to share with them in the celebration
of the power of God that changes and transforms lives, not just today but forever, in Jesus name,
Amen. Thank you so much.
So blessed. We have been so blessed this morning, just been lost in worship, it's just wonderful.
Something special happening here and you are so right, something is happening across the nation.
The Lord spoke to us prophetically through Isaiah 43 18, behold I'm doing a new thing,
can't you see the green shoots of revival happening, behold I'm going to bring life
into the wilderness and the hyenas are going to worship me. You are in revival,
we all think revival is you're going to turn up here and suddenly heaven's open,
but when winter turns to April, it's the green shoots that show you're in the new season,
look for the green shoots, that is the evidence you're in a new season, it is happening everywhere
I'm going, I'm seeing green shoots moves of the Holy Spirit, like nothing in history is seen,
behold I'm doing a new thing, it's going to move the spirit, I'm telling you that's going to
transform our nation, I'm telling you and I also have a word maybe, I've only got 10 minutes of me
which is absolutely fine, I'm going to let these the students speak, but I really have this word
that just kept coming about this church, unspoilt, you have something here that is so precious
and unspoilt, I mean you come here, I say this respectfully, it's not a place of great wealth
or grandeur, but you have a wealth that is far greater than material wealth, you have the
presence of the Holy Spirit here and I believe that God has kept you, whether that's in the
leadership or your decision making, because I kind of saw a tribe and you know when you go through
the Amazon rainforest and suddenly you come across a tribe that's been kept for years, almost unspoilt
culture values and I could see that, I really felt that word for the church, that the Lord
has kept you from certain things, he set you apart as a community because you have something
unspoilt here, something very precious and you know a beautiful time of worship, you feel the
presence of Jesus, gosh I might just sit down now and yeah I oversee Massey Hall training centers,
formerly Dissemblies of God Bible College, 50 years Dissemblies of God Bible College, we are not doing
anything new, we are just honoring the legacy, the heritage of the mighty men and women of God
that walked at that place, it was going to be bulldozed when the AOG moved over to Manchester
but God said no these grounds are precious to me, that was a place when I was there in 2004-2007,
gosh where people were trained up to go on missions around the world, well we are training
men and women up to go on missions but to our locality, we need to send missionaries to our
nation because I have never seen our nation so broken, so bankrupt in many ways, in Isaiah 60 it
says the darkness is upon the land but the thick darkness is on the people, there is a darkness
upon people now that is so thick but I don't get scared about that and I just sense revival is
imminent and Jesus, but didn't Jesus say we need some preparation, the harvest is plentiful and the
workers of you, so where are the workers of you coming from, God gave us Dissemblies of God Bible
College, a place where these men and women would never had a chance to sit on those grounds,
never had a chance to do a three-year degree but God has rose up a generation, I call them the King
Davids, who was one of the greatest leaders in the Bible, David, where did he come from, what happened
in his life, well he was overlooked, he wasn't first in line, he wasn't the first pick but
Samuel said no there's somebody else that's going to be a great leader, there's someone else that's
going to be the next pioneer, the next visionary, the next builder, the next creator, the next
support worker, the next whoever it may be, he's in the fields right now, he's
overlooked and God is rising up a generation that have been overlooked, a generation that have
gone through difficult circumstances, a generation perhaps like David that have been homeless,
being wrote off by life, being told that they'll never amount to anything but God is rising
that generation up and has called them to matters and they are being trained with theology,
NVQ health and social care level three, we're training them to be disciples before leaders,
you know, I say this so respectfully, all leaders are Christians but not all leaders are
disciples, you know, we've got to look at discipleship, servanthood, sacrifice, take up my cross
every single day, follow Jesus Christ and it's like God has brought these precious men and women
to the college where I am in awe, we have 45 of men and women wrote off by the the world that are
worshipping in the chapel every day for an hour, they're learning theology, Peter Kavana, the head
of theology and spiritual development and they're learning, they're growing, I said Lord why are you
bringing, why are you bringing this beautiful generation here to the grounds and the Lord
said their hearts have not yet been tainted by religion, you know, Jesus says, Jesus says in the
book of Revelation I stand at the door and knock, that's not a salvation message, it's Jesus trying
to speak to the church but we've become so busy, so trapped with all of the Sunday morning stuff
and Jesus says I'm going to rise up a remnant, I'm going to rise up a group of people, I'm going to
rise up and they may not be perfect and they may have been battling through some stuff but they're
teachable and they're like blank hammers where they're like sponges absorbing all of the stuff
we're teaching at Matheson, it's beautiful, they're growing, they're learning and it's a safe place to
take your mask off and stumble, we have to stumble safely, I have learned more through stumbling
than I ever have from success, you know, we live in a world now where the moment you stumble as a
Christian that's it, you're wrote off but we've got to walk and journey with each other
when we make mistakes, let's get up and grow and learn like David, the man after God's own heart,
so we can journey with our boys and now we're sending them out doing missions work
from the college, they do practical social care missions to the poor, the broken, the hurting,
the elderly, the widows, the orphans, the outcasts, the destitute, all of those that Jesus says go to
you, go to them, in fact Jesus says in Matthew 25 if you truly are a disciple of mine the evidence
of that is you'll have a heart to go to the widows, the orphans, the outcasts, the homeless
and those in hospitals and prisons, so they're going to work, they're going out serving,
Mathesi, the whole creation of Mathesi, the vision of Mathesi is not hey look at us what a great place
it is, it's to serve the local church, how can we serve you with the generation of workers that will
serve, that will love, that will commit themselves to the poor and just help the vision that's going
on on here, so my own little journey and just a few scriptures, I'll try and get off at 10 past
so give me a nudge when it's 10 past but I did love it when you said about your men's group,
if my wife was there she'd have give me a little nudge right there in the in the ridge you know
when you said about men don't listen to instruction you know she'd have just give me a little little
nudge one of those things but she'd have also said can you please bring it to the men's group
why they can't open cardboard boxes properly, I don't know about you but but have you ever tried
to open an apple juice box, it's got the little lines and I try and get my scissors and I'll cut
here and I'll cut here or I'll do this on any cardboard box and I don't know whether it's a man
thing or a darren thing but I'll go I'll follow it and then it sprouts out or shoots out like a
fountain all over the place, my wife will get some scissors like this she'll go and it's the most
beautiful flow, is that just me or or do men generally have an issue, a cardboard box, so I was
a royal marine commando, I was searching for many things in life, maybe like some people here,
I didn't want to know Jesus although I had a sense from birth that I was on this earth to do greater
things, you've all got that, you know I don't know where you are with the Lord but you're born with
a sense of eternity, purpose, destiny, I didn't want to know church, I always felt church was
boring, I didn't know this type of church, priests and dog collars and all of that stuff, boring
songs but I always had but I always, that was my negative view of church honestly and but I always
had a sense of more that there was a God and I was shot through both my legs and I remember in
my lowest moment and I just said I remembered the Jesus from my Sunday school, Jesus from
school assembly and I said Jesus if you're real will you heal my legs, one broken night just
crying out to the Lord, all my bravado gone just weeping and crying and to cut a long story short
four and a half inches of my femur bone just grew back, you know signs, wonders, miracles,
must follow those as well as love for the poor and the broken and the hurting.
In the book of James it says religion that is pure and faultless is to keep ourselves polluted
from the world so we have to talk about purity, you can't just have a social gospel you know
we're either too far this way or too far this way but you know he's called us to be pure and
then to look after the widows and orphans in their distress so you have the the pure and the poor
and then you see the power of God come as well when you've got those three together I'm telling
you now and then I rose up from that hospital bed left the marines but my heart was burdened
for the poor and the broken and the hurting. I just had this compulsion came across David
Wilkerson's crossing the switchblade after only eight months as a Christian and sleeping homeless
had nowhere to live after the marines but had God's call upon my life stripped me down bare
all I had was Jesus and that's why we go for the poor and the needy and the broken and the hurting
because they they may not ever have a Ferrari may not ever have caviar but Jesus says I'll always
take care of their leads but I will be their treasure and all I had was Jesus Christ the
clothes on my back but I felt like the wealthiest person in the world and I learned some great
lessons that Christ is my treasure that I didn't need a great amount of money I didn't need even
a career then you know he was my everything the love the guidance the trust the faith that was
built every day he took care of my every need and he directed me overseas to work with David
Wilkerson amongst the broken crossing the switchblade then I hopped on to YWAM's
missions trip to China just wanting to know more about why the broken and the hurting poverty
injustice slavery and all of those things and then the Lord taught me to Massey Hall Bible
College in 2-4 and 2-7 and I just wouldn't shut up about the poor and the broken I felt like the
weeping prophet Jeremiah and I remember when I left there 2-7 the Lord put a calling upon my
life and we set up our first lighthouse hostel in in Rotherham and the songs that you played
today amazingly are songs that have journeyed with us all of our all of our life all of our
all the time setting up projects so we set up our first hostel and I hate the word hostel
and let's call them family homes a 15 bed in Rotherham but they were just a place where we
set the right culture the values it was never going to be a place where we just put men in there
and saw them on benefits in sickness and just stay there for the rest of their life God had more
for them and my hero is William Boo, Salvation Army hostels from very very early years where he
was able to put the social the supernatural and spiritual development under one roof
and that's what we did we just set a culture where Christ honored him made sure we were right
with ourselves purity and holiness we prayed constantly over these these hostels and we started
to see amazing changes and transformation broken men just rising to a destiny and a calling and
then over the next 15 years another one and another one we took over blocks of flats a
whole block of flats in Chesterfield notorious blocks of flats it's not hard once you've got
a culture protect your culture we grew and protected our culture we never compromised
the core values of why we saw growth no one got any glory every place we did we honored Jesus
we kept those simple values and we saw moves of the Holy Spirit a whole block of flats Jesus
Bible studies didn't make sense 15 years later but the Lord said this you know we're only touching
the surface here we need the next generation of workers our towns and cities are broken
God spoke to me through Nehemiah slavery is like no other time in history but we don't hear it
preach much in church you know it's not a calling to reach the poor it's a command
it's not a request by God it's a responsibility there are three thousand scriptures in the Bible
that tell us to reach the poor the destitute the outcast and when we do we honor God you know in
Jeremiah 22 16 my my favorite scripture in the Bible about King Josiah we all talk about this
man of God who was holy and and brought spiritual revival and reform like Nehemiah but he says this
in 22 16 he defended the cause of the poor and needy and so all went well is that not what it
means to know me declares the Lord three power points there he defended the cause of the poor
and needy defended in the Hebrew means to set a straight course no matter what I do no matter
what we do he's saying no matter how we are always going to defend the cause of the poor
and the needy it's going to be ingrained in our in our strategies our memorandums our vision of
the church whatever we do we're going to defend the cause of the poor and the needy the cause
you know their well-being their hopes their dreams their education opportunities
you know we can tick a box with an outreach we can tick a box with a with a coffee but that's
more about making us feel better you know God's called us to defend the cause and the rights of
the poor and the needy and he wraps it up under the word injustice and justice in Micah 6 8 it
says I've told your man what to do what does the Lord require of you to do justice to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God but the Jeremiah scriptures are finished now it's powerful he said
he defended the cause of the poor and the needy and all went well is that not what it means to
to know me declares the Lord if we go backwards on that one if we don't have a heart for the poor
and the needy and the broken the adult elderly the widows the outcast the destitute the oppressed and
those who are struggling with prejudice racism on all of those things that's wrapped under the
banner of injustice this isn't about homelessness this morning this isn't about drugs it's about
injustice that banner that we operate under it's unjust that people are struggling with addictions
it's unjust that people don't have the right access to education because they live in a certain
area it's unjust that that that people are battling with with mental health issues and
they struggle with this lonely in their home isolated it's unjust that there are 60 000
children in our nation in care homes and we've got empty rooms to foster and adopt these children
religion that is pure and faultless is to look after the widows and orphans in distress
it's our responsibility as the church of Jesus Christ it will challenge us it will take us to
that point of I foster me and my wife foster we look after a 12 year old boy did I do it hop
skipping and jumping no because that's my home but when God says I'll be a father to the fatherless
it's when he puts his spirit in you men and you start to become a father to those kids now
on the estates in youth clubs who don't have dads that's all about injustice reaching out to
the broken the fatherless the lost the widows the orphans and all of those things and you know
it's glorious the blessings and the power of the holy spirit fall upon those who give themselves
to the poor and the broken you know the blessings are through the bible those who give themselves to
the poor lack nothing proverbs 1917 he was gracious to a poor man lends to the lord and he will repay
him for his good deeds and finally isaiah 58 10 if you give yourself not just do a small measure
but if you give yourself to the hungry satisfy the desire of the afflicted
then your light will rise in darkness your gloom will become like midday the lord will continually
guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places and give strength to your bones and you
will be like a water garden and like a sprinter of water whose waters do not do not fall what
incredible blessings promises of god move to the spirit you're like nothing and what does it seem
of the conditions for those that gives themselves to the poor and the needy and the broker and the
impressed supernatural blessings of the holy spirit you know we can all pray for revival
but i want to suggest that we all need to look at what are our hearts like towards the afflicted
and the broken are we filling these 3 000 scriptures in the bible to help the lonely
the affirmed the elderly the widows and the orphans and i think this church is doing it
very nicely by the way okay so that's the remit of the college god gave it back to us
after 15 years miraculously the aog moved out and the lord said the harvest is plentiful the training
the workers are few so god gave us the assemblies of god bible college the very place where the
vision was birthed 15 years before and now it's a bible college that's training up men and women
to go and reach the poor and the broken and the hurting and isiah 58 to go and rebuild our broken
walls our infrastructure the education system the school system the political system everything that
pushed jesus christ out now i'm telling you that revival will permeate every area of life and
that's all that we're doing at the college the same thing that's been going 50 years these men
and women are heroes their courage is remarkable they love jesus and they're out there in the world
serving him every single day wayne do you want to go and share uh seven or eight minutes your
testimony young man and then christina
new crowd so i'm a bit nervous um so yeah my name is wayne i'm 39 years old um i'm from wales
originally um so i'm gonna start off from the age of 11 because i lost my dad when i was 11 years
old he died in my arms literally in my arms he had a heart attack on his birthday and that's where
my journey really began because i was broken i was lost and i was really angry with god
taking my dad away from me died on his birthday at age 44 and it led me to getting in with the
wrong crowd i started drinking with him at age 11 taking cannabis getting into trouble
arguing with my mum all the time me and my mum didn't get on because she got into another
relationship and i was quite angry with my mum as well because it was only a month after my dad died
and i thought why are you doing this it's a broken family as it is but you're making it worse so um
we were arguing and arguing all the time and the age of uh 13 14 my mum started to have enough of
me because i was rebelling from her so and when i got to 15 and she was like i can't have you
she kicked me out at the age of 15 i started living on the streets i started taking heroin
i started taking speed um and i was just going around in circles i was homeless for three years
living under branches park park bridges and that and then my daughter come along so i was quite
proud of that i got clean for a little bit um but then our relationship with her mum fell and
that's when i started using again um and then my daughter got taken off me so my my addiction went
worse um i lost my house i lost everything and i was living in the horse's stable for a bit
and i stayed at the friend's house one night because he wanted to get me off the street for
the night and i had a phone call at three o'clock in the morning wayne where are you
you're okay i says why what's the matter the stables you're staying in someone's lit
put it on fire we thought you were dead so you can see god was there then protecting me from that
and then um i got to got to a point where i was like i need to move away from the area i lived
so i moved to a place called clanathley in wales um i got clean again i was doing really well
and they moved me into another place in camarban and i got into the wrong crowd again i started
taking all sorts of stuff um i lost hope and that and then i owing money and my dealers was getting
coming to my door kicking it in i got beat up i got stabbed um and i just lost all hope in myself
so i decided to move back to clanathley closest to one of my sisters and um i just started going
really bad with the drugs and i was walking around town at three o'clock in the morning
and i just felt something because my friend said to me you need to go to rehab you need to go to
a place called battalion i was like no i'm okay i don't want that and i was walking around this
town and i felt someone say what have you got to lose and i thought i'm hallucinating here what's
going on so i went back to my flat and it just played on my mind and i didn't know this at the
time but i truly do know and it was god speaking to me so i went to my friend i said yeah get me to
this place and he goes it is a christian place i'm not going to become a christian i just need to get
clean so i went to batal and i felt the peace in there soon as soon as i went through the gates
i just seen everyone happy and full of joy and i was like you're all nuts what are you doing
but it was a nice feeling when i got in there because you feel the love and then within a month
we were in a service and um i was in the middle row and we were worshiping and then all of a
sudden i started crying i thought what's this why am i crying and i said to my friend why why am i
crying he said you've just been hit by the holy spirit i was like wow and at the end of the preach
the preacher goes whoever wants to come to the front of the thing to give their life come through
and next minute i was at the front on my knees hands up saying lord please i need this and that's
when i gave my life to the lord and then the journey got it even more interesting because i
couldn't do the work because it was a work in rehab and i couldn't do the work because i had
arthritis in both legs i couldn't walk so they had to carry me up and down the stairs so they
said they said we need to ask you to leave but we're going to put you somewhere else
so and this is when they said we're going to send you to the lighthouse and i was like oh another
place and that i was like i don't know i'm going to pray on it so i went up to the bottom of the
field i started praying on it and then again god said what have you got to lose i was like come on
lord come on so i moved to rothram um i started doing amazing there i got connected in the church
i uh got i got my life back um i got my own place um i got a job as a chef i was doing amazing
and then i relapsed again two years two and a half years ago got in the wrong crowd and my head was
just wasn't in the right place i lost connection with god um and my the pastor from liberty church
said wayne we're gonna um you need to go to matisy or somewhere you you've lost everything
so i was like okay so um we got in contact with darren and that and um i turned up and i was in
a mess when i turned up um they had to put me in a hotel for five days because i turned up
off my face i didn't even tell him about it um and they they'd love they gave me when i got there
they put me in hotel they come and see me every day they've um they fed me every day and then
they brought me back and this is where i truly surrendered was on the friday in the chapel i
walked through the doors and i just broke down i was like lord i am fully surrendering to you now
i says i need a difference in my life and matisy has completely changed my life
i i've just finished an intern in the kitchen i'm going into support work i've done my health and
social care people don't think there's a god look at the difference in me i was in a right mess and
some god god's just amazing i've got my daughter back in my life i'm i am just thriving i've got
the most confidence back in me again i feel the love i feel the joy and someone gave me this
when i was uh in riaban this is a song that everyone should keep with them psalm 91 whoever
dwells in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of the almighty i will say of the
lord he is my refuge and my fortune my god in whom i trust and i trusted god all the way through this
and look at the difference matisy is just amazing place and our god's just there every day so yeah
and thank you for listening
go on wayne um hi guys so i'm christina um um i've got a really similar story to wayne's not
not exactly similar but um so i'm from mansfield and i grew up with three brothers and i grew up in
a very dysfunctional family my dad was an alcoholic and we grew up with domestic violence
um as a child i always knew there was something different about me but i just didn't know what
and i never really felt part of my family i felt like the outcast i was always being picked on
bullied and beat up by my brothers um which for me in them days i just thought it was normal
um we grew up in an estate where our family was absolutely hated and i could never really make
any friends or be accepted um so that really you know had an impact on my self-worth and my
confidence and you know i never really knew what unconditional love was because we never had it in
our family um i remember i've always believed in god from a very young age so it started at sunday
school and it was my older brother he took us to sunday school because they gave out sweets it was
the only way we were going to get there so unbeknown to me though i did learn about someone who really
loves me and cares about me and is watching over me and and i took that i took that as gold that
that i held on to that because i had nothing else to hold on to and growing up for me was
really difficult you know i struggled academically at school and stuff um and i struggled to fit in
i could never make friends so you know i grew up feeling really lonely um and i remember one summer
i was grinding for six-week holidays and i remember pasting up and down my bedroom and it
was a really nice summer as well it was really hot i remember it and i remember pacing up and down
my bedroom and i must have been speaking to god i must have been um asking him why me lord why
this family you know um had a lot of questions um there only there was only two things i ever
really wanted to be in life um first one was a christian and the second one was a social worker
um i joined the brownies and the girl guides so i loved helping people i loved you know helping
people um and that's probably because you know no one ever cared about me no one wanted to help me
and i just had a big heart for that and i still have um i left home at 16 years old and that was
it i went straight into addiction started on on speed and it gave me a confidence i'd never had
before um so i continued taking it you know i lived a life of partying and drugs and drinking
um and i did that for 24 years um you know rolling around the same mountain
um i have two children um my oldest is 22 my name's alexi but she was actually born
paris but she changed her own name to alexi by depol and i have a son who's 17 now when dylan
his name's dylan when he was um nine seven months old he was taken from me by social services um
and you know that devastated me that that had a massive impact on me and but you know i just knew
god was in that because he went to a really good family i got to meet his parents i was asked if
i wanted to meet his parents and i did and i'm so glad i did because i knew he was going to be safe
and i knew he was going to be happy and usually what they usually do when they get adopted is
change their names um but i asked them to keep his original name apart from his last name obviously
and and they did that they honored me so i knew i just knew god was in that and we have letterbox
contact um so my daughter uh wasn't in my life for a long time so the last time i was a mum to her
properly she was eight years old um the last time i saw her before we got she came back in my life
was at the age of 16 and she came back into my life in 2022 in october and i knew god was all
over that i just knew it and we're on a journey of finding out who we are you know mum and daughter
building a relationship and i can only really give god the glory for that um you know it's
been so faithful to me throughout my life there's been times when i've shouldn't even be here i'm
honest um i should have been dead but you know god's grace you know he was watching over me and
i know he's all over my family he's definitely over my daughter um so uh yeah so i had a flat
and i lost it and this was in 2016 and that's that's where my life just spiraled i was in
the darkest place ever i ended up homeless on the streets nine months every door shut in my
face nobody wanted to help me um and i had no hope but one day i went to the beacon project
in mansfield um the night a couple of nights before that i was beaten up and had everything
taken off me drugs wise um by a couple of males and i remember walking the streets um
feeling really scared and i went into the beacon project and i just sat in the corner and a woman
came over to me can i pray for you and i just looked at her clutching me i'm back to get um
so she prayed for me and within days i went to a different church and there it was god had sent
three people from the freedom project in shybrook and within that i filled out forms to go to the
lighthouse which is what darren was just talking about he set up lighthouse homes and his wife
then i started on a journey of um of being loved back to life finding who i was finding an identity
i got clean at the lighthouse um i had to do treatment before before i decided to go to rehab
um but i did a teen challenge program and i went there in july 2018 um it was the hardest thing
that i've ever done but i'm so glad i did it because it was the most rewarding it's where i
got my foundations um in the lord you know and while i was on the program i always struggled
with identity and you know self-worth and when i was on the program a we have what we call advisors
and i remember talking to her about my family situation and she gave me a scripture and it's
equal 16. um you'll have to forgive me because i'm a little bit blind um on the day you were born
your cord was not caught nor were you washed with water to make you clean nor were you with
salt or wrapped in clothes no one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of
these things for you rather you were thrown out into the open field for on the day you were born
you were despised then i passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood and as you lay there
in your blood i said to you live i made you grow like a plant in the field when i got that script
scripture my life just made sense i knew who i belonged to i was meant to be a child of god
like we all are but i actually literally got that revelation all my walls of jericho just came
tumbling down you know finally i knew why god placed me within that family and it's for a
greater purpose than what i could have seen at the time and so i was quite thankful for that after i
did the tc program and i went back to the lighthouse to do an intern um no i didn't i went to tcla um
leadership academy and then i went back to the lighthouse to do an intern um and then i got a
job i left the lighthouse i got my own flat i got a job did everything in my own strength you know
at this point like i was just like focused on what i wanted but god was still faithful he gave me a job
provided um a bed one bedroom house for me um in war and i fell back into addiction and i was in
a job where i was working with broken people and i really struggled to not be allowed to talk about
jesus um so but i was suffering with a condition um and it embedded me for months or weeks you know
depending on how painful and how severe it was and i ended up losing my job um but before that i
remember going to a friend's wedding and seeing julie and julie said to me have you thought about
coming to madison well the year previous i'd already applied to come to madison and then i
took back the application and decided to go and do my own thing um and i was like no not really
um but when i went back after that wedding within a week i'd lost my job and i just knew god had
opened the door for me to go to madison and i'm so glad i did because i've just embarked on a
beautiful journey and i think first and foremost we we need to be mindful that we live for the
benefit of others you know um and that that's a process there is there is a time of healing
there was time of growing learning to be educated and i'm really thankful for madison you know what
comes to mind really is you know i'm thankful that our leaders are first and foremost led by the
spirit and obedient to god because if it wasn't for the obedience we wouldn't get um the things
that we get the blessings that we get and madison is truly wholly sacred ground it's a very very
special place to be and it's that special i don't even really want to leave so um i really don't it's
beautiful grounds and um so i've completed my health and social care um well the class side of
it anyway and um i was put in to an intern in resettlement and now i've just been moved into
an intern in support work which is truly my real calling this i really want to help people but i
remember being at madison and god said to me dream dream big so i have dream big um i only came to
madison with a desire of wanting to be a support worker but now you know it's in my heart that
i want to manage and run my own center to help vulnerable women to empower them to be mighty
women of god and to make firm decisions and find their worth and their truth and identity in god
um and i know god will make that happen i've just got to remain faithful be obedient and allow him
to do what he does so um i'm still on a journey and i'm happy about it so i hope it's really
encouraged you all you know god is on the move um all the time and god is good
you
guys oh for that um just uh just the openness honesty the passion
it's just so exciting to hear what god can do as wayne said people think there's no god but look
just come and see what the lord has done and uh it's just amazing just amazing to hear and uh
just thinking about it the wayne and christina darren were talking about the journey of life
that they've been on in discovering what they were born for what they were made for and by god's
grace they're tapping into that but we're all in that position aren't we and whether it's as
individuals or whether as a church what are we here for what are we here for this is the whole
thing and i believe that you know darren and the guys have just opened up our eyes to see again
just what it's all about what what we have one there's a and i think the same impact of the visit
that we had on the thursday morning to this morning just the excitement again of the gospel
of what it's about um mentioned about not being tainted by religion i trust that we're not tainted
by religion but we can get into the routines can't we we can get into the routines of life
and i think the fire of god uh needs to touch our hearts again and to remind us what it's all about
and in response let's consecrate ourselves set ourselves to do actually not split our minds but
actually god this is what you've called us to do this is what you've called us to be a place of
refuge a place of safety a place of security a place of justice that's the word that we on a
thursday morning and and and through other things that we do one word that keeps coming up is
justice and i was really encouraged when darren emphasized that over and over but we need to be
a place of justice that we need to have it in our heart in our dna that uh that these things matter
that this is our center of gravity that it's not about a project that we do like i said not
an outreach but it's actually it's in our hearts it's it's it's it's what it's what you meet when
you actually come and you and you're part of this community and i know across this room we've got
people from every different imaginable background but yet the opportunity for us all to consecrate
ourselves to that command what does the lord require of you to act justly to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your god and we can apply that in any and every circumstance whatever you're
going to be doing tomorrow morning we can apply that in our hearts and so i just want us to
to respond in our hearts just ask the worship team maybe if they could come and i would love us to
uh to begin just by praying for mattasy um for darren away increase maybe you could join me again
at the front here darren and wayne and christina is that possible and i'd love us just to to just
as a worship team prepare just to stand together if we can and let's pray for them and then i'll
ask them to pray for us as well okay so we're going to pray let's let's stand let's reach out
our hands let's pray god the the richest they've experienced so much of the richness of god's grace
and we just pray for more and more and more that you haven't actually uh i think wait you've only
just scratched the surface and i believe that you only just scratched the surface even in the
wonderful things that you've seen and the wonderful things that you're doing and the
wonderful things that you've experienced there is still more there are unsearchable riches
of christ and he has called you to discover them and to and to spend the rest of your lives just
going from room to room to room seeing all that god is able to do and not only in your life but
in all those that will come christina you said the vision that god has given you for the center for
for vulnerable women there are there are so many women that are going to be touched by the fire
that god has put in your heart so many that are going to be reached so many that are going to be
changed god is going to give you the fulfillment of your dreams and your visions we believe that
wayne god has called you for a purpose he's called you for a purpose he's seen you even
before he didn't discover you when you reached out to him but he as you know he came after you
he pursued you and it's for a purpose and every step forward every step back and everything he's
been drawing you to himself like a magnet and you're going to be a blessing to so many and we're
just going to pray for you and pray for darren and the team at matter c just pray for the an
outpouring of god's spirit that this revival that we're beginning to see
this will be a center of it we pray and so we let's let's just let's just lift our hands and
our voices to god father we pray for matter c we thank you for this morning we thank you for darren
and wayne and christina we thank you for the whole community the 45 men and women that are
there lord god that they are called from every different background come and see what the lord
has done it is just amazing what you can do it is just incredible there is no limits to what you
can do in the lives of men and women and so we pray for them we pray for them as they put
themselves into your hands we pray for them as they consecrate themselves to you that you will
pour your fire onto them lord god just as they are like an offering on the altar and the fire
comes down from heaven i pray your fire will come down from heaven and burn up everything that is
that has been uh considered worthless and you will replace it with the treasure and the jewel and the
precious metal that you put into their hearts i thank you for their lives and i thank you for
their calling and i thank you that you're going to fulfill what each and every one of them has
on their hearts individually and as an organization lord god may the fire of god fall and and and
burn in that place and go from there to many many places and for everything that you you've put in
their hearts it represents people and for those 45 people we know that that represents thousands
upon thousands of people that are going to be touched by the same fire we thank you for them
and we pray your blessing upon them in jesus name amen amen and um we uh as you say as you know this
is in our hearts we feel like we started you know there's all sorts of things that we a bit like you
said you know we don't know which way to go sometimes we go forward we go back with all sorts
of stuff but it's in our hearts we want to do it want to consecrate ourselves to this calling of
god on our lives so i just want to ask you as people that have gone ahead of us if you would
pray for us as a church and and all that god is going to do here father your word is there for us
to draw from to learn how you interact with your people uh lord it's not complicated there there
was an a man nehemiah who looked at the mess looked at the ruins there was a group of people
who lived in that ruins and he never affected their consciousness and maybe we've become like
that as christians we've just accepted that this is the norm or we've took our eyes off the ball
but nehemiah was a man who said hey this is not right and he wept over the ruins the the political
system the education system a society that turned it back spiritually on god and i prayed lord god
that god that this would be a church and a people that are like nehemiah that says we need to do
something about it that you will break their hearts for what breaks yours that they would
be a set apart holy remnant you don't need a whole denomination society and history is changed
by just a small group of people of a certain type may this be a church and nehemiah just thought i
need to do something about it he did not have a clue as to how this would unravel he was almost
led like a spiritual compass and i pray that this that would be for the leadership lord that they
will be led by an overwhelming sense every day of what needs to be done where they need to go
where they need to be built and i pray like nehemiah lord that you will use this church
to bring others inspire others motivate others to join together in the rebuilding of the walls
and lord nehemiah lord he didn't have the qualifications he wasn't an architect but in
record time he rebuilt uh the jerusalem socially and spiritually so god we ask that you will use
this church to rebuild the social walls and the brokenness and all that that means within our
schools again within every area of life but i also pray that you will use this church to bring
spiritual revival upon our nation starting with our locality this locality god that you will take
this church just like nehemiah before he did the work he prayed and it's that simple he sought your
presence before he moved and i pray you'll ignite in this church in the leaders that hunger and fresh
passion that fresh desire for prayer and your presence and for the word that this will be a
holy remnant first and foremost who love the word who love purity who love your presence and also
love the poor and i pray you'll do mighty things in this church there will be such a move of god
that these four walls can't contain it in your precious name amen thank you thank you i'm just
going to ask the worship team will lead us i think the thing will go up if you want to go and collect
children that would be great but i just want to yeah thanks

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Summary of Sermon: Covenant by Nick
This sermon explores the story of Abraham and Sarah from Genesis 17, focusing on the concept of God's covenant and its enduring promises.
Key Points:

God's timing: The passage highlights the vast amount of time that can pass between God's promises and their fulfillment. We can get discouraged by waiting, but God's faithfulness endures. (Genesis 16 & 17)
Resilient Faith: The long wait for a child teaches us about the importance of holding onto faith and God's promises even when there seems to be no progress. (Romans 4:17-21)
God initiates the relationship: God is the one who pursues a relationship with us, revealing Himself and offering His blessings. (Genesis 17:1)
God's Sovereignty: We are not God. There's a healthy reverence and humility required in our relationship with Him. (Genesis 17:3)
The Power of Names: Names and labels can influence our perception. God changes Abram's name to Abraham signifying a shift in his identity and future. (Genesis 17:5)
Transformation: God desires to transform us from the inside out. We can hold ourselves back by clinging to past limitations. (Gideon - Judges 6:11-16)
Promises vs. Feelings: God's promises are not contingent on our emotions. We can rely on His faithfulness even when we doubt or feel discouraged. (Genesis 17:1-8)
Signs of the Covenant: Circumcision served as a physical reminder of God's covenant with Abraham. God gives us various signs to bolster our faith. (Genesis 17:11)

Illustrations:

The author uses contemporary examples like service awards and long-term friendships to illustrate God's faithfulness despite the passage of time.
The story of Zacchaeus from the Gospels demonstrates how God takes the initiative in relationships.

Applications:

We are encouraged to develop a resilient faith that trusts in God's promises even when facing challenges.
We should acknowledge God's sovereignty and majesty in our worship.
The sermon challenges us to examine the labels we place on ourselves and be open to God's transformative work.
We can rely on God's enduring promises regardless of our emotional state.

