Just recently I’ve been involved in a couple of conversations that have surprised me.  The topics were a little bit churchy, but in the first conversation I got into a discussion with a group of ministers about the impact of Islam.  The conversation started out talking about the situation of Israel, and moved on to Islamic terrorism.  They mentioned the escalating birth rate of Muslims, and wound up talking about how Islam is trying to convert Britain and how there’s no freedom of religion in some Muslim suburbs.  I could see that the conversation was going to go into one of those death spirals where we were all going to suffer from depression when finally I had enough.  Something just rose up within me and I thought I’ve had enough of this kind of conversation.  So I began to tell them the facts that anyone can read on the Internet –that Muslims are not really breeding faster than others.  They are just one generation behind other populations before they too will enter a tremendous decline.  In places like Iran this decline is already happening.  I then talked about how Islam is more fragile than many imagine.  Terrorism is actually a sign that Islam has entered an intellectual dead-end, and I wrapped up by pointing out that the number of people leaving Islam for other religions has probably never been higher than at any other time in human history.  I think I managed to get us back up to ground level again.  Then the same thing happened in another conversation.  A small group of ministers were talking about how hard it is to be a Pastor.  Now don’t get me wrong –being a Pastor is a very challenging role.  It is incredibly emotionally demanding, but it is also very satisfying.  This time the conversation was heading downhill fast and I could see us all resigning by the end of the discussion, when again something within just rose up and said, “This isn’t right.  This is wrong.”  So I began to tell them about how much more stressed I was when I was an accountant and how I enjoyed being a pastor because I had more control over my time, worked closer to home, had a greater variety of more interesting tasks, a much closer working relationship with my colleagues, and of course, I have the privilege of interacting with wonderful people like you.  Now I hope all you accountants don’t turn around and quit this week, but the end I had one minister nodding his heading and thinking, ‘It’s not so bad after all.”

Now the point isn’t to talk about me or other ministers, but what I want to talk about this morning is that quality we each need within us that says, “I’m not standing for this” and causes us to rise up and to rise above the pessimism and negativity that can so often try and keep us down.  I want us to discover how we can fight for the future with confidence.  This quality that I’m referring to is commonly known as ‘resilience.’  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of resilience is 1.  The ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or misfortune; buoyancy, and 2.  The property of a material that enables it to resume its original shape or position after being bent, stretched, or compressed; elasticity.  Now maybe you’ve been bent out of shape lately.  Maybe pressures have compressed you in your workplace.  Have you experienced illness, bad luck or unhappiness that has made you think about giving up?  Who hasn’t had the winter blues?  [Hands up].  Sometimes we just need an attitude adjustment.  I heard of an old man who said, “My health ain’t what it used to be.  I walk halfway around the block and I’m so out of breath so I have to turn around and come back.”  So what do you do to make yourself more resilient?  What are some of things you do to harden up or to recover so you can bounce back?  Let’s have some suggestions.  [Ask congregation with microphone].  If you’d asked me beforehand I would have thought your answers would be things like get fit, escape to the movies, play a game of golf, go fishing, have a holiday, sleep or eat chocolate!  Lots of chocolate!  But what I want to suggest to you is that what you actually believe makes a big difference.  What you believe about life and about your future may actually be more significant than the others, and in this passage today are four dynamic beliefs that will make you far more resilient than you might have been.

1. The first thing is there’s something extraordinary about Jesus (v1-8). There’s something awesome and amazing about Christ.  Most of you here have hitched your wagon to Jesus, you’re trying to follow Him, but do you ever give thought and consideration to who He is?  Do you sometimes forget what He is?

At the end of chapter 16 (last week) Jesus tells his disciples “Some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom (Matthew 16:28).”  In chapter 17 Jesus fulfils this promise by taking Peter, James and John up a high mountain by themselves.  That mountain was probably Mt. Hermon, which is the highest point in Israel, and there something amazing happens.  The report says that Jesus is transformed in front of them so that His face shines like the sun and His clothes become as white as the light.  Jesus is showing them some of the glory He had before He became human.  Then suddenly Moses and Elijah are standing with them.  Peter panics and blurts out some stuff to try and cope with things.  Then a bright cloud surrounds them –the same cloud that led Israel through the wilderness and then filled the Temple.  It’s the cloud of the presence of God and from it a voice says, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.  Listen to him!”  This is a famous Russian icon of this scene and it’s packed with symbolism.  Moses on one side stands for the Law of God.  Elijah on the other side stands for the long line of Old Testament prophets.  Jesus stands in the middle as the climax of them both.  The cloud of God’s appearance surrounds Him affirming that Jesus is both human and divine.  He is one with God and yet the Suffering Servant of all.  Jesus is ‘glowing’ to reveal His majesty, and the disciples have fallen at His feet in awe.

Now most commentators will tell you that the Transfiguration was staged primarily for the disciples benefit.  It was to show them who Jesus is, and sometimes we need a reminder don’t we.  We need a reminder of His supernatural make-up.  One of my favourite preachers, Edward Irving, suggests that sometimes we get too fixated on the cross.  What we forget, he says, is that Jesus has risen.  He has ascended to sit at the right hand of the Father.  He is reigning over the universe.  He will come again one day to sit in judgment and currently He is pouring out His Holy Spirit upon us.

I’m sure quite a few of you have heard the story of the young soldier who went to Washington during the Civil War to ask permission from Abraham Lincoln to return to his family farm and look after his dying parents.  He couldn’t get access past the Whitehouse guards and was left to sit and mope outside.  A young boy came along and asked if he was okay.  The soldier poured out his story.  So the boy said, “Come with me.”  He led the soldier past the guard, up the steps and into the Whitehouse.  Inside one room was Abraham Lincoln.  He looked up and said, “Whose the friend with you, Todd?”  Lincoln’s son introduced the soldier and asked him to share his case.

