Sermons

SUNDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2009

THEME – THE ‘BIG PICTURE’ AND HOW WE SHOULD LIVE
[AIM – FOR GOD TO CHALLENGE OUR HEARTS TO LISTEN TO THE DISADVANTAGED IN A NEW WAY, AND OBEY HIS CALLING]

Why am I preaching to you today?

Heb 10:24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. (NIV)
Martin and I were challenged last weekend to determine an aim for when we preach - what is our pray? This was a challenge to us, both when we preach and when we listen!

So, what are you expecting from my sermon:

• To be intellectually challenged?

• To be entertained?

• To hear confirmation of what you already think (selective hearing?)

• Nothing; its part of our tradition to hear a sermon every Sunday?

• Time to catch up on some shut-eye!

• Or are you expecting to be challenged about some aspect of your life which needs to change, so that you are more like Jesus?
God wants us to be like Jesus, His glorious Son, who is Lord and King – to bear much ‘fruit’ (Galatians 5:22) John 15:8.

2 Corinthians 3:18: And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, ... (NIV)

Today, may we all be open to hear God’s voice and respond to his call, thus allowing Him to change us. The alternative is to harden our hearts and stay as we are!

Let’s start on what really want to talk about - my main theme!

James 1:27: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (NIV)

How are we at doing ‘pure religion’?

• Righteous living? Think of the ‘Sermon on the mount’, i.e. both moral and spiritual righteousness. Okay, though in my case room for improvement

• Helping disadvantaged? Not much really, though worked 5 years for a charity helping the poor.

I suspect we can all say, to a greater or lesser extent, we are better at the latter than the former - is that okay?

I would like to unpack this statement to see whether this objective of God is something new, or has it this always been God’s objective? Remember, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrew 3:8 (NIV)

Empires! The Bible has a lot to say about empires – Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Assyria, Rome. So let’s start with an early empire in the Bible – Egypt in Exodus.

The potted history cycle for Israel was:

1 In Egypt, where the children of Israel were in slavery.
2 God heard their cry and responded with Moses, and delivered them
3 God made a covenant with them at Sinai; Israel was to be His people, to show His glory, to help a needy world:
That covenant required them to help the poor (e.g. corner of fields Lev 19:9), and the aliens (Lev 19:33-34; Exodus 23:9), even their enemies (Exodus 23:4-5)!
4 God brought them into the promised land, and blessed them.
Deut 8:10-18: When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery........ You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.
5 They became an empire, exploiting the poor. At the height of their prosperity, Solomon used slaves to build his house, and built military fortresses to protect his empire, became an arms dealer. (1 Kings 9:15; 10);
6 God sent prophets to warn them to turn back to him
7 Exile to Babylon came when they refused to listen
Deut 8:19-20: If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the LORD destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the LORD your God.
8 They cry out to God for deliverance, and repent
9 God heard their cry and responded and brought them back to Israel
10 .....

However, God realised that the Sinai covenant would not work, men were too sinful. So he decided to make a new covenant:
Jeremiah 31:31-34: "The time is coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." (NIV)

This new covenant was created by Jesus Christ by his death and resurrection, which we remembered this morning. The purpose is the same as the Sinai covenant – for God to have a people that shows his glory to a needy world, that will redeem the world. Indeed, we could argue it goes back to the creation of Adam - Gen 1:26: Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, .. (NIV)

Let’s see if the above cycle still works under the new covenant for Christians:

1. In slavery in the world, a captive to sin (Romans 7:23)
2. We cry out to God and he saves us through the work of Jesus Christ (Romans 7:24)
3. He makes a covenant with us, to be his ambassadors’ on earth, to show his glory (2 Corinthians 5:20)
4. We are blessed by God: he meets our every needs, etc.
5. Then what do we (or should we) do with this blessing:
a. Do we become an ‘empire’ and enjoy our success (as the children of Israel did)? or
b. Do we remember where we came from (slavery) and help similar needy people?
6. If we do (a), following the cycle of the children of Israel, then God warns us then takes us into exile.
Rev 3:14-17: "To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold-I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. (NIV)
7. What is exile like – despair, irrelevant, just like the world! Romans 12:2 ‘Do not conform to this world, but...’. Exile is not a place, but a state of our soul:
o When we forget our story, of where we were before God saved us, and
o When we fail to convert our blessings into blessings for others, and
o When we find ourselves a stranger to the purposes of God.
8. Then we need to repent and cry out to God, for he will hear us and deliver us.
Go always hears the poor and oppressed, and responds. We therefore should do the same, but do we hear? If so, do we respond?
Consider Christ’s mission statement in Luke 4:16-19: And [Jesus] stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour." (NIV)
As Christ’s servants, we are anointed to do the same task in this world, not to indulge ourselves.

To conclude:

James 1:27: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (NIV)

James 1:27: Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, (and) to keep oneself unspotted from the world. (ASV)

Why is the (and) in brackets? Let’s remove it, as does not exist in the Greek. We need to help the disadvantaged for our sake, to keep us from being polluted by the world. If we do not, ...
Where do we start – Listening!! To God and the disadvantaged.

Let’s pray.

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