Verses Referenced:

Genesis 16:1-16
Genesis 17:1-27
Romans 4:17-21
Judges 6:11-16

Transcript
Thank you very much and excellent foundation this morning to what I want to say from the
team so thank you Stephen team as well for leading us in worship that way we've already
we've raced to Genesis chapter 17. So right into the heart of the story of Abram and
Sarah I and remember Karen spoke very challenging last week about the birth of Ishmael and
how that came about. And so if you do have a Bible or a phone or iPad or whatever it
is figured up to Genesis 17 and we'll read it so we get some context into what I want
to say this morning. So Genesis 17 from verse 1. When Abram was 99 years old the Lord appeared
to him and said I am El Shaddai God almighty serve me faithfully and live a blameless life.
I will make a covenant with you by which I will guarantee to give you countless descendants.
At this Abram fell face down on the ground then God said to him this is my covenant with you
I will make you the father of a multitude of nations what's more I am changing your name
it will no longer be Abram instead you will be called Abraham for you will be the father of
many nations I will make you extremely fruitful your descendants will become many nations and kings
will be among them I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you from
generation to generation this is the everlasting covenant I will always be your God and the God
of your descendants after you and I will give the entire land of Canaan where you now live as a
foreigner to you and your descendants it will be their possession forever and I will be their God
then God said to Abraham your responsibility is to obey the terms of the covenant
you and all your descendants have this continual responsibility this is the covenant that you
and your descendants must keep each male among you must be circumcised you must cut off the
flesh of your foreskin as a sign of the covenant between me and you from generation to generation
every male child must be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth this applies not only to
members of your family but also to the servants born in your household and the foreign-born servants
whom you have purchased all must be circumcised your bodies will bear the mark of my everlasting
covenant any male who fails to be circumcised will be cut off from the covenant family for
breaking the covenant then God said to Abraham regarding Sarah your wife her name will no longer
be Sarah from now on her name will be Sarah and I will bless her and give you a son from her
yes I will bless her richly and she will become the mother of many nations kings of nations will
be among her descendants then Abraham bowed down to the ground but he laughed to himself in disbelief
how could I become a father at the age of a hundred he thought and how can Sarah have a baby when
she is 90 years old so Abraham said to God may Ishmael live under your special blessing
but God replied no Sarah your wife will give birth to a son for you you will name him Isaac and I
will confirm my covenant with him and his descendants as an everlasting covenant as for Ishmael I'll
bless him also just as you have asked I will make him extremely fruitful and multiply his descendants
he will become the father of twelve princes and I will make him a great nation but my covenant
will be confirmed with Isaac who will be born to you and Sarah about this time next year when
God had finished speaking he left Abraham on that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and every
male in his household including those born there and those he had bought then he circumcised them
cutting off their foreskin's just just as God had told him Abraham was 99 years old when he
was circumcised and Ishmael his son was 13 both Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised on
that same day along with all the other men and boys of the household whether they were born there
or bought a servants or were circumcised with him that's the story Genesis 17 the title is
covenant but I've broken down going through that passage broken it down into a number of different
sections so we've just got some some points that we can draw from in terms of our application
and our understanding of the story and the first thing that I want us to think about is
that God's word and God's promises over our lives have no sell by date you don't get to a point
where you think well yeah that was then but this is now you know that that is sort of worn out now
it doesn't you know God may have said that in the past but but I think things have moved on
we've progressed we've gone to a new situation a new reality and maybe the promise doesn't carry
the same weight as it once did and one thing that's easy to miss with these accounts in Genesis
has been pointed out over the last few weeks is just how long the span of time is between
the events Karen spoke last week about the events leading up to the birth of Ishmael and here that
was in chapter 16 and in chapter 17 Ishmael is 13 years old already it's like super fast forward
I was saying we've raced to chapter you know 17 this this is a long period of time
and we still haven't seen the fulfillment of the original promise given to Abram
Abram and Sarah as they were then messed it up as Karen pointed out they and they involved Haegar
in a in a plot to try and try and manipulate God's blessing and to work out how it would
how the promise could actually be brought about according to their own understanding
and God said no that's not the way it's going to be I'm going to bless you from a son from
your own body and yet 13 years later we still haven't seen it
when Erika spoke she talked about there being 25 years between the promise the original promise
that Abram would have a son and the birth of Isaac 25 years is a decent amount of time isn't it
it's not as long now as it once seemed but it's still a long time
teaches me about and us about the longevity the length the span of time that God's promises
can cover they can span years decades and they're still as valid today as they were the day they
were given and we're an instant-minded people aren't we we if we send a text or a WhatsApp and we
haven't had a reply in 20 minutes we think what's wrong what's wrong with those people
haven't they maybe I better send them another one or send them a different one if you send
a WhatsApp try a text message or then an email maybe even radically give them a ring
they've seen the message there's two blue ticks and they haven't written back
why aren't they answering I've got a number of friends now that I've turned off that blue tick
thing so you never know with it yeah maybe we'll give them a nudge I remember we used to get a
gold watch or a carriage clock when you've done 25 years service in a company my son my youngest
son started a new job last May and this week he got his long service award
he did personal letter from the CEO congratulations on on finishing a year
we're not very good at allowing the passage of time are we without wanting something dramatic to
show for it I mean he did laugh I like his perspective he did they understand it was a funny thing
long service award for a free I don't know what they're expecting
but these accounts ground us in the fact that God's work in our lives take a lifetime
faith in Jesus is a long game I keep referring see I'm really good on I listen to what everybody
said Chris spoke many weeks ago and said about a long obedience in the same direction I've read
that book as well the world my world looks very different from when I was 16 and when I first came
to faith it's four years so so much has changed but things God spoke to me then are still being
worked out now and some haven't even come to be I found in the attic the other day a number of
prophetic words I got in about 1988 and it was it's fascinating to see that these things still
carry weight they still stand and I wonder if you struggle when God seems slow or even seems to
have forgotten about you all together Genesis teaches us that just because nothing's happening
doesn't mean nothing's happening God allows our lives to unfold and he doesn't seem to be
worried by taking time Charles Slagle once said that God is extremely slow but he's never late
he doesn't give us updates or commentary he told them 13 years ago actually you've got it wrong
Ishmael is not the blessing there's going to be a son from your body 13 years later they're still
waiting there haven't been there haven't been daily updates or you know like we get from Steve
we get emails from Steve keeping us up to date with what's going on in case we in case we lose
heart that God doesn't seem to to operate in the same way Steve but he's building strong
resilient people who have the strength to hold on to him and his word even when there's no external
disco even when there's no external encouragement even when we don't actually get the updates
even when we don't know we haven't got you know our latest sort of nugget of encouragement from God
or from anybody else can we keep holding on can we keep resilient can we keep our eyes focused on
the promise on our understanding of what God has said we struggle don't we in that in the African
churches which we've been so much a part over the years there's the thing where somebody was
out God is good if he was there all the time and all the time God is good because that is his
nature and it's a wonderful declaration but it's something in our in our sort of society that we
can start to undermine and we can start to question and say yeah but there's all this that's happened
and that's that happened but there's something about those statements and those declarations that
are so important to actually say that yes God is good he's good throughout the span of time he's
good throughout every change in our circumstances he's good in sickness and he's good in health
he's good in poverty and he's good in wealth he's good all the time and there's a resilience
and a strength that is needed in our hearts in order for us to navigate the life of faith and
particularly in the times that we live in we have to be those that can hold on resiliently
and rigidly onto onto the Word of God and say that we know what he said and we know what he
would do and we will not be knocked sideways or blown around by everything that happens to us or
everything that can come or everything that might undermine our faith we say know that we know
that we know the God who we have believed so what Paul said didn't he I know who I have believed
and I'm persuaded that he is able that's nothing to do with feelings that's nothing to do with
what might happen tomorrow that's to do with what we know what we know deep in our hearts
what we've been persuaded and what we've come to the settled realization about that God is good and
faithful in Romans it tells us the story about Abraham Abraham they said he faced the fact that
his body was as good as dead and yet against all hope in hope believed and so became the father of
many nations he faced facts and yet still believed can we face facts and still believe still hold on
still choose faith still choose joy still choose that overcoming attitude to endure confusion and
loss and hold firmly to what we know about God always challenged by the the accounts in the book
of Acts about people like Silas and Paul when they were whipped and they were flogged and they were
they were thrown in a dungeon and they were locked in stocks and there was there was there was nothing
good about their situation and yet they were able to respond with joy they were able to respond with
worship because they knew that they're God they they knew who they had believed and were persuaded
in every way that he was good that he was faithful and that he would do what he had promised and
that whatever happened to their lives God's promises would stand and that's the situation
that we have and that's the the type of people that God is wanting to build in us we need to be
tough we need to be tough people tough for tough in our faith tough in our resilience tough in
our ability to hold on to the word of God and you don't need me to tell you that life has its own
curveballs it has its own challenges it has unexpected twists and turns the question is will
we stand when those things come will we know that God's promise is not undermined it's not set aside
it's not forgotten but it stands in our lives secondly our relationship with God is his idea and not
ours God appeared to Abraham and didn't just speak but gave him his name I am El Shaddai God
Almighty that's a real big deal for someone fought for God to come to Abraham and reveal his name not
just say you know give me sacrifices give me worship give me loyalty give me give me your stuff give me
all those things he's actually I'm going to give you my name I'm going to give you my presence I'm
going to give you my who I am could be reticent about using our first and English people can
be can't we we're a bit more relaxed here you know I I am Nick or whatever you know but in in
tradition we we don't like to keep our powder dry a little bit who we are we we we're a little bit
more formal Americans are very relaxed about it all but giving our name it's a bit like the
lifting of the veil this is who I am it reveals something about ourselves all the local tribes
had their gods that they offered sacrifices to but he was God Almighty drawing closes and this is
who I am I'm going to give myself to you Abraham through no for no reason except that I'm choosing
to do it and the Bible is a story of how God has revealed himself to us and his intention to be
known by us we think we hold ourselves back who think I'm not good enough I'm not strong enough
I'm not faith filled enough I'm not you know I don't think I can really aspire to a relationship
with God and yet we find God has actually come to us and revealed himself to us of his own
volition and his own choice I am El Shaddai God Almighty God's idea to have a friendship with you
not yours so when you think I don't know if I could be a very good friend of God
go say well I'm being your friend
I want to be a friend with you and yet we disqualify ourselves when it is actually God who has approached
us God who has revealed himself to us God who has gone before us and lavished us with mercy and grace
you look at yourself and you say well who am I that God should know me that you know that I could
I could even think maybe I'm just on the edges I'll look just like Zacchaeus in the tree and he was he
didn't even qualify himself he didn't want to introduce himself to Jesus he just wanted to see
what was going on and so he climbed up like a spectator in life and looking down just to see
if he could benefit from just seeing what Jesus was doing with his real friends and in the middle
of it all Jesus looked up pointed at him and called in my name and says Zacchaeus come down
because I'm coming to your house I'm coming to your house not would you like to come to my house
I'm coming to yours he's very bold Jesus wasn't he wasn't very English I'm coming round
get the kettle on
that's the position of security we're in
we are safe we are secure we are blessed because our blessing is from God to us
not the other way around that he comes to us and he says I am God almighty of all the people to
introduce themselves to us God almighty makes himself known to us made himself known to Abraham
thirdly God is God and we are not sounds obvious doesn't it but it's easy to forget God is God
and we are not
verse three at this Abraham fell face down on the ground God spoke to him and Abraham didn't speak
back he fell face down on the ground and God said to him this is my covenant with you and
explained the terms of the covenant God has come to us and he's announced himself to us and his
desire to have a relationship with us but it doesn't sort of put us on a unequal as somebody once said
he's God almighty not God almighty so there he comes so close and there's such an opportunity for us
but yet there was something in the revelation that Abraham received that caused him not to just
say all right God let's have a chat he got down on his face on the ground and then God spoke to him
and there's something about that relationship that we need to I think that was reflected in
some of the songs that we chose this morning the the power and the glory and the majesty
of who God is is so vital for us in our relationship with him because we have we're
invited into a beautiful relationship with him we're invited into his promises we're invited into
his blessing but we have to remember who we are and who he is and we have and there must be always
that dynamic of worship between us you know we have that thing people will say well when I see God
I'm going to have a word with him and I'm going to I'm going to ask him a few questions I'm going
to sit him down and he's going to answer me these things we think well okay we'll see how that works
out because there is a difference there is a difference between God and us there's a difference
between the eternal and the flesh there's a difference and we have to know it and we have to respond
to it we are free in our relationship with God but we have to know who he is he is God and we are
not Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and from that time
they decided we're going to decide now what's good and you find it now don't you people will say
well if God is going to say this and if God is going to say that then you won't find me worshiping
him I couldn't worship a God like that there are even people that will that will assert that
what God has said is evil or wrong or not progressive or not modern enough or whatever it is
and we have to understand that whatever we think we are not the judges of God
and Abraham fell down on his face and then God spoke to him that was the position from which
God spoke to him and there is that in our hearts where we have to know that we are we are who we
are before God in order that God might speak to us we are not God God is God Simon Peter when he
had interacted with Jesus he knew who Jesus was they were friends together they'd done all sorts
of things together but when there was a revelation about who Jesus was who this was standing in front
of him he said go away from me Lord because I'm a sinful man
Isaiah when he saw God himself he said
woe to me because I am a man of unclean lips and I live amongst the people of unclean lips
there is a conviction that comes just by being in the presence of God and we need to be prepared
for that and ready for that because that is the reality of what it means to be worshipers a revival
of worship that will turn us inside out and put us down on our faces it challenges the natural
arrogance of our hearts as we come to terms with what it means I am God Almighty
and that immediately affects the way that we interact and the way that we relate with God
thirdly or fourthly or fifthly I can't remember how many we've done
three thank you God changes our names or changes names and he changes outcomes he changes the labels
that are put upon our lives Abram's name was changed from Abram exalted father to Abraham
father of many after 25 years things were beginning to happen at long last
God said this time next year you will have a son and I'm changing your name from Abram
to Abraham exalted father to father of men it's a good label Abram was a good name not a bad name
and he said there's a change of gear now we are we are moving from from from one position to another
where we are looking at the eternal blessing with the eternal promise this son you thought you'd
worked it out Isaac each male was born and all of that but then none of that is gonna is gonna
is gonna affect the eternal promise but it's Isaac who will be the source of the blessing
and so Abraham's name was changed to accommodate the word over his life and future names and labels
matter and names and labels can keep us rooted in the past or they can build faith for the future
and our understanding and then there's so many things that we might it might be our actual name
came across a child in our sad situation in our time in Zambia and when we asked the child's name
we were told it was rubbish that was that was the name of the child and and it was such a
such a terrible you know it's almost like something you throw away and yet and so
people of faith and I think the family came to faith as well and they decided to change the name
of the child to blessings or gift gift that's what it was gift not something but you know those
simple things like that matter our names your name might mean something it might it might not
is something that parents do these days a lot more than they used to do look into the meanings of
names and what it all means on sort of want to our aspirations and our expectations our hopes
for our children so we'll let's encompass it in a name I think Nicholas means great leader or something
look it up later
but we can label ourselves in our in our hearts and our emotions we can say well this is just what
I am this is who I am this is what I've always been this is what I'll always be it's interesting
how they stick isn't it I was fascinating you know the Jesus had had supper in the home of a
man called Simon the leper he was someone who'd been healed but he was he's still carried that
that label but there are things from our things from our past things from our
our understanding of ourselves things from our upbringing that shape our expectation of what we
can be and what God can do in our lives and God himself comes to right at the beginning of history
comes to Abram says I'm going to change your name to Abram because I know that names matter
and know that labels matter and and it's true of us today that there is so much that can
can be encompassed in the labels that are placed upon us whoever controls the labels controls the
outcome and we need to hear what God is calling us not what we call ourselves he would come to Gideon
in the Old Testament while he was hiding away threshing wheat in a wine press an impossible
thing to do and he said the Lord is with you mighty warrior and he looked out and he said
I'm anything but a mighty warrior but that was what was spoken over him Jesus would change
Simon's name I tell you you are now Peter and on this rock I'll build my church
so much that is carried in the in the names that we that we have and very often we look back and we
judge ourselves and we shape ourselves and we make the the Abram was limited by the by his
imagination in terms of what he understood of himself and God was coming in and saying no I'm
going to stretch your imagination and God wants to stretch our imagination about what is possible
about what grace can mean in our lives about what transformation can look like you know we talk
the message of transformation but we don't often really grab hold of what it means to be transformed
from the inside out that we we have a gospel of transformation but we really expect to be the
same we year after year after year and yet there is an opportunity and I know there are people in
here that could give testimony after testimony of how God has transformed them from one place to
another but we want to see that multiplied over and over again and one of the things that will be
the key to that is if we are prepared to change the labels over our lives and our expectations
over what can happen even the good things there are many good things many transitions
that we go through in life from one good thing to another and yet it's that previous good thing
that can hold us back whether it's a a life change of direction or change of employment
retirement whatever it is there can be all of that and we can we can we can fail to really step
into the fullness of all that's ahead of us because we we're pulled back a little bit by what we what
we hear from the past God changes labels and finally the promises of God are not attached
to our feelings we rely on our feelings very much for our encouragement don't we we encourage
ourselves if we feel good all is good we feel good God is in heaven if we feel bad maybe years
we're not sure other promises still standing other promises are strong when we feel bad as
when we feel good and God was establishing here with Abraham an eternal unconditional covenant
he changed his name and then he gave him an enduring mark he didn't say you know just just
remember this you just tell tell people he said actually what we're going to do is give you quite
a radical mark of circumcision to remind him and everyone of the promise
Erica spoke about the signs of the covenant about the rainbow and the starry night and how Abraham
had nine thousand starry nights to consider the promise of God and nothing that ever happened
to him in his life was ever going to remove those stars from the heaven it doesn't matter you know
and with it there was desolation all around him he could still look up and those stars would be
there to remind him and God gives us marks that remind us that actually these promises are outside
of ourselves they're outside of our circumstances are outside of whatever might happen to us and
they are deep and permanent God came to him spelled out that he was going to become a father and it
was Sarah his wife who would give birth and he laughed in disbelief this is Abraham the father
of faith by the way who got all his credit all his righteousness credited to him for faith his
first response was to laugh and and as I was preparing this I remember that song by Michael
Cobb they called him laughter I won't sing it to you before he came after the father had made an
impossible promise come true the birth of a baby to a hopeless old lady no offense to the to Sarah
on there but just amazing what God can do but Abraham his his human response was to laugh
how can this be it's impossible but then from that laughter he got himself together he took a
deep breath and he stepped forward and he did what God had told him to do he did the circumcision he
made the mark on his body and everybody else's all the other male bodies that were there to remind
them of the of the nature of the covenant he set aside all his feelings and he acted on God's word
he chose to believe he chose to put things into action he chose to to mark himself permanently
in order that he would always remember what God had said and every generation after would
remember what God had said because there needs to be those things in our lives we need to be those
those moments where we take a decision to say actually we're not I don't even care what's going
to happen tomorrow I don't even care what's happening to me at the moment I am going to choose to believe
in the goodness and the permanence of the promises of God as we look forward as individuals as we
look forward as a church and we consider all that God is going to do we choose to believe in the
promises of God so excited and it's encouraging when we hear the hundred thousand pounds has come in
and we think oh well maybe we got it right after all that's not what we're thinking or what we
should be thinking you know that's a relief few they actually know that's what we that's actually
what we expect because God has placed something in our hearts and promised us things that we are
now seeing the unfolding of and so therefore we will continue to see the unfolding and we will
continue to see and we will see God establish things in this community and in this church that even
we won't even see the fulfillment of there'll be others that will come after us because we believe
in the promises of God it's not down to you know did did we get it right did we get it wrong what
do we feel today or how you know how's it going how was the how was the feeling at the prayer day
what do people think we don't take focus groups to decide whether the promises of God are still
valid they are there but perhaps our response when we consider what God has said is to laugh
and we have to be those that will then stand up and take action and make decisions and allow
ourselves to be marked by the promises of God not just moved by the promises of God
let's not allow it would only just be a moved emotionally into a into a into faith but we want
to be marked forever to say we are people who have staked everything on the promises of God
and as we come to communion don't want to take away from what James said he's going to say but as
we come to communion it's that that is so important it's that it's that it's not an emotional process
it's not something that we go through and we we try to find the emotions for communion but it's
actually a physical thing to remind us that these promises stand forever that this covenant stands
forever remember God's word stands no matter what time has passed he wants us to choose
faith in him regardless of what has happened or is happening or will happen he has chosen to come
to us and open a relationship with us not the other way around God is God and you are not
I am not God has things to say about you your life your future that are different to what others
have said or you've said about yourself and we need to listen to him and what he says
and it may be difficult to believe God or to trust him but you can choose to do it
you can determine to put your trust in him every day for the rest of your life and be marked forever
as a believer in Christ and as a believer in God not just while things are running well
but forever forever and ever and ever and on into eternity amen God bless you

View Details

Summary of Karen's Sermon: Making Mistakes
Introduction
Karen starts the sermon by acknowledging the audience and explaining her method for preparing the sermon. She then introduces the passage she will be focusing on: Genesis 16, which tells the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar.

Bible References: Genesis 15:6, Genesis 16
The Story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar
Karen outlines the story in Genesis 16:

Abraham is promised by God that he will have descendants as numerous as the stars (Genesis 15:6).
Ten years later, Sarah has not conceived a child.
Sarah proposes that Abraham have a child with Hagar, her maidservant.
Hagar becomes pregnant with Abraham's child, Ishmael.
There is conflict between Sarah and Hagar.
Hagar flees into the desert.
An angel of the Lord finds Hagar and tells her to return to Sarah.
The angel promises Hagar that Ishmael will have many descendants.
Hagar acknowledges God as "the God who sees me."

Key Points

Karen highlights that women are not portrayed positively throughout Genesis, but her perspective on this passage has changed.
Everyone makes mistakes, and the characters in this story are all facing difficult situations.
Even though Abraham and Sarah made mistakes, God did not abandon them.
God sees us in our circumstances and offers us grace.

Challenges and Choices

Karen talks about a personal situation where she feels stuck and is praying for guidance.
She emphasizes the importance of seeking God's will when faced with challenging circumstances.
We should pray about what our role is in difficult situations – is it to pray, or is it to take action?

Conclusion

Karen encourages listeners to reflect on the passage and ask God what He wants them to learn from it.
She reminds everyone that God sees us and will help us through our struggles.

Additional Notes

Karen mentions struggling with the concept of rescuing others and emphasizes that God is the rescuer.
She acknowledges that waiting for God's timing can be difficult.

Transcription
Um, we're going to have a little bit of audience participation as well.
High, lovely people.
Is that okay?
You're not allowed to say no, by the way.
I don't know.
Um, and a rider is, you are not the people that you will be in today's story.
Is that okay?
So I went to see Graham, and I went morning Graham, and he went,
it's going to be trouble, isn't it?
And all I wanted was some verses up there, that's all.
So, um, we're doing Genesis 16 today.
If you like Genesis 15, 16 and 17 are all part of the same soap opera,
because it all goes together.
But before we start on it, I'm going to give you a little bit of my background
because it is relevant.
So, as Nick said, I've been married to Johnson for nearly 40 years,
as I've known him for 43 years.
Um, we started going out on February the 1st, 1981.
And we met at Bible College.
Or, as was commonly known at the time, London Bridal College.
Plus, there were lots of women there, and not that many men.
Um, and Jonathan was doing a diploma in theology, and I was doing a degree in theology.
And because I was doing a degree, that then meant that I could do a pastoral diploma
alongside my degree.
Which meant that you did extra lectures, but you also had to do various other things.
I had to do two summer schools.
I did one with Bob Gordon and Colin Erkart many years ago.
Um, and it also meant that you had to do so many preachers at churches over the two years.
Okay?
So, you'd get a list, and you'd phone that church up,
and you'd say, hi, I'm your, hi, I'm your preacher for such and such a date.
And I would do this, and on a regular basis,
as soon as whoever picked the phone were up, and they heard a woman's voice,
they would say, no, you're not.
Okay? I'm talking 40 years ago.
The method is actually, we're very good. They always let me go.
Um, and that sort of embedded in me something that started when I was about 12.
So, I remember one day at home, my dad was painting, he was decorating.
And I went up to him, and I said, can I have a go, Dad?
Oh, no.
It's not for women, this is a man's job.
Now, I don't know whether this is something that God's placed in me,
or just whether it's a character flaw.
If somebody tells me I can't do something, I'm blooming well going to do it.
So, when I went to Bible college and lots of men, sorry men,
were telling me I couldn't preach in a church.
I was good enough to, I could do the children's talk.
I was good enough for the children, but I wasn't good enough for the congregation
because I was a woman.
So, that kind of set me on a journey.
And there was a lovely lecturer at Bible college called Mary Evans,
and she wrote a book called Women in the Bible, which I very much appreciated.
Because if you think about it, the Bible was written by who? Men or women?
Men.
Who is it mainly about? Men or women?
And then I started, as we've been going through Genesis,
my premise before I started living this chapter over the week was
women don't really come out in a good light in Genesis.
And I have to say, my viewpoint has changed because of living this chapter this week.
So, for those of you that have done the speaking course that has run a couple of times,
you'll know that how I get my talk ready is I'll read it,
and then I start living it, I read all about it, I read all the commentaries,
I have to go to speak to me, and that has been very challenging this week
in ways that I'm not going to go into before I'm ready to stand up and talk.
Now, when we start going through this, there are three characters.
There is Abraham, not Abraham at this point, there is Abraham.
There is Serai, not Sera, Serai, and there is Hagar.
Okay? These are our three characters, all right?
Now, what Erika talked about last week was the promise that was first given to Abraham.
And that promise was that he would have a child,
and the descendants of that child would be as many as the stars.
Okay? And he believed that promise.
It says in 15, verse 6, that Abraham believed the Lord.
Okay? So, chapter 16, we've skipped ten years, we're ten years later.
If I could have verse two, grey, and whenever you're ready, that would be marvellous, thank you.
Now, I'm not sure if when Abraham told Serai what he said,
what he said, hello wife, God told me you're going to have a baby,
and your baby is going to have lots of babies and so on.
So, was the promise first given to Abraham, or was it first given to Serai?
Abraham. So, Sera is getting it second hand.
It's the promise that's given to Abraham, but actually it's her that's going to fulfill that promise.
Ten years down the line, she's thinking nothing's happened here.
Is this my fault? Is there something wrong with me?
Am I not good enough? I don't know what she was thinking, but the bottom line was she was thinking nothing's happening here.
And yet, this is the promise that Abraham has said, God has given him.
So, I'm going to need to help out here.
The Lord has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my slave.
Perhaps, I can build a family through her.
The very important word there, perhaps.
She wasn't absolutely certain, but perhaps we can do it this way.
Next first, please.
So, Abraham has been given a promise that his descendants will come through Serai.
Did Abraham say that to Serai? Not really.
I don't know what he said, but he went ahead and did what she told him to, or suggested.
And he lay with Hagar.
Now, poor Hagar, servant slave, could she have any say in it?
No. Was it something she wanted? We don't know.
Did Serai think about the consequences of what she was asking of both Abraham and Hagar?
Often, we don't see the big picture, do we? We just see that little bit.
What was Abraham thinking? Was he thinking, well, she might be right. Nothing's happened yet.
This will, God promised me, I believed it. We'll give it a go. I don't know. Anyway, it happened.
Then, Hagar, who's been this servant to Sera, well, from being this subservient servant, she's now got something that Serai hasn't got.
Abraham's child.
That puts her in a position of power.
I don't think Sera quite thought that through, did she?
So then, Serai, oh, my word, my slave is standing there all haughty, talkty.
I'm carrying Abraham's child, something you haven't been able to do.
She got coke well with that, surprisingly. It gets a bit jealous.
I love this bit.
Then, can you carry on, Graham? I'll tell you when to stop.
This is it, I love this bit. She says to Abraham, you're responsible for this. This is your fault.
This is what I mean about Genesis, we mean it a bad light anyway.
But actually, she's not wrong, is she?
Is she?
Because Abraham could have said...
No!
And he didn't.
And the promise wasn't given to her, it was given to Abraham.
She was trying to help out by saying, well, nothing's happening with me, let's try this another way, and he agreed.
The innocent victim, if you like it all of this, wasn't Abraham, wasn't Serai, it was?
Now, I've thought long and hard about this, and I'm going to be there, I'm even going to read the wording because...
There is something about our circumstances.
And I've thought very carefully and pray very hard about which circumstances I highlight, because we are all, if you like, victims of circumstances, at some point in our lives, to a greater or lesser degree, would you agree?
Sometimes, illness, whether that is a physical or a mental illness, we're not in control of that, we haven't asked for it, we don't want it, it becomes part of who we are, because it's a circumstance we live with.
Sometimes, loss, loss of a child, loss of a spouse, loss of a job can impact, and it isn't something we are in control of.
Sometimes, the inability to have a child, we're not in control of that.
Sometimes, to have a child with a difficulty or disability that impacts on our lives and who we are, again, we're not in control of that.
Sometimes, loss of reputation that we are not in control of, I was thinking about the post office scandal.
One of those poor women had to have, I was listening to her on the radio, and she begged not to have the baby in prison and actually had the baby in an ambulance on a roundabout, so that that baby was not born in prison.
Circumstances that we are not in control of can and are very impactful on our lives.
Greed? So, there's Hagar. Okay?
So, she's had enough.
Sarah is being absolutely horrible to her.
Abraham's walked away and said, not that far. Do what you want.
Hagar's had enough, so she thinks I'll take a walk. Can't do this.
Now, she's not supposed to because she's the possession, if you like, of Sarah.
And the thing is, when this baby comes, it won't be long to her, it will be long to her mistress.
Absolutely, these circumstances are outside of her control, so she takes a walk into a desert.
And keep going, Graham, and I'll tell you when to stop.
Stop there, please.
So, she's had a spring in the desert, fairly desperate.
And in verse 7, it says, the angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert.
Okay, next verse, please, Graham.
And he said, Hagar, slave of Sarah, where have you come from or where are you going?
He knew all of that.
Yep.
And she gives the bare minimum, I am running away from my mistress, Sarah. I carry on, Graham.
Then the angel of the Lord told her, go back to your mistress and submit to me to her.
What would you have said?
I don't think so. I'm not going to do that. Thank you very much.
It's not nice. I'm not having a nice time.
Next one, Graham.
Then, I will increase your descendants so much that they will become too numerous to count.
Where have we heard that before?
Oh, the previous chapter.
The promise that was given to Abraham about Sarah, and yet here it is again.
Okay.
And he's promised it to this slave, Hagar.
Because she is bearing Abraham's son.
Next verse, please, Graham.
You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son and you will name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery.
Ishmael means God hears.
God hears.
The Lord has heard of your misery.
Next verse, please, Graham.
I love this description because, you know, you could have a baby.
It's going to have loads of descendants and it's going to be a wild donkey.
Whoopee.
Yeah.
He'll be against everyone and everyone's hand will be against him and he will live in hostility towards all his brothers.
There's something about this particular verse because we are living as part of that now.
Okay.
Next verse, please, Graham.
Right.
She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her.
Now, two verses earlier, it's been an angel of the Lord. This is really, really important.
Two verses earlier, it was the angel of the Lord who came.
Okay.
Now, she gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her.
You are the God who sees me.
I have now seen the one who sees me.
This is really important. Tell me another woman in the Old Testament who has seen God.
Now, Johnson and I would did this for quite a while.
Please feel free to come and let me know afterwards.
We could find loads of women that had actually prophetesses that had heard from God.
But this says, you are the God who sees me.
I have now seen the one who sees me.
This woman was a slave and circumstances had put her in this position of misery.
And God, God came to her and said, I see your misery.
This is the promise that I will give you because you haven't done anything.
You are a victim of your circumstance.
Wow.
And the more I thought about this, you see, then we get, who were the first to the tomb?
It was the women that went and said, he's not here. He's gone. He's risen.
So I get to the point of actually the Bible might have been written by men, about men a lot of the time.
But there is a equality in that I personally do not see that God prefers men.
That God prefers women. He prefers people who have a heart for him.
And for me, this woman was changed because she could say, I have been seen by God and I have seen God.
And she went back.
And when Ishmael was born, Abraham, if you like, honored the fact that Ishmael was his child.
So, I think it's entirely up to you what you take away from this passage.
I'm still working things through a lot in my head and my heart.
But for me, the biggest thing was we will all find ourselves in circumstances that are out of our control.
And we all have decisions to make about our approach then to those circumstances.
Now, when you read to the next chapter, does God abandon Abraham because actually he blew it a bit?
And actually, to be fair, he blew it a lot. If you look at what happens later in terms of the sons of Ishmael
and the adversity between the two half brothers, if you like, does God then abandon Abraham?
No, in the very next chapter, changes his name. And Sir I changes his name, her name.
So, from being the exalted father, which is what Abraham means, to the father of many, which is what Abraham means.
And Sir I, it's just like a little change. It still means princess, but I think it's almost a reconformation that you are a princess and you have born a son.
So, God doesn't actually hold this whole mistake against these two. He still does what he planned to do.
So, that tells me it's not a brilliant idea to make a mistake, but also is that going to ever stop God working in your life and doing what he needs to do?
So, therefore, for me, is this about our response? Now, I don't say this lightly, and I don't say this as this is what we should all do, because we are responsible for our own salvation.
The New Testament says you work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
But my challenge to each and every one of us is when circumstances come along that we are not in control of.
And there's a particular situation at the moment for me, and I've been praying about it, and all I can see is a big, big block of concrete.
And I can't get over it. Can't get under it. It's a bit like the bear hunt. Can't get over it. Can't get under it. Can't get around it.
And all I'm asking God to do is show me the way through it, because at this point we have choices to make.
We try to do God's work for us, and even if we do, he's not going to stop loving us. His grace is sufficient.
But if you think about it and pray about it and say, OK, God, this is what I do, but do I do that? Do I not do that?
Now, can I make a distinction here? This is very different to you making plans for yourself, where you might say,
right, Lord, I'm going to open this door, I'm going to open that door, and you close the one that isn't right.
That's very different to being in circumstances that you are not in control of. Does that? Yeah?
So all I would like us to do is ask God to speak to you about which part of this has been relevant for you and what God wants to say to you.
Just because I've been going through all of this all weeks, I'm putting on you now, basically.
The other thing is, the very last thing is, it's almost like sometimes we feel the need, we can see people in these situations, can't we?
We can see people in circumstances that are hard for them, and it can be very easy for us to want to rescue them.
And that's the situation that I found myself in this week, in a situation that involves other people, and I just want to go and rescue.
And this has absolutely stopped me in my tracks, because now I've had to say, actually, it's not my job.
And that is really hard sometimes. You know, you love people, or you know people really well, and you know how hard it is for them, and there is a desire within us to rescue people.
And the thing that we then have to say to ourselves is, what is my role?
Jesus, and God our loving Heavenly Father, or the motherhead who loves to gather her chicks to herself, is the rescuer.
And therefore what we need to be praying is, what is my role?
Is my role just to be praying, or is my role to do something?
Does that make sense as well?
So, I'm sorry, it's been very different to yours last week, Erica.
But this is honestly, I've battled so much with this in terms of what has been the right thing to do and to say.
But all I would say to you is, God is the God who sees you, and sees you wherever you are, whatever situation you're in.
And he is the one that will make a difference.
Now, I'm sorry I'm going to go into the next chapter.
Abraham and Sarah didn't have a baby that next year.
I think it's something like another 17 years past.
So, it's a waiting game.
And as Christians, we're impatient, and we want stuff, and we want it now, and we want differences in situations now.
And that's when we start to rescue, and that's when we start to engineer things to happen.
So, sometimes we need to hold back, and we need to ask God for patience.
And I don't know whether that's what God means with this block.
He's saying, you need to stop, and put in a block in your way so you can't.
And then I'm working that through.
So, what I want us to do is simply, I'm not asking anybody to do anything other than perhaps go home, read that particular chapter again,
and ask God are you saying anything to me, and what do you want me to do?
And I'm done.
Thank you.