Well it’s the same thing with us.  You are connected to Jesus.  There is something extraordinary about Jesus.  He gives you access to God Himself.

2. Moving on… there’s something extraordinary about suffering (v9-13, 22-23).

Okay you may not want to hear this, but there is something extraordinary about what God can do in the midst of distress.

For as soon as Jesus comes down from the mountain with his mates He begins to tell them about His upcoming suffering and death.  Then again in verse 22 He tells them that He will be betrayed and die.  Now its all part of obeying God the Fathers will and Jesus is trying to prepare them for it, but they don’t want to know.  They are filled with grief.  In Matthew’s story he tells them three times, but it’s like they are tone deaf.  They don’t hear it.  They don’t grasp it.  It does not compute, and we can all act the same way.  We are so often deaf to suffering.  We don’t want to suffer.  We don’t want it near us.  We don’t really want to know.

And so what we don’t hear like the disciples is that suffering can be redemptive or that God can redeem suffering.  You see Jesus suffered, and you will too.  But Jesus rose again and so will you.  God can make sense out of suffering and confusion.  God can give life new meaning despite whatever happens.

For example, one of the things that regularly amazes me is the faith of people who suffer.  Atheists will point at people who are suffering and say, “There’s proof that there is no God.”  But when you talk to some of those people who have or are currently suffering what you frequently discover is that they have a faith that is profound and incredibly deep!  The process of suffering with God has often revealed to them the depths of God’s love and the depth of God’s plan.  They know that God is with them and that suffering is not the final word.  As someone once said, it is darkest just before the dawn, but it always ends with the sun rising and in resurrection.  So there is something extraordinary about suffering.

3. There is also something extraordinary about prayer (v14-21) (and in my heart of hearts this is one of my favourite themes).  Something extraordinary happens when people pray.

For instance when Jesus gets back to the crowd a man approaches Jesus and kneels before him.  He says he has a son who is having seizures and often falls into the fire or water.  He has brought him to the disciples, but they can not heal him.”  Jesus is clearly exasperated that the disciples have not healed him.  “O unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you?  How long shall I put up with you?  Bring the boy here to me.”  Then Jesus rebukes the demon, and it comes out of the boy and he is healed instantly.  Later on the disciples ask why could we do that?  And what does Jesus say?  That they should have!  The only reason they couldn’t so He says was because they had little or ineffective faith, and he adds “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move.  Nothing will be impossible for you.”  The implication is that the disciple’s faith is not functioning properly, it should be returned to the store, and repaired, because nothing, nothing, is impossible in prayer.

Now we have to be honest here and say that not every prayer gets answered, or at least in the way that we want it to.  As a boy I would look out of our kitchen window and see the Wither Hills in front of me and I would practice this verse.  If this verse were literally true there would be some very strange rock formations in Marlborough by now.  Jesus is using hyperbole or exaggeration to illustrate a spiritual truth, and yet, and yet…  God will and does answer the most impossible and unlikely of prayers.

For example shortly after Dallas Theological Seminary was founded in 1924 it almost came to the point of bankruptcy.  All its creditors were going to foreclose at noon on a particular day.  That morning they had a prayer meet in the Presidents office at which one of the men Harry Ironside prayed, “Lord, we know that the cattle on a thousand hills are yours.  Please sell some of them and send us the money.”

While they were praying a tall Texan with boots on and an open collar stepped into the business office and said, “I’ve just sold two carloads of cattle in Fort Worth.  I’ve been trying to make a business deal, but it fell through, and I feel compelled to give the money to the seminary.  I don’t know if you need it or not, but here’s the cheque!”

The office secretary took the cheque and knowing how critical things were went to the door of the prayer meeting and timidly tapped.  When she finally got a response, the President took the cheque out of the envelope, recognised the cattleman’s name on it and turning to Dr. Ironside announced, “Harry, God has just sold the cattle!”

Now, is this crazy?  No, it’s sometimes normal.  Other could tell you of the ways in which God has marvellously provided over the years.  The bottom line is this -why worry when you can pray?’  The other week something was going incredibly well.  I couldn’t understand why.  It was like I was being pushed or buddied along, and then I remembered that morning I had prayed.  So I urge you this week, pray!  Jesus tells you to pray.

4. And fourthly there’s something extraordinary about my future (v24-27). There’s something extraordinary about what lies ahead for you.

This is a slightly unorthodox interpretation, but after Jesus gets back to Capernaum a Temple tax collector approaches Jesus disciples.  He asks Peter, “Does Jesus pay the Temple tax” –just assuming that He will.  You see every year every adult Jewish man must pay a small tax for the upkeep of Temple‘s 6 weeks before Passover began.  Peter immediately says “yes,” but later at home Jesus asks him in effect ‘what do I need to pay the tax for?”  After all Jesus is God’s Son.  The Temple has been built to worship God.  Why should He pay for the upkeep of a Temple built to worship Him!  It’s a bit like Jesus tithing to our church?  Jesus sees no reason why He or His mates should give money to honour Him, but so as to fit in and not upset others, He supernaturally produces the coins and that’s what Peter gives for the Temple.

Now the funny thing for me is that there is a sense that Jesus and His disciples are in the world, but not of it.  Yes, they pay the tax like everyone else, but really they shouldn’t need to.  They are treated like strangers or foreigners, but really they are completely at home with God.  They are in a different space.  They occupy a different spiritual place.