View Details

Summary

Introduction

Erica starts with an illustration about her son singing a children's worship song and how it made her think about brokenness and God's mercy.

Recap of Last Week's Sermon

Erica summarizes the previous sermon where they spoke about the importance of trusting God even in difficult situations.

Abraham's Story - Genesis 15

Erica focuses on Genesis 15 where Abraham has just rescued Lot and other people from a battle.
Abraham decided to return all the captured plunder to the king of Sodom, even though he had won the battle and could have kept it.
This act of giving everything back to the king impressed God because Abraham gave God all the glory for his success.

The Importance of Giving God the Glory

The message is that we should give God the glory for everything good in our lives, not take credit for ourselves.
Often we focus on the temporary pleasures of the world instead of the permanent reward of knowing God.
Erica emphasizes that trusting in God will never leave us feeling like we missed out.

Abraham Questions God's Promise

Abraham reminds God of his promise of a son, as it had been 10-15 years since the initial promise in Genesis 12.
This act of reminding God is seen as acceptable because it shows dependence on God's faithfulness.

God Reaffirms His Promises to Abraham

God reassures Abraham of the promise of a son, using the countless stars in the sky as a metaphor for the multitude of descendants Abraham will have.
God establishes a covenant with Abraham, promising him land for his descendants.

The Ritual of the Cut Pieces

God instructs Abraham to perform a ritual with sacrificed animals, cut in half and laid on the ground.
Vultures came to eat the sacrifice, but Abraham drove them away.
This is seen as a representation of doubt and negativity that can try to steal our joy and faith.

God Shows Abraham the Future

Abraham falls into a deep sleep, and God reveals the future struggles and hardships Abraham's descendants will face.
Difficulties do not negate God's promises; they are part of the journey.

Finding Freedom Through Worship

Erica uses Philippians 2:13 to remind listeners that God works in them to desire and do what pleases Him.
This means God gets the glory, not us.
She emphasizes that God doesn't forget or abandon us, even during moments of doubt about faith or salvation.

God's Unwavering Promises

Referencing the stars again, Erica highlights God's faithfulness to His promises, even when we doubt.
She assures listeners that God remains a covenant-keeping God, even when we are faithless.
Quotes Hebrews 13:5 ("I will never leave you nor forsake you") to emphasize God's constant presence.

Worship as an Expression of Gratitude

The sermon shifts to the purpose of worship.
Worship is not about manipulating God to obtain things; His promises are already established.
We sing and worship because our hearts overflow with gratitude for God's free gifts and the freedom He offers.

Conclusion

Erica emphasizes the privilege of being a worshiper and the freedom that comes with focusing on God's faithfulness.
The sermon ends with a powerful declaration of "amen."

Key Points

Give God the glory for everything good in your life.
Trusting in God is more valuable than temporary worldly pleasures.
Don't be afraid to remind God of His promises.
Doubt and negativity can try to steal your faith, but you can overcome them.
Struggles and hardships are part of life, but God's promises are still true.
God works in us to accomplish His will.
God's promises are unwavering, even when we doubt.
Worship is an expression of gratitude for God's faithfulness and the freedom He provides.

Transcript
speak through eric is now in jesus nine
uh...
one
it's dark green
now it's dark green
jensen i wonder if you could put up that song
once again i look upon the cross where you died
that first
jesus christ i think upon your sacrifice
just made me smile i had that song for such a long time and i tell you why it
made me smile
uh... was because when aiden was very little how old was he
probably about
three
uh...
it was probably about three and he uh...
he used to love that song and he used to sing the second bit i'm humbled by a
mercy but
he would sing
humbug mercy
and and and and and and and and i broken inside was how we saw it
and uh... and this morning i was just uh... thinking about that song it's an
absolutely brilliant song but i just remember this little three-year-old
going humbug mercy and and and and and and and and and and and and and and
and and and and and and and and broken
broken inside so i thought i'd share that with you
uh... just as my introduction to
powerful really really powerful he did a solo as well
uh... once
a wedding
only once
uh... but i was i have to say i just thought that by the grace of god uh... he
spoke really clearly uh... last uh... sunday
from genesis chapter fourteen
and i just kind of want to recap the three points that he spoke about
or the god spoke through him
and remember the title was when a lot is at stake
and a real lot
person lot was at stake
and it would you mind getting me a glass of water please thank you
and and abraham when a lot is at stake there were three things one of them was
the first one was keep calm
and factor in god
but god
everything looks impossible
but god the army looks
huge but god the situation looks bleak
but god
the second point was gather your three hundred and eighteen trained men
uh... and maybe that's not literal well it won't be literal for us three
hundred and eighteen trained men but
find your trained people the people that will stand alongside you and battle for
you and with you
and isolation is not
gift from god
it's a strategy of the enemy
it's a strategy of the end
we are much stronger together
then we will ever be apart and so when we are feeling in that place where
things look challenging and difficult
gather
the people around you that will remind you and help you to strengthen your faith
thank you very much
and then the third point was abraham
and rescued a lot
and in the process
he freed all the women and other people
i'm still trying to understand what that movement of the people mean but um...
just to regard again a reminder that our decisions
and the choices that we make have a ripple effect on other people
and uh... abraham decided to save one man
and so many other families were saved in the process don't underestimate
what god can do
through the decisions that you make and the impact
that it can have on the world around you
and so we come to chapter fifteen and abraham has rescued lot and a ton of
other people
and he's also come away from the fight with all the plunder
which is normal all the gold and the silver and everything and by law
all of that stuff belongs to abraham there's no disputing it he won the battle
he gets all the stuff
and he goes to the king of sodom to return his people back to him those that
he'd rescued
and uh... the king of sodom says to him all this plunder is yours
and abraham says i don't want
any of it
and now by right this all belongs to me
but i don't want any of it because i don't want anybody out there to say
that it was they that made me rich
i really
was struck by that
he didn't he wanted all the glory for any success or any prosperity or any
achievement or to go
to god
so when the king of sodom said you can have it all all of this is yours how
amazing really really good stuff
he made the choice to walk away from all of that
so that god would get all the glory
for all the prosperity and all the achievement and all the success
that abraham
would have
and uh... it reminds me that saying from jim elliot you know that famous one
don't you
he is no fool
who
gives up
what he cannot keep
to take hold
of what he cannot lose
it's all rightfully his there would have been nothing wrong to take it it
wasn't theft he wasn't stealing it
but he made a decision he didn't want anyone to be able to say
we made you who you are we played a party wanted all the glory
to go to god
and i just found that really big challenge and asking myself the question
this week is i've been mauling it over and i've been mauling this chapter over
a lot
who do i give credit for the achievements in my life who do i give
credit for the successes of the things that i feel i've done well or
the right choices who i do who do i give credit to
do i give it all to god and say god have all the glory you do i try and share it
a little bit well you know it was some garden some may and whatever
and i want to be like abraham who says you know what lord jesus it's all yours
everything
everything is all yours
and now we come
to genesis chapter fifteen and i'm going to read it if that's all right
you're still with me
sure
okay so genesis chapter fifteen i'm going to read
from the beginning after this
the word of the lord came to abraham in the visit vindict vision
it's given up the plunder
and now he has this vision don't be afraid abraham i am your shield
and your very great reward
but abraham said
sovereign lord what can you give me since i remain childless and the one who
will inherit my state is aliased of Damascus
and abraham said you have given me no children so a servant in my household
will be my air
then the word of the lord came to him
this man will not be your air but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be
your air
he took him outside and said
look up at the sky and count the stars if indeed you can count them
then he said to him so shall your offspring be
make a note in your bible verse six abraham
believed the lord
and he credit it to him
as righteousness
he also said to him i am the lord who brought you out of her the childians to
give you this land and take possession of it
abraham said sovereign lord
how can i know that i shall gain possession of it
so the lord said to him bring me a heifer a goat and a ram
each three years old along with a dove and a young pigeon
abraham bought all of these things to him i love that it's all as if it was
sitting there waiting
uh...
he just went out to the supermarket and came back with it all
abraham said that sovereign lord oh yeah i've done that but abraham brought all
of these things to him cut them into two and arrange the halves opposite each
other
the birds however he did not
cut in half
then the birds of prey came on the carcasses but aden drove abraham drove
them away
as the sun was setting abraham fell into a deep sleep in a thick and dreadful
darkness came over him
and then the lord said to him no for certain
that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in the
country not their own
and that they will be enslaved and ill-treated
but i will punish the nation they serve as slaves and afterwards
they will come with great possessions
you however will go to your ancestors in peace
and be buried at a good old age
in the fourth generation your descendants will come back here for the
sins of the amorites has not yet reached its full measure
when the sun had set and darkness had fallen
a smoking brazier and a flame blazing torch appeared and passed through the
pieces
and on that day
the lord made the covenant with abraham and said
to your descendants i give you this land
from the wadi of egypt to the great river the uphrates
the land of the kennesites kennesites kabmanites and hitites
perisites rafayites amorites kennesites and gurgersites
and jebusites are men
so it's given up the plunder and god comes to abraham in a vision and it says
i'd like to paraphrase it i'm not sure that god said it exactly like this but
bear with me says it says i saw what you did back there
and how you valued me more than all the other stuff and all the other treasure
and some people would have thought that abraham was a fool to have passed it all
up but god is saying you made the right decision
don't be afraid abraham i am going to be
your shield not i'm going to be i am your shield
your protection against blows against violence against missiles whatever it
is i am your shield that was a promise that god made
to abraham and to his people and i am your very great reward
what he was saying was abraham you will not be a loser
when you give up everything for me i will more than make up
what you have given up i will more than make up
for you and he says that to us today as i go through
you'll never be the loser for putting your faith in jesus
never you'll never come off worse all the world has to offer and it's got some
incredible things to offer amazing valuable stuff out there
but when we give our lives to jesus we will never be the poorer for it
sometimes we behave like god is a killjoy or he's out to ruin our fun or make
life miserable but what he's actually saying is
when you put your trust in me you will never be the poorer
abraham you'll never be the loser and he says that to you this morning
so he says to him don't pine after all the other joy just know abraham that i am
your shield i am your very great reward the king of
sodden was offering so much amazing and valuable stuff
but god was not saying i'm going to give you more stuff abraham i'm going to give
you more gold and more silver he says i'm actually going to give you
myself wait in the balance all the stuff out there
or god himself
who are we sure yeah well i'm sure this morning
i'm really sure this morning because i'm in the presence of all you lovely
people and we've sung some really amazing stuff about the promises of god
and i feel quite good because i've read this chapter and i'm so excited about
it all that god has said about his promises
and but i know that monday morning is coming
way up all that that is out there or god
himself and i love abraham's reply because he's kind of blunt because he
kind of says oh yeah thanks ever so much god
thank you for giving yourself to me but what about
that what about that other concern i have what about that other thing that you
promised me what about the other stuff that i need you to do
and i just realized how easy it is for us to focus on the dirt and the dust of
daily living that we actually forget that god
himself has promised to walk with us every day god
with me and all the other stuff out there that he's promised it's all there god
hasn't forgotten he's not forgotten me his concern is for me
but sometimes i lose sight of the glorious truth of his promise
and i hold on to the dust and the dirt of today
god with you and abraham reminds god of the promise of a son as if god had
forgotten now to be fair to abraham the promise
was initially given in chapter 12 and there are
there was about 10 to 15 years between chapter 12
and chapter 15 like for us it's just a few pages in the bible isn't there
there's chapter 12 oh look there's chapter 15
but for abraham that was that was 10 to 15 years
that god that god had promised all that time ago and it'd be easy to imagine
that god had forgotten have you ever felt like that
time passes maybe god you've forgotten
maybe god i hadn't heard you properly maybe god is getting older and we know
what happens as people get older don't wait
you think like that yeah god is getting out what do happens when people forget
i say they forget
people can have a conversation with me do you remember i told you about that
thing a week ago
no i told you
no it happens with nicholot actually
sometimes i have to go back to the original conversation and i'll say
it was a sunny day and we were out walking with the dogs and we had quite a
robust conversation about it and we came to the conclusion and this was going
to happen and that was going to happen do you remember
and sometimes i can even see the cogs turning like i know i'm supposed to
remember so i'm going to put my remembering face on and hopefully
she'll think well i've remembered
and remember you said i've got i've got a memory of an elephant
who said yeah that's right yeah
are you calling me an elephant
but sometimes we behave as if god is getting older and we all know what
happens when people get older they forget
and so god is abraham is reminding god about a promise that god hasn't
forgotten about but it's just wonderful to know that god isn't offended
when we go back to him and we say i feel a bit wobbly about this i feel a bit
uncertain about this i feel a bit doubtful about this it's been a long time lord
some of you have been praying over god's promises
for your children for a long time for your children for a long time and
sometimes you think and you can feel like god's forgotten them
because that's what we do we forget don't we
we forget the promises that we've made and i love that god doesn't get offended
or he doesn't get cross and he reiterates the promise and he says to
abraham i've not forgotten and then he takes him outside and i really hope i
can communicate this this morning because it's the most beautiful thing
god takes him outside and he shows in the stars in the sky
and he says to him this is your reminder abraham your children your offspring
that i've promised you they're gonna outnumber the stars in the sky
you know what came to me this morning and i may be wrong
my theology is wrong but i just wonder whether god put the stars in the sky
in order that there would be a reminder for abraham
all those years later
so thought isn't it isn't that what he did with Noah
with the rainbow i don't think a rainbow existed until that point
didn't exist and suddenly there is a rainbow
that is just there to remind Noah that he was never ever going to flood the
earth again maybe god put the stars in the sky
just for abraham to remind him that he hadn't forgotten
and he takes him out 15 to he takes him out and says i'm gonna
fulfill my promise just you look at the stars
now it would be another 15 to 25 years before he would become a father
just like god had said do you know how many night skies there are in 25 years
9 000 night skies to stare at every time abraham had a wobble
every time he had a doubt every time he wondered whether he'd misunderstood
god or not heard properly or that god might have forgotten or they
wouldn't do it because other people had let him down
maybe god would do the same he was human just like us abraham was
and every single time he had that wobble he was able to go out to the sky
and look at the stars and be reminded that god's
remembrances are have been established in time forever
if you remember the story of the children of israel god says to them that to make
halters aren't they so that they can go back to remember
that's right isn't it you know take your children and go back and remember what
god's done and then god would lead him into another thing and he would say
make another altar and bring back your children to remember
how many of those altars still stand none not a single one of those altars
exists today i tell you what exists today though
stars in the sky and the rainbow doesn't that tell you something about the
promises that god makes with us that they are established
that no tsunami or earthquake or as we've heard in Dubai this week cloud
seeding any of you seen that nothing no war
no missile nothing ever can touch the stars in the sky or the rainbows that
will ever come they were established to remind abraham to remind
Noah and to remind us that god's promises
his relationship with us is rock solid i don't know about you that just makes
me so excited when you're on your own
you're on your own and you have in that moment of doubt where is god in the
middle of this look at the sky look at the sky
nine thousand reminders to abraham before the promise
actually was fulfilled it blows my mind
i hope you can see that i'm getting quite excited about this
next time you have the wobbles find a night sky
and look up don't look at the wobble find a night sky
and look up they're easy to find they happen once every 24 hours round about
they're not difficult if you can't find one by yourself give me a ring and i'll
find one with you you know if you've got to go search him
we're not trusting in the night sky we're not trusting in the stars but we are
trusting in the god of the stars the one who flung
it all into space and causes it all to exist now
this is the nature of this god are you still with me
the account tells us in verse six that abraham believed in the lord and the
lord accounted to him as righteousness he didn't believe in the promise
all the stars all the stuff he believed in the lord
and you know what that simple seed of belief did in that moment
it put him in a place of righteousness do you know what righteousness means
what does righteousness mean
right standing before god now it's interesting to go back in time into
abraham's life abraham was obedient to god
he worshipped god he tithed he went to battle for god
he did all of that but it was his belief that putting him in right relationship
with god all of that other stuff didn't none of that other stuff was
accounted to him as righteousness it was when he put his trust in god and he
said lord jesus no i didn't say lord jesus
my god i believe in you it was at that moment
at that moment that god says this is what puts you in right standing
with me
isn't that just so exciting
bible tells us we are saved by grace alone through faith alone
in christ alone and when we put our trust in him
regardless of how fragile it is or how uncertain we are
god credit is that that is a very difficult thing to say that
god credits it it it it to us as righteousness and puts us in right
standing before god hallelujah hallelujah
god reiterates his promise to abraham about it so we've had this you know god
says i'm giving myself and abraham goes yes lord but
what about that other promise and god chosen the sky and all of that and the
remembrance of that and then he comes back again and god says you know
i'm going to give you land and an inheritance for your people
and again abraham comes back and he says okay god thank you very much for that
but how can i know that it will be mine where's the proof
god isn't offended we ask him questions it's not offended
i actually think he enjoys showing us what he's going to do next because he
says to abraham bring me a three-year-old heffa female
go around a turtle dove and a pigeon all sounds really weird to us doesn't it
any ritual that we do today
well we wouldn't do that it would be really messy and steve bode would tell
us off for messing up the carpet
but as soon as god begins to describe the animals abraham knew exactly what he
was talking about because this was a normal ritual when two people were
making a contract or a promise with each other
they would get these animals and they would cut them into pieces and they
would lay them down half of the animal on this side
and half of the animal on that side split into
and the contract was two people would make that agreement and then they would
walk together down the center sounds really weird doesn't it
down through the center down through the center of the minute
if you had to do that in my marriage now i mean the white dress would be a
right mess wouldn't it down through the center two people
together and the implication was is that any of them
that broke the contract any of them that didn't do their part or failed to do
their side of the bargain they were to be put aside
just like these birds and the heffers and the rams and all of that they were
supposed to be regarded as that so making a contract a covenant a
relationship had huge implications if you knew that you
couldn't hold up your side of the bargain
it was a deadly serious quite literally that
deadly serious abraham does exactly what god has asked him to do and i'm sure
in his mind he's thinking to himself this is me and god
walking down this thing together and you know if i was abraham my heart would be
pounding because i know that i am a failure
i know that i fail over stuff i have great intentions about things i'm going
to do but i know how easy it is for me to break my vows
he's making he's preparing himself to walk down this thing
with god and god doesn't turn up god isn't there for ages
and as abraham waits ready to walk down to play his part the carcasses on the
ground begin to dry up and the vultures begin to appear
and then you know what abraham does then has to do he then has to try and scare
the vultures away because they want to come and devour
the carcasses they want to come and devour this ritual
that god that abraham knows needs to happen
the vultures were physically coming to the animals but i also believe that they
were spiritually swirling around abraham's head
doubt i've laid it all lord just as you've asked me to do
and now i'm waiting where are you maybe i misunderstood
maybe i've made god angry any of you's that statement any of you use that
statement maybe i've made god angry maybe he won't come
maybe he's punishing me maybe i've done something and he's punishing me
anybody ever use that statement before yeah
maybe he's changed his mind i bet you know what that feels like when people
have promised stuff and they've changed their mind
the problem is is that we interpret our promises in the same way that we have
experienced them ourselves when i was little
we used to have something called a pinky promise
do you remember those pinky promise i'm just doing it for one four six
they were really important promises weren't they the pinky ones because
there was this thing that was done it's solid
and did you ever have the promise i'm sorry if anybody's offended by this but
that we used to do cross my heart hope to die
stick ten needles in my eye
do you remember those they were like real promises
you know if you said that people were supposed to believe you
a promise was never just a promise you had to like say something else to make
it stick and then you remember the fair weather
promises don't you where somebody's promised you something when the weather
was nice and then when circumstances got tough
i've done that to people made promises that i've not been able to keep because
of different things and i can imagine that abraham is putting all of that
on gardeners the vultures are swirling around
they're swirling around his head as well
bringing in doubt bringing in fear maybe god isn't who he says he is maybe god
won't come maybe i'm wasting my time all the time the vultures are swirling
around well i looked on the internet you know
to work out how you're supposed to get rid of birds of prey from your garden
you know what it says says don't treat them like pets
yelling is good make yourself big and i began to think
about that spiritually what does it mean if vultures
the vultures can't steal the promise but they can steal my joy and they can
steal my peace and they can steal my security
and they can fill me with doubt and all of that kind of thing
if the vultures are coming to steal your yelling is good
make yourself big assert the truth of his promises assert your faith you know
what else works rattle your pots and pans
every time they come close rattle your pots and pans we had thieves come to our
house in zambia one day and i got a saucepan and i ran it down the burglar bars
like this to make a huge noise they never came back again
rattle your pots and pans when the when the vultures want to come in and steal
your joy and tell you that god is not a god of his word
or his promises you remind them rattle your pots and pans
every time they do they come close disrupt the influence
of doubt and negativity worship loud surround yourself with people
the other thing you need to do is remove any perches so they can't settle
don't give them the platform are you all right there Kathy
Kathy sparrow
we don't want purchase the vultures though
do what you need to dismantle dismantle anything that is
that is not creating an environment where faith can flourish
and when doubts and fears come you need to want to make sure that they don't
take root i'm trying to rush through this what a great passage today
so is a Abraham weighted shooing off the vultures god sends him into a deep
sleep basically what god is saying is i am making you incapable
of walking down this thing with me incapable
and as Abraham is asleep god shows him the promise and how it will be
fulfilled but also shows Abraham that they will be
struggle and strife and difficulty and hardship and all of those things
before he would see the the problem filled
why do we think that struggle and strife and difficulty and all of those things
why do we think that those things undermine the promises of god
one of the scriptures in the bible says in this world you will have
trouble but take heart in this world you will have to why do we look
surprised when it comes as if god is not
he's not true to his word he is says you will have trouble but take heart
and as Abraham wakes up he sees god the smoking brazier with a burning
torch passed through the pieces of the sacrifice
together i want you to understand this because this
is really crucial we sometimes live as if the promises
is down the promise that god has made to us is down to us
to maintain and we work really really hard and we forget
that when they walked through the pieces to make the covenant to establish the
relationship it wasn't two people that walked down
each of them making the contract with each other it was god
alone why because he knew that we were frail and we were broken and we wouldn't
be able to keep our end of the bargain and if we aren't able to keep our end of
the bargain that would break the covenant and it would mean all the promises would
come to an end so god took himself down there because he
was the only one that was able but perfect enough to keep the covenant
hallelujah and we're running around frantically
trying to keep our end of the bargain we have no end of the bargain to keep
he made the covenant by himself we struggle with this we struggle with
grace we really struggle with grace because we want to do more
and do stuff in order to earn it god made that covenant with you
all by himself when you were fast asleep and completely incapable
he made a covenant with you oh hallelujah thank you Jesus
he took full responsibility for his promise you see it isn't about your
effort or your faithfulness or your watchfulness that his promise to you is
fulfilled it's about his effort and his faithfulness
and he is determination to fulfill his promise hallelujah
on that day god made a covenant with Abraham that required nothing
from Abraham at all in actual fact he was capable couldn't even get up
he'd been in such a deep sleep i was thinking about this the vows that
i've made to god over the years and i have to say i failed
at every single one of them lord i'm going to get up earlier
i'm going to spend more time with you lord jesus i'm going to be up at four
i'm going to pray longer i'm going to be a new christian and i'm going to be
praying longer any of you said that do you know lord jesus i'm going to be
more loving and kind and patient i do the kind
bit all right the patient bit i still struggle with a little bit
lord jesus i'm going to be more forgiving i'm not going to fail you lord i'm not
going to deny you lord jesus i'll be totally devoted to you lord
fail fail fail fail fail
and if i'd walked down the center of that covenant making ritual
that would have been the end of the relationship because of my failure
i want to tell you something jesus hasn't failed
on his part of the bargain and as he made a contract with himself
means that we are completely secure in his promises i'm almost finished
i want you to shift forward some and i don't know exactly what date it was
but some three thousand five hundred to six thousand years later
and it wasn't the blood of animals
but we're going to be strewn out for god to walk through for the covenant to be
made it was the body of his son jesus
he would be the sacrifice where it was rams and lambs and bulls and all of that
he would be the sacrifice and his body just as abraham
did to those pieces his body was broken
into pieces and his blood was poured out
in preparation for a new covenant a new promise it didn't mean that the old
he got it failed at the old one this was a new one
and as he died on the cross the lord jesus he was completely alone
and i don't know whether the cross is on either side i've done a lot of reading
on this this week maybe the cross is on either side kind of
resembled the picture of the animals in abraham's day
i don't know but i do know that when that covenant was work made jesus
god walked through the center of that sacrifice completely
on his own and he made a covenant with you and with me completely
on his own and he took full responsibility for it
completely on his own and he when he said it was finished he meant it completely
and utterly over your life and even though he knew that you would get it
wrong i love when people say um you know i'm i feel like i might have
disappointed god he had no illusions about what he
was taking on he knew exactly what we're like
you only disappoint someone if you pretend and then they find out who you
really are god knows exactly about each and every one of us
is not phased he made a one-sided covenant because he knew that we
couldn't do it on our own he knew that we would fail and
this promise this promise was the forgiveness of sins once and for all
it would mean that we didn't have to go every five minutes to go and
slot for a ball or a cow or whatever in order to be forgiven again
this sacrifice was a once and for all sacrifice that was made
for your sin in the past for your sin today and for your sin in the future
that's what the new covenant was it was about reconciliation with god
which means that we can walk we walked with god yesterday we can walk with
god today and we can walk with god tomorrow and the indwelling
of the holy spirit the indwelling when i gave my life to jesus i was filled
with the holy spirit the holy spirit took residence
in my life that's part of the covenant that jesus has made
with us he didn't meet us halfway almost of the way
god did it all through jesus because only he gets the credit
for the success and the achievements in my life
we aren't the promised makers or the promised keepers
he makes the promises he keeps the promises and he keeps them all by
himself we don't give ourselves to god he's
already given himself fully and completely to us hallelujah
we don't make covenant with him he makes covenant with us
and at the bottom of each contract at the bottom of the thing to do with your
life there where there should be two names both
playing their part there is one name and it's been signed
the name of jesus in his blood no labor or hard work the bible says
come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden
and i will give you rest no effort involved the bible also says that he
who began the good work in as he's the one that will carry it out
so when you're running around trying to make yourself better go to jesus
he is the one that will carry it out to complete
fission he is the one who works in us both to will and to do his good pleasure
god does it all in us and through us which means we don't get any of the glory
all the glory goes to jesus and i'm always almost finished
so when you have a wobble about your faith and you're worried about your
salvation and afraid that god might forget or be offended or be
disappointed with you or might forget you or might neglect you or might not see
you in the crowd i want to encourage you they go outside and look up
at the stars and remember that god has established a promise in the heavens
that cannot be touched by anybody that reminds us that he is a
covenant keeping god faithful to his promises
even when we are faithless god is still faithful
even when we walk away he has said he'll never leave me or forsake me
even when i've gone and i've looked for my own source of provision
god has still said i'm your provider i'm your protector i'm your shield
i'm your deliverer i'm your strong tower i am all of those things
yes but i get it wrong lord jesus and i don't do it right and i sing
yesterday and he says the promise is still stands
they are yes and amen
the reason we worship and i'm going to ask the musicians if you would come back
the reason we worship is not to make those things happen
they're established they're established all those things
are established we don't have to sing louder for them to happen
they are already established we sing and we worship
because our hearts are grateful and our lives are free
and we've decided that we're going to look at those things
and worship jesus what a privileged people we are
what a privileged people we are
amen

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Summary
This sermon explores the story of Abraham rescuing his nephew Lot from captivity in Genesis 14. Aiden uses this story to provide guidance on how to deal with difficult situations in our own lives, emphasizing the importance of faith, community, and the potential impact of our actions.
Key Points:

The Battle of Nine Kings: Aiden summarizes the story of Abraham leading a rescue mission to save his nephew Lot, who was captured during a battle between five kings and four eastern kings.
A Lot at Stake: The title of the sermon refers to the high stakes involved in Abraham's situation. This is used as a springboard to discuss the challenges we face in our own lives.
Reacting to Challenges:

Keep Calm: Aiden emphasizes the importance of maintaining a sense of calm in difficult situations. This calmness is not simply a feeling, but a deep-rooted trust in God's sovereignty and goodness.
Assemble Your Team: We are not meant to face challenges alone. Building a strong community of support is crucial.
Consider the Ripple Effect: Our actions and decisions can have a significant impact on others, both positively and negatively.

Illustrations:

Modern Airplane Stories: Aiden shares personal stories of missed flights to highlight how the stakes can change our perspective on a situation.
Cuban Missile Crisis: The story of Vasily Arkhipov, a Soviet Navy officer who potentially prevented nuclear war, is used as an example of staying calm under pressure.
World Trade Center Rescue: The teamwork displayed in the aftermath of 9/11 is used to illustrate the importance of a strong support system.
Grandmother's Ministry: The story of Aiden's grandmother who started a children's ministry that continues to impact many lives demonstrates the far-reaching effects of our actions.

Call to Action:
The sermon concludes by encouraging listeners to reflect on how they can apply these principles from Abraham's story to their own lives in dealing with challenges and making a positive impact on others.
Bible References:

Genesis 14 (primary passage)
Acts 7 (story of Stephen)

Transcript
Thank you Rowland. All that's loud. I'm sure he won't mind me saying this, but a couple
of weeks ago I was in awe of Darren. A full 10 days before he was due to preach, he'd
sent round his PowerPoint, he'd primed the team who were leading the service and he had
everything ready. So I resolved that I would learn from his example and I would do the
same. Long story short, I sent my PowerPoint to Pete yesterday. So thank you Pete. Appreciate
that. There's not here is he? This morning we're looking at the Battle of the Nine Kings
in Genesis 14. It's got a couple of other titles as well. If I could have my first slide
please James. Other titles include The Battle of the Veil of Sidim or The Slaughter of That
Place. We have a catchier title to follow, so don't feel like you need to write any of
those down. And I'm going to be breaking the mold a little bit because I'm not going
to read the passage in its entirety on the proviso that you go home and read it this
afternoon because it's such a short passage but there's so much to unpack in it. And the
reason I'm doing that is twofold. The first is there's lots of difficult words to pronounce
and the second more serious one is that sometimes, I might just be speaking for myself, when
you read the Bible word for word, I sometimes lose track of the fact that this is a real
event happening to real people many years ago and sometimes I can fall into the trap
of treating it a bit like a fairy story or a bit like a novel that isn't this interesting
but actually this is a real thing that happened to Abraham and the people at that time. And
just to kind of help us with that, I've transposed what happened or tried to transpose what happened
onto a modern day map so we can kind of understand where this is happening, where this is taking
place. And what happens is we have five kings sort of around the Dead Sea region and there's
uprising that goes on there and in response to this uprising four eastern kings, the four
eastern facing, west facing arrows, from sort of Kuwait, southern Iraq and Syria region
go to try and quash these rebellions and around the Dead Sea area there's this big battle,
the battle of the nine kings. In these five kings that we've got, the point is going to work on
there, you've got the kings of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, cities which I'm sure you may have
heard of but we'll come up later on, back one. And as this battle is going on the four eastern
kings plunder the five cities that they've gone to quash and in doing so they take away
a lot, Abraham's nephew, as well as lots of other people and lots of possessions.
When Abraham hears that lot has been taken, he immediately gathers 318 trained men from
his household and sets out to rescue his nephew, Abraham, and his band of brothers reach a
city called Dan, which is just in sort of East, sorry Northern Israel. And when they get there
they stop for the night and they plot what they're going to do next. And they sort of
build this plan and then they go in and they attack the kings who have taken a lot. And
what they do is they then chase them up to the further Black Dot which is just near Damascus
and then they chase them on further and they completely route these four eastern kings and
they retrieve all of the stuff that they've taken as well as lot and as well as the other
hostages that they took and they bring them back.
So I hope you're still with me after that and I guess here comes the catchier title for
the note takers amongst us. The title is A Lot at stake, Genesis 14.
I try little play on words you think, but actually I really feel that there's much more
from this passage that we can take both in the world that we're looking at.
And I think that the list of wars is endless. The list of civil wars is endless. The list
of problems that our world is facing is seemingly endless, but also about how we deal with our
own lives as well. How do we talk to people? How do we love people? How do we interact with
people when there is a lot at stake? I really think there's so much to unpack. If you look
at what's happening in Ukraine, Palestine, Congo, Myanmar, the list goes on and then you
spend five minutes on Twitter, you realise that everyone's an armchair expert and you switch
on the news and you've got Mr. Expert or Mrs. Expert giving their opinion on why this has happened
and what series of events led up to this and what will happen next. And there's all of this sort
of rhetoric that goes on and yet at the centre of it all there is suffering. People are dying,
families are going hungry, there is a lot at stake. And at the risk of beating this
tripe saying to death when we forget how much is at stake we run the risk of harming people
and hurting relationships in our own lives as well. So I'm packed this a little further and perhaps
set the scene of what I mean. I'm going to tell two short stories both of which involve me nearly
missing a flight. That's not a common occurrence and these were out of my control. The first one
I was travelling home from Zimbabwe with a friend and we were due to fly from Harari to Johannesburg
and then Johannesburg on to London. As we went through security in Harari a storm descended on
the airport and visibility was so low and as we sat in the departure lounge we watched our estimated
time of departure get ever further away and we only had three hours to play with in Johannesburg
and so that time was getting shorter and shorter and it quickly became apparent that we were at
risk of missing our flight. Friend said to me what are we going to do and I said well it's quite
simple if we do miss our flight the airport will sort us out because it's not our fault they'll put
us up in our hotel and then we'll fly out tomorrow evening instead. Neither of us had work to get
back for neither of us had any commitments to get back for and actually as we started to talk about
this I started to get a little bit excited about the prospect of staying in Johannesburg.
We would go to the Santa more we'd buy some swimming shorts relaxed by the hotel pool that
was paid for by the airline. It was actually quite exciting and then in a cruel twist of fate our
flight was called and we made it on time. Fast forward a couple of years and Meg and I were
travelling home from Zambia. We were due to stop over in Ethiopia and then fly onwards to Manchester.
We stopped in Ethiopia we had a meal and then we went to board our gate. We
beeped our boarding pass on the little scanner and there was kind of a warning noise and we
were ushered to one side and that was the the that was the extent of the information that was passed
to us. As we stood there waiting in the rapidly emptying departure hall I caught the unmistakable
glimpse of our plane pushing back and then departing to Manchester without us on it.
Ethiopia and Airways put us up in a hotel we had two nights in Ethiopia the difference was
that we were due to land back on a Sunday both of us had worked the following Monday both of us
were training to be teachers we were in our last term we both had assignments to finish
suddenly there's a lot more at stake and that definitely influenced our levels of anxiety our
levels of stress when dealing with this situation and that's the kind of difference I want to draw
out when we're looking at things today. Life is different our reactions are different yet we
need to be so careful when a lot is at stake and I do hope none of us find ourselves in a situation
where our nephews have been carried off by four eastern kings even though this is happening around
the world today when you look at the suffering that's going on but nonetheless I believe that
Abraham gives us some handy tips for when we find ourselves in situations like this so this is
on that one there we are Abraham's guide for when there is a lot at stake point number one keep car
the 27th of October 1962 a Russian B-59 submarine meanders its way towards a patrol up the coast
of the USA the last message received from Moscow was pretty cryptic and commanded the vessel to
patrol the coast of the USA days have passed since the last message and there'd been no further
contact with Moscow the submarine had been able to pick up some radio signals that these have
not been particularly helpful and then they started to hear explosions these were only
signaling charges which were being dropped by the US Navy above to try and get the submarine to
surface but they didn't know that yet the captain of the submarine Valentin Savitsky concluded
that war must have broken out they were being fired on by the US Navy and the only plausible
course of action was to fire the T-5 torpedoes a submarine had in its arsenal these were nuclear
torpedoes and would have decimated major cities causing tens of thousands of deaths if not more
captain Savitsky was certain in what he needed to do but in order to launch those torpedoes he
needed the consent of two other members of his crew Ivan Maslenakov agreed that they needed to launch
and it all came down to Vasily Archipov an argument broke out amongst these three men and his archipof
calmly tried to convince the other two that they should not strike he held firm and eventually he
managed to convince them to surface the submarine at which point they were able to contact Moscow
and await further orders the captain eventually did what Vasily Archipov had asked him to do
and Vasily Archipov is now credited with single handedly avoiding nuclear war and the outbreak
of world war three this passage we're reading does not give us too many words but the indication I
get is that Abraham doesn't fret he doesn't flap he hears the news he collects himself
and then he formulates a plan on how he is going to go about this rescue mission
so how does that help us does this happen because Abraham is just a cool calm and collected guy
nothing phases him he's easy going i don't think so i think this happens because Abraham knows
the god in whom he believes and the god in whom he trusts when the storms are swirling
around his head when everything is working against him he does not get carried away
he does not know the fate of his nephew he knows that he's been kidnapped he knows that he's been
taken he does not know if he's still alive but he does know that his god is still sovereign he does
know that his god is still on the throne he does know that his god is still good and he does know that
his god is still watching over him just saying calm is pretty useless no stressful situation has
ever been dissipated by the words keep calm but this is a different calm i don't believe this is a
feeling of calm i believe this is a more of a state of calm i like to call it the but god factor
when steven's taken before the the judges in acts he is asked to defend himself and he gives
a defense and as part of it he gives the story of joseph joseph being
the guy who was sold into slavery by his brothers and taken to egypt and and all of that sort of
stuff uh steven says this because the patriarchs were jealous of joseph they sold him as a slave
into egypt but god was with him and rescued him from all his trouble troubles joseph was sold into
slavery but god and this is a common reprieve that we see throughout stories in the bible even
the easter story jesus was crucified and was laid in a tomb but god raised him the calm in these
situations that we face is not a feeling but a sure and certain understanding that the wind
and waves of life will buffer us they will come but god is still in control
point number two assemble 318 fighters perhaps quite not as literal as we see in the passage but
there's definitely a message in here about the power of the team that surrounds us and that's
why i've chosen to ride to Amsterdam with james hope you'll as part of my team we recently watched
the film the world trade center about the events that took place on september the 11th 2001 in new
york and this film follows two police officers who are part of a squadron that were sent in
to try and evacuate one of the towers while it was still burning they gather up all their gear
and they they start making their way towards the staircase they've got extra tanks for air because
it's going to take them hours to get up to the people who need them as they as they collect all
this gear they feel the building start to shake more debris starts to fall windows start to break
and then there's the the unmistakable crash of the building down coming down on their heads
they rush to the elevator shaft to try and protect them because it's an empty space
two of them make it that the others sadly don't and what happens is the building has fallen down
on their heads these two police officers are trapped by concrete and steel and they're stuck
and then suddenly everything goes quiet everything goes dark and it's just the two of them they're
hoping that someone hears them the whole day passes the towers collapsed in the morning the
whole day passes and in the evening the the search is called off everything goes quiet everything
goes dark yet above them in the rubble there is a single us marine who has a torch and a
conviction that he shouldn't stop looking and he starts clambering over the rubble shouting
if you can hear me say something bang something and he does this but i don't know how long it is
but there's a there's a period of time where he hears nothing at all and then the people below him
hear him shouting and they they twang a little piece of metal because they've got so much dust in their
lungs and he hears it so then he shouts again if that was you do that again do that again so they
do it again and eventually he pokes his torch through the hole and he sees these two police
officers in a moment he gathers a team of people with hydraulic machinery stretchers oxygen
torches ready to rescue these people while he's doing that he shouts down to them we are marines
and you are our mission we're coming for you long story short they open up the cavity that they're
in they pull them out they put them on a stretcher and there's this really moving
part towards the end of the film where there's a long line of people all over the rubble and
they're passing the stretcher with these men on person to person in that particular example
each person has their role to play there's the guy who found them he formulates the team there's
people who dive into the rubble and they they're they're they're pulling out bits of concrete
off these people's chests there's other people who are just holding torches that the other people
can see and then right at the end you have a long line of people each with their own life-saving
role to play passing the stretcher to the next person to get them the medical care that they need
each person has their role to play on this team each person has been chosen for a particular role
some people are diving into the rubble others are just holding torches and it's important in
our lives to identify those people that we can build a team with us it might not be 318
but it might just be one person either way we need those around us who can encourage us who can
build us up who can play their part in our mission the enemy will always seek to isolate us and
it's our responsibility to identify our 318 people and build each other up third point
there we are bring back the other people this is a rather subtle secondary story that's happening
alongside the main story of course lot is rescued but as the passage states in verse 16
he recovered all the goods and brought back his relative lot and his possessions together
with women and the other people and those that's kind of a secondary is just great lot is back
and all the other people have been brought back but actually when you dig into that the ripple
effect of lots rescue is huge on these women and other people as the bible describes them
they were taken off they didn't know what their future held and yet Abraham's mission to rescue
his nephew meant that all of these other people were liberated all of these women and other people
were free and in orchestrating his daredevil rescue Abraham completely changes the outcomes
for all of these other people and how we deal with the storms in our own lives
has a ripple effect on those around us on those and on those who we may never know
my grandmother on my mum's side my dad mentioned her last week it was a very small woman
four foot tall she used to call herself a bear of little brain which was a drastic understatement
when they lived in Ghana she began the children's ministry for the church of pentecost
the church of pentecost now has churches in over 60 countries and is absolutely huge
she wrote the syllabus and faithfully delivered it to a group of children when they first started
the church and then when she died in 2015 the children's ministry of the church of pentecost
which was still running elements of the curriculum that she'd written had over 750,000 members
many of whom probably do not know who Margaret Mills is but who are direct beneficiaries
of her faithful completion of her mission
the storms in our lives will affect those around us and in some cases they'll affect
generations to come and we always want that effect to be one of grace liberation and one that draws
people home to their loving father similar to Abraham's mission when he rescued Lot
so there we have it that is Abraham's three-step guide to dealing with solutions when there is a
lot at stake point number one keep calm this is not a feeling but it is a settled conviction
that no matter what is happening around us God is still good God is still for us God still loves
us God is still on our side point number two assembling our army of 318 the strength of our
team around us directly influences our mission and how we deal with it and it helps us deal
with the things that life throws us and then point number three when you bring Lot back
remember the other people as well our decisions our actions and our plans do affect other people
do have a ripple effect and we have the opportunity to be a life-changing liberating force
in the lives of those we come into contact with and what a privilege that is I'm going to close
there thank you Rowland thank you

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Nick's sermon based on Genesis 13, titled "Facing Up to Reality" or "When Your Blessing Becomes Your Burden".
Key Points:

We often associate blessings from God with material possessions, health, and success.
The Bible story of Abraham and Lot shows us that blessings can also become burdens and lead to conflict.
Abraham and Lot became very wealthy with flocks and herds, but their abundance caused arguments between their herdsmen.
Abraham valued his relationship with Lot more than his possessions and offered him the choice of the best land.
This act of generosity was rewarded by God who gave Abraham even more land.
The true goal in life is not to acquire blessings but to have a relationship with God.
We should not let our blessings (or lack thereof) become the reason we don't seek God.
MCF church has grown recently, but they must be careful not to let their success become a burden.
True success comes from focusing on what God values and not on outward appearances.
We should hold our blessings lightly and value our relationship with God above all else.

Bible References:

Genesis 13
Ephesians

Illustrations:
1. Social Media and #blessed:
Nick uses the current trend of social media posts showcasing a perfect life with the hashtag #blessed as an example. People often associate blessings from God with material possessions, good health, and success. These posts create a perception that these things are a sign of being blessed, and the lack of them suggests God's absence.
2. Ice Cream Wars:
This term refers to territorial disputes between ice cream vendors. Here, Nick uses it as an analogy for how abundance can lead to conflict. Even seemingly trivial things like selling space can become a battleground when there's a lot to be gained. This highlights the point that blessings, if not managed wisely, can become burdens that cause arguments and divisions.
3. Story of a Church Split due to Arguments over Property:
Nick uses this real-life example to illustrate how even churches, which are meant to be places of unity and love, can fall prey to the allure of material possessions. The Church of Pentecost in Ghana, once it acquired land and wealth, experienced similar conflicts to Abraham and Lot. This story emphasizes the importance of prioritizing relationships and spiritual values over material gain.
4. Story of a Young Man in Zambia who Faithfully Tithed:
This story serves as a counterpoint to the focus on material wealth. The young man, Kelvin, faithfully tithed his meager earnings despite his financial limitations. This act demonstrates that true blessings come from obedience and faith, not from the amount of money one has. He valued his relationship with God more than his possessions, and his act of giving reflected that.
Call to Action:

Don't let your blessings become your burden.
Focus on what is truly valuable: your relationship with God.

Transcript
Great morning. Yes, I do apologise for my slightly tawdry appearance.
A lot, lot better than it was yesterday. I don't know what it is,
but swollen eyes. It was all closed up yesterday like I'd been doing 10 rounds with Mike Tyson.
When I, my first day at secondary school, somebody looked at me and said,
why do you look like Sylvester Stallone? And I thought, well, that's good. That means I've got
rugged, film-style good looks. Then I saw a picture of Sylvester Stallone, I thought it's not
actually the compliment that I thought it was. But this sort of enhances my naturally droopy
eyes gifted to me by the Lord. So there we are. But yeah, thanks for your prayers. It is good
to be here. It's always good to speak the word of God. And we're in Genesis chapter 13 this morning.
We're racing through at a rate of knots. Not Martin Lloyd Jones pace. This is MCF pace.
Genesis chapter 13. And my handsome assistant is going to come and read it for us.
It doesn't, looks more like David Hasselhoff than Sylvester Stallone.
There you go.
Thank you, Pete. Chapter 13, Genesis. So Abraham left Egypt and traveled north into the Negev,
along with his wife and lot, and all that they owned. Abraham was very rich in livestock
silver and gold. From the Negev, they continued traveling by stages towards Bethel,
and they pitched their tents between Bethel and Ai. Ai, Ai, where they had come to before.
This was the same place where Abraham had built the altar, and there he worshipped the Lord again.
Lot who was traveling with Abraham had also become very wealthy with flocks of sheep and goats,
herds of cattle and many tents. But the land could not support both Abraham and Lot
with all their flocks and herds living so close together. So disputes broke out between the
herdsmen of Abraham and Lot. At that time, Canaanites and parasites were also living in the land.
Finally, Abraham said to Lot, let's not allow this conflict to come between us or our herdsmen.
After all, we are close relatives. The whole countryside is open to you.
Take your choice of any section of the land you want, and we will separate. If you want the land
to the left, then I'll take the land on the right. If you prefer the land on the right,
then I'll go to the left. Lot took a long look at fertile plains of the Jordan Valley in the
direction of Zor. The whole area was well watered everywhere, like the Garden of the Lord or the
beautiful land of Egypt. This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot chose for
himself the whole Jordan Valley to the east of them. He went there with his flocks and servants
and parted company with his uncle, Abraham. So Abraham settled in the land of Canaan,
and Lot moved his tents to a place near Sodom and settled among the cities of the plain.
But the people of this area were extremely wicked and constantly sinned against the Lord.
After Lot had gone, the Lord said to Abraham, look, as far as you can see in every direction
north and south, east and west, I am giving all this land as far as you can see to you
and your descendants as a permanent possession. And I will give you so many descendants that,
like the dust of the earth, they cannot be counted. Go and walk through the land in every direction
for I am giving it to you. So Abraham moved his camp to Hebron and settled near the Oak Grove,
belonging to Marmer. There he built another altar to the Lord.
So I think the nominal title for this on the screen would be something like facing up to reality,
but I renamed it when your blessing becomes your burden. I don't know what your understanding or
belief about blessing is, but there's a natural aspect to our relationship with God where
we tend to think that when things go well, when we have what we need, when we have all that we
hope for in life, when we see prosperity in any form, things are a little bit easy, then we are
blessed in inverted comets. And when things are a little bit difficult or where they're challenging
or where we don't have what we want or where there's disappointment or where there's upset or where
there's pain, then things become a struggle because we're left wondering what happened to our
blessing. And you've probably seen it on Facebook, Instagram, all of that stuff. If you spend any
time in the area of social media, the problem can be compounded with these hashtags, hashtag blessed.
And so he said, no, I've just got an amazing new job, a million dollars a year, hashtag blessed.
Or, you know, everything is going wonderfully, wonderfully well. And the pictures prove it,
hashtag blessed. And we make a correlation, we make a connection between the collection
of success, maybe the collection of material things, maybe the enjoyment of health. And we say,
well, that's what it means to live in the blessing of God. If we have all those things, then we are
blessed. If we don't, then there are a lot of questions, doubts, fears, and insecurities.
Now, somehow we know in our hearts that that's not really the case, but we still struggle with it,
don't we? We do sing, blessed be your name in the land that is plentiful and blessed be your name
on the road marked with suffering. Blessing of God is not just attached to all things going well,
getting all the things on our list to Santa or all the blessings that the tooth fairy can give us.
And then that's, you know, everything is wonderful in life. But there's a lot more to the blessing
of God than all of those things. And in the context of our understanding, Abraham and Lot and their
families were blessed. They had both become very wealthy. They had flocks of sheep, they had goats,
they had herds of cattle, and many tents. I like that phrase. They had lots of animals and many
tents. Many tents must mean lots of people. They had silver and gold. They were living the dream.
This was lottery level stuff. But it didn't take long for their blessing to become a problem,
for their blessing to become their burden, for their blessing to become almost the thing that
destroyed them. The land they were on could not support both of them. And as a result,
disputes broke out between their herdsmen. We know what that's like, don't we? Disputes between
our herdsmen. When clashes come. And it's usually to do with that. I mean, I was fascinated by the
term ice cream wars. And it turned out that it's to do with, you know, the areas where people are
able to sell their ice creams and people go to war over and fight over all of that turf wars.
Because, you know, you're on my space. When we were in Kenya this year, whenever it was,
seems like a blur when I was in Kenya. But it was last year, wasn't it? And we were told horrific
stories about how families and people had been massacred. And it was all to do with arguments
over land. Some wanted to grow crops on fertile land. Others wanted to graze their cattle.
And the two couldn't mix. And so people were killed over that sort of dispute. When you're
blessing, when what you have becomes the reason why you divide and the reason why you have problems
and the blessing can become a burden. If these two families didn't have so much blessing,
then those problems wouldn't exist. And now they did. The potential was there for their blessing
to become their downfall. And so in the middle of all of that, as we're retelling the story,
Abraham stepped up and took responsibility for the situation. He showed that he had enough
understanding to know that it was not worth coming to war over these things. These were the blessings
of God. This was how far God had brought us from nothing to this. And now we're going to fight
over it. It's not worth it. There were people, there were relationships, and there were principles
that were more valuable than everything that they owned between them. And so he said to lot,
let's not allow this conflict to come between us or our herdsmen. After all, we are close
relatives. The whole countryside is open to you. Take your choice of any section of the land you
want and we will separate. It wasn't an acrimonious separation. It was a practical pragmatic solution
to say that our lives, our relationship, our families, the things that God has called us to
are so much more valuable than what we're going to lose if we start fighting over the land.
And so Lot had a free choice with Abraham's blessing to go where he wanted to go. Abraham,
he gave priority to Lot to risk his own future. He said, you take whatever you want, wherever you
want to go, you can go there. Whatever you want to have, you can have. And I will go after you.
He valued Lot more than all that he had. And the Bible says that after Lot had gone,
the Lord said to Abraham, look as far as you can see in every direction, north and south and east
and west. I am giving all this land as far as you can see to you and to your descendants as a
permanent possession. And I will give you so many descendants that like the dust of the earth,
they cannot be counted. Go and walk through the land in every direction for I am giving it to you.
That was the result of Abraham's free and open giving to Lot. He didn't give to Lot on the
condition that he could keep something. He said, you take whatever you want, go wherever you want
to go. And as a result of that attitude of heart, God came to him and said, now I am going to give
you. I am going to bless you more than you could ever imagine. Go and walk through the land in every
direction for I am giving it to you. And what we see, even though we shy away from it sometimes,
we see in the Bible that God is in the business of blessing people. He blesses his people with good
things. But we know and we should know and we need to learn and to remind ourselves constantly
that the goal of our life is not the blessing. The goal of our life is not to find the prosperity,
the goods, the health, the success, whatever it is, the goal is God himself. And the test is
whether we can see past those blessings or even the lack of those blessings to see what is truly
valuable. We can so easily fixated on what we have or even what we don't have. And we think, well,
if God was really with me, this wouldn't be happening to me or this wouldn't be my circumstance
or we say, well, because this is my circumstance, God is surely with me. And I'm something rather
special in the eyes of God. And we have to see through all that, just as Abraham did, to understand
what is truly valuable. And the applications, simple applications of this passage on so many
different levels, but the warning is the same. Do not let your blessing become your burden
or the reason. Don't let your blessing or your lack of blessing become the reason why we don't
take hold of the fullness of all God has for us. You know, for us as a church, we're in a very
exciting position. We can be nothing but grateful to God for all that he's done and that he's doing.
Because churches all around have experienced and have reported drops in the number since COVID
and all the effect that that had. People of churches have shrunk in nature. And yet,
for whatever reason, for things we can't put our fingers on, we seem to have grown. And every week
to see this place full is so exciting. And to know that 146 was full. Last week, we had the Baptist
Street pool here. We had all the people mopping and everything else around it. We had chairs laid
out everywhere. And we had something like 170 people in the building. And we had about almost 30
people at 146. That's incredible to see. And it's really exciting to to be part of something
that God is doing like that. And there's there's reasons that we can't understand, but we say,
thank you God. There's a sense of God's presence. There's a sense of God's presence in the worship.
There's a sense that God is leading us the way we acquired 146 through the miraculous provision.
The sense that God really does want to do something great here in our time. This is our time to be
alive. And God is moving. It's exciting. It's genuinely exciting. But if we don't take care,
our blessing can become our burden. And our blessing can even become our downfall.
If we get it right, we focus on those things that truly valuable, that truly matter.
We hold our blessing lightly, value our relationship with God with each other,
above all things, then what God can do in us and through us really is limitless.
There is a wonderful thing and there is exciting thing to look. But if we say,
actually, no, actually we're something rather special. We've got something here.
This is marvelous. This is wonderful. Come to MCF. This is how church is done.
And all of that stuff, then that will become our downfall.
We have to hold it all lightly, hold it all before God. And just like Abraham did with Lot,
he said, you go, you take whatever you want. And we will simply trust in the Lord God.
A look of success does not automatically equal success in the eyes of heaven.
There are letters to the churches in Revelation. If you read them,
which says, you say that I have need of nothing, that we have everything we need.
We are successful. He said, yet you are wretched, poor, pitiful, blind and naked.
That was the assessment of God to that particular church. And as I say, I truly believe that the
potential for what God can do here is great. It's so exciting to be part of. But true success
doesn't come automatically and it doesn't come easily. It takes determined, committed decisions
to value what God values above all things. And it's so important that we keep our eyes
fixed on what is important to him and not what can lead our hearts astray or can cause us to
become a pro. Or churches that grow, churches that develop, churches that acquire also split.
And we have to value so much what is in the heart of God so that our blessing doesn't become
our burden. There was a missionary called Jim Elliot who said he is no fool who gives up what he
cannot keep to take hold of what he cannot lose. And we need to have an attitude in our hearts,
whatever God does, whether it's in our individual lives or whether it's in our life as a church,
that we will give it up just as Abraham did, not losing it necessarily, but letting go,
holding lightly in the palm of our hands, saying, all of this belongs to you, Lord,
and we're going to focus on what really matters. And that's what is so encouraging
about the times that we have in worship and whatever, because I believe there is a heart
that is going after the heart of God. And we have to be aware of ourselves and check ourselves
and hold each other to account to make sure that we're not getting drawn away by things that are
not central to what God is doing. Erica's parents, if you knew them, you'd like them, some of you
didn't know them actually, I think, they were missionary pastors with a church called the Church
of Pentecost in Ghana. And today it's among the largest churches in the world with presence
in scores of countries, they are all over the place. The membership in Ghana alone is in excess
of 10% of the population. So they have to be careful with their blessing because they can do
all sorts of things, like bring down the government and that sort of thing. So when the church started
in 1938, it was part of another organization. And as the church grew in acquired land and property
and wealth, like in Genesis 13, disputes arose and the church ended up splitting. And it got so
bad that they ended up in the High Court and a judge had to decide what happened to the church
and he brought his judgment down and said and ordered that two new churches should be established
and that the two parties should separate and that the property and all the goods and all the
wealth of the judges should be split into and shared equally. And the leadership of the
church of Pentecost said at the time, actually, no, we don't want any of it. We'd rather give it all
to the other party and God who brought us this far, who raised us from nothing up to here,
he'll do it again. And so they released it all. And they went back to starting with nothing.
And from that root, this church that is now all over the world, there's 10% of the population
and government has done all sorts, has grown. And sadly, the other church that received all the
stuff is nowhere now. You can't find it anywhere. And it's a principle that's so important because
if we measure success and blessing the way that everyone else does, it simply leads us into problems.
And so we need to check our hearts, check our minds, check our spirits, make sure we are aligning
ourselves with the Lord and what he is doing and what he wants to do and what is important to him
regardless of what is going on on the outside. There's a personal application as well. Our hearts
and minds are easily taken up with what we have or what we don't have. Our dreams and ambitions for
life, what we have, what we don't have, what we experience, what we see. But we need to value
our faith, to value our relationship with God above everything that affects our physical lives,
whether it's our health, whether it's our wealth, whether it's our success in life, whether it's
the things that happen to us. How else do people make sense of being prisoners for Christ? How
else when Andy preached many months back and he quoted Richard Wernbrand, I went and found the
book and read it through it. It's fascinating. If you can ever read the book by Richard Wernbrand
about his experience, 13 years, I think it was in prison in Romania, tortured for Christ.
How can you make sense of those decisions to submit yourself to that sort of thing
unless you know that the things that happen to you, that the physical circumstances of your life
don't actually matter compared to what really is valuable, to what really is important.
And in this room this morning, there's a whole spectrum of different circumstances.
Each and every person has a different understanding of, you know, a different experience of life,
a different experience of maybe things that we have or don't have.
But perhaps we all carry a sense of lack in one way or another. But the question is not how
much blessing we have compared to one another, but how much do we value what is truly important.
Ephesians tells us that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
It's already blessed us. We're not hoping for a blessing. We're not looking for a blessing.
We're not working for a blessing. But God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
God has promised to look after us. It's a given. He has promised to care for us. He's promised
to provide for us. The question is will we lift our eyes from our physical circumstances
and fix them firmly on God, not allowing our sense of well-being to be dependent on how things
work out for us, but rather on who God is and the promises that He's made for us.
There's a fascinating passage in Philippians 4 where Paul thanks the Philippian church
for a gift they sent him, but he says, actually, I don't have any need of anything. Thanks for the
gift, but I don't need it because I've actually learned whether I've got loads of stuff. I'm happy
whether I've got nothing. I'm happy because I have learned to be content in any and every circumstance.
He's learned contentment and trust in God. He thanked them for the gift they sent,
not because he needed it because as he put it, I want to see what is credited to your account.
Your gift gives me pleasure because it shows me what's in your heart.
I don't give me pleasure because I've got another 10 quid or another 100 pounds or whatever it is.
And I can do something with that. He said, that's irrelevant, but the fact that you thought to give
me something, the fact that you thought to express your love in this way shows me that God has done
something great in your life. And for that, I rejoice because you value something that is important,
value 10 pounds or 20 pounds or whatever. It's great to have, that's what he was saying,
but that's not the point. The point is what God has done in your hearts. The point is the sense of
focus and vision that you have. When we're in Zambia, the principle of
tithing to the church is very much more prominently spoken about than it is here. The idea that people
would, as part of their commitment, will give 10% of their income to support the work of the church.
It's laid down as a principle, but not many people, I don't even know what happens here,
but not many people do. I think in our church, I was quite involved in the admin of the church
and he used to have a handwritten ledger. The people used to write lists of who tithe and whatever,
and probably another church of 200, there might have been eight or 10 people listed there as tithers.
But one of them was a young man. This is not about money, by the way. This is just, this is like
Jesus telling the story of the widows might. But one of them was a young man and he made his living
selling plastic buckets on the street, a young guy called Kelvin. And his income, month by month,
was a matter of pence. But faithfully and without fail, he would take 10% of his pence and he would
put it in an envelope and he would drop it into the offering in the church. The money made no
difference to the church at all. If he stopped, they wouldn't have noticed. But it was such a joy
to see the impact of that young man's faith on his life and the decisions he made with whatever
he had in his hands. He loved God and his desire to honour God was not connected to what he had.
He just wanted to do something to express what God had done in his heart.
Now he never moved on when we're thinking about our lives and how we measure success.
He never actually moved on from selling buckets on the street. A year or two later, he died.
Some people might say, well, was he blessed? Is there a blessing in that selling buckets on the
street until you die? But actually he saw and understood things that many more people, many more
physically blessed people might miss. He saw things that our blessings can blind us to.
He understood the value of what God had done in his life. And so we love and look for the blessing
of God in our lives. But we need to take care of where and how we look, put value on the right
things, pour ourselves into our pursuit of God and our love and commitment to each other. And that
will be the hallmark of MCF. Because a big successful church is not really any good to anyone unless
its heart is right. Unless when people connect to the church, they're drawn closer to God and they
know what it is to become a disciple of Jesus Christ, not just a faithful member.
Our blessings in life are no good to us or anybody else unless they lead us closer to the heart of God.
I remember my father-in-law saying, you know, when we were thinking about the children and
which about them going to school and what would happen to their education and all of that,
particularly traveling around the world. And he said it matters to a point but it doesn't
really matter at the end of the day because what really matters is their heart. What really matters
is what is going on in their hearts. What really matters is their faith in Jesus.
Our blessings in life are no good to us if they don't lead us closer to the heart of God. Or if
when they are gone, all the wheels fall off and we have nothing at all. Somebody once said the
church is what is left when the building burns down. Can we worship love on a God and each other
regardless of what happens to us and regardless of what we have and regardless of what people
think about us and what regardless what people say about us. Because while we enjoy the blessing
of God and we enjoy the growth that we're seeing God give us and we're enjoying all of that,
there may come a time when people won't as Jesus promised people won't speak well
of the church. People won't speak well of all of God's people. What will we do then?
Will we value what is truly important? The challenge is real but it's a doorway to an
experience of God and all that he can do and it's impossible if we hang on to what we think
we need. So let's not let our blessing become our burden. Let's not hold on tightly to those
things and say this is what I need in life. What we need in life is Jesus.
A. W. Toes has said people don't know that Jesus is all we need until Jesus is all we've got.
It's a challenging thing. It's a challenging thing for me. It's a challenge to think about that
because so often when things go well, when you've got money in your pocket, when you've got
opportunities in life, you can feel at peace, you feel all is well with the world.
When those things are not there, when those things are challenging you, when those things are a
problem, we can think where is God and our blessing or lack of blessing becomes our burden.
In actual fact like Paul, we can learn contentment in each and every circumstance we can learn
that actually all we need is found in him.
It's a big challenge. Abram and Lot were blessed beyond measure and yet it became
a burden to them and so they took decisions based on what was truly important, what was truly
valuable and that is what we are called to do as God's people. Amen.

View Details

Join us as we celebrate Easter.
Summary
This Easter sermon by Jonathan focuses on the message of hope and new beginnings found in the story of Jesus' resurrection.
Key Points:

Peter's Denial and Despair: Jonathan uses the story of Peter denying Jesus three times to illustrate how we can all fail and feel like failures. (John 18:25-27)
The Power of Resurrection: The sermon emphasizes that Jesus' resurrection offers forgiveness and a chance to start anew, regardless of past mistakes. (John 20:1-18)
The Call to Follow Jesus: Following Jesus is a call to a new life, leaving behind the baggage of the past. (John 21:1-17)
Finding Peace and Overcoming Doubt: The sermon highlights that Jesus offers peace in times of fear and doubt. (John 20:19-23)
Baptism as a Symbol of New Life: Baptism is presented as a public declaration of following Jesus and leaving behind the old way of life. (Romans 6:4)

Jonathan's Easter sermon uses the story of Peter's denial and Jesus' resurrection to deliver a powerful message of hope and new beginnings. Here's a closer look at the key points:

From Denial to Despair: We start with Peter, a close follower of Jesus, who denies him three times on the night of his arrest. This relatable story shows that even the most devoted can make mistakes. Pastor Jonathan acknowledges that we all experience moments of failure, leading to feelings of despair and questioning our worth.

Resurrection: A Beacon of Hope: The sermon doesn't dwell on Peter's despair. It shifts to the transformative power of Easter. Jesus' resurrection isn't just a historical event; it's a symbol of God's victory over death and sin. This offers immense hope - no matter how badly we've messed up, forgiveness and a fresh start are possible through Jesus. (John 20:1-18)

A Call to a New Life: Following Jesus isn't about maintaining the status quo. Pastor Jonathan highlights Jesus' encounter with Peter by the Sea of Galilee (John 21:1-17). Peter, burdened by his past actions, returns to fishing, his old life. Jesus, however, calls him again, and the miraculous catch of fish reminds Peter of his calling. This act signifies that our past failures don't define us. When we follow Jesus, we embrace a new purpose and direction.

Facing Fear and Doubt: The sermon acknowledges that following a new path can be daunting. Fear and doubt are natural responses. Jonathan reminds us that Jesus' appearances to his disciples after the resurrection brought them peace (John 20:19-23). Jesus can calm our anxieties and guide us through uncertainty.