And so do you –as Jesus friends.  For example, this week very sad events happened in Afghanistan, and I’m not just referring to the Kiwi soldier who died there.  A group of ten foreign aid workers were executed by the Taliban on their way back from a medical mission.  Some of those workers had served there for 40 years.  One them was finishing to get married soon.  All the Taliban saw were foreign missionaries interfering in Muslim lands, but as you and I know, what God saw was quite different.  Something holy and very loving happened there –the poor were being helped, the sick were being healed, the hungry were being feed -there is no greater love than you lay down your life for your friends –and one day you and I may well meet them in heaven.

As Jesus said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End (Rev 22:13).”  He was with us when we were born.  He will be with us when we die.  He will be with us beyond the grave.  That sense of disconnect that you sometimes feel with this world is a sign that you are destined for better things.  You have an extraordinary future both here and now and to come.

C. So the next time you are feeling a big negative or are surrounded by people who get you down, or when turkeys surround you and you long to soar like an eagle, wrap yourself up in these thoughts.  Remind yourself of these things -your life is part and parcel of something extraordinary.

In fact can you do this for me or for yourself this week?  If you find yourself in one of those death spiral conversations (where everyone is gossiping and bagging other people or God, and just heading down, down, down), stop yourself, remind yourself of your beliefs, and make a decision to turn that conversation around by saying at least one positive thing.  Simply stop and say one positive thing.  Do you think you can do that this week?

Would you please stand and let’s speak out loud these truths that we’ve learned:

There’s something extraordinary about Jesus.  There’s something extraordinary about suffering.  There’s something extraordinary about prayer.  There’s something extraordinary about my future!  Amen!

Well the race for the Super City mayor is heating up.  Maybe you’re interested in it and maybe you’re not, but who do you think will be the new Super city Mayor?  Who’ll get the top job?

Just recently I had the chance to hear one of the leading contenders.  It was an interesting experience for me because I went to the meeting with certain expectations.  I’ve read the newspapers.  I’d talked to people.  I’d listened to talkback and I came expecting him to come across in a certain [Box].  I expected him to be like everyone else said.

I left… in some ways impressed.  He was not exactly like what I expected.  So I was left thinking instead how would this man (not the man I imagined) lead us if we made him mayor?  Where would this Mayor take our city if we unleashed him?

I know that others of you have had the benefit of hearing the other candidates, so you’ll have a better idea who should get the position, but one thing I did decide is that if he doesn’t get the job as Mayor, we should invite him as a guest preacher!  He is excellent at public speaking!

But it also prompted me to think; we often try and put people into a box don’t we?  We often get an idea or form an impression of what a person is like and how they are supposed to act, and then we expect them to live up to that expectation, when they might actually be a very different person.  How often have you been mistaken about someone –and then discovered they were different?  Maybe it was a co-worker, or a schoolmate, or a teacher, or a brother or a spouse.  Did you misjudge them?  Us humans are great at jumping to conclusions, aren’t we?  We build boxes into which most people don’t fit.  So what you do if the person that you’ve done it to is God?

This is situation in Matthew 16, which we have just read.  The leaders of Israel, the Sadducees and Pharisees, ganged up to question Jesus about who He was.  They had done this to John the Baptist in the past –checking him out and demanding to know who He was and why He did such things.  This time they were doing it to Jesus.

And so they come to Jesus and ask Him to do a sign in the sky that will demonstrate beyond all doubt that He is the promised Messiah of Israel.  You see Israel was waiting for a warrior Prince, a bit like the ‘old’ King David, who would crush the Romans, conquer the nations and make Jerusalem the centre of His worldwide empire or kingdom.  They were ambitious I know, but this was what they expected, and so they demanded, not just an ordinary sign, like healing cripples, raising the dead, and the cleansing of lepers, but something cosmic in the sky.  As 1 Cor. 1:22 says, “Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom.”

The leaders were asking this for two particular reasons.  They did not really believe in Jesus, but they wanted to test Him to find out for sure.  They were offering Jesus the once in a lifetime chance to convince them that He was the Messiah by offering them an above average quality miracle (you know a really top shelf one), and if it didn’t work then they would cut Him down depending upon what happened.  Think of it as tall poppy syndrome.

But Jesus gets incredibly angry.  He is not pleased with the box that they have brought Him for Him.  For a start He is not a warrior prince.  He is the Lord Almighty instead.  He has His own plans and own agenda –and it doesn’t involve knocking the snot of the neighbours.  It’s about loving them.  Secondly He has already offered adequate proof of His identity.  Why won’t they get it?!  He asks if they are being deliberately difficult?  If they can guess from looking at the clouds what the weather will be that day, why don’t they guess who He is based all He’s said and done!

You know there’s a place for sensible doubt and there’s a place for finally trusting.  You have to jump some time.  Jesus reckons He has offered them more than enough reasons to believe, and so now He says there will be no more signs!  That’s it.  No more signs, except for one -the sign of Jonah!  Do you know what that sign is?  Remember how the fish swallowed Jonah for three days before he was spat up on a beach near Nineveh.  Jonah went and preached and Nineveh repented and turned back to God.  Jesus will do the same thing.  He will be dead for three days and then everyone will hear of His resurrection.

In short Jesus refuses to play ball with them.  He will not let them define Him or box Him in.  Jesus then heads off with His disciples across the lake and He warns the disciples not in any way to be like them.

So what can we learn from this encounter?