Baptism: A Public Declaration: Jonathan concludes by drawing a connection between the message of Easter and baptism. Choosing baptism is a public declaration of our decision to follow Jesus and leave behind our old life. It signifies a new beginning, washed clean by God's grace. (Romans 6:4)

Overall, Jonathan's sermon uses the Easter story to deliver a message of hope and encouragement. It reminds us that regardless of our past mistakes, through Jesus, we can find forgiveness, purpose, and a new way of living.
Bible References:

John 18:25-27 - Peter Denying Jesus
John 20:1-18 - The Empty Tomb and Jesus' Appearances
John 21:1-17 - Jesus Reinstates Peter
John 20:19-23 - Jesus Appears to the Disciples
Romans 6:4 - Buried with Christ in Baptism

Transcript
Easter is an exciting time for us as Christians. We're the other side of
the story. We even know the truth that Jesus didn't just die on a cross and that was the
end, but he rose again to life. And we've seen the power of that and the life of that
in this place. Matt, look around you. If you've never been to the church before, this is alive.
And it's alive with faith. It's alive with an experience that people have met Jesus.
And he makes the difference in everyone's life. Amen. But for Peter, all those years
back, Easter was really the low point of his life. Things could not have gone any worse
for him. It all started on the last meal that Jesus and his friends had together, where
Jesus was explaining to them that actually he was going to die and that they would all
run away and leave him alone. Peter was absolutely emphatic in Adam and look, even if the rest
of them, because they're a bit lightweight, even if the rest of them all leave, can't
keep up. I'll go with you to prison. I'll go with you to death. I will never deny you.
And he had his bubble burst immediately by Jesus who said to him, look, mate, I think
Jesus would have called him, mate. We call it friend because we're religious, but makes
good, isn't it? Look, mate, before this evening finishes, before a rooster crows, you're going
to deny me three times on how Peter felt. I wonder if he felt steel to say, I'm going
to show you Jesus. That's not going to happen. You wait for it. Whatever we know is Jesus
took a sword. Peter took a sword rather with him as they went off to the Garden of Gethsemane
because he was going to fight. He was ready for a fight. If anything was going to happen,
he was there. Something did happen, of course. A group of people with guards came to arrest
Jesus. And Peter drew his sword and didn't go for one of the guards. Think of one of
the soldiers. Big man Peter went for a servant, didn't he? And he attacked him. In anger,
frustration, he lashed out with a sword. Now, Peter was a fisherman. He wasn't a soldier.
He didn't know how to handle a sword. Whether that was good or bad, we don't know. All
we know is that this guy had his ear chopped off. That means to me that Peter was going
for his neck. He was that cross. He wanted to kill somebody for the sake of Jesus. Wow.
Well, what happened next was that Jesus took control. He said, look, guys, you're after me.
This is the person you've come for. He healed the person's ear. And Peter, in response and
Thanksgiving with the rest of them, all ran off. They ran off into the night and left Jesus.
The first thing Peter must have been thinking was, what have I done? But there's a curiosity
in Peter that's always there. And this curiosity led him to go to the high priest's house. Big
mansion with a big courtyard. See what was actually going to happen to Jesus after he'd
been arrested. And he's there around a fire with some of the other people. And suddenly
he's recognized. Hey, you're a Northern, aren't you? They said it with a Southern accent.
He was a guy. You're a Northern. It's too, aren't you? You've been with him. I've seen
you with him. And suddenly Jesus, Peter's, you know, on the back foot, he's not prepared
to stand up for his convictions or his faith or what he believed. He said, I know, no, no,
no, you've got to be mistaken, mate. Not me, another mate. You know, he's a Northern.
You've got to be mistaken that I don't know him at all. In fact, these questions of Peter got
more and more, three times he was asked. Surely you were with him. I've seen you with him.
Peter goes, look, on my very life, I swear to you, I don't know him. I'm swearing to him. He
starts cursing and swearing. Suddenly Jesus appears walking across the courtyard and he fixes his
eyes on him. And if the whole ground could have opened up for Peter at that moment,
his whole world is crashing that he would have loved to have been swallowed up. He'd have loved
to have been anywhere else but there when Jesus looked at him as he's denying him. And all Peter
can do is rush out of that courtyard and uncontrollably break down in tears. He's sobbing his eyes at
because he knows he's messed up big time. He knows he's failed. He knows actually that he's
done the very thing that Jesus said he would do and the very thing that he said he wouldn't do.
And it seemed like it was game over for Peter as we know Jesus is condemned to death and dies a
criminal's death on a cross. And that seemed to be that. Each the morning would have started just
like any other day in Jerusalem. Sun would have rose, people would have got up,
they'd be making their breakfast, getting ready to go to work. But it wouldn't be known to all but
a very few people on that day, a history-making life-changing event had taken place. Someone
that still takes some believing today. But even for those who were there who knew Jesus best,
they struggled with it at the time. Jesus didn't just have men following him, he had women too.
And in fact in many ways the women were there when the men had run away. They were there at the
cross. They'd seen where he was put in a tomb, a borrowed tomb. And they wanted to do what was
right for a body. In those days it put spices and ointments on the body to preserve it. It was a
way of honouring and respecting the dead. They went to respect the corpse of Jesus early in the
morning. They'd had to have a day off because in Jewish religion Sabbath you didn't do anything
like this. So they had a day off the Saturday, the Sunday morning they went there. And so
they're shocked and surprised. They wondered if somebody had nicked the body. The body had been
moved because this massive stone had been rolled away and the tomb was empty. And they wondered
what had happened. Well we'd all be amazed, wouldn't we really? And then they met these guys,
actually angels, with this great message. It's the message of Easter morning. Why are you looking
for the living among the dead? Jesus isn't here. He's alive. He's risen from the dead.
And they told them to look, look for yourself. Nobody's here. Go and have a look in, see the tomb?
Nothing to say, apart from some of this empty. And they were amazed by this story. And the angel
said, look, go back and tell the rest of the followers. Tell the guys what's happened. But
particularly they said, tell Peter. Peter the one who'd messed up big time. Peter the one who had
failed to stand up for Jesus. Peter the one who'd lost his nerve and his temper, who'd assaulted
somebody with a sword, who denied jeez with curses. The angel said, God wants Peter to know,
it's not game over for you. It's not the end of the story. So the women went to see the disciples
and told them what had happened. And if you read the Bible, sorry, they couldn't believe it.
They said it seemed like nonsense to them. That Jesus has risen from the dead. How can we believe
that? I mean, we've been following him. We've seen him raise other people from the dead. We've
seen miracles he's done. But somehow we can't possibly believe this could have happened.
But two of them went to the tomb just to check it out for themselves. One called John and the other
one, Peter. Peter's off again. And we read that when John saw the empty tomb, he believed the message
straight away. But we read that Peter went in, saw the cloth and he wondered still what this was
all about. He still wasn't sure what this might mean and what this might mean to him. By the evening,
these guys, the followers of Jesus, all gathered in this big room again, probably the same room
that had that last meal with him. And they were frightened, bewildered, confused. They'd heard
the story that the ladies had said. They'd seen the empty tomb. They'd heard the reports, but
they weren't quite sure. And they were still scared, stiff, for what might happen to them.
They thought the Jewish authorities would come and get them next and they would be the next ones for
the chop. So they'd lock the doors. And suddenly, Jesus on that first Easter evening came to them.
No lock can keep Jesus out of lives. He's more powerful than the locks we try to put on, you know?
And there he was among them. And into their fears, he spoke peace.
See, Jesus wants to speak peace in our fears too.
And he reminded them that they really had a calling that was beyond being tied in this
upper room or this room. They had a calling to take this message around the world.
And he breathed life into them, the living spirit of God.
There was a sense where Jesus brings peace into this place of confusion and bewilderment and fear.
The presence of God can do that for anyone in this room today.
It was a week later when they saw Jesus again, because some of them hadn't been there that
night. Thomas in particular hadn't been there. One of the disciples, one of the 12 people,
the special people that Jesus had picked. And he said, look, I can't believe this has happened.
What more do you need, Thomas? Do you think they're all lying to you? Do you think they've not,
you know, they would tell you, but he wanted to find out for himself. I won't believe it.
I've saved himself. So I've touched him for myself. And so I know it for myself.
And you know, we eat later. Jesus appears again.
And he meets Thomas in his doubts. Jesus will lead us in our doubts. We may not understand
everything about this Christian faith. We may not understand everything about resurrection
and about the life that Jesus brings and about the hope that he brings. But Jesus, the living
Jesus, this morning, can meet us in our fears and it can meet us in our doubts.
There was a third time that Jesus met these disciples. And this was the most pertinent for Peter.
By this time they'd left Jerusalem and they'd gone home. They'd gone back to Galilee in the north.
And Peter had gone back to his job fishing. Because for Peter, whilst he knew that Jesus was alive
and well, the thought of what that meant for him, he still wasn't sure. He felt disqualified.
He felt he failed. He felt his life was so messed up with the things he'd done wrong.
He'd been a follower of Jesus, but he messed up big time. He denied Jesus. He'd lost his rag.
He'd done so many things that were wrong. He thought there's no way that Jesus couldn't use
me again. And that day Jesus kind of reenacts what happened on the day that he originally called
Peter and the others to follow him as fishermen. Do you know what? Peter went back to his old life
and what did he catch? Nothing. Because there was nothing back there for him. I want to say
to you who become Christians in this room, there's nothing back there for us. Nothing.
That's dead to us. There's nothing there. It's not worth going back to.
And Jesus had been fishing all night caught. Nothing. And then Jesus says, well, put your nets
on the other side. As he had done those three years before, they did so. And this miraculous
catch of fish was brought in. And Peter immediately knew it was the Lord. It's the Lord he says.
And this is the third time Peter had met Jesus as a resurrection life. And he gets out the boat
and he swims to shore. And Jesus makes Peter and reminds him that his past did not determine his
future and said that whatever has happened in the past is gone. This is about you now.
I've called you to feed my sheep, to feed my lambs. And the word that Jesus uses,
one of the last words we have recorded that he says to Peter, the little discourse afterwards,
but one of the men think he says to Peter is, follow me. There's nothing worth going back to Peter.
I've called you to follow me.
Today, baptism is a public decoration that we're following Jesus. In baptism, we identify,
which is why it's so great to know Easter, that Jesus died for our sins. And he rose again to new
life. It's a declaration that the way we live before is finished. There's nothing to go back to.
It's over. That actually, whatever the pain we feel about that, how we're embarrassed or ashamed
we might feel about that, how we're guilty about what's happened in the past, there is a new life
for us to live in Jesus. Hallelujah. That we no longer need to struggle with guilt and shame and
a feeling of being unworthy to be his follower. If Jesus could recommission Peter to follow him,
don't you dare think that anything you've done in your life is too great for Jesus to forgive
and to deal with. He wants to set you free from the guilt of the past. It's a new day. You can
rise up into a new day, a new dawn. And just as with those first followers at Easter,
Jesus wants to breathe his life into our spirits. He wants us to know his peace instead of living
in fear. He wants us to learn to trust and know faith where we have struggled with doubts.
And he wants us to know there's nothing to go back to in this world. But our past failures do not
stop us from achieving all he has for us. Why? Because he is risen and he has power over sin
and death and hell. He is Lord. Hallelujah.

View Details

Summary
Here's a summary of the sermon, including details about Abraham's journey and the challenges he faced:
The Call and the Leap of Faith:

The talk focuses on Abraham, a pivotal figure in many religions, and his unwavering faith in God.
God instructs Abraham to leave his comfortable life in Ur, a prosperous city in Mesopotamia, and embark on a journey to an unknown land.
This is a significant demand, requiring Abraham to abandon his familiar surroundings, family, and established way of life.
The destination remains a mystery, highlighting the immense trust Abraham places in God's guidance.

Challenges Along the Way:

The transcript acknowledges the inherent difficulty in following a path dictated by faith.
Abraham's journey is not without hardships. The text mentions a famine that forces him to seek refuge in Egypt.
This unexpected obstacle demonstrates that even those who devote themselves to God's will can face trials.

Faith Tested, But Not Broken:

Despite the challenges, the message emphasizes that God remains present during these difficulties.
Abraham's unwavering faith allows him to persevere through the famine, demonstrating the power of trusting in a higher purpose.
The story serves as a reminder that God's promises hold true, even when the path seems unclear.

Key Takeaways and Applying the Message:

The core message revolves around cultivating a strong foundation of faith in God.
The transcript emphasizes three key points:

Absolute trust in God's plans, even when faced with uncertainties.
Obedience to God's instructions, regardless of their perceived logic.
The importance of applying common sense alongside faith for wise decision-making.

Open-Ended Questions for Reflection:

The sermon concludes by prompting listeners to reflect on their own faith journeys:

How can individuals strengthen their trust in God?
What are practical ways to incorporate faith into daily life?

By posing these questions, the message encourages deeper personal reflection and a commitment to growing one's faith.

Transcript
So I've known Jensen and his family for a good few years now and Jensen
actually faithfully serves some weeks at the back doing the role that Graham's
doing at the moment which is brilliant and we were chatting a few weeks ago and
I was just asking him do you have a fancy having a go at doing the talk on a
Sunday morning and he said yes so the way we're going to do it this morning
we're doing chapter 12 as you heard and Jensen's going to start do the first
part and I'm going to do the second part of what we've agreed but I have said you
know it can be quite daunting standing here looking at a sea of faces but I
have told them that you're all very nice and that you're all and that you're all
rooting for him all right so let's go
Good morning.
Especially I appreciate that reception you have to give the same for Andy when he
comes up all I do is not fair all right that's the deal that's the deal with me
I'll just give a quick quick sort of introduction to myself to people who
don't know me so as I said I'm Jensen I've been coming here for some years nine
years I think it is so since I was nine I hope that doesn't make any of you feel
too old and yeah I'll put the help with the the projector at the back and yeah so
I think we had this chat a couple of weeks ago like you were saying we won't talk
about that specifically just sort of co-oping conversation and sort of let on
from there and but yeah this morning I'll be doing the first nine verses of
Genesis chapter 12 and then Andy's gonna hopefully pick up if everyone's still
awake and carry on and just all this but I was poorly introduced this is about
Abram and Darren did brilliantly last week and just and it was mentioned but
it wasn't really gone into that much so if it's all right and grim can we get
the perfect clockwork isn't it so I'll read you'd have to stand up or read it out
you can just sort of follow along and we're just trusting my reading ability so
the Lord had said to Abram go from your country your people and your father's
household to the land I will show you I will make you into a great nation and I
will bless you I will make your name great and you will be a blessing I will
bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and all peoples
on earth will be blessed through you so Abram went as the Lord had told him a
lot went with him Abram was 75 years old when he set out from Heran he took his
wife I'm assuming that's like Sarai but I would just call Sarah his nephew lot
all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they required in Heran
and they set out for the land of Canaan and they arrived there Abram traveled
through the land as far as the site of the Great Tree of that one at B thank
you at that time the Canaanites were in the land the Lord appeared to Abram and
said to your offspring I will give this land so he built an altar there to the
Lord who had appeared to him from there he went on towards the hills east of
Bethel and pitched his tent went Bethel on the west and yeah I was gonna say
that but on the east there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the
name of the Lord so they're the first nine nine verses I'm gonna sort of break
this down you can thank you Graham I'm gonna try and break this down as best I
can into sort of three sections so the first three the middle sort of three and
the end three so it's just where I sort of done it so in the first verse God says
that even go from your country your people and your father's household so
Landau will show you which is is a big a big sort of ask of Abram to leave
everything knows everything he's been comfortable with everything you know
that he's been it says in I think those five of us four that he's 75 years old so
you can assume he's probably done a good stint there so you see you know where
he's been for the last few years and and just to sort of open leave to the
Landau will show you I will do that to the Landau will show you just just
quoting it but and that yeah like I was saying that's not an easy thing to do
you know he doesn't know sort of like sort of the food situation the sort of
what situation you know basic things housing it's gonna be anywhere to you
know park is camels stuff like that and it would take an immense amount of
trusting God and God's words we have to say yeah you know what I'm gonna say I'm
gonna ask any questions I hear what you're saying I'm gonna go and I'm gonna do
it I'm gonna leave everything I know I'm gonna take everything I know and I'm
gonna move out all right I've been I've been working at the Northern
General for about six months now and every single morning I take the same
route to work sometimes I start my dad sometimes I start my mum's it's not
much difference but I could tell you all the route but I'm not gonna you know I
hope that you're all still awake by the end of it and but I take the exact same
route every day and I have to I have to have Google Maps on because I won't I
don't trust myself to go there without it I know exactly where I'm going I know
exactly you know the sort of the frozen is taken if it's going to be late I'll
take this way if I'm gonna be early I take this way but every single time I
have to see where I'm going to be able to think yeah I'm confident I can get
there but you know I can't imagine someone saying to me let alone go to a
different site and work today or you know go to work without seeing where you're
going because I need that sort of visual input so for Abraham to be able to say
yeah I'm gonna listen to what God's saying I'm gonna go somewhere I don't
know where I'm going he's gonna show me on my route and not be able to you know
see like a map or a final destination or anything like that it takes a you
know a big amount of trust and you know land I will show you it's not
massively informative is it so you know and leaving the country is one thing
but you know leaving to go to a random other country is another and you know
over the first three verses I've got his promise in a lot to Abraham he says
make you into a great nation and I will bless you make your name great and you
will be a blessing and bless those who bless you curse those who curse you
and all peoples on earth will be blessed for you so again promise God is
promising a lot if Abraham is obedient to his instructions and trust him you
know I will bless those who bless you so you know everyone he meets will be
blessed through him and I'll protect you by cursing those who curse you and it
is a big a big promise which only can come from God that can't come from any
humanly source you know and trusting in God's word will give you these these
things that no human can provide they're just a quick recap for the first three
good as told Abraham to go somewhere that he will show him and he returns
promise to bless and protect him is all right if we could just get four and five
up Graham please so I'm just gonna reread them just a familiar ask myself so
Abraham went as the Lord had told him and what went with him Abraham was 75
years old when he sat out from her and he took his wife yeah his nephew a lot
and all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had
acquired in her and they sat out for the land of Canaan and they arrived there
so fortunately Abraham makes the right decision by trusting God's words and and
he sets out you know Abraham went as the Lord had told him he took his wife and
left you with him and that sort of comes back in with the you know being
able to trust God and being obedient of God instructions which are two very
linked linked things in this sort of passage of verses because if you can it's
all good trusting God and saying yeah I trust your word and I know that you'll
bless and protect me but if it doesn't act on those and be obedient on those
instructions well first of all he's not gonna leave so he's not gonna get to the
land I will show you won't get to see whatever wonderful place I might be but
you know he's obviously blessed because as much as he's trusting in God he's
not doing what God's asking him to do and you know this sort of being obedient
and trusting God's word can be found in you know mortal parts of the Bible I
think the main one that stuck out to me was Noah and Noah's Ark because God has
said look you need to build a boat I did a bit of research as well actually so
apparently Noah's Ark was 450 feet long and a Boeing 747 is about
270 feet the Titanic was 800 feet you know it's a good good size and you
know you don't have like a crane or anything like that so you know it would
have taken him a long time it's not a five-minute job so God asking him to do
this is is a big thing so you know everyone to leave his country leave
everything he knows he's comfortable with and Noah to build a big ark and
get two of every animal and take his family and survive a flood and it's a
big ask and these decisions you know everyone will have decisions in their
own life where you're trusting in God's word I think it's important to seek out
and seek his direction and be able to trust in his word of the obedient of
where he tells you so I've currently got a decision to make myself regarding sort
of what I'm doing in my future and I currently work like I've been saying
but got a place for university in September to do physiotherapy which is
why I'm working now and I've got a decision to make do I carry on working
where I'm working and you know there's some other things that I won't go into
that a fat man's decision or go to university and and praying and seeking
out God's instruction on this is is sort of the root I'm taking it's the
right of something I'm assuming that's the right way yeah but yes afraid and
seeking out God's instruction but then there's always the possibility that God
will say to me look this is a really good option this is a really good option
but I want you to do this and that if God tells you that thing I'm gonna have to
trust him because I don't know what that might lead me into and I don't know
where that might take me but trusting in God's word and being obedient the
instructions will take me on the best path I can get and then be a just going
back so there's no being obedient of God's word saved him saved his family
Abram being obedient of God's word is gonna deliver him safely to where God
wants him to get where God wants him to get to so yeah so Abram has
agreed in and he's gathered everything he owns and all these people and being
obedient of God's instruction as everyone noticed and in verse 5 God
makes a very very quick one verse journey he sets off from her and then
arrives in in the same sentence so I don't know if he's kind of like
a week of extra breakfast or is it right for you to get verses 6 and 7 up
please
yeah there we go Abram traveled through the the land as far as the site of the
great tree of the at that time the Canaanites were in the land the Lord
appeared to Abram and said to your offspring I will give this land so he
built an also there to the Lord who had appeared to him so you know in these
verses it says to your offspring I will give this it give this land but at the
time it wasn't wasn't theirs to open it was the Canaanites own the land and
there isn't any sort of mention of how this this change over in ownership of
the land happens so I'm gonna sort of push that to one side and we'll ignore
that but it's it's again trusting in God and and he's promising this to him
it's not saying look if you go there I'll do be there safely but it's sort of
your own you to sort of everything out yourself it's I'll look this is what I
want you to do I'm gonna take you there you're gonna get there safely we've
listened to people and when you get there it'll be yours to own for your
offspring's home and that sort of thing is it's not being able to say look
you're gonna get delivered here and it'll be yours don't worry about it it's
very very easy to ask for Abram it would have been easy for us how how's that
gonna happen why why is this happening but he doesn't as well as far as this
documented and it's it's a term that and the user I was talking to you the
day trust is the bedrock of our faith so being able to trust in God and trust
that he's gonna say look this is what's gonna happen and then he's gonna do it
and follow through on it and you know the questionless faith and questionless
trust so not asking questions and not sort of saying right I know this is
what you tell me to do but I don't understand how you're gonna do it how
are you gonna how's this gonna happen how's this gonna happen why is this
happening that sort of that sort of thing is obviously not
Abram doesn't do that he just sort of trust going to things right this is what's
happening I know what I'm doing I'm gonna do it and he just and it will as
follows obviously but as I think especially for me for example if someone
asked me to do something that might seem sort of outlandish or strange I will I
will want to know why and I won't know how are you gonna how am I gonna do
that and I think it would be the same with anyone in the room you know I'm
not gonna point fingers or anything but I'm sure and everyone's own life this
thought right God something to do this how is this gonna happen how am I gonna
be able to pull this off how is it gonna work but and it's not something that's
easy and it's not something you can do sort of first hand around you know God
says right I want you to move country and I want you to help these people out
here I want you to go on this mission and help these people out it's it's not
something that you can say right okay I'll just do it you know it would be
especially if it's like the first time you've been asked to do it you would
want to ask how we want to know why wouldn't you so I think yeah that that
sort of questionless faith is something that I know I'm working on I'm sure
people today are also working on it themselves so yeah and then it sort of
it carries on this seven eight and nine to get if we could get them up
Graham please I'll give you a visit I'm sorry the Lord appeared to Abraham and
said to your offspring I will give this land so he built an altar there to the
Lord who had appeared to him from there he went on towards the hills east of
Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and on the east there he
built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord so he's for the
rest of this sort of end of my land verses is he's built an altar where he
can worship the Lord and where he can remember this encounter with God or
remember what he's promised to him and sort of just not let that sort of God's
instructions slide if that makes any sense so not letting what God's told him
go under the river like it's not his decision he's not chosen to do this he's
been told to do it and he's done it and now look where he is and he's got to
honor that by building an altar and praising God for it and yeah so he
continues on his journey and he eventually gets a building altars on
arrival so if you're going to take anything sort of away from from this
short sort of it's an hour long it's been amount of time I've been speaking for
it would be two things three things one is trusting in God's word two is
the obedient of his instructions however strange or peculiar or sort of
outlandish you might seem and three I'm not great at public speaking but I feel
like I've done a good job
I hope Andy gets his reception as well I'll be watching you as I'm sort of
going outside to try and stop shaking and sweating nervously but thank you
thank you
great job Jensen brilliant so I've got what ten minutes so this passage this
story of Abraham in this chapter is just a tiny tiny mirror of what it's
like to become a Christian and a tiny reflection of what it is to follow
Jesus today so so we have at the beginning that God chooses Abraham
right and for you and I as we're Christians we're following Jesus today
we might use the language that I've chosen Jesus or I've chosen to be a
Christian but the reality is behind that is that God has chosen you right great
new so this story immediately speaks to us today and the second thing that we
see is that God then gives Abraham a plan and a purpose and sets him off as
Jensen's told us on this journey not knowing where he's going or as we heard
from Paul in earlier get the out of thy country and he sets him off on a
purpose and the same is true for you and me as we follow Jesus that he gives us a
plan and a purpose we haven't chosen us the problem if we say we've chosen to
follow Jesus it kind of feels like it's for our benefit but actually God has
chosen you and has chosen you and given a purpose to you and to your life for
you to take hold of and then the next thing that Jensen's reminded us of is
that God has promised sent promises over Abraham he promises to bless him he
promises about how numerous his children are going to be he promises about his
offspring occupying the land and the same you know what is true for you and I
that God has spoken promises over your life that he will fulfill that are true
through the death and resurrection of Jesus and what was achieved on that
cross and God will always set out and fulfill his promises and not let them go
and so that's our first bit of the chapter and then we get to the second bit
of the chapter and it's just the same it's just like following Jesus and being a
Christian because we discover that Abraham makes a few mistakes made a few
bad decisions does something not quite right and you know what as Christians
we make a few mistakes and we do some things that are well not quite right and
we have to ask the question what's going on so three things I'm just going to read
the second half of the chapter if you put the words up grand but I'm going to
read them if you want to follow them please do now there was a famine in the
land and Abraham went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the
famine was severe as he was about to enter Egypt he said to his wife Sarah
I know what a beautiful woman you are when the Egyptians see you they will say
this is his wife then they will kill me but will let you live say you are my
sister so that I will be treated well for for your sake and my life will be
spared because of you when Abraham came to Egypt the Egyptians saw that she was
a very beautiful woman and when Pharaoh's official saw her they praised her to
Pharaoh and she was taken into his palace he treated Abraham well for her
sake and Abraham acquired sheep and cattle male and female donkeys men
servants and maid servants and camels but the Lord inflicted serious diseases on
Pharaoh and his household because of Abraham's wife Sarah so Pharaoh summoned
Abraham what have you done to me he said why didn't you tell me she was your
wife why did you say she is my sister so that I took her to be my wife now
then here is your wife poor woman take her and go then Pharaoh gave orders of
Abraham to his men and they sent him on his way with his wife and everything he
had three things hopefully quickly this that I pulled out of this the first thing
is God as we as Jensen told us God Abraham arrived at the land God had
promised he arrived at Canaan and you think great I'm in the will of God
I've got the place that God's got in store for me but what happens famine
that's right the famine there's a famine that God says I have a plan I have a
purpose for you this is it but then famine there's hardship there's
difficulty and how many times do we equate being in the will of God with
things going well with things making sense with things is adding up with life
being smooth and okay with relationships going well with the church going woo-hoo
and all that kind of stuff and how many times do we think we're out of the will
of God if things are difficult and we're out of sorts with people and things have
bad things are happening to us and we confuse that and it's a seduction of
modern Christianity that we think things should be going well and it isn't true
and I'm confident that because Jesus said in this world you will have but take
heart I have overcome the world so it's wrong of us and we think if things are
going badly you know in the type of language we use I'll be blunt and I'll
probably upset a few people it's things like oh I'm under attack right and we
use that sort of language and it kind of shifts what's really going on because
the question we got to ask all the time here is God still at work it is God
still at work in Abraham's life all this is going on and we'll come back to
that in a minute you see it must have been hard for him he's
thinking walking into God's plan he's doing this amazing thing of faith and
trust as Jensen's reminded us and he lands in this place of famine but how
often does the challenge come at the start of what God has called you to do
how often when God speaks and says promises into your life and wakes you up
to see what he's got in store and you think yeah I'm gonna make a step of
faith here how many times at the start of that do difficulties come just like
the Abraham here so often right look at Noah building the ark and they all mock
him and around him look at Nehemiah trying to rebuild the city and the
opposition that he has to do that look at Jesus at the start of his ministry
led by the spirit into the wilderness and tempted look at the early church
as God moves so powerfully persecution breaks out against them time and again
scriptures teachers and church history teachers but when God moves in power
and his people responding faith that there is difficulty and hardship and
conflict at that point in time and the challenge we have is what are we going
to do about that one four six I don't know if you meant to say this earlier
I thought you did right so so we've won for one four six you know we're in
faith for God has promised there for what's going on and we we mentioned at
the family night the other week about that the the applications we've put in
for grant funding and we talked about one we're going to the government that
would cover the rest of the balance as we have at the moment and then we heard
this week that we didn't get it and we didn't get any of it and any of that
money so we have to look elsewhere but we could think oh no is God really in
this is this really what's the no we fall back just like Abraham on the
promises of God we fall back just like Pauline on the promises of God because
he will fulfill what his word sets out over your life over my life over this
church over his church in this nation over this community because it is born
in the fact that he has chosen us and he has spoken promises over the same thing
out of this passage we read that he has to move to Egypt goes down to Egypt he
arrives at the place God has called him to one next he has to leave now I don't
know how the story goes because Jensen said we don't get a lot of detail but I
can kind of imagine that as he moved his family and his servants and his animals
and flocks from from her and all the way down to Canaan they kind of had a sense
what we're doing this because we're following God's word and God has spoken
to someone stood up by it and they kind of get to Canaan you can soon going back
to Abraham and saying this is so this is where God wants us right there's no
food we're going to die so Abraham has to get them all up again round them all
up against it right we're going down to Egypt but that's not where God wants us
to go he wants us here and so there's this challenge in this passage that he's
reached the place God wants him to be but actually just to survive he needs to
go somewhere else for the time being and this is to me as I read this I think
this is a great lesson in that most spiritual gift of common sense right
sorry you won't find it in one Corinthians or Romans 8 or although it is
that yeah it is the gift of wisdom but it is the gift of common sense and what
I mean by that is we have a tender why didn't Abraham stay in Canaan and say
right I'm in the place God has asked me to be God will deliver me God will
deliver us there's a famine here but God will provide and we have a great
tendency in a danger to over spiritualize things at times that means we're
trying to look for things and God is saying I just want you to exercise common
sense right go where there is food Abraham and so he leaves you know and it
just strikes me that sometimes it's okay to respond to what's going on around
and seemingly move away from the place God has called us to that's what this
teaches us and why is that again because behind the scenes it's God who has
chosen Abraham and God who was called Abraham and God who has spoken
promises over Abraham that he will fulfill and the same is true for you and
we can move ourselves through common sense or other reasons to a different
place that we don't really want to be and I really don't want to be up here as
the worship singer believe me right but God will move powerfully because at the
end of the day your life and my life are actually lived out in a context that
God has chosen you and God has spoken promises over you and it's not about
what we're doing so much it's about us learning what it is to trust God and
Abraham as we know is a man who is taught through scripture that he's a
hero of the faith that he's held up as the guy who is the father of the faith
but faith and trust are the things that we remember him for and yet he's got to
learn that and that is what's going on through this point at this point in time
sometimes it's not the message we want to hear but sometimes we need to move
God moves us to a place where we need to move to a place just out of common
sense remember Covid lockdown who wanted to be in that place right but there's an
element you might disagree with me there's an element of common sense about that
and just as I was thinking about so I had credits of my wife here who
suggested strongly that I started keeping a list of things I could use as
analogies in sermons and I was just looking through this one and I don't
know Terry, Terry Bamford if you're in 146 but I've got jotty down here in my
notes on the 24th of May 2020 and Janai visited Terry so this is what two
months into lockdown and he's still on his doorway and we stood six feet back
and we chatted about the message that have been out that morning online and I
wrote down visited Terry drawing lockdown he'd listened to the service on the
radio about the resurrection the disciples had been fishing all night and not
caught anything after the resurrection of Jesus and Jesus told them to cast
them out on the other side and Terry said what and the message was why should
they do that they know what to do they've been doing it all night now God asked
them to take a step of faith and try something different that they wouldn't
have done anyway because that's not how they do it and Terry bless him he
compared that he's telling us compared that to being in lockdown God has got
us doing things that we never would have done because they were not part of our
routine not how we do things and yet we've done it and God has blessed us you
know bless you Terry for spotting something when we're in a place where we
don't want to be and actually God is teaching us stuff and the irony now is
that Terry I hope is in 146 and the guys are in 146 with the benefit of stuff
we learned to do in lockdown and stream stuff out there that's great so the
third thing I just want to bring out is in this story is there's this strange
story about what he does with his wife Sarah you know there's this cultural
pressure being applied to Abraham as he ends up in Egypt and how does he
respond you know we've gone from a story of a man who is exercising faith and
trusting God on this journey to a man who abdicates his own responsibility makes
his wife extremely vulnerable when he's supposed to protect her and do all of
that just to save his own skin it's the same guy that's exercising faith and
trust in following God's okay now how did this well first off I'd say this is a
great story of how God works with broken mixed up people hallelujah because we
all do that right we all make mistakes we all do things wrong and God works in
us but the pressure of the culture and the circumstances conspired to make him
act out of self-preservation rather than faith and it's the same today when you
and I when we drift from the place of blessing when we drift from the place
that God has brought us to when we lose that passion that we once had and that
singleness of vision when we first responded to him then we become
vulnerable to the pressures of society around us of the circumstances we
find ourselves of the culture in which we live and when that happens we lower
the bar and we trust ourselves rather than trusting God and we trust our gifts
and abilities rather than trusting his promises and we want to save our own
skin rather than lean into the fact God has chosen us and called us by name
everything about the gospel screams the opposite Jesus resisted not only
resisted but spoke out against the prevailing culture of his day as did
Paul and Peter and the other apostles as we go through the rest of the New
Testament as does the early church as the church history when you read through
church history and see when the church is on fire for Jesus and God is moving
powerfully they're speaking out against the ills of society of that day
there's a ask the question how does the cultural pressure that we have today turn
our eyes from the call of God on us to be more bothered about saving our own
skin you know we haven't got time to go into that I'll leave that for you to
think about maybe that's a good bit of homework but think you know how does how
does our succumbing to the advertising industry reduce us down to being more
bothered about our own skin than actually following the call of God how does the
the proliferation of the entertainment industry and something that is so
temporary and so transient become something that's so important in the
world today how do we respond to that how do we respond to the sexualization of
everything and anything that is out there right now how do we respond to the
proliferation of technology that means I can do anything good or bad very
easily thank you very much on the device in my hand how do we respond to
that how do we how do we resist the culture around us trying to squeeze it
into its mold and encouraging us to become men and women who have simply
want to be quiet and not raise our head but actually become men and women hold
on to his promises how do we challenge the the issues of sexuality of gender
confusion confusion of racism of abortion of the rich and poor divide of the
confused mishmash of values and society all of which are complex right I'm not
simplifying that at all but there's a tendency as Christians that in this
damn age to let us the squeeze us down and push us down and like Abraham
responding to the culture of his time being more bothered about saving his
own skin rather than leaning back into and trusting the promises of God he'd
been called by God to a massive purpose to be the father of nations who's
faith in God to be a shining example and in his following of God to reflect
something of the Jesus that was to come and we too you and I this morning here
in 146 watching online we've been called we've been chosen by the same God that
chose Abraham we've been called and chosen by name and we are being built
into his church right now to be a light for the nations to speak and live out
the resurrection of Jesus to pray his kingdom in to pray the not yet kingdom
into the here and now so that we see him move and transform people's lives what
are calling that we have it's massive so let's stand together against the
pressures around us and encourage one another and let us learn to put others
not ourselves first and pursue the glory of Jesus in this life with our
strength and resolve together leaning into that very fact we had at the
beginning that it is God who has called us and it is God who has given us a
plan and a purpose and it is God who has spoken promises over your life and our
life and so we can give ourselves to trust him as Paul writes don't conform
any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of
your mind and I just finish with for some strange reason I've had a really
old hymn from when I was a kid going around my head follow him follow him
yield your life to him he has conquered death he is King of Kings
accept the joy which he gives to those who yield their lives to him Amen

View Details

Daren continues our series on Genesis. This week he is speaking on Genesis 11. His topic is "God of Abram"
Transcript
Oh, yeah, don't say, well, we really participated
in the fact you've both, haven't we?
Well, thinking of saints, it turned out
that, as you know, we're speaking on Genesis
for the moment, that there is and was a saint
from Saint Genesius.
And it's not very much like Genesis.
Now, yeah, look at that.
I don't think that was a celery, though.
Now, do you have a look at that picture there?
It was a patron saint of something.
What do you think he was looking through?
Saint Paul, as for his greatest actors, actors.
Now, on that note, I've got very deep
theological questions, you guys, to think about.
Are you ready?
It's with the same thing.
Oppenheimer or Barbie?
What did you know?
What did you know?
It was great, then.
It turned out a good book, and I'm Oppenheimer fans.
You know, I'm a chair, I've got a kid.
What, Barbie?
Oh, oh, good day to see you, baby.
I've got a little bit more of it.
Well, the reason I say that is,
I think you will wear it down and go with it,
so don't worry if it will open together.
Well, lastly, of course, was the Oscars.
And there was a lot of talk in the answers
about women or movies.
In fact, at the birthdays, a week before,
he wrote a poem he said, when he was giving
his presentation, he probably said,
he brought great, one of the people who loved us
and then he would have read.
Anyway, he was at the birthdays, and he said,
Oompa, Oompa, Oompa, Oompa, Oompa, Oompa, Oompa, Oompa.
Oompa, Oompa, Oompa, Oompa, Oompa, Oompa.
Oompa, Oompa, Oompa, Oompa, Oompa.
Oompa, Oompa, Oompa, Oompa, Oompa.
Most of these films were frankly too long.
LAUGHTER
And you can watch the Oppenheimer these three hours.
It's three hours.
Barbie's nearly two hours.
And if you watch that, it's a flowers of the kind of
the news in his course,
and you go, that's three and a half hours.
They're talking about bringing back
into missions in the syllabus.
Remember those?
I don't know.
I think they're on this stage now.
You know, I can really think of these missions.
But if you remember, you'd expect to come out
and go there with your screens.
OK.
But do you know what?
Since COVID and lockdowns, viewing habits
have changed, doesn't it?
And to be honest, do you think you've washed up?
Yeah.
Do you think you're going there?
Absolutely correct.
We tend to binge watch things, don't be one.
Lots of screen sets.
And the reason I'm saying that is because
I'm going to content to you that Genesis,
chapter one to 11, are like series one of a box set.
And chapter 11, which we're looking at today very shortly,
is the final episode with a clear item.
And most of the erosions and stories
will tell you that is actually the structure of Genesis.
But first, 11 chapters are of a certain series
if you like.
Everything changes next week.
Next week is the first episode of series.
How many series in Genesis?
I don't know.
Maybe two or three.
But today we've got the final episode of series one,
really, that shouldn't be clear at the end.
But think about that.
Some of it I read recently, but apparently,
to read the entire book of Genesis
in one day would take three and a half hours.
So maybe, if you're thinking about each week
we've been looking at one chapter at a time,
maybe what you want to go to today,
you might want to binge and read Genesis.
It might be about three and a half hours.
Well, before we go any further,
I'd like my good friends Chris,
who's going to read Genesis 11 for us.
And this is Genesis 11,
and it's from 1 to 32.
The first bit's going to be easy.
He's talking about the Tarah of Babel.
Now, the Tarah of Babel.
Now, the whole world had one language
and a common speech.
As men moved eastwards,
they found a plane in Sheena and set them there.
They said to each other,
come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly.
They used bricks instead of stone and tar for mortar.
Then they said, come,
let us build ourselves a city.
With a tower that reaches to the heavens
so that we make a name for ourselves
and not to be scattered over the face of the whole earth.
But the Lord came down to the city and the tower
and that the men were building.
The Lord said,
if, as one people speaking the same language,
they begin to do this,
then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
Come, let us go down and confuse their language
so that they will not understand each other.
So the Lord scattered them from there over the earth
and they stopped building the city.
That is why it was called Babel.
Because they're the Lord confused the language of the whole world,
from there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Now, this is where it gets interesting.
From Shem to Abram.
Two years after the flood,
when Shem was 100 years old,
he became the father of a fraxed.
And after he became the father of a fraxed,
Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.
When a fraxed had lived 35 years,
he became the father of Sheila.
And after he became the father of Sheila,
a fraxed lived 403 years
and had other sons and daughters.
When Sheila had lived 30 years,
he became the father of Iba.
And after he became the father of Iba,
Sheila lived 400 years and had other sons and daughters.
When Iba had lived 34 years,
he became the father of Pelic.
No, I won't lie.
I did think about saying peg leg,
but then that's fine.
I actually got to the hang of this.
And after he became the father of Pelic,
Iba lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters.
When Pelic had lived 30 years,
he became the father of Roo.
And after he became the father of Roo,
Pelic lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters.
When Sirogh had lived 30 years,
he became the father of Nihor,
and he became the father of Nihor.
Sirogh lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters.
When Nihor had lived 29 years,
he became the father of Tira.
And after he became the father of Tira,
Nihor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters.
After Tira had lived 70 years,
he became the father of Abram, Nihor and Haran.
This is the account of Tira.
Tira became the father of Abram, Nihor and Haran.
And Haran became the father of Lot.
While his father Tira was still alive,
Haran died in the Ur of the Shaldines,
in the land of his birth.
Abraham and Nihor married, both married.
The name of Abraham's wife was Sirea,
and the name of Nihor's wife was Millech.
She was the daughter of Haran,
the father of both Milka and Isuka.
Now Sirea was barren.
She had no children.
Tira took her, his son, Abram.
Abram, his grandson, Lot of Haran,
and his daughter-in-law, Sirea,
the wife of his son, Arabim.
And together, they set out for the Ur of the Shaldines
to go to Canaan.
But when they came to Haran, they settled there.
Tira lived 200 years, and he died in Haran.
Well done.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
It was really well done.
So I'm just wondering,
how do you understand this?
A little bit deeper into what I've been trying to say
for us, we've given the system earlier,
and just kind of setting my story.
I want to just put the idea to your sacred space,
holy ground, if you want.
And because I believe with all the exciting stuff that's going on here,
MCA, particularly, thinking about the development of 146,
what do I've got these important to say about these projects
and what about this individually?
Because if we go back to the next slide of it,
if we go back to Genesis 11, it's really a story of two hearts.
You've got the Tower of Babel, first of all.
And the treaty story, which is actually a flashback,
we'll see in a little bit.
And it's almost like a bit like one of those trying thrillers
where something happens and I think they jump in time
and go look at that in a minute.
But there's really, really interesting ideas about that.
And, but, can you just say, well,
if you're not important to all things, that might hurt.
And, but, I want to be about sacred space
in really, really important.
I've got this picture on the screen,
and we've got a picture on the left there
of quite a traditional church.
It might be a Catholic church,
or when you go to a very traditional church,
it might be a Catholic church,
or a Catholic church,
you're often confronted with the baptismal font.
And the reason that's there is because of the first thing you see
when you walk in, it's baptism.
Because the view there is, it speaks at baptism,
speaking of the Christian church.
That's why you see that.
And often, it's furniture, bits and bobs,
in a sacred space.
Speak and tell about what we believe
and something about God.
On the right-hand side, you've got a really high artist.
You might have heard these Russian six feet of our conviction.
And, but, you know, the, the personal of those is to say,
the priest's word is really, really, really important.
But, what does this space say about God?
What do you say about God?
So, we're going to talk.
So, I don't even want to quite,
I don't even want to walk it on this way,
because, and I can hear, just over a year,
so I might be able to see this,
when perhaps fresh wine is loaded.
So, what really come into this workplace,
the first thing you see is always a lot of information
about the Lord and you,
there's a lot of your knowledge of this space.
You usually get the work on a tiny one,
but you usually throw me cards.
And, that tells you the things that can flow on the world.
So, even by the day,
just don't look for it on the front,
and the next thing you see is, front and centre,
But this version space, what does that tell you?
It will tell you the question here,
it really, really wants to pray the Lord in his coming.
It's by your dear, the fact that it's by your and in your cup,
I don't think we can agree with some of our politicians,
but we think about that a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
But this is from the center.
If people know they don't go wrong,
we get to this clear podium that we don't want to call it.
And quite unusual why you want to sometimes,
because it's clear, what does that say about God
and what God will believe?
Might like to pretend that it's transparent.
We don't hide.
We're authentic.
You can see there's no hiding behind any wooden box here.
What you see is what you get.
I'm going to take you a little bit further
to my favorite thing in this whole building.
And that's this cross there.
We often sit at this part of the church
and sometimes, you know, just stare and look at that.
And I wonder what's your favorite picture on there.
But what does that say?
Well, to me, you can quite clearly see each of those timers be made by children.
Not quite clearly says that children are welcomed here and valued here.
So all of these things in this sacred space,
tell us about who we are, what we believe and what we think about God.
What we think about God.
So getting back to Genesis 11 then,
I mentioned that it was a kind of like a throwback.
It's almost like a thinking back to a previous time.
But if you have a look at this life,
there's this talk about the people being spread out
and scattered on lots of different languages.
And it was great to hear those this morning.
But then suddenly you have this story of Babel.
So this baby really is the story of almost like thinking back to something
that happened a little bit earlier.
But there's some really interesting ideas about this story.
It's quite kind of widely accepted that the tower of Babel was what they call a ziggurat,
which is like a rectangular tower.
Think of like a wedding cake with lots of levels.
And it starts off with a big level and it gets higher and higher and higher.
But the idea is that people would not go up this tower to worship.
The idea is that God would hopefully come down.
Priest would maybe take some food up there.
There would be a bed at the top.
But what does that say about God?
You know, let's just keep God way higher there at a distance.
Maybe God doesn't really care about us.
He's up there in evidence.
And you see, you know, because we heard a few weeks ago in Genesis 3
that people had lost their access to the presence of God
and they would long to get it back perhaps.
If you're a bit of historian, you might have heard of Josephus.
And in his antiquities to the Jews in Chapter 4,
he reckons that this tower was built by Nimrod, son of Ham,
grandson of Noah.
And the reason Nimrod wrote it, built it according to Josephus,
was because he thought, do you know what?
If God is going to flood the earth again,
I want some way to run and hide and take my boat here.
Absolutely, yeah.
He was wrong because God said he wasn't going to judge the world
in that way again.
Others say, well, perhaps this passage is all about an explanation
of why we've got so many different languages
and I'm sure it is.
And on that note, what do you think about this?
Well, yeah, exactly.
What language were we actually speaking? Glory.
A friend of mine, a preacher of friends, used to say,
well, of course, the version of Scripture is going to be
the King James Version in Heaven.
But who knows? Who knows?
But what does our most trusted source say to Scripture itself?
Let's have a look.
So thank you, Chris, for reading that.
Let's have a look at these verses one to nine, the Tower of Babel.
And it turns out there's actually structure in this passage
for those who care to look a little bit closer.
This happens quite a lot in Hebrew literature.
And it starts off, if you look at verses one and two,
it kind of linked to verses eight and nine.
But the opposite way around.
So in verse one, you start up with one language
and people are coming together in one place.
And then in verses eight and nine, you've got many languages
and people are scattered.
So it's the same, but the opposite in reverse.
Then you come into verses three and four,
and then they link up to six and seven.
So the three and four of the people spoke, verses six and seven,
God spoke.
So this is a bit like, you know, there's really posh restaurants
you go to where you've got your plate and loads of knives and forks.
Where do you start?
Where you start on the outside and you work your way in.
And the most important bit is right in the middle.
The Lord came down.
This is the punchline, if you like.
This is the punchline.
This is the whole point of this passage, I believe.
In fact, this particular structure of Scripture
is called a chiasm named after the Greek letter X.
And I like the thought there that that is Jesus there
right in the center of that spiritual.
Or you could say X marks the spot.
The Lord came down.
That was a central idea.
But wasn't that a good thing?
The Lord came down.
Wasn't that the point?
Wasn't that what they wanted?
They built this tower and they wanted God to come down.
So what's been wrong?
Well, I think we need to get back to the previous verse.
Let's have a look at that.
The people came together and said, let us build ourselves a city
with a tower that reaches to the heavens so that we might make a name for ourselves.
Oh, doesn't seem to be anything much wrong without this.
Isn't it a good thing to make a name for ourselves?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Oh, who's that?
Yeah.
A couple of years ago I got a job in a particular school in Sheffield
and I was really, really proud when they had my photo taken
and you can see my classroom there just through the door there
and you can tell how proud I was about this.
The fact that I still got a photo of it.
And what was amazing was outside one door, there's my name,
Mr. Darren Craddock, head of computing.
Brilliant, there's my name on the door at the top of my game
when they're to set up this computing department.
I'm absolutely really, really proud about that.
But that thing's always wrong for me.
And by the end of that year I ended up being signed off for mental and physical health really.
And even though from my point of view, this was it.
This was the peak of my career.
I even got one day on the door with a photo.
My name, I think it all went wrong for me.
In fact, during that time I even had an eye surgery,
a cataract surgery on my right eye.
It's kind of weird.
I've got a contact lens in this eye.
It's kind of a normal eye of this if you like.
So when I take my contact lens out at night, on the long side of here,
the short side of there is kind of weird perspective on life.
But even during, after that procedure, the eye pressure,
my eye went sky high.
Apparently your eye pressure is meant to be between 10 and 20
whatever those numbers mean.
Mine went up to 50 and I could have lost my sign.
But I'm just going to think to take you back like a story within the story.
When I sat there for this eye surgery, it was in Barbara, this amazing place.
And there was three of us men.
I was youngest by far, all waiting for this pretty scary eye operation really.
If ever you had that, you know what I mean.
It only takes 12 minutes to do this surgery, but you lie back in the theatre.
Your eyes can't open.
A bright light shines on it and your lenses removed.
I won't go into details.
And you have a new one, a fidget.
So before this operation, there's three of us guys sat there.
The guy on my left, his flick was bouncing up and down.
You know how men do.
And I was sat there.
But in front of us were these two nurses.
And there was a male nurse and a female nurse.
And they were talking to us really calmly.
Putting our drops in our eyes, making sure we got the right eye.
And going from one to the other.
And we would sit there, trying to, lots and lots of eye drops.
And the guy who was talking to me said,
he's doing anything this weekend, sir.
I said, well, actually, yeah.
I said, all being well with my eye, I'm leading a service and preaching at my local church.
And he goes, oh, that's really good.
And he said, my wife's daddy is the church minister.
And that's my wife there, the other nurse.
Oh, wow.
And then if that wasn't really good, the man to my heart.
The man to my right leaned over and put his hand at my shoulder and said,
hey, brother, I'm a Christian soon.
I thought, wow, we've got a list of congregations right here.
And it made me realize that sacred space can be wherever you find it.
Sacred space can be wherever you make it.
I like to go to the gym in Chris, who read this morning.
Go to the same gym.
And Chris, I've not asked his permission to share this.
Sorry, Chris.
But something that Chris does.
If you know what gyms are like, they often have a change with lots of lockers.
And what Chris would do, once he's finished his workout, he'll leave a gospel tract in the locker.
So who knows what might find out.
So even the smelly stinky men's gym locker could be sacred space.
Sacred space is when you find it.
Sacred space is where you make it.
And I sometimes think that if you really want to find holy ground, if you want to see a burning bush,
you've got to spend some time in the wilderness.
So that was part of my story.
Going back to my school, it was so off of me, and I handed in my notice with no job to go to.
But I'm always to pay, you know, but a wife and doctor for you, you know, and...
Actually, and that sort of thing.
But I handed in my notice with no job to go to, but it was the right thing to go.
This was right at the end of the school year.
If you know how schools work, you can only really apply at certain points of the year.
This was sort of June time.
And then God miraculously provided a job for me, not ahead of computing,
but temporary teacher of computing.
I thought, I almost didn't go through it.
My wife could have killed me.
Of course you've got to go through it.
But I went for the job and got it.
And then during the summer holiday, just before this job started, I thought,
I'd go into school, be really keen and tidy up the computer room.
Teacher's company quite messy, sorry.
I went in.
And anyway, I was walking around the room.
And the first thing you come to in my classroom is this little cupboard.
You can see it like a kitchen unit with all computer stuff.
And I opened this cupboard, and there was this teaching resource there, as you can see.
And I took it out.
I thought that looks familiar.
I gave you a closer look.
And it says, down product, 2008.
That's me.
So I can only presume that where they bought this at this school,
14 years previously, and it's probably been in the cupboard ever since.
And it was almost like, you know, God was saying, you know, your name might not be in the front of the classroom door anymore.
But I've tucked it away here in this humble place, because this is where I want you to be.
I'm going to show you a couple of more quick photos of my classroom.
I took these a couple of weeks ago.
On the left is just above my teacher's workstation.
You see what is there by Bible scripture.
You see on the other picture, looking out for the windows, there's a cross.
And in all of our classrooms, we have a cross, because there's somebody else's name on the door.
There's somebody else's name glorified.
And even better, this is the score logo.
Now, I'm going to have that.
I'm going to try and torture the French.
It's in French.
And it's, ah.
I mean, I never know if it's, ah.
Well, ah, like a sign.
Ah, that's it.
Yeah.
But if I have a go, it's ah.
Keena Bonne de Bongeur.
And the score motto is, ah.
How good is the good God?
Isn't that great?
So, it's not my name and majority of somebody else's.
Somebody else's.
So, let's go back to our scripture.
You see, the builders really wanted to make a name for themselves.
They wanted to make a name for themselves.
Not always wrong in itself, but can be, certainly in my case.
But when I started to dig into the scripture a little bit deeper,
I was really taken with that word name.
Now, I want you to keep your eyes, if you can, on the word names,
because I thought, let's have a look at the Hebrew.
I'm not a Hebrew scholar or anything like that.
Once very carefully, when I go to the next slide,
it says that we might make a shimmer ourselves.
We go back, look, name.
One's of technology, name.
And, in fact, if you have a look, you can see this on Bible gateway
or whatever, look at the Orthodox Jewish Bible.
And it says that we may make a gem for themselves.
I think you look down at the very end of the Tower Babel,
verse 10, this is a count of Shem's family name, a line.
It turns out, Shem means name.
And I wonder, it might just be me, that God is saying,
not your name is my name.
And it's my family name.
They tried to make a name for themselves, but God said,
no, not your name, my name.
And the rest of Genesis 11, if you follow the story down,
you go down from Shem and it ends as we heard at Abraham.
And that is, that is the kind of like cliffhagger
at the end of Genesis 11.
Well, I'm going to give you a spoiler.
Because if you turn to the very beginning of the New Testament,
the story continues.
This is the genealogy of Jesus and Messiah.
The son of David, son of Abraham.
And it goes on, Father David, David was the father of Solomon
and so on.
Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary,
and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.
I wonder if that's the reason why the Tower of Babel story is right there.
Yes, of course it's about the languages.
But remember the punchline, X marks the spot.
That's where the treasure is.
God's saying, it's not about your name.
It's about my name.
And I wonder if God is saying in Scripture,
I will make a ship.
I will make a ship.
I'll make a name, but not in the way that you would imagine.
Because it's not going to be through a building.
It's going to be through a body.
It's not going to be through a tower, but it's going to be through a tree.
It's not going to be through confusion, but it's going to be through crucifixion.
It's not going to be through religion, but it's going to be through relationship.
It's not going to be through sacrifices, but it's going to be through his spirit.
It's not going to be through our power or our performance,
but it's going to be through a person.
It's not through anything that we can do, but it's through what he has done.
It's not through our skill, but it's through his salvation.
It's not through our goodness, but it's through his grace, and it's not through our name,
but it's his name, Jesus, Savior, Emmanuel, God with us.
You know, a couple of weeks ago, I was teaching a group of year tens, I teach computer science,
and there was three lads who were all having a bit of a chat together, and that it was
getting quite heated, and they were all talking about heaven and hell, and perfectly, of course,
it's a Catholic story, and about his men all sorts. Now, they were supposed to be getting on
with their coding, but I always let that slide, and I'm more than happy for those conversations
to go on. Now, as I was walking around, one lad who I know, he's a believer, caught me over,
he says, sir, sir, and I went over, I thought he was going to ask me about his computer program,
and he said, sir, he said, you can ask you a question, and I said, yeah, you dream dreams.
And then this young lad, 15 years old, said, what he said in Joel, in the last days, God says,
I will pour out my spirit on all people, your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.
Yeah. I guess I'll have to take that one on the chin, one side.
Yeah. But he got me thinking, he got me thinking, this young lad, 15 year old, in a class of a
couple of weeks before I was speaking, Joel. So I turned to Acts chapter two, where we read about
Pentecost, and when the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place, how stable.
And suddenly a sound like the blurring of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the
whole house where they were sitting. God came down. And they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire
that separated and came to rest with each of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and
began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled him. Now they were staying in Jerusalem,
God's fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. And when they heard this sound, the crowd came
together in bewilderment, because each one heard them in their own language, utterly amazed, they
said, I know all these men who were speaking Gathalains, and how is it that each of us hears
them in that very native language. So where there was confusion, now there's understanding.
And then Peter, Peter stood up and he addressed the crowd and said,
yeah, they're not drunk as you imagine. And then Peter says, this is what was spoken by the
Prophet Joel. In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit and all people. Your sons and
daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams,
even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they will
prophesy, and I will show wonders in their heaven above. So from a 15 year old boy,
the Pentecost, no longer confusion but understanding.
So what, so what can we say about this? Well, I just wonder whether as we're thinking about
the building work that's going on in 146, everything that happens here, maybe it's a ministry
that we've got. Maybe sometimes we need to accept our own hearts and just to say,
Lord, am I, is this about making a name for me rather than the name for you, Lord?
How far are we allowing God to establish his presence and his purposes among his people
in his way, on his terms and for his glory? And I wonder if we have or have had any attitudes or
actions that might get in the way of God's purposes and presence, that might confuse the
scatter instead of bringing peace and unity and blessing.
And I wonder also about this because Jesus said, when you pray, go into your room, close the door
and pray to your father who is unseen. Then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward
you. Well, we've been talking about sacred space as a corporate place. I wonder,
maybe if this is a holy place, just when you get home, just close your room, just you and the
Lord. And it doesn't even matter what you say. There's a famous quotation where an interviewer
wants to approach Mother Teresa, who is now a saint trying for them, and who prayed a lot.
An interviewer said, Mother Teresa, when you pray, what do you say to God thinking it was going to
be something amazing? And Mother Teresa apparently said, well, I don't say anything, I just sit and
listen. And the interviewer, I think, you know, being clever, said, well, what does God say? Mother
Teresa said, well, he doesn't say anything, he just sits and listens to you. What about this?
Saint Paul says in Corinthians, do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit,
who is in you, whom you've received from God. You're not your own. You know that. You've been
brought with a very expensive price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies. So, what do our lives
say about God, about who we are, what we believe and who God is? What do our homes say? What do our
workplaces say? You know, when I get into work now, it's, I used to get quite early,
we're going to the gym, it's cheaper at the clock, but I'm usually in quarter to seven, and one of
the first things I did was I walk around my sacred space, my classroom, and I pray, and God is always
there. So, you know, I perhaps even look up the cross, the cross, and I say, Lord, I welcome you here
today. I pray your blessing on all the children in my hair, in here, and, you know, just welcome
you here, and then I walk around and I say the Lord's prayer, because my place of work,
you know, it's work, and I'm looking forward to the holidays coming up, but it's a sacred space.
It's holy ground up. Maybe I should take off my shoes next time.
So, we are temples of the Holy Spirit, and because God just wants to be with us, because that's all
he desires, in revelation we've been hearing about revelation, and it says, John says, look,
God's dwelling place is now among the people, he will dwell with them, they will be his people,
and God himself will be with them, and be their God.
I've really finished, but just some thoughts to bring to your close. I want to invite the
musicians. I wonder, up in the moment, would you?
Yeah, go for that one. I'm going to actually take us right back to, you know, where we started,
and I realise that I've forgotten the story, that picture, that might come back in a minute,
I've realised I've forgotten to tell a story which I'm going to share, think about sacred space,
because it's just going to link up with this. Remember that picture I showed you earlier about
the really tall palm pimp, and I can't believe I missed out on that story, so I'll share it,
it's worth sharing. So, about 30 years ago, I was invited to go and preach in every year,
this really old Baptist Church, and my wife Judith and I went, so it was an old friend of mine,
a preacher friend who couldn't make that the appointment, so he asked me. So, this was in June,
30 years ago, in this really ancient Baptist Church, it looked like an old kind of Anglican
Paris Church, and as my wife and I arrived, the whole congregation was outside, the youngest
must have been 83, but they were there really excited, you know, and they welcomed us, and as
soon as we went in, the first thing you could see was this great big pop which I was going to be
preaching from, so anyway, a bit later when I went up there, right next to it was the Baptist
history, is baptism equally important, now I'm terrified of heights, which I've not very tall,
but we've grown up this and looking down, but anyway, at the start of the service, all the
ladies seemed to kind of usher my wife to one side, and some of the older gentlemen said,
said, down a bit, let's go and pray, and they took me to, this was a side room with all these
refugee teachers, and they were the little chair, and we always sat down to pray, and as we sat down
all the old men in unison all got up their chairs, and they went to kneel down to pray,
and it was when we were praying, I suddenly felt on this day floor that she feels quite comfortable,
as I looked down and looked to my left and to my right on these flag stones, you could see a little
kneel, that knee shape indentation on these flag stones, and I thought, how many decades of
kneeling in prayer in that speaker, I just had to share that story, and so I'm not a kid
position waiting for that much longer, but coming back to where I started,
thinking about fame and actors, their name, have a look at this, I'm sure you're familiar
with, you know, when actors, when they get famous, and they get their name on the Hollywood walk,
and having a look at those photos, and I think it's quite interesting to see their position
where they are, and I want to share with you, I suppose a sort of personal thing, and maybe
like a sort of tip, if you like, for anybody who has any ministry or preaching, and something
that I do, because when you're preaching at the end of a service or leading a service,
people always come up to you, and they say, well done, you know, that was really good,
what would you do with that? Is that pride to accept that? Well, I'll tell you what I'll do,
and I'll note that I'll do that today, is you just accept the praise, and the thanks in good
faith, and you might say, well did he God speak to you, and then when I get home, I will go and
shut the bedroom door on my knees, and say, you know what Lord, all those praises are yours,
and you remember that glorious vision in Revelation 4, when there's a rainbow circling the throne,
the surrounding that throne were the 24 elders, and they were dressed in white and had crowns
of gold in their heads, and they bowed down, and gave those crowns before the living God,
so maybe, maybe that is the most sacred space, on your own, on your knees, is for the name that
is above all names. So then invite the musicians, if you want one to start sort of playing to me,
and give us a moment just to respond, because it's worth responding.
Maybe as you're sat, you might want to sit and just listen to what, maybe chew on what you've heard.
Just thinking about whose name is on your, your door.
Are there any attitudes in our life that we've had? Maybe we've been quite happy to keep God in
our pockets. Maybe we've been happy to keep God at arms length high up in the sky out of the
reach, just on a Sunday. Maybe it's time to come close.
And maybe there's, some of us, there's been confusion in lives in the scattering.
Maybe you're here because you're confusing, you've been scattered.
Maybe life has been hard for you, and God has felt far away.
Maybe this morning, if not physically on your knees, then just quieting your heart is near before
the name that is above all names, because in his name there is no more confusion.
He will bring beauty for action. He will bring healing from illness and pain.
For those who have been depressed, the suffering from depression, can arise easily.
He can bring that calm and that peace.
The age of us, as we've been out before our hearts, and we remember the Shems, the name, the name of
all names. Because God has exalted him to the highest place, and given him the name that is
above every name, that of the name of Jesus, every dish about, in heaven and on earth,
and of under the earth, and every tongue confess, that Jesus is Lord.

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Jonny continues our series on Genesis. This week he is speaking on Genesis 10. His topic is "United Nations"

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Summary
Chris's sermon on "Human Dignity" from Genesis delves into various themes including the importance of the Old Testament for Christians, the significance of covenants, and the implications of being made in the image of God. Here's a summary of the sermon along with the Bible passages used:

Summary:

The Importance of the Old Testament: Chris emphasizes the significance of the Old Testament for Christians, refuting the idea that Christians don't need it. He provides three reasons:

Jesus and the New Testament writers frequently refer to the Old Testament with authority.
The Old Testament contains beauty and depth that enriches our understanding of God.
Starting the salvation story from Genesis helps provide a complete understanding of God's narrative.

Interpretation of Old Testament Laws: Chris addresses the question of whether Christians are bound by Old Testament dietary laws. He explains that while Jesus fulfilled the law, Christians still consider Old Testament laws in light of New Testament teachings. He discusses the debate within the early church regarding adherence to Jewish laws and concludes that Christians are not bound by them but should consider cultural sensitivity.
Interpretation of Old Testament Commands: Chris tackles the interpretation of Old Testament commands, particularly regarding the death penalty. He emphasizes the need for consistency and context when interpreting such commands, highlighting Jesus' authority to reinterpret Old Testament laws.
Human Dignity and the Image of God: Chris explores the concept of human dignity rooted in the image of God. He contrasts the Christian perspective, where every individual is created in God's image, with atheistic viewpoints, emphasizing the basis for treating others with respect and love.
Covenant and Grace: Chris discusses the covenant between God and Noah, highlighting the significance of covenants in Christianity. He draws parallels between the rainbow covenant in Genesis and the covenant represented by the bread and wine in Christianity, emphasizing the depth of God's commitment.
Grace in Forgiveness: Chris compares Noah's sons' reactions to their father's disgraceful behavior, illustrating the concept of grace in forgiveness. He connects this to Jesus' forgiveness of the woman caught in adultery, emphasizing Jesus' fulfillment of the law with grace.
Challenges and Disappointments in Spiritual Journeys: Chris reflects on the challenges and disappointments in spiritual journeys, drawing parallels with Noah's experience after the flood. He encourages maintaining a focus on the ultimate goal of the Christian journey, despite setbacks.
Desire for the Eternal: Chris concludes by echoing C.S. Lewis's sentiments about the longing for the eternal home, emphasizing the importance of striving towards it while appreciating earthly blessings.

Bible Passages Used:

Genesis 9: The passage describes God's covenant with Noah, including instructions for humanity's relationship with animals and the rainbow covenant.
Leviticus 18:6: This verse prohibits sexual activity with close relatives, possibly providing context for Noah's situation.
John 8: The story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery illustrates Jesus' approach to upholding the law with grace.
Romans 8: Paul's writing in this chapter discusses the groaning of creation and believers' longing for redemption.