1. The first thing is that God is at the centre of the universe, not you or I. We are not the movers and shakers in His universe that we think we are.  He is.  We sometimes forget and act as if we are the hubs of the wheel around which life turns.  Everything is “I, my, me, mine.”  I wonder if this is true.

The early European map mapmakers, for example, assumed that they were at the very centre of universe.  For hundred of years they drew maps with Jerusalem, or Rome or England at the very centre of them.  They missed out the really important parts –like the true centre of the universe, New Zealand!  But what we now know is that Europe is not the centre of the world, and the earth is not the centre of our galaxy, and our sun is by no means the centre of our cosmos.  This knowledge really hit home when the astronauts sent the first photographs back from the moon.  It put us in our place.

And it’s the same thing with life.  We orbit around God, and He will not be defined by us.  It’s the other way around.  He is the great “I am –who I am.”

As the old black preacher once said, “I wish I could describe Him to you, but He’s indescribable.  He’s indescribable.  Yes.  He’s incomprehensible.  He’s invincible.  He’s irresistible.  I’m coming to tell you, the heavens of heavens cannot contain Him, let alone a man explaining Him.  You can’t get Him out of your mind.  You can’t get Him off of your hands.  You can’t outlive Him and you can’t live without Him.  He always has been and He always will be.  I’m talking about He had no predecessor and He’ll have no successor.  There was nobody before Him and there’ll be nobody after Him.  You can’t impeach Him and He’s not going to resign.  That’s my King!  That’s my King!  Yes.  Thine is the Kingdom and the power and glory, forever and ever and ever and ever.  How long is that? And ever and ever and ever and ever. And when you get through with all of the evers, then, Amen.  God is the very centre of life.

2. Secondly Jesus is not satisfied with being just another great prophet. Jesus does not want you to think of Him simply as a great man!  Jesus wants you to think of Him as Lord -as He defines Himself- or as nothing.  He’s not the least bit interested in downsizing to meet other people’s expectations.

The thing is that when they arrived in Caesarea Philippi, which was a bastion of pagan worship, Jesus asked his disciples “Who do people say I am?”  In other words He wanted to know their current assessment of Him.  What were the crowds saying?  “They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  There were all kinds of answers, but basically they were all saying, “Jesus, you’re a great prophet.  You’re a great man!”  But they weren’t the answers that Jesus was looking for.  Jesus is only looking (or fishing) for one thing and He’s not prepared to accept such limitations.

I don’t think it’s too different today.  There is a lot of garbage said on the Internet about Jesus and God.  Most of it wouldn’t survive 5 minutes in the lecture halls at Carey Baptist College, but people are continually trying to make Jesus fit within their own particular terms.

Incidentally this is where all the great heresies come from.  Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, struggled with some of the basic Christian doctrines so he cut and pasted them to create a new religion that he could believe in.  Muhammad too struggled with this problem.  An Uncle gave him some factually incorrect information, which you can read about in the Koran, and as a result Mohammed believed it was impossible for God to have had what we technically call a ‘Son.’  You see, sometimes people everyone’s try to cut God and Jesus down so they can fit Him into a tiny little box called their brain!  They think He’s a good man, even a great man, even a man who had a special relationship to God, but they do not believe He is the Son of God from heaven.

Many of you are familiar with C. S. Lewis, possibly the greatest Christian apologist of the twentieth century.  In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis says, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.”  -That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to.”

In other words there is only a limited range of words that Jesus wants to hear from the lips of His disciples.  Friend is obviously one of them, but I heard one of them prayed the other day by an Indian sister, and that word was “Master.”

So how are we doing?  What else can we learn?

3. Well the third thing is that if you stop trying to put God in a box, if you let God out, it changes everything. -A decision to let God be God and to let Jesus be Lord changes everything.  You will never be the same person again.

If you look at Peter for instance in Matthew 16:16 Peter passes through a spiritual transition.  He is the first person ever to answer the ultimate question of history -‘who do you say I am?” and to get it correct.  And Jesus affirms Peter for this.  He says this isn’t simply something that you have stumbled upon, but God the Father Himself has revealed it to you.   It’s a spiritual revelation that has profound consequences.

For a start Peter can now spiritually ‘see.’  What many Old Testament prophets and kings longed to see, he now sees, and what they longed to hear, he now hears.  Peter sees with unveiled eyes for the very first time that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the one God has appointed to rule, and that as the Son of the living God, He is a human being in a unique relationship to God.

Imagine what this must have been like.  There’s a story about a man who decided to leave the city that he lived in and move to a new land, so he packed up his gear, put his pack on his back and started walking.  The first night he stopped in a forest where he wasn’t sure of his direction, so he placed his shoes outside his tent pointing in the direction he intended to go in next morning.  That night, for reasons unknown, someone passed by and turned the shoes 180 degrees around so they were pointing back to the place he had some from.  That morning he got up and headed into his old city thinking it looked like a new one.  It didn’t take him long to recognise it, but by going out and coming back in again he saw it with new eyes.  He saw things that he’d never seen before or which he had simply taken for granted before.  You could say Peter’s new ‘eyes’ give him a new life, and you can have new eyes and a new life too.

But more than that he now had a new community.  Jesus says on this rock, on your confession of faith, I will build my church and death will not defeat it!  What an amazing privilege.  Jesus says that Peter is the first member of a spiritual family that will grow and grow and grow.  I’m sure Peter had no idea of what He’d just done –the snowball effect that he started.  For instance, He would never have imagined the Gentiles of the world coming in droves to worship God.  He would never have imagined that by the year 2,000 nearly 2 billion people on the face of our planet would know the name of Jesus.  He would never have pictured that here in Pakuranga on 8 August 2010 you would be present with other followers of Jesus.  On that day the church was born and everyone who let’s God be God becomes a part of this community.

And with this community comes a new mission.  You’ll notice that Jesus gives Peter the keys of eternal life and death.  Most scholars believe that Peter used these keys on Pentecost Sunday, when 40 days after Jesus ascension Peter tells a large crowd in Jerusalem how they can have an eternal relationship with God and over 3,000 people respond.  That message has been being taken out to the world and this week alone over 550,000 people will become first-time followers of Jesus.

But there is also a new lifestyle and it’s a lifestyle completely different than the one He lived before.  Jesus began to tell His disciples how He was heading towards Jerusalem and there He would die at the hands of the Jewish leaders.  Three days later He would rise again.   Maybe Jesus compliments went to Peter’s head, but he then takes Jesus aside and says in Greek, in harsh terms that no disciple would ever use with His master, “Never, Lord!”  But as you all know there are two words that can never ever go together.  You can say “Never” or you can say “Lord,” but you can never say “Never, Lord!”  Jesus rebukes him and says, “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”  This teaches us that from now on the things of God take priority in our life.  It’s not about what we want, but what God wants comes first.  As Jesus said, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matt. 6:33).” So there’s a new way of life where surrender to God is an ongoing lesson.

C. So what can we say about what we’ve learned?  How does this account challenge us?  Let me ask you these questions:

1. Whose at the centre of your life right now?  Is it God or is it pleasure?  What sits on the throne?  Who does your life revolve around –God or yourself?

2. Have you acknowledged Jesus as Lord and Master over your life?  If not, when will you do this and be baptised?

3. Are you living like part of Christ’s people, His Church?  How are you carrying out your part in the mission He gave us?

4. Are you trying to make what Jesus wants the very centre of every decision that you make?

Remember there are usually three phases to any kind of life change.  At first we resist and deny things.  Then we reluctantly accept them.  Finally, after a while, we are surprised that it could have been any other way.  Be prepared for what happens when you let God out of the box.  Let God be God and it will change your life forever.

Every once in a while I read something that makes me sit and up and think.  Every so often I read something that causes me to examine myself and ask ‘am I doing the right thing?’

Just recently I have been reading an historical novel set in the sixteenth century.  The hero of the story, or you could say the villain, is a European businessman who commissions one of his servants to cross the border into enemy territory to collect and bring back 2,000 cuttings of a very famous grapevine.  At great personal risk to himself the servant carries out this mission, but he only comes back with 1500 vines.  The businessman is very angry and wants to beat his servant and pay him nothing, but because the Bible says that you have to pay your workers properly he takes the money that he was originally going to pay him, divides it up and gives him exactly 75%.  The servant probably deserves the whole amount as danger money for the risk he took, but the businessman is very legalistic and very precise.  At the same time the same businessman is having a battle with his brother over the state of their parents will.  And because he can find nothing in the Bible that prevents him from ripping a brother off in this way he takes his brother to court and steals the entire amount.

It’s a sordid little story and in the end he gets his comeuppance, but what’s clear is that when it comes to Christian faith the businessman follows the letter of the God’s law if he has to, and when there isn’t a rule to follow He violates the spirit of God’s Law in the end.

And it got me wondering, ‘Do I ever do the same thing?”  It’s a horrible thought, but do I ever follow whatever custom, action or tradition I think is right, but in the end violate the principles or spirit behind it?’

Certainly the Christian faith encourages us to examine ourselves regularly and to ask these kinds of questions about ourselves.  It’s an important spiritual practise to do a regular check up and to see just well you are doing.  St Ignatius of Loyola taught his students to go through a process like this at least twice a day –once at noon and in the evening.  He said: 1.  Find a quiet place and thank God for the good things that you have enjoyed this day.  2.  Ask God to help you review your day far to see how well you have lived it day.  3.  With God review your day.  What thoughts and promptings has God given me?  Which thoughts have been sinful?  How have I responded to God and what choices have I made?  4.  Seek (and receive) forgiveness –ask God to forgive you for your errors.  5. Then plan concretely, how with God’s strength, I will live better next day.

This method is the basis of the Faith Five that many of our families do together and the Bible encourages self-examination.  Lamentations 3:40 says, “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.”  2 Cor. 13:5 states, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.” And as we head towards the Lord’s Supper this morning 1 Cor. 11:28 reminds us, “A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.”

So are we like this at all?

In the Book of Matthew chapter 15 a group of Pharisees come to Jesus especially from Jerusalem to find out why Jesus disciples aren’t following the teaching of the Jewish Elders.  They are concerned that Jesus is playing fast and loose with their traditional rules.  For instance, all good Jews were supposed to wash their hands in a proscribed manner way before eating.  (You point the fingers down and pour water over them from the wrist down.  Then you hold them up and let them drip as you pray).  They wanted to know why they aren’t doing this, as they ought.

But Jesus turns the question around on them and asks ‘why do you use your traditions to play fast and loose with what God’s commands?  Why do you let your petty little rules get in the way of what God really wants?’  Jesus cites the example of people quoting the traditions and saying “But I’ve already given my money to the Temple” as a way of getting out of the fifth commandment to honour and support their parents.

The problem is that around the teachings of Jewish Bible there had grown up a whole series of rabbinical teachings called the Mishnah.  What had happened is that after the Jews returned to Israel from exile in Babylon the Rabbis began developing rules on how you should obey the law.  These had got quite complicated.  For example, according to Exodus 30:18-21 the priests in the Temple were required to wash their hands before offering sacrifices.  This was a practical thing and it symbolised personal purity as well, but the rabbis decided that because the priests did it before touching meat then everyone should wash their hands before eating a meal!  Chuck Missler estimates that in the end they came up with 613 rules that a good Jew was supposed to keep[1].