Chris's sermon provides valuable insights into the intersection of Old Testament teachings, New Testament principles, and their implications for Christian life and ethics.
Transcript
So we're continuing with Genesis, and we're continuing with Noah,
and in fact we're continuing Noah beyond the flood, so it's kind of what happens next.
It's the new creation and so on. Next slide please.
Christians don't need the Old Testament, true or false? False. False is the right answer.
Let me just give you three reasons for saying that.
I think the first reason, quite simply, is that Jesus and the writers of the New Testament
frequently quote and refer to the Old Testament with authority as being God's word.
So if we didn't need it, somebody forgot to tell Jesus that.
Secondly, I think if we don't have time for the Old Testament,
then actually we miss out on a lot that is really good and beautiful.
Over the last few years, I did something that might be considered foolish.
I tried to memorize Psalm 119, all 176 verses of it,
and I spent hours and hours and hours as an Old Testament to try to do that.
And I didn't do that because I thought that God would love me more if I did,
because he couldn't. I didn't do it, or I hope I didn't do it,
because I thought I would get some kind of spiritual brownie points,
because that's not how it works. And I didn't do it, or I hope I didn't do it
in order as some kind of shortcut to supercharge my faith.
I did it, I think, simply because it was something very beautiful,
and also the Psalmist seemed to have something, a good infection,
that I wanted to catch.
And my third reason goes like this, a few weeks ago,
Anne had started watching some crime series on TV.
I can't remember what it was. And she'd watched the first three episodes
before I started to watch, and it was too much to kind of go back to the beginning,
so I kind of started at episode three.
And for that reason, I don't think my kind of grasp of everything that was going on
was all that it should have been, right through to the end.
And it's kind of the same with the Bible, you know.
If we don't start the salvation story in Genesis,
then we're coming in part way through the story.
And I don't know if you know what the first line in the New Testament is,
but it contains the word Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.
So that's like a clue that this was the continuation of a story that had already begun.
So, yes, it's definitely true. We do need the Old Testament.
We do need the Old Testament. Well, I'll establish that.
Let's get all out to read us some of it.
So, Genesis 9.
Then God blessed Noah and his sons and told them,
be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
All the animals of the earth, all the birds of the sky,
all the small animals that scurry along the ground,
and all the fish in the sea will look on you with fear and terror.
I have placed them in your power.
I have given them to you for food,
just as I have given you grain and vegetables,
but you must never eat any meat that still has the lifeblood in it.
And I will require the blood of anyone who takes another person's life.
And if a wild animal kills a person, it must die.
And anyone who murders a fellow human must die.
And if anyone takes a human life, that person's life will also be taken by human hands.
For God made human beings in his own image.
Now be fruitful and multiply and repopulate the earth.
Then God told Noah and his sons,
I hereby confirm my covenant with you and your descendants.
And with all the animals that were on the boat with you,
the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals,
in fact every living creature on earth.
Yes, I am confirming my covenant with you.
Never again will flood waters kill all living creatures.
Never again will a flood destroy the air.
Then God said, and I am giving you a sign of my covenant with you
and with all the living creatures for all generations to come.
I have placed my rainbow in the clouds.
It is the sign of my covenant with you and with all the earth.
And when I send clouds over the air, the rainbow will appear in the clouds.
And I will remember my covenant with you and with all the living creatures.
Never again will the flood waters destroy all life.
And when I see the rainbow in the clouds,
I will remember the eternal covenant between God and every creature on the earth.
And then God said to Noah, yes, this rainbow is the sign of the covenant.
I am confirming with all the creatures on the earth.
The sons of Noah who came out of the boat with their father were Shem,
Ham and Japheth.
Ham is the father of Canaan.
And from these three sons of Noah came all the people who now populate the earth.
After the flood, Noah began to cultivate the ground and he planted a vineyard.
And one day he drank some wine he had made.
And he became drunk and lay naked inside his tent.
Ham, the father of Canaan, saw that his father was naked and went outside and told his brothers.
So then Shem and Japheth took a robe.
They held it over their shoulders and they backed into the tent to cover their father.
And as they did this, they looked the other way so they would not see him naked.
Thank you, Anne.
So at the beginning of chapter nine is the new creation in a way.
And the wording that we can just sound very similar to what we saw at the end of Genesis chapter one
about being fruitful and multiplying and so on.
Only now there's a kind of cloud and a kind of darker picture here.
And it doesn't finish with the words and God saw everything and it was good.
It is a fallen creation.
And there's now a tension between man and the natural world.
Particularly in the case of animals that man's not going to eat them.
But there's this harmony, a disconnection in the natural world in this new creation.
Interesting, there's an aside.
It kind of looks as if in paradise or in the Garden of Eden people were vegetarians.
But from now on they can eat meat.
But there's that cloudedness about the new creation.
And I'll come back to that later because there's a reference to it later in Romans.
But yes, it's a new world.
And it's a new world that experiencing some of God's blessing but not without its issues and problems.
And you kind of think about things like global warming is how kind of man's ambition and sinfulness
actually is often at variance with the needs of the natural world.
And something of this I think comes out in these verses.
Next slide please.
But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood in it.
So the question I want to ask you is, does that mean as Christians today that we shouldn't eat black pudding or rare steak?
And if not, why not?
After all we talked about us needing the Old Testament and the Old Testament being the Word of God.
That sentence is not ambiguous, it's pretty clear.
So are we bound by it or are we not?
And I'm going to try and answer that question a bit.
I think the good bit is, I think it's all right.
So I think you can eat black pudding if you want to.
You don't have to if you don't want to but it's there and the same with rare steak.
So I think this is okay for Christians.
But let's try and unpack the reasoning a bit for this.
I think the reasoning is when we look at the dietary laws that we find in the first five books of the Old Testament
and indeed much of the ritual laws about how they did religion including sacrifice and all of that.
Then we're going to look at all that with New Testament eyes.
So it's not about lift and drop.
We don't just kind of take a verse out of the Old Testament and say, right, this is for Christians.
We don't look at that without considering how the New Testament has viewed this.
So we're going to look at this with New Testament eyes.
And in the New Testament we learn that Jesus has fulfilled the law.
And let me just unpack a little bit in the context of this verse what we understand by fulfills.
I'm going to do that with a simple example.
If you come by our house at certain points last summer, you'd have seen scaffolding up around the front and the side
right up to the roof and the chimney stack.
And all the scaffolding was there because we were having leaks and they needed to dig up on the roof and try and fix the leaks.
And if you came a few weeks later, you'd find the scaffolding was gone.
It wasn't there anymore.
So why did we take the scaffolding down?
Was it because we thought scaffolding was useless?
Well, not at all actually.
We thought the scaffolding was very necessary and it done what we needed scaffolding to do.
But once it had fulfilled its purpose, we no longer needed that scaffolding.
And that's a bit about how we Christians have traditionally understood a lot of that kind of dietary and ritual law of the Old Testament.
It's not that it was bad or wrong whether it was old fashioned or any of the other adjectives you could think about.
It had a purpose.
But when Jesus died and rose again, its purpose was fulfilled and we no longer needed.
So that's why we say we do that.
There is actually an exception to that, which I will mention.
And it was certainly an exception because this verse, or verses very much like it,
were a hot issue in the early church.
And they were a hot issue for a good reason because you did church at that time that's primarily Jewish.
So to most Christians at the beginning are also Jewish.
And because they've been brought up as Jews, they're keeping the Jewish law.
But then, you know, people who are not Jews started getting converted and coming to Christ.
And the numbers of those who are not Jewish increased.
And because they hadn't been brought up with any of this ritual law not being Jews.
And so there was a tension.
And some people at the time thought, well, in order to be a Christian, you need to be, you need all the Jewish stuff and you need Jesus.
And the early church debated this at great length.
And the conclusion literally reached is actually you only need Jesus.
But this is where I come to the exception.
Out of deference to Jewish believers, we're going to ask you not to have food with meat in it, with blood in it.
And I think that would still be relevant.
So, you know, if you had somebody staying with you who was, said, a Jewish believer, or even maybe somebody who would come out of Islam
and go, you know, has got that kind of whole halal thing in their mind,
it might be appropriate not to do that rather than cause offense.
So there's a cultural sensitivity, but it's not a binding law.
So that's the explanation.
At least as best as I can give it now.
Next slide.
So we've gone forward to verses.
He who sheds human blood by humans, his blood shall be shed.
For the image of God, he made humankind.
Now, some people believe that this verse means that Christians should campaign for the restoration of the death penalty by the British government in the 21st century.
And some Christians would say yes to that.
That's exactly what we believe.
And I'm going to try and wrestle with that more difficult question.
Actually, I'm going to be, let me put it this way.
I'm not going to get too hung up on that question, because I'm really feeling for the question, okay, so which bits of the Old Testament do we accept?
I'm feeling for the bigger question behind it all.
So rather than getting too hung up on that question, they say, well, so what's the process we have to go through?
And remember what I said about the previous verse?
We don't just lift and drop.
So Christians don't just take something out of the Old Testament and plunk it down and say that for me.
We're always going to look at it through New Testament eyes.
So we're going to understand the question.
But the first challenge you have, if you are saying this definitely means we should have the death penalty for murder,
is actually going to be one of consistency.
You have to imagine the senior there tucking into your breakfast of bacon and black pudding,
while in your head composing an email to your MP arguing for the death penalty will be restored.
So what allowed you to say that actually it was all right to have black pudding, but we must have the death penalty?
Now, you might have an answer to that, but there needs to be an answer to that.
It can't just be, you know, I pick out the bits I like and say they are good, or because I've got a hobby horse on this particular subject like the death penalty.
I've found a verse in the Old Testament that supports that.
It's got to be, there's got to be a reason for going to say the supply.
And then there's a question where it's really around context.
So if we're really going to get into this issue about the death penalty, I think we want to look at all the other verses in the Bible,
including in other bits of the Old Testament and the New Testament and say, well, so what's the total teaching here?
Do we understand the whole teaching of the Bible and the context in which that's given?
I remember Andy saying, maybe other people have said it as well, but Andy once said, you have to ask not only what does the Bible say,
but what does the Bible also say?
So, you know, if you're going to build a position on something, we're not going to do it on one verse only.
We're going to look at what whole Bible have got to say.
And then there's another bit of context to think about.
The first five books of the Old Testament are really given to the people of Israel.
So this is God's particular people called to be His chosen people.
And that's the context in which the law is given.
Can we just say that also applies to the British government today?
And that's a big question.
And some people would say, oh, yeah, no, it's definitely, if God says it's got to be good for everybody, hasn't it?
So, actually, we know it was given to Israel, but it's got to be good for everybody.
I think one of the difficulties of that is you don't find in Acts or say in Paul's letter,
Christians being encouraged to lobby the local Roman senator on some point that Christians have a view.
That doesn't appear to be happening.
So I think there are some quite hard questions to be asked.
Now, you might be thinking at that point, oh, this is actually much easier.
It's quite clear when we come to a commandment in the Old Testament,
we just kind of fast forward to the next verse because it's all been fulfilled and we don't need that stuff anymore.
And we're under grace and we're under law and we're free to live as seems right to us.
Hold on a second.
Hold on a second because this is a bit more tricky because what we do find, again with our New Testament eyes,
is that big chunks of kind of the moral teaching in the Old Testament gets kind of reaffirmed in the New.
Now often it's reaffirmed with a twist, but nevertheless it's reaffirmed.
So that feels a little bit different to what I said about some of the dietary and ritual stuff.
Let me give an example to describe what I think is going on and then we can look at it a bit more.
Some of you will not, but for many years I was a senior manager in HMRC and I was later there,
I was based in a biggest office in Sheffield.
And obviously there was an expectation that people like me would kind of understand what the party line was on issues
and we would support that party line when we talk to staff.
And then one day I called John came to visit the office and John spoke to the staff probably anything a bit like this
and he took questions and he spoke to them.
And I realized that on a lot of issues he wasn't quite doing the party line.
He was saying things that were a bit different or suggesting how things might be not quite the same.
And I think that was interesting, I wish I could have got away with saying that myself.
And anyway, John went and I am certain that John never got into trouble for that.
He might think, well why would John get away with it?
And the short answer was he was the chief executive.
And actually that's a bit the same as Jesus and some of the Old Testament stuff.
He very often takes a command in a slightly different direction
and he can do because he has the authority.
So sometimes he says something like, you know, you've heard Moses saying so and so, but I tell you.
So he's kind of claiming authority.
So he reaffirms it, but often with a wider interpretation.
So a really simple example would be one of the 10 commands is not to commit murder.
And in the 7 of the Mount Jesus reaffirms that.
But he also applies it to hatred and slander.
So he widens and deepens the commandment.
So he's affirming it, but also widening and deepening it.
In doing so though, he's probably making it less easy to be the kind of thing you could put in a rule book.
It isn't more about the heart and it's about attitudes.
But he's not loading the bar.
Frankly, if the commandment is just to not murder, I'm fairly confident that I'm going to get through my life without breaking that one.
If the commandment is not to hate anybody or to slander them, that's harder.
So to what Jesus and the Testament do is often reaffirming, but also applying in a slightly different way,
the teaching of the Old Testament.
Next slide.
Yeah, so we're going to look at the second part of this now.
And actually, well, the first of all, the good news is if we look at this in New Testament eyes, this is exactly picked up and reaffirmed in the New Testament.
So it's a very important statement.
And I've said that, I think probably for three kinds of reasons.
First of all, because it kind of unique, I suspect, to Christians and Jews that you would think that way.
After all, if you're an atheist, this verse doesn't work, does it?
Because I thought there's no God that we can't be created in the image of them.
So that's no good. I'm not sure about other religions, but it feels that kind of a unique thing.
And it has important implications for how we treat other people.
If everybody, whoever they are, are created in the image of God.
And this is after the fall, remember?
So it might be marred a bit by sin, but nevertheless, they are created in the image of God.
That's very important.
And that's different from where you would kind of be if you're an atheist.
I remember having a conversation with an atheist.
Actually, I think it was in a wine bar in Budapest, but that's another story.
And he was a lovely guy.
And he actually had some great values and was telling me about things he felt strongly about.
And I said to him, I think that's great that you believe and hold all that stuff.
I said, my problem is, I don't think actually atheism gives you a basis for that.
You think these things, but you don't have an underpinning for that that would explain it.
I mean, let's be specific. Let's pick the issue of racism.
So why as I a Christian, why should I as a Christian not be racist?
Well, do reason straight.
Well, first of all, this one is that every human being is created in the image of God.
And secondly, that Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves.
So it is absolutely forbidden to me as a Christian on the highest authority to be a racist.
Now, I'm not told suggesting that atheists are racist.
Some may be, some may be not.
But they don't have that kind of authority for not being racist.
Often it's a kind of gut feeling that that's not the way I should treat people.
We have authority for doing it.
I think there's also a kind of personal thing.
If I'm created in the image of God, then, and Paul talks about it, you know, I need to put on.
I need to kind of live up to that.
I need to express some of that.
I need to put on the new me that comes from God.
I need to be expressive of that.
Just when I sin, part of what I do is actually, I'm kind of defacing God's image.
So I need to live up to something as well as the way I treat every other human being.
Next slide, please.
Covenant.
So this is about the covenant and the rainbow.
Now, covenant's an interesting word.
And I guess that it's probably a word that you don't come across outside of church.
Unless you happen to work for law firm or in property or to do with kind of contracts and stuff like that.
But that exception is actually a clue to the meaning of the word covenant because it is simply defined.
A covenant is a formal and serious agreement or promise.
So it's something that's intended to be binding.
But it's important to how we understand our relationship to God.
Let me put it this way.
I'll say one other thing first.
I actually Google this.
It was quite interesting just how much stuff came out of it.
Some people have problems committing.
And based on my Google search, I would say it seems to be more often men than women.
But anyway, there's a lot of stuff out there.
So some people have it hard committing in relationships.
God does not have commitment issues.
God seems happy to commit.
But it's important to understand that if I can put it this way, God doesn't just say to you, I love you.
He says to you, will you marry me?
And there's a difference between the two because marriage is about covenant.
And it takes the thing to the next level.
I noticed too that this covenant, which I say covenant with all creation, never again to repeat the great flood, has a sign.
And the sign is the rainbow.
Now we've just been celebrating our deeper covenant in breaking bread.
And the signs of that covenant are the bread and the wine.
And as I said, it's also I think a sign where our covenant goes further is that the rainbow is something you look at.
The bread and the wine are something you consume.
You take part in it.
So we are more involved.
So it is another level in relation to covenant for Christians.
Next slide.
I don't know if anybody else can remember.
The opening scene in the film Witness, which came out in 1985, and it starred Harrison Ford.
And the opening scene is a field of corn kind of blowing gently in the wind.
And obviously there's music and it started to get the kind of credits up of who the editor was and all that sort of stuff is rolling on.
And then some people kind of emerged coming through the corn and they're all dressed in kind of period Dutch dress from a few centuries ago.
But you know, big hats and women have got bonnets on.
And then you see a kind of horse and buggy and all the rest of it.
And you're thinking, I'm watching a period drama.
And then this banner comes up across it and it says Pennsylvania, 1984.
You think, well, truly that's a mistake, surely that would be 1784.
But then, you know, the scene becomes clear and it was about an image community in Pennsylvania and the film.
But it's a very striking opening scene.
And there's something about that in this story because on the one hand, this is something very, very ancient.
Really, you know, we're still kind of in prehistory with Noah.
So this is something very ancient, but also something totally modern.
Because actually what happens in this rather sorted story is repeated in one form or another regularly.
Because Noah gets drunk and because he's drunk, he does things that he wouldn't otherwise do.
He's uninhibited and he behaves disgracefully.
And because he's drunk, somebody takes advantage of that.
And that's a story that's being repeated in the modern day.
This might be very ancient, but it's also incredibly contemporary.
There is a suggestion that there's something even darker in this story.
I mean, the story is not a nice story, but even darker in it.
If you read a verse like Leviticus 18 at verse 6, and if you read it in something like the new living translation,
or even in the NIV, it says something like, you shouldn't have sex with a close relative.
That's kind of what it says.
If you took a different translation, one that aiming to be much more literal capture, the original language,
it says you mustn't approach a close relative to uncover their nakedness.
So in other words, uncovering nakedness was a kind of figure of speech for sexual activity.
So is there something even darker in this story?
Now that's conjecture, and so we really don't know.
But even if that's not right, this is still what hand does, it's still very unpleasant.
I read something on our government's website, gov.uk.
And it's a statement published in 2019, and it says no one should have to suffer the immense distress caused
of having intimate pictures about them posted online without their consent.
In fact, that's led to an act in Parliament.
And OK, Ham doesn't have a smartphone on the internet.
That's pretty much what he's doing.
You know, he's seen something and he's gone out and talked about it.
This is very unpleasant.
Next slide.
In contrast, his two brothers behave impeccably.
And this must have been a little tricky to do, but walk backwards into the tent with a blanket
and kind of look in the other way and then cover the old man up.
And I was thinking about it, you know, obviously they epitomize, don't they, the fifth commandment,
they honor your father and your mother.
But I was thinking this.
Treating somebody with respect when they've behaved respectfully is just good manners.
Treating somebody with respect when they've behaved disgracefully is grace.
And these two display considerable grace.
We have another story, a story in the New Testament, in John 8, about Jesus and the woman caught in adultery.
And she's brought before him and probably ever be staring at her.
I mean, the whole thing is, again, deeply unpleasant.
And Jesus averts his eyes.
You know, he bends down in roots in the ground.
He refuses to stare at her.
And he forgives her.
And that truth is grace.
And I want to stay in this story for a while because it kind of comes back to what I said earlier about what Jesus does with the law.
See, the Pharisees, and this has all been, it's not really about the woman at all, it's all about how can we get Jesus.
They've got this great plan and it's, it's tales you lose, heads we win Jesus.
That's what they've got it because either Jesus will say, well, we've got to pull the law here and the poor woman's got to be stoned,
in which case A, that wasn't happening at the time we don't think.
And Jesus followers would not like that.
And the Romans might not have liked that.
So, or Jesus says, well, you know, forget all about that law, we're not doing that.
In which case they can say to them, you break the law.
And Jesus walks away from either of those things.
He actually upholds the law.
But he also prevents his forgiveness.
And, you know, that's another clue, I think, to the way in which the Old Testament is applied in the new.
And it's always about involves grace.
And it often, too, is linked with the activity of the Holy Spirit.
And I would just say for those who do think that, you know, we should be using the Bible to argue for changes in laws.
There's very little in the New Testament that I can't think of anything that sounds like instructions to parliamentary counsel.
Let me explain what I mean.
If you want to pass an act of parliament in the UK, then someone, usually the government department, has to write instructions for parliamentary counsel.
And parliamentary counsel will draw up an act of parliament or a bill based on that.
And it's a great deal of work and something of a specialist art.
But, you know, some things you can legislate for and some things you can't.
Actually, you know, the New Testament is full of strong advice to us.
You know, Paul, talking about difficulties in the church, says to the church,
you must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
Now, that is another raising of the bar.
You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
This is a raising of the bar.
But it's also not stuff you can make in a rule book.
You know, I'm told that some people, and my list has happened to, but some people will kind of leave Christianity and convert to Islam.
And I think one of the attractions for that, I guess, is that the Islam is easier and you know where you stand.
So you want to be a good Muslim, you've got the mosque on Fridays, you don't eat bacon, you don't drink alcohol,
and you've got a timetable that tells you exactly when you should pray in which direction you should face.
And if you do that lot of stuff, then you're a kind of righteous Muslim.
And we've got love your neighbors as yourself.
Ours is harder.
Ours is harder.
But we have grace in the Holy Spirit to help us do it.
I think it must be time for a bit of CS Lewis.
Next slide.
Oh, no, wait.
I've got this wrong, got the timing wrong.
Have you ever had a fresh start and then been a bit disappointed?
I think I'm sure we all have.
And you know maybe the thing, maybe it was a new relationship, a new job, a new house, maybe a new country that you're living in.
And you think, well, this is really fantastic.
And then actually, it's not as you don't like it, but it's not maybe been all that you hoped for.
And maybe can I say, maybe more controversially, as that happened in a spiritual context as well,
maybe you thought, I'm going to get baptized.
I'm going to get baptized.
This will be wholly different from now on.
And actually that proved harder.
Or maybe had issues and you've been prayed for.
And you really thought this time, I've really seen a great victory over sin or some other problem in my life.
And actually, it's not quite worked out as you'd hoped.
I think if we don't ask Noah that story, it's about exactly what you're talking about.
You know, we got out of the arc.
It's a new start.
And it hasn't been quite what we hoped it would be.
And we're still, I think Noah would say, part of the reason it didn't work out well was because of me.
And I would say, the experience that I've been disappointed, and more often disappointed with me than anybody else.
Now time for some serious thoughts.
It's a wee bit small.
But anyway, I must take care on the one hand never to despise or be unthankful for earthly blessings.
And I think that's true.
I think, you know, often, often you start, here's a source of blessing.
And the good things that we have in life, the people around us are friends, our relationships.
These are things we should be thankful for.
But on the other hand, never to mistake them for the something else of which they're only a kind of copy or echo or mirage.
I must keep alive in myself, the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death.
I must make it the main object of my life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.
And I think that's brilliant.
And that's a much higher authority than C.S. Lewis.
Paul says something similar in Romans 8.
You know, he talks about all creation is groaning as in the pains of childbirth.
I eat a great deal of groaning and a great deal of pain, waiting for the sons of God to be revealed.
And he says, then we also groan.
So we also, as Christians, groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit as a foretaste of the next life as we wait for our final redemption.
Final slide.
And I would say, you know, if you, if what I said about feeling you're a new star and then experiencing disappointment gels with you,
I would just give two bits of advice.
And the first bit is I had talked to God about that.
And the second bit is, remember, that's not how it finishes.
This is how it finishes.
A new heaven and a new earth.
Look, God's home is now among his people.
He will live with them and they will be his people.
God himself will be with them.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
And they will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.
All these things are gone forever.
Amen.
But, amen.
Mike, back to you.

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Summary
Chris's sermon provided a comprehensive exploration of the narrative of Noah and the flood while also addressing broader themes and applications for contemporary Christian life. Here's a more detailed breakdown:

Interpreting Genesis 1-11: Chris acknowledged the challenges some may face in understanding and accepting the stories in Genesis 1-11, which contain unusual and sometimes perplexing narratives. He presented three common perspectives:

Literal Interpretation: Some believe these stories to be historically accurate in every detail.
Symbolic Interpretation: Others view them as based on real events but conveyed through symbolic or allegorical storytelling.
Disinterested Perspective: Some may see these chapters as irrelevant or dismiss them altogether.

Reasons for Reading Genesis 1-11: Chris outlined three compelling reasons for engaging with these early chapters of Genesis:

Authenticity: Despite their strangeness, Genesis 1-11 represents the genuine word of God and provides essential insights into His character and purposes.
Foundation: These chapters lay the groundwork for understanding the broader biblical narrative and fundamental theological concepts.
Revelation of Jesus: Just as Jesus revealed how the Old Testament Scriptures pointed to Him, Genesis 1-11 offers glimpses into the person and work of Christ.

The Significance of Sacrifice: Chris emphasized the importance of sacrifice in Noah's story, highlighting how Noah's act of offering sacrifices demonstrated obedience and prioritized God above all else. He drew parallels between Noah's sacrifices and the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ, illustrating how Christ's sacrifice fulfills and surpasses the need for animal sacrifices.
God's Promise and Human Nature: Reflecting on God's promise never to curse the ground again despite humanity's inclination toward evil, Chris underscored the enduring grace and patience of God. He acknowledged the ongoing struggle with sin but emphasized God's unwavering love and commitment to His creation.
Personal Reflection and Application: Chris encouraged personal reflection on the implications of God's grace and the need for obedience. He challenged listeners to consider their response to God's voice and to prioritize faithfulness and endurance in their Christian journey. By pointing to Jesus as the ultimate example and source of strength, Chris urged the congregation to fix their eyes on Him and persevere in the race of faith.

In summary, Chris's sermon provided a comprehensive exploration of the Noah narrative, weaving together themes of interpretation, obedience, sacrifice, and endurance in the Christian walk. Through practical insights and biblical exegesis, he sought to inspire and challenge his audience to deepen their understanding of Scripture and grow in their relationship with God.

Bible Passages Used:

Genesis 8:1-22
Matthew 24:37-39
Hebrews 12:1-2

Transcript
Amen good morning everybody. We're continuing again today with the story of Noah and the great
flood. We started in chapter 6 that was I think when Jonathan was speaking continued last week with
Nick and you've got me on it today and actually next Sunday as well. Let's have a next slide please.
I want to confront an issue head on which is kind of how do we read these chapters
and I'm going to spend a little bit of time in this. You might wonder why I put up Genesis chapters
one to eleven there and that's because Genesis chapters one to eleven is kind of a block and
it deals I guess with with sort of prehistory. It's difficult to place in time and in truth it
contains some of the more unusual stories of the Bible. So people are struggling with it
you know that's perhaps understandable and once you get onto chapter 12 you're with Abraham
and it's slightly on more familiar territory and I put up there where are you with Genesis and
kind of three options and one is that you just think it's all a fairly stale.
Two you think it's historical it's literally true in all detail and three you believe it's
based on real events but it's told in stories and you wonder whether you're meant to take it all
literally. So let's talk about that a little bit and in truth if you're kind of with number one
you're probably not listening today but if you are then I up my plea to you would be
you know keep an open mind listen you never know there may be more truth and beauty in here
than you had thought. Next talking about two and three let's admit that there are sincere
Christians who are in two or three in both categories and also they're probably shades between
two and three it's not as clear as one block or the other is it but the fact that actually
they're sincere believing Christians in in both two and three I think she encourages not to be
judgmental so if you're firmly into don't be judgmental with people who are more than three
and if you're firmly in three don't be judgmental of those who are in two and the reality is we
probably you know are not finally going to know the answer to this debate this side of eternity
you know we may well get into eternity and find that things that we thought that were stories
of metaphors were actually historical truth or the other way around and that we're not going to
awesome that this side of eternity but for all that I think there are a couple of dangers
I think we need to watch out for and the first one is that too much of the kind of skeptical spirit
of this age of a kind of western secular cynical culture gets into the way that we read our Bible
you know the first temptation recorded in the Bible had nothing to do with sex or money or
even power it was a temptation to doubt God's word and the second said to ease did God really say
so there's a temptation to doubt God's word but I think there's also a real danger that we can't
confused about our role in relation to the Bible you know we're a bit like the man in the dock
in the court we start shouting out that he doesn't like the judge or the jury you think mate you
haven't understood this they are here to judge you not you to judge them and it's a bit like that
you know if we've got this kind of pick and choose that we sort of read the Bible think well I like
this bit I don't like that bit I agree with this bit I don't agree with that bit I believe this bit
I don't believe that bit we're kind of judging God's word and that's a deep confusion about our
role in relation to God's word we sit under God's word and allow it to search us it's not the other
way around next slide please time for a bit of CS Lewis I think
what God wants for us in church is an attitude which may indeed be critical in the sense of
rejecting what is false or unhelpful but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not
appraise does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects but lays itself open in uncommon
thing humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going and I love that last line in particular
you know about laying ourselves open to any nourishment that is going and I think that's what we need
in church laying ourselves open God if there's any nourishment going today
may I get it that's what prayer should be next slide
give me three reasons to read Genesis 1 to 11 so so here goes I think my first reason is it it's
because it's the real deal let me give you an example to to kind of explain that a bit more
imagine that you've you kind of grown up in Sheffield and you've lived here all your life
and but you've developed a kind of liking for curry and and you've got that based on supermarket
ready meals but you really you know you're fond of the thing that comes from the city of Brisbane
over there and and you like that but then one day you for circumstances you move to India and
you're living in India and you're not living in some kind of western compound you living with
local people and you're eating local food what that food strike you probably it would strike you
as very strange and foreign maybe a bit dangerous a bit unusual but if you were sensible you would
think about but that is what real Indian food is like the thing I had here the things raised ready
meal and that was a kind of pale version of it for western parts this is me encountering the
real thing and perhaps if you lived there for a number of years then you came back to the UK
and you had you know the chicken tikka masala formaldi you might think this is a bit bland
and it's not it's not the real thing and I think it's the same you know we actually need our
pilots to be educated to appreciate the real thing of god really speaking to us through his
words so yes janice is one of the it's full of stuff that strikes us as strange and foreign and
odd but it is god's word it's called that all scripture is god breathe you know this is the real
deal and we should come to appreciate it and the second reason I would give is that
janice's contains many of the building blocks that help us understand the rest of the Bible
and they did the world in which we live and it contains stories and truths and ideas that are
incredibly helpful to the rest of the Bible and I say you know they're foundational in a life
it says to the life of faith and the way that we look at the universe and thirdly I would say
and this much of value we we read janice's one to eleven in order to find out more about Jesus
and you may recall the story that after his resurrection two friends are setting off on that
walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus a journey that may have been about eight or nine miles
and Jesus joins them incognito on that journey and one of the things that Jesus did was he took
them on a Bible study and it said starting with Moses and the first five books of the of the old
Testament were known as the books of Moses and the prophets he explained to them all the things
in there that were talking about him so janice's tells us about Jesus
next slide so this is an illustration of what I thought about kind of in a sense foundational
truths that we get from the book of janice's let's let's read this the Bible teaches us that this
world was made good but went bad at sin janice's one to three she has a very foundational concept
it helps us understand so much however god does not take this lying down and one day there will be
a new beginning this is the rest of the Bible is all about that it's the fact that god does not
walk away from this broken world god persists with this world he stays with it and he will work
it all out to a better ending even than the beginning was so all of that we get in janice's
anyway that was me just setting the scene let's have an up-to-do today's reading
but god remembered noah and all the wild animals and the livestock with him in the boat
and he sent a wind to blow across the air and the floodwaters began to recede
the underground waters stopped flowing and the torrential rains from the sky were stopped
so the floodwaters gradually receded from the air and after 150 days exactly five months from
the time the flood had begun the boat came to rest on the mountains of ararat and two and a half
month later as the waters continued to go down other mountain peaks became visible
after another 40 days noah opened the window he had made in the boat and released a raven
and the bird flew back and forth until the floodwaters on the earth had dried up
but he also released a dove to see if the water had receded and it could find dry ground
so it returned to the boat and noah held out his hand and drew the dove back inside
after waiting for another seven days noah released the dove again and this time
the dove returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak and then noah
knew that the floodwaters were almost gone he waited another seven days and then he released
the dove again and this time it did not come back now noah was a hundred six hundred and one
years old and on the first day of the new year ten and a half months after the flood had begun
the floodwaters had almost dried up from the air and noah lifted back the covering of the boat
and saw that the surface of the ground was drying two more months went by
and at last the air was dry then god said to noah now leave the boat all of you
you and your wife and your sons and their wives and release all the animals the birds the livestock
and the small animals that scurry along the ground so that they can be fruitful and multiply
throughout all the air so noah his wife and his sons and their wives left the boat
and all of the large and small animals and birds came out of the boat pair by pair
then noah built an altar to the lord and there he sacrificed as burnt offerings
the animals and birds that had been approved for the purpose and the lord was pleased with the
aroma of the sacrifice and said to himself I will never again curse the ground because of the human
race even though everything they think or imagine is bent towards evil from childhood
I will never again destroy all living things and as long as the earth remains
there will be planting and harvest cold and heat summer and winter day and night
thank you um next slide
but god remembered noah and all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat
sent a wind to blow across the earth and people who study these things have noticed that
the account of the flood is written very precisely and intricately and it's a story of two half
and the first half of the story is story about the flood coming and increasing and the second
half is about the flood increasing and ending and most of the lines in the first half have a twin
in the second half so they kind of pair you could almost think it would be like a hinge with two
half and the turning point when you move from part one to part two is this line
but god remembered noah but god remembered noah and the writer is clearly making a point here
this is not an accident this is the key thing god is up to something and that is why things are
about to change for the better god is for something here
wonder it's not said in the thick but i wonder whether noah at any point felt that god had forgotten
him um it's quite interesting either that when god tells noah what to do to build the art
he doesn't give him any idea of how long it's going to last or what will happen next
and um i don't know if you remember jane the first uh kind of episode of covid a story that was
was often in the news was about uh the cruise ship diamond princess and uh you know they they got
got covid on the cruise ship and for about a month this cruise ship was um had a moored off
yukahama in japan while people decided you know what they should do and i don't know we see the
people on the boat were very anxious that the authorities weren't kind of giving them sufficient
attention that was that's about a month in a luxury cruise ship um from the start of the flood to
getting out of the arc is about 13 months and i assume that the arc was no luxury cruise ship
so in a sense you know no might not have been human if he hadn't wondered god how long is this
going to go on for um and i did a bit of looking at this because the line and how long will
or do i have to put up with all this is one that occurs frequently in the bible i did a quick look
and i found 10 occasions most of them in the Psalms but also in uh some of the prophets and
and one in revelation too so actually the prayer oh god how long do i have to put up with them is
a good prayer and one of these is actually prayed by a figure called the angel of the lord
so you know it's a prayer that's okay to pray and we should be praying oh god you know when are
you going to act when are you going to act in my life in the life that people are around me
in the lives of our nation the plea to god because god remembering is the crucial thing
not only forgotten but he wants to hear us calling out his name
then god said to Noah leave the boat all of you your wife and your sons and and and release the
animals and we're not told how god spoke to Noah only that that he did so um but it didn't you know
god's word to know it does not come as a boat from the blue it doesn't come in a vacuum
there's a context in all that happens after all the things you know the the rain has stopped
the wind blowing um that the ark has grounded the water has receded you've done the things with the
birds all of it is pointing to this is over now um but Noah kind of waits for god's
word but god's word when it comes is not a boat from the blue it's a confirmation of what
other circumstances are pointing to right then Noah is the same having come out of the art
built an altar to the Lord and there he sacrificed as burnt offerings the animals and the birds that
have been approved for that purpose this is an exercise in putting first things first
you know um the first thing will be recorded after the god of the art is this offering of
a sacrifice to god it is putting god first i'm sure that Noah would have been very conscious that
all had led to the flood with disobedience to god and he is determined to be obedient
god in those circumstances and david posten tell the student get true story about his
great grandfather and great grandmother who had a small shock in wake field with a couple of
rooms behind but the shock was and the rooms were cramped for their family and and business was
not wonderful and then one day his grandfather had got an opportunity to go to bigger premises
on a new housing estate and he said those would be fantastic because there's more room for the
family in the rooms that were attached and business will be better and his wife had said to him well
yeah but how far is it to the chapel he goes off the find out and he comes back and he says to his
wife um there's no chapel and his wife said henry we stay here and that's about choosing to put god
first choosing to prioritize god and and you get the sense that that's what Noah is doing here
um no it's also that sacrifice is important to Noah the sacrifice of animals is central here
and you might be thinking well that's uh you know that's all right so kind of back then and that's
all right for kind of primitive people or you know Jews at that time but um it's not relevant
to us as Christians and actually you would be dead wrong but let me let me explain that with
with an example um over a number of years we had a series of local issues with our kitchen
and I think they call them kickboards a lot of boards underneath the units kept falling down
and we would keep fixing them back up again and also there was a gap open between some of the
linoleum tiles and and we kind of keep pushing them back together again and the gap and this
went on for ages and ages and ages but um actually we haven't we haven't had to do anything like that
for months now why not well because eventually we got somebody in who did a proper job
he fixed it all and so we don't have to repeat it because a proper job has been done that's why
Christians don't have to offer sacrifice because somebody has done a proper job it's not that
sacrifice isn't important it's central to Christianity but somebody has done a proper job and so we
don't have to do it again by the way if you think i'm just making that up as a life story or a
illustration it's all in Hebrews eight and nine so next slide and the lord was pleased with the
aroma of the sacrifice and said to himself is that very kind of down to earth thing isn't it it's
but what's really clear is this is describing a person and not a thing
um i remember i um i said became a christian it quite early as i in as i was growing up
and um i had a kind of encounter with god and i had i really had no idea what had happened to me
and i you know it was much much later before i really understood what the experience meant
but but even at that time i was thinking about what had just happened to me i was thinking
oh gosh god stopped being something and he became someone that's what it felt like
it became real and so it is very important to us that we understand that god is more like a
someone than a something he's a real person and god likes sacrifice and is pleased with sacrifice
again quoting Hebrews um for the joy set before him Jesus endured across
and next
next slide i will never again curse the ground because of the human race
even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood
um so god has promised never to curse the ground and and that's i think probably christians maybe
we don't get why that might be surprising because we we're kind of super familiar with all the
stuff that we in a sense the surprise behind it doesn't get us there's there's a poem it's
actually in scarce but you can get an english translation on google and it's called Ginnai
was god by Charles Murray and it's a slightly tongue in cheek uh oil but it's very short and
Ginnai was god means if i was god and it's not if i was god i would do this and it ends up
if i was god before they could even launch a second arc and send a whole flood
wipe the board clean and start all over again and the fact is that you know i don't think we
never get the surprise that god doesn't do that why when when when humanity is really very broken
when the universe but when our planet is very broken this god not either walk away from it or
set bright you know throw that one in the bin and start all over again the grace that god
persists with us um is remarkable even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward
evil from shall be that really cuts to the quick doesn't it um it's not that that version
number of versions use the phrase even though everything they think or imagine actually
i'm told but that's not quite what the original said it says something like for everything they
think or imagine or because everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil so it's not so much
even though it's more god saying is is this god saying if i if i'm going to act in judgment here
there'll be no end to it you know um i think john carbon said god would have to if god would
be moving in just we'd have to send a flood every day because you know the problem of sin
is still there incidentally this tells us something about um the flood story is a story of
uncreation and recreation you know during the flood the world kind of goes back to what it
been before before the first creation is uncreated and then it's created again
but there's still unfinished business because you see and it wasn't just knowing the animals
that came out of the ark sin came out of the ark too came out carried in the hearts of Noah
and the other human beings the infection of sin is still present in this new world it's not sorted
we'll be later but it's not so next slide if you knew the truth about me you might not like me
what do you think of that um i think actually you know there's a kind of inescapable truth about
that um i think all of us and certainly i include by itself of this you know the stuff that we've
done or not done or said or not said that it was wildly known other people would have a lower
opinion of us that's the reality that is the reality or maybe you've been on the other side
of that you thought you met somebody you got a very you know you think they're great and they
go it's one of the opinion of them and then something about their you know their personality or
something they don't come to that you think well i'm not sure so so you know the there's a truth
about this statement but but let's think about what let's think about why i put that up there
let's go back to the to the previous slide if you don't mind i think if we can go about right
you see the only person whose opinion really matters already knows all about you
you know there can be no dirty washing there are no skeletons in the cupboard
that god does not already know about and so the god who loves you that his love for you
is never going to be obscured by a cloud or something crops up that he didn't know about before
and as god thinking as well as you he already knew it all in fact he probably knows a good
deal more about you as him than you yourself know he already knows the worst about us
and still he loves us and his love will continue from everlasting to everlasting
let's uh let's go forward again and again great
um i'm going to finish with two pictures and um
the first picture it she's both of it's the day's day
one of the key lessons of the whole story of the flood is that if god is speaking to us
we need to act on that the day if you hear his voice do not harden your heart so that says in
Hebrews you know if god is speaking to us we need to act on that because if we don't and if the
simple habit of not acting on what god says to us develops us one day it will be too late
so act now while there's still time and get your microphone
so this is from matthew 24 verses 37 to 39 when the son of man returns it will be like it was
in noah's day in those days before the flood the people were enjoying banquets and parties
and weddings right up to the time noah entered his boat people didn't realize what was going to
happen until the flood came and swept them all away and that is the way it will be when the son
of man comes
did you just apply that in a very direct and specific way and and then my last picture
don't you recognize that do you see it but it's the London Marathon in fact it was you kind of
knew the area as Buckingham Palace is in the background and there's a large crowd of onlookers
probably shouting out encouragement to the runners who are running the race
and and you might think well so what's that got to do with noah actually got a lot to do with noah
because again the writer to the Hebrews says and he's talking about noah and the other old
estimate heroes of faith he says therefore since we are surrounded by such a great crowd of witnesses
let us run with endurance the race set for out for us so we we we think of noah and others that
we've known maybe much more recently in our own lives and experience who have gone before us
are standing in the crowd encouraging us on
but for all that the runners do not encourage the crowd witnesses are not unless they're going to
risk a bad fall standing at the crowd they're looking forward and that illustrates I think
both the blessing that is noah but also the limitations he know it is a kind of safer
you know that the people the eight people on that boat and the animal they owed their lives to noah
but for noah is obedient they ain't going to be there but when noah comes out the arc he still
has to sacrifice for his own sins and you'll hear next week he's still capable of royally messing up
so we don't look at noah we look at Jesus we look at Jesus but the whole story of the flood
and the whole story of noah is like an appetizer or a prequel it's there to wet our appetite for
one greater than noah and
Hebrews 12 1 to 2 says therefore since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses
to the life of faith let us strip off every weight that slows us down especially the sin
that so easily trips us up and let us run with endurance the race God has set before us
and we do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus
let's let's pray Father we thank you for your word and Lord we pray that if you are speaking
to us this morning Lord we pray that we would hear that we would receive your word with joy
and we would act on it Lord have a messiness in Jesus name amen.

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Nick continues our new series on Genesis. This week he is speaking on Genesis 7. His topic is "A man of faith"
Summary

Nick Lugg delivered a sermon titled "A man of faith" on February 18th, 2024, as part of a series on the book of Genesis. The sermon focused on the story of Noah and the theme of faith. Here's a summary of the sermon along with a list of Bible passages used:

Summary: Nick Lugg began by emphasizing the importance of understanding what God is saying to us through the book of Genesis. He referenced the previous week's sermon by Jonathan and introduced the topic of Noah as a man of faith. The sermon explored the concept of faith using Noah as an example, highlighting Hebrews 11:7, which speaks of Noah's faith in building the ark.

Lugg discussed the nature of faith, emphasizing that it goes beyond mere belief and requires a foundation of trust in God that governs every aspect of life. He noted that faith is not automatic and referenced Jesus' question about whether faith would be found on Earth when he returns. Lugg also pointed out that faith is a key component of pleasing God, using examples from the lives of Abraham and Noah.

Throughout the sermon, Lugg presented several points about faith:

Faith is not a "wait and see" approach.
Faith is not limited by age; Noah's faith endured at 600 years old.
Faith is not easy; it requires resilience, determination, and hard work.
Faith is trust without knowing the end of the story, as exemplified by Noah's obedience in building the ark.
Faith can be lonely and takes time to unfold; it requires perseverance and trust in God's plan.

Lugg shared personal stories and reflections on faith, including experiences from his missionary work in Zambia. He encouraged the congregation to respond to the message by examining their own faith and trusting God, even in challenging circumstances.

Bible Passages Used:

Hebrews 11:7
Hebrews 11:32-40 (referenced)

Lugg's sermon provided a deep exploration of faith using the story of Noah as a powerful illustration. He challenged listeners to consider the role of faith in their own lives and encouraged them to trust in God's plan, even when faced with uncertainty.

Transcript
Hello, good morning. I think we need to hear your body. Happy smiling faces.
Yeah, we're moving rapidly through Genesis.
It's still going to take us a while. It's not one of those deep letter by letter exegesis,
but we want to find out what God is saying to us week in and week out.
And I was very pleased and relieved to see my title this week. Now we're a man of faith.
I know Jonathan spoke absolutely last week with a challenging passage.
For those on the preaching team, it's a bit like spinning the wheel of jeopardy.
Sometimes these early chapters of Genesis. But what a series that we've got.
It's an epic series full. And Sheila's doing a wonderful job in the entrance hall there,
putting up key themes from each. And if you haven't seen it or haven't noticed it,
as you go out, have a look and see the creative artwork that she's doing out there.
Reminding us of the key themes week by week by week.
But at the end of Jonathan's talk last week, we were introduced to Noah, a man of faith.
I'm going to put these, I'm in between. You see, I can't see this and then I can't see you.
So I don't know what to do. I need more faith.
Noah, a man of faith.
Yeah, so Jonathan, at the end of chapter six, talked about the story of Noah, how God came to him.
And the world had become so corrupted and so ruined.
That God said, right, I'm going to do something about this.
And I'm going to flood the earth. But in the process, he didn't just spot Noah.
Like, oh, here's somebody. He knew Noah. And he knew what was in his heart.
And so he spoke to him and said, I want you to build a boat in order to save you, your family,
and two of every kind of animal that walks all over the earth.
And so as we come into chapter seven, we've got the story of what actually happened when the flood covered the earth.
And there's all sorts of stuff as Jonathan alluded to last week, that in history and archaeology,
that would point to the historical facts of this story.
And it's amazing. But because it's not a historical lecture that we're into this morning, we want to know what God is saying to us.
And so the question is about faith. Noah had faith.
Hebrews 11 says, by faith, when warned of a flood, not yet seen, Noah built an ark to save himself and his family,
he moved and lived by faith. And faith is what pleases God.
It's as simple as that. It's not very complex. It's not very complex, but that's the hardest thing.
But faith is what pleases God. It's what God judges.
You know, it says that when Abraham had so many things against him, if you read the story of Abraham, as we will do,
and as we go through the story, you'll see so many things that he got wrong.
So many errors, so many mistakes, so many failings, so many sins.
But yet God knew that he was a man of faith. And when he saw faith in him, he credited it to him as righteousness.
And God noticed in Noah, despite the sin, because he says Noah was blameless over all the earth.
Well, in actual fact, probably technically, he wasn't blameless because he was born into sin the same way he was born outside of Eden,
the same way so that everybody else had been. He was corrupted like all of us.
But yet there was something in his heart that expressed itself in faith.
And God saw that faith and said, I like that. And he credited to him as righteousness.
And he was able to save him. He's blameless over all the earth.
Faith is more than just believing stuff. We can believe in all sorts of things.
I won't mention some of the things we can believe in because we've got some younger members here.
But you know the sort of thing I'm talking about.
It's more than just believing in God. It's a foundation of trust in God.
Over everything else, the foundation that governs everything that we are, every decision that we make,
everything that happens to us, where we live by faith, it gets into all of that.
It's not just about an hour and a half on a Sunday morning as we know.
It's about what happens to us in the darkness. It's what happens to us in the grief.
It's what happens to us at the graveside. It's what happens to us in the hospital room.
It's what happens to us in the celebrations. It's what happens to us everywhere.
Faith is the foundation of life, whatever happens to us.
And faith is not automatically part of religion.
When Jesus said, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?
It was a genuine question.
Will he find faith on the earth?
He'll find religion. He'll find churches. He'll find all sorts of things going on.
But will he find faith when he met people and he saw their response to him and he said,
well, I've never seen such great faith.
Or where his disciples found him, where Peter, I mean, I'm sorry for Peter, don't you?
I mean, he tried everything. And he did everything so well.
And he was the one who said, Lord, let me walk to you on the water. I can do it too.
And so he got out of the place, started walking, then he sank to you.
Oh, you have little faith. Wow.
I'm sure Jesus was smiling at the time. Let's put a bit of apocryphal interpretation in there as well.
But, you know, faith is what he's looking for.
Faith moves God and without faith is impossible to please God.
It's not where I'm likely to please God without faith, or God would prefer it if we had a bit of faith.
He's actually saying without faith, there's no, I'm not even talking to you.
Faith is so important and it's so, so much of a challenge to our lives.
It's so easy for faith to be put to one side, to be put on the shelf,
and for us to just go through the motions of life.
Go through the motions of religion.
Go through the motions of church.
Go through the motions of church. Leadership, dare I say.
And yet still put faith on the side and on the shelf and leave it there.
But yet without faith, it is impossible to please God.
And characters like Noah challenged the very heart of our relationship with God.
It is the number one thing on our checklist when we are assessing our relationship with God.
Now, I've got some points that I want to just bring up that hopefully will challenge us and make us think through.
About what faith is not and what faith is related to the story of Noah.
Faith is not, let's wait and see.
And sometimes that's our favourite approach.
I have to put myself in that as well.
You know, well, we'll see what happens and then we'll give thanks to God.
But faith is not about wait and see.
It's not about hedging our bets.
Noah didn't say, I think I'll wait and see if it rains.
Because then, he'd have missed the boat.
Oh, you see?
Do we wait and see and then give thanks to God?
If God wants it to happen then of course it will and if he doesn't then it won't.
And then it sounds like faith, doesn't it?
But it's not actually.
What God told Noah made no sense.
It was very easy for him to ignore.
I haven't read it in there but I'm probably somebody clever than me.
It was like as if there had been no rain.
Anyway, rain wasn't a usual part of the life.
I mean, can't imagine it, can you?
Every time we look out the window it's raining here.
So, you know, if God says I'm going to send a great rain over the earth, he says, well, what's new?
But to Noah, it was all new.
And elsewhere in the Bible it says in the times of Noah,
people were marrying and giving him marriage.
Their life was going on as normal. God hated it.
He saw the corruption that was there but the people themselves loved it.
Oh, it's great. Never had it so good.
Times are going on.
And God spoke to Noah about something not seen, not understood, not felt,
but yet discerned in the spirit of Noah responded with faith.
God is looking for that active partnership.
Noah didn't know anything, all he knew was to build a boat.
He didn't know what would happen, what the future would look like,
but he knew that God had spoken to him.
There's a story and I hesitate to, I'm not hesitate to tell the stories
because God has done great things.
But, you know, full disclosure,
faith is not my automatic go-to all the time,
as I'm sure it's not yours either, before you look at me like that.
When things happen, when challenges come, when fear comes in,
when worries are there, when there's financial pressure, when there's health pressure,
when there's family pressure, whatever.
We don't think, oh, it's all right, we're going to pray.
Everything's going to be fine. God is in control.
We don't always think like that.
We run to the panic button.
There was a lady in our church in Mexico who was, well,
she was part of our church in Mexico.
She was a missionary in Latvia and she'd gone out a number of years before
and it's been a remarkable story and I only found out more about it as time went by
because she's quite a quiet person.
But she went out, you know, like many of the stories of missionary heroes that we've read,
she went out to Latvia with one suitcase and that's all she had.
And the way things unfolded, she ended up, she bought a house, she got established there
and when you heard the story of her ministry and the people that she'd impacted,
it was just incredible what God had done in her life.
But she was getting older and she was suffering with arthritis
and the winters in Latvia were not kind to her and she was really worried and fearful
about the coming winters and she felt with that and a number of other factors
that it was actually time for her to come home.
And so she contacted us and said, I want to come home, but I can't
because I can't sell my house, I can't.
There were all sorts of reasons why she couldn't do it and she just felt trapped.
And so I, along with another leader from the church, we went out to Latvia
to see her, to encourage her and to see what was going on out there.
And she said, I'd really love, I really need to be back before the winter,
before the snow sets in, but I just can't see how it's going to happen.
And there's me, you know, suddenly, sometimes you do open your mouth
and you hear what you're saying, don't you?
And I said, well, why don't we, you know, has God spoken to you
about coming back?
She said, yes, I believe he has, I believe it's time for me to come back.
And you've seen God's faithfulness to you every step of the way
through the whole of your journey, through in Latvia,
and you've seen his blessing on you, yes, I have.
I said, right, well, believe God now that he wants you to come back
and don't wait and see, well, what haven't, you know, if I sell my house
and this will happen and that will happen and the other happen,
book a flight and plan to come.
And I must have had a certain area of authority because she did it.
And she booked a flight a few months ahead.
I thought I felt really pleased with myself.
I felt like a man of faith for the hour.
And I knew that within a week or so, the house would be sold.
Of course, it wasn't.
And it kept on going and nothing changed.
She booked her flight.
She was planning, she was packing up her things.
She was working out how to get back to England.
But yet nothing happened in terms of selling the house.
It went on and on and on until she was due back on a Sunday
on a Ryanair flight.
And on the Wednesday of that week, she rang me.
She said, you'll never guess what's happened.
I've got a cash buyer for the house.
This is the only person that had ever shown any interest.
She'd not even had anybody look at it.
She'd not even had anybody ring.
She'd not had any inquiries at the estate agent.
There had been absolutely nothing until three days before.
How many between Wednesday and Sunday is?
Four days before she was due to come, she had a cash buyer for the house.
And she came home and got open the door to her future.
And I was just blown away by that.
And I still am when I think about that.
And it's one example that I can think of.
We've got one's active partnership in our faith.
We don't just have to wait and see.
There are things that we have to put into place.
There are things that we have to say.
Not we'll wait and see if it's your will, Lord.
But because it's your will, we will trust you.
And therefore, we will act in advance of even seeing these things
fulfilled.
So faith is not a game of wait and see.
Secondly, faith is not a young person's game.
Verse six of chapter seven.
I haven't read the first, but I was supposed to, but I haven't.
But you can read it in your own time at home.
Pete's going to go and watch the sermon later.
So follow his example.
Seven, verse six, Noah was 600 years old when the flood covered the earth.
Albert got away to go yet.
600 years old.
Who told you it was a young person's game?
Who told you that it was all to do with our life performance and our track record and our CV?
Faith is there.
For all that Sheila brought the word.
If you just want to reach up and take hold of Jesus' hand,
I could apply that to faith.
If you just want to take hold of faith, it's there for you.
The opportunity is there for you regardless of the circumstance,
the situation, the age, the background, the story, whatever.
Noah was 600 years old.
Faith is a gift.
We embrace it.
We adopt it and it can start today regardless of what has gone before.
Whether it's faith for the first time, putting your faith in Jesus for the first time, you can do that at any time.
It's not a great long build-up towards that.
Today is the day of salvation.
And when it comes to our trusting in God, maybe you know deep in your heart.
Like I said, we don't always go to faith and sometimes we never engage faith.
We just worry and we fear and we're anxious and we're just running circles sometimes.
Well today, there's an opportunity to stop.
Maybe you've said it's over.
Maybe you've got, maybe you feel 600 years old in faith.
There's a whole background of story behind you.
There's so much under the bridge, so many things you've seen, exciting things you can think of from the past.
Stories you could tell.
We just celebrated the 20-year anniversary of being in Unit 3.
Maybe you think back that time and think, those were the days, my friend.
We thought they'd never end.
I was waiting for you, Howard.
But not now.
That was then.
But now it's, well, we're just old.
We're just finished.
It's just watching. What else goes on?
Faith is not just, let me just say it's not a young person.
It's not just a young person.
We want a young people to be alive with faith.
We want a young people to engage with faith.
We want them to experiment, to journey on the adventure of faith.
That's the whole vision and the whole purpose, that we don't just teach young people Bible stories,
but they actually experience God for themselves.
But what about us?
In fact, their best chance of experiencing faith for themselves and the goodness of God for themselves
is what they see in us and what they see in those that have gone before
and what they see in those that are right there.
So whether we're 95 or whether we're 75 or whether we're young things like me,
there's an opportunity for us to engage in the adventure of faith.
Thirdly, faith is not easy.
Did you know that?
Noah's task was not easy or enjoyable.
It's a great story.
You know, Noah often only crops up in cartoons or Sunday school stories.
If you think about Noah, you either think of those sort of really bright, colorful cartoon drawings
that you see in children's Bibles or Evan Almighty, Steve Carell.
And it's a bit of a funny story.
It's an interesting story.
It's a fascinating story.
But actually, it was a real story.
Noah's task was not easy or even enjoyable.
God said to him, I want you to build an arc.
And he was, oh, fantastic.
Thank you, Lord.
Well, building an arc is not easy.
Didn't even have YouTube videos or anything to help him in the process.
Hard work and inconvenience.
Faith requires resilience, determination, hard work, doing things we'd rather not do.
How do you get two of every kind of animal onto a boat and then sail with them for a year?
It's not one of those things you're just going to say, oh, Lord, more, Lord, give me more.
I want more of this experience.
We're living with one puppy.
It's not easy.
It requires resilience, determination, and hard work.
And as I've said, doing things that we'd rather not do.
But that's the cordial.
Sometimes I think we think, well, faith is easy or faith should be exciting or faith should be something to jump up and down about and sing about and dance about.
Well, it is.
But in the reality, in the everyday, in the Monday to Friday, it's hard work.
I remember the day when we finally bought 146.
And Andy had set up this almost like an eBay auction for the place.
And we've got our bids and everything in place.
And it was in there.
And they kept extending the time.
And it was just seemed like to be going on forever and ever and ever.
And in the end, the countdown came down to zero and said, congratulations.
You have won the auction.
And everybody was celebrated.
Oh, we've done it.
God, it was amazing.
An amazing story of miraculous provision and faith.
It was such a celebration and an exciting then.
Looking forward.
Now this means that there is a bright future ahead.
There's all sorts of things that are going to be achieved through this building.
And there are all sorts of things that are going to be achieved through this building.
But here we are today from that moment of celebration up till today.
It's not actually all been dancing and singing as it, Andy.
It's been challenging.
It's been hard work.
It's been burdensome.
Sometimes when you sit and you scratch your head at a meeting this week with a lot of head scratching.
Celebration led to hard work, transforming communities, believing it and celebrating it is one thing.
Engaging faith and doing it is another.
And there are greater things that still to be done in this city.
But there's harder work ahead.
There's challenge ahead.
There are things that will put us off ahead.
Things that will make us think, actually there's an easier way to do life than this.
But in actual fact, there's no other way because without faith it's impossible for us to please God
into experiencing the experience, the fullness of God.
Number four.
Faith is trust without knowing the end of the story.
Noah did not know what was going to happen.
He built the ark according to God's instruction.
He gathered the animals according to God's instruction.
They got on the boat according to God's instruction and then God shut the door.
And that was it for a year.
Imagine what that is just bobbing about with an affectionate reference to Steve Wright in the afternoon.
Serious bobbing, no G.
Some of you know what that's about, some of you don't.
Bobbing about on the sea.
God shut the door without telling him what came next.
How do you feel today as you're looking forward with faith?
Can you trust God even if you don't know the end of the story?
Are we happy to trust God if we don't know the end of the story?
If we think, well if I know the end of the story I'll have faith, it won't be a problem.
But I'm just a bit anxious about not knowing what's going to happen.
Just a bit worried about the fact that it might not work out as I want it to.
It is tough and it is difficult.
And this can be applied in so many ways.
Not just to that but I read Steve Legg's book recently.
Steve and Becca Legg who spoke at our women's conference.
Our husband Steve, a friend of ours, he has terminal cancer.
And God is doing amazing things in their life.
But he's written a book about what it's all about.
And he was talking about Becca, his wife there and the things that she'd said.
And she realized she said that there are all sorts of things you have to come to terms with in the walk of faith.
And one of the things is that everything is going to be alright.
Everything is going to be okay.
But then she added it might not be the okay that I want.
But everything is going to be okay.
And that is really, really difficult when we're talking about faith not being easy.
To have faith in those circumstances.
I think of so many examples.
Noah is our big one today.
But Paul and Silas in the Macedonian jail.
They were imprisoned for preaching.
And they were put into chains.
They were flogged.
They were put into a dark dungeon.
The worst possible outcome for their life of faith you would think.
And their response was to sing songs of worship and praise.
And the thing is we know the end of this.
So we know that in the end that there was a miraculous deliverance for that jail.
But they didn't know.
In Hebrews 11.
Let me just quickly look up to the Hebrews 11.
It introduces us to the whole thing of faith and Noah and all the other characters.
You can find Hebrews quickly.
Nobody.
Not me.
Here it is.
Hebrews 11.
Go through it by faith, by faith, by faith.
Here we are.
Verse 32.
In Hebrews 11.
How much more do I need to say?
It would take too long to recount the stories of the faith of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jeff, David, Samuel and all the prophets.
By faith these people overthrew kingdoms, ruled with justice, and received what God had promised them.
They shut the mouths of lions, quenched the flames of fire, and escaped death by the edge of the sword.
Their weakness was turned to strength.
They became strong in battle and put whole armies to flight.
Women received their loved ones back again from death.
Amen, we say.
Then he says, but others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free.
They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection.
Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips.
Others were chained in prison.
Some died by stoning.
Some were sword in half, and others were killed with a sword.
Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated.
Amen.
They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.
All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith.
So faith takes you through every circumstance of life.
Faith takes you through the celebrations and the glory and the victory.
Faith takes you through the darkness and through the sadness and through the grief.
Faith is our calling.
Faith is trusting God without knowing the end of the story and how much we want the guarantees,
and yet he never, ever gives them.
Faith, fifth point, faith is lonely and it takes time.
Park life must have been weird.
There must have been a buzz about Noah's world where the God judged, where there was noise,
and there was activity, and there was celebration, and there was life,
and there was hundreds of thousands of people all going about their business,
and suddenly the flood came and there was silence.
There's not even a record of God speaking to them while they were in the ark.
One year in the boat, they just had to sit, trapped by their faith.
So faith is lonely and it takes time, and some of you can identify with that.
You know what it is.
You've put your faith in your trusting God, and things have panned out in a way that you think,
well, this is bleak.
Where is God in all of this?
But God was there.
God shut the door on the ark.
God put them in the ark.
God left them in the ark.
God had purpose for them in the ark.
He had a plan.
He had a future.
He had a vision of all that the future was going to look like
because of Noah's obedience, but in the middle of it all, Noah was just left there
with his animals and his wife and his children, probably in that order.
And he's just like...
It's not good.
It's not enjoyable, but it's where his faith took him.
And that can be the perfect description of our life.
Sometimes we're in the middle part.
We hear God, and we have faith in God, and we trust God, and then we put it into action,
and then there's just silence for a long time sometimes that just goes on.
And we can lose sight of what is ahead, because we're not thinking like that.
God is thinking about that.
He's thinking about the long-term vision.
We're just thinking about, well, how do we get through the next 24 hours?
Sometimes that's it. We're stuck there.
We have to just trust God in the process.
That is where faith really becomes real.
Can we give honor and glory to God in the middle of all of that?
Some of you will know, some of you won't.
A number of years ago we went to live in Zambia, and we had a decision to make,
and we decided to, in effect, burn our financial bridges.
We sold our house against advice, but it was a good decision.
We sold our house, and we basically put everything that we owned onto a ship,
and then sent it off on the ocean on a shipping container,
and we just turned up the four of us in Zambia, starting our new life that God had given us to live.
And yet things did not work out as we'd planned and hoped, and how much we look forward to,
and we had our gloriously victorious farewell services and all of that,
and all the excitement of everything else.
Very soon we were stuck in a very difficult situation,
where if we'd had a way out, we would have taken it,
but we didn't have a way out because God had shut the door.
And so we were left bobbing.
Bobbing up and down, not quite sure what to do,
and remember talking to a friend of ours,
a man who's just died recently called Dave Plale,
and he said, it seems, it was a very helpful word from guys,
it seems that God has got you over a barrel.
And you can't do anything, so don't do anything.
Don't make any decisions, don't try and fix it, just bob.
And sometimes that, as I said, is the perfect description of our life.
We're just in the middle of something.
But because we took that advice and we had no much choice to take that advice,
it did lead to an unfolding and an opening up
and an understanding of that God really is in control over the whole of our lives.
And yet it's in those moments of bobbing, in those moments of challenge,
in those moments of boredom, in those moments of wondering,
well, this doesn't look like faith, this doesn't look like victory,
this doesn't look like God is anywhere near where I am.
We can lose sight of our faith, but hold on if that is you this morning.
And so faith is not way to see, it's not a young person's game,
it's not easy, it is lonely, and it does take a long time to unfold.
And we need to make our decisions, and we can make our decisions this morning.
So like Sheila said, we can reach out to God, give me faith.
It's hard for me, Lord, but I choose to trust you.
I choose to trust you for my life.
I choose to trust you for my future.
I choose to trust you for my family.
I choose to trust you in my health.
I choose to trust you in everything because, Lord, that's what you've called me to do.
And for us as a church, we choose to trust God.
We don't know so many questions when it comes to leadership issues
and so many unanswerable questions.
What do we do? How do we how do we grow the church without the facilities?
How are those problems and yet God has called us to transform a community
and we can hold on to him without knowing all the answers
and without knowing the end of the story?
How do we do it? We hold on to Jesus and we reach out to him
and it takes us away from planning.
It takes us away from all the things that we try and achieve for ourselves.
It takes us away from our cleverness and our wisdom
and puts us in the hands of God.
Hold on to him because Noah was a man of faith and because of him,
because of that, he came to a point where the waters receded
and we shall get on to those.
As Chris takes it up next week, we'll get on to those
and we'll see how the world opened up and unfolded before him.
The journey of faith.
As the worship team come back, I want to invite them to come back.
I would like us to consider this word and to respond to the word of God
because faith is a need that we all have to get it right without faith
it's impossible to please God.
And yet it can be the biggest challenge in our lives because our hearts pull away
because we're fearful, because we're anxious, because we worry about stuff.
So easy to get into that.
What's our reaction when we read in the Bible it says,
don't worry about anything.
You think, oh well, that's easier said than done.
And as we worship, as we pray, I want you to make a response.
And sometimes we're very easy to say, well, you know, wherever,
if you want to just respond where you are,
respond in your own heart, I just feel it's important in terms of putting our faith into action,
that if you know that you need faith, if you know that you need strength for the journey,
if you know that you need the resources, if you feel, if you can identify with Noah
in all the difficulty and the challenge and the bleakness of his experience,
then I would invite you to come forward and to stand here and to pray.
And also as you do that, I believe there will be people here who,
maybe if you keep it quiet, keep it to yourself, you wouldn't know,
but I believe it's just a faith step of my own,
that people will have the word of God for you
and will be have an opportunity to share it with you.
And I want to encourage you, as people do respond,
and as we respond together, to also for us to pray together
and to seek God for his word for one another, because this is word that brings faith,
and it's word that inspires his word that encourages them in.
So just as Jonathan and the team begin,
I just want to make some space here, and I want to encourage you,
if there's anything in you, any measure of response,
did you want to say anything in?
Yeah, but I'll.
Yeah.
All right, okay.
Yep, you go for it.
Then do come forward, and we're more than happy to pray.