Well Jesus claim is that the Pharisees had so elevated their rules above the teachings of the Bible that they became more obsessed with keeping man’s rules than in obeying the key principles of God’s will.  He argued that their hearts had become so bound up in keeping these unnecessary traditions, which they were so very proud of, that they were overlooking the essential things of the Law and that their attitude was offensive to God.  In verses 7-9 and then again in v14 Jesus condemns them in the strongest of possible terms.  “You hypocrites!  Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: “‘these people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’”  Leave them; they are blind guides.  If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”  Jesus condemns the Pharisees because they have led others up the garden path to their ultimate spiritual destruction.

So what can we do to avoid winding up in a similar situation?  What do you need to do?

1. One of the first things is that we need to do is to examine God’s word. We need to ask, ‘Do our practises line up with what the Bible actually teaches?’

Some of you will have heard about when Paul went to speak in the synagogue in Berea.  The Bible says, “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true (Acts 17:1).”

The Bereans looked at the scriptures to see if what Paul taught matched up with what God said.  They evaluated his teachings using the Old Testament as a scale for comparison.  We need to do the same thing.

That means having a plan for the regular reading of the Bible, and making sure that we are familiar with it, particularly the high points like the Ten Commandments, Psalms, the Gospels, etc, and then making time to reflect upon them.  Each of us needs our own process of study and reflection, learning and application.

But one question that’s important in particular to ask is which principles are more important than others?  What is the spirit behind it?  And have I got my principles in the right order of priority?

e.g. The Pharisees taught that if you had planned to give your parents some money to support them, but then decided to give it instead to the Temple that was okay.  The principle was called “Corban.”  If you said something was “Corban” or dedicated to God, then that was the top priority.  This worked out very well for the Pharisees and Sadducees because they got the money given to the Temple, but in practise it violated a much higher standard.  It violated the fifth commandment of looking after one’s parents.  Think of it this way.  A Jewish bloke might have a hundred dollars in his hand.  His parents would ask him for money or they might simply have a need for that cash.  He could say, “It is corban –it’s dedicated to God,” meaning that I gave a $100 to the church last week already; so sorry I can’t help you right now.“  That way he could look religious –“I’ve already given to God,” but he still had the $100 left to spend upon himself!  What people were doing was ripping off their parents using their religious giving as an excuse!

Another example could be the debate over tithing that gone off and on for years.  When I was 18 I became convinced that the Biblical thing I should do was to give ten percent of my income to the church and to God as an offering.  I thought it was a very good discipline to do because God is worthy of worship, and I thought that giving ten percent was a pretty good effort.  But later on what I discovered is that the higher spiritual principle is actually one of being generous.  You see God is very generous to us.  He wants us to enjoy His generosity and to be like Him and to pass it on to others.  Now there will be times in our life when giving 10% might be a real sacrifice.  You might have debts, be unemployed, or have a mortgage, or kids.  But there will be other times in your life when you can give 15%, 20% or more to your home church and to many other worthwhile causes.  At that time of life giving only ten percent could look very stingy to God!

So we have to understand what the principles are so that we can our sort out our practises.  This means getting to know the Bible and what it actually teaches.

2. We also need to examine ourselves. In order to avoid being like the Pharisees, you need to examine your attitudes.  For instance, am I too focused on how I look on the outside to others rather than being concerned about what’s going on in the inside?

The issue here is that you might recall Jesus calling the Pharisees ‘whitewashed tombs.’  By this He meant that their lives sort of looked okay on the outside, but they were spiritually dead inside.  On the outside they appeared to be okay, but on the inside they were anything but.  Why?  Because they had taken what God wanted from them and turned it on its head!

Let me give you an example of the Pharisees way of thinking.  I have here a list of things.  As I read them off, if you have done this, would you please stand?  Has anyone here eaten pork in the last month?  Please stand.  Has anyone forgotten to wash their hands before they ate this weekend?  Please stand.  Have you prayed for someone on a Sunday?  The prayer ministry team can stand!  Have you worked on any Sunday in July?  Please stand.   Has anyone not done the dishes this morning?  Please stand.  Did any of you men shave with a razor?  Please stand!  Anyone been drinking blood lately?  All vampires please stand!  That’s probably enough…

Would everyone who is seated please turn and shake hands with other seated people.  [Pause].  Congratulations, you are in with God.  Everyone standing – I’m sorry, but you are out with God.  Would you please leave right now!  No wait!  -End of role-play.  Would you please sit down?

What did you think of that role-play?  How did some of you feel?  I know some of you felt good to be seated, but others of you were offended to stand.  You thought the rules were silly.  They didn’t reflect your attitude towards God.  But it’s a window on what some of the Pharisees thought.  They thought that following everyone of their 613 rules would keep them right with God.  They thought that following the rules was what made them pure before God.  But as you and I know it’s the heart above all else that matters.  Attending church, praying prayers, giving, serving, and living moral lives will never ever put us right with God!

In contrast in verse 22 Matthew introduces us to a pagan Canaanite woman who shows us what we need to do.  Even though she’s a pagan, a non-Jewish woman, she comes down from the hills when she hears that the Lord Jesus is in town.  In v22 she calls out the prayer that we all need to pray  “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me. “  Later on she kneels before Him and says, “Lord, help me!”  Now the story is unusual one because Jesus appears to treat the woman very harshly.  She is forced to compare herself to a pet dog living in someone’s home, but the story is there to show us two things.  Jesus wanted to give the first chance to repent to the Jews.  He wanted the rule bound Pharisees to have the first opportunity to repent, but in the end the Kingdom of God is open for everyone to enter by way of the heart -and by way of faith.

So how is your heart towards God -and your attitudes?  Are you relying upon your good behaviour to get you into the good books with God or do you cry out for God’s help as the Canaanite woman did?

3.  Then thirdly we need to look more closely at our impression of God. You may need to review who and what you think of God deep down.

The thing here is that all true worship of God begins with God’s grace.  It all begins with the fountainhead of God’s love.  In verse 29 onwards Matthew describes the feeding of the four thousand.  Now it looks like a repeat of the previous episode –the feeding of the five thousand, except there is one important difference.  In this part of the passage Jesus for the only time in His life leaves the physical boundaries of Israel and enters Gentile territory.  He goes up to Tyre and Sidon where He meets the Canaanite woman, and then to an area called the Decapolis or the Ten Cities east of the Jordan.  He heals the sick, the lame and the mute and then He feeds them all.  The only thing is that none of them are Jews.   None of them even try to keep the Law.  They are all pretty much foreigners and Jewish Law breakers.  These people worship Roman Gods, but Jesus gives to them and as a result many of them turn and praise God!

And this is what God is like.  Some people think that God is an accountant.  He keeps a record of this right and that wrong.  Yes, there’s an element of truth in that.  God does see all and know all, and there will be an accounting for everything we have ever done, but it’s not the whole picture.  The key is that we live from a place of blessing.  We begin from the very basis that God loves us and wants the best for us in the first place.

That’s why I loved Ecclesiastes 11:9 when I was a teenager.  It says “Be happy, young man, while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth.  Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you to judgment.”  I don’t know if you see it, but what it says is that God gives us so much to enjoy, and only asks that we be responsible in the process.

I think we would be less like the Pharisees if we realised that it’s not a case of keeping score.  It’s a case of responding with gratitude to God’s love and kindness.

C. So where are you at this morning? Do you take time to regularly examine your own heart?  1. Read the Bible and work out the key principles.  2. Examine your own heart and attitudes towards God. Are you relying on your own merits to be saved or upon His?  And 3. Review your impression of God.  God wants the very best for you.

Do these often and you will avoid the problem of the Pharisees and getting your lifestyle all screwed up and contrary to what Jesus wants.

Remember that at the base of it all -the heart of the problem is a matter of the heart!  Not rituals!  How’s yours?

I believe that all of us need to have a defining moment with God.  We all need a defining moment when we go from simply knowing about God to absolutely knowing God for ourselves.

For instance one of the earliest defining moments in my life was when I was ten.  My family went with my Uncle and Aunty and several cousins to swim in a popular river.  The river was wide, clear and cool, but I found it very difficult to swim because the current was so strong.  So I got out of the river and sat down beside by Uncle and developed an interest playing with the river stones that only a ten year old can have.  I was sitting there happy absorbed when suddenly my Uncle exploded into action beside me.  Suddenly he was on his feet, pumping arms and legs, sprinting across the gravel until he did the most perfect dive that I have ever seen in the river.  I was quite shocked!  You have to understand that I had never seen my Uncle move faster than walking pace before and I wondered what was going on.  But with powerful strokes he swam across the river and then grabbed his daughter who was floating face down in the current.  He dragged her to the side, and after few splutters on the beach she was fine.  Then he came back to sit beside me panting.  It was a small drama (will actually not that small –she could have drowned), but in those brief moments something changed.  In that short space of time I went from believing that my Uncle cared about his kids (I mean, he was a sheep farmer.  They’re good after animals) to knowing beyond all shadow of a doubt that he loved them deeply.

And I believe that the Bible says it’s the same thing with God.  There needs to be a defining moment or moments in your life, in my life where we move from simply knowing about God to knowing actually God for ourselves.

So how do we have these?  How do we experience these moments?

1. Well, the reality is that in this day and age we sometimes forget who Jesus is.  We tend to forget who Jesus really is and it’s just because of the culture that we live in. On the face of it quite a number of people have pushed God to one side in their lives, and this is often for two major reasons.

The first major reason is illustrated in Matthew 13:53 when Jesus goes to speak in the synagogue of his old hometown of Nazareth.  It was the right of every Jewish man to be able to stand up and to speak on the scriptures and so Jesus went forward and spoke on this occasion.  Jesus spoke with power.  Jesus spoke with wisdom.  The people were impressed by His teaching, but their reaction was an unexpected one.  They begun to say, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?”  ”Isn’t this just the carpenter’s son?  Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?  Aren’t all his sisters with us?  Where then did this man get all these things?” And they turned on Him!  The people of Nazareth were jealous of Jesus because they had known Him all their lives, and so they concluded that He was ‘nothing special’ and that they didn’t want Him.

Jesus said to them was, “Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honour,” and in today’s language we would say that “familiarity breeds contempt.” The townsfolk were so familiar with Jesus that they did not realise who He was, and that can be a trap for some of you this morning.

Think about it -we grow up in a culture where Jesus is a familiar word, even a swear word.  People assume that they already know everything they need to know about Jesus because they’ve heard His name some place.  Yet it’s surprising how little they actually know.  While there are others of us who have grown up in church and heard the Bible stories so many times in Kidzone, Youth Group and at home that we don’t want it hear them any more.  We hear some thing about Jesus and we think, “Oh, it’s just Jesus again.”  Have you ever been to visit somewhere that truly spectacular so that on your first visit you thought it was utterly amazing, but by the 10^th visit you had lost all interest?  Well, you can do the same thing to God, and become too familiar with Him.

The second major reason is illustrated in Matthew 14:11-13 where King Herod is cornered and embarrassed into executing Jesus cousin, John.  The problem is that Herod had a long running dispute with John the Baptist over a woman.  Herod had married his brother’s wife –he was committing incest and adultery.  It wasn’t a good look and John the Baptist had been bold enough to say so in public.  Now Herod couldn’t execute John because he was so popular, but his wife decided to force his hand.  When his 13-year-old daughter performed an erotic dance at a banquet that pleased him he promised to give her anything she wanted, even half the Kingdom.  She asked her Mum what to do and she demanded John’s head on a plate.  Herod was too embarrassed to go back on his promise in front of his dinner guests and so he executed John.

Herod is an example of people who reject Jesus and what He stands for because they feel threatened.  They find Jesus standards too high.  They feel He demands too much of them.  “Why I’d have to give up this and this and this.  I couldn’t have any fun.”  Deep down their problem is that they would rather have a good time with the crowd and not change their lives in order to follow Him.

So you have apathy and maybe fear, but underneath it’s all the same thing.  It’s unbelief.  Some folks don’t believe in Jesus enough and that thinking can infect everyone!

2. So sometimes we need to step back and be reminded of whom exactly Jesus is. You need a wake up call to snap you back to reality so you can see Jesus in all His glory and power and what could this mean for you.

In fact I think this is part of the point behind the feeding of the five thousand in the next event, because after John’s execution Jesus withdraws.  He gets into his boat and sails away.  For this has been a bruising experience.  He’s been rejected by his own hometown (which has been a real letdown) and now he knows what’s going to happen to Him –executed like John.  So He goes looking for some peace and quiet –a place to reflect, a place to pause, pause, a place to pray, and yet what does he find?  V14 tells us that when Jesus landed He was meet by a large crowd.

Now those of you who have been burnt out will know the answer to this –what is the best thing to do when you are dog tired and you see a huge pile of human need standing right in front of you?  What should you do?  Run!  Head for the hills!  But what does Jesus do?  The Bible says He had compassion upon them and healed their sick. Then as evening comes it’s in a very remote spot so the disciples come to Him and say, “Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.” The problem is that they’d all eaten their sandwiches at lunchtime!  But Jesus says, “They do not need to go away.”  Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, He gives thanks to God and breaks the loaves.  Then he gives them to the disciples, and the disciples give them to the people (over 5,000 men, not counting women and children.  (20) They all eat and were satisfied, and the disciples pick up twelve basketfuls one basketful each of broken pieces left over.”

What the disciples witness in that moment is a miracle!  It’s an amazing event, and what it tells us is two things:

Firstly, Jesus supernatural power and resources are incredible compared to what humans can do.  Now-a-days scientists are doing some truly amazing things –they can clone animals, re-grow damaged organs, and heal genetic diseases, but so far no one has taken two loaves of bread and five fishes and multiplied them to feed over 5,000 people.  You don’t hear of those kinds of things happening!  But that’s what Jesus did.  Jesus possesses that power.  Our resources may not be big enough to do these kinds of things, but Jesus has all the power to do it.  Jesus has all the power and resources He needs to meet your needs.

(And) secondly, He is willing to help.  He is willing to be a source of help to you.  Eyewitnesses say that He felt compassion for the crowd.  The Greek word for compassion literally means He felt it deep down in His gut.  It hit Him here.  Have you ever thought about the fact that some of your problems ‘hit Jesus here too?’  Jesus didn’t turn the crowd away.  He didn’t fob them off just because He was exhausted and Jesus won’t do that either to you.  Jesus is willing to help you no matter who you are.  He is the Sovereign Lord of the universe and He holds out His hands to you.

3. But it is one thing to hear Jesus invitation and to ‘witness’ His miracles. It is quite another thing to trust in Him.  Let’s not be confused.  There are a lot of people who have a very high opinion of Jesus.  They read about His miracles in the Bible and think ‘what an amazing person.”  They hear the testimonies from folk who have been rescued or helped by Him recently.  They think that’s great for them.  They might appreciate the quality of His teaching.  They might even believe that Jesus saves human beings from sin.  They may admire, and even be in awe of Jesus.  ‘Jesus’ can be very popular with some people!  But be warned -He only remains a wonderful theory, a powerful proposition, unless you base your life upon Him.

There’s a true story about a great tightrope artist from the early 1900’s called ‘The great Blondini.’  His star attraction was to walk across the Niagara Falls on a tight rope.  He was very good at it, and he drew large crowds whenever he performed.  One day after walking across with the balance pole he asked the audience whether they believed he could walk across without a pole, but pushing a wheelbarrow.  The crowd cheered him on!  So he did it!  Then asked if they thought he could do it with a hundredweight sack of potatoes in the barrow.  Again the crowd cheered him on, convinced he could do almost anything on this tightrope.  So he pushed a wheelbarrow with a large sack of potatoes in it across the falls, and returned with it safely.  The crowd went wild!  So he stood up and asked whether the people believed that he could wheel a man across the falls in the wheelbarrow?  The crowd yelled their approval: ‘Of course the Great Blondini could do it!’…  So Blondini turned to the people and asked for volunteers… and the crowd suddenly went very quiet…  It was a long time until someone (his manager?) volunteered.

And it’s the same thing with Jesus.  You have to actually trust in Him.

4. But get this: When you do trust in Him you get to find who Jesus really is.  You experience God at a deeper level, for those who trust in Him move from knowing about Jesus [head] to actually knowing Him for themselves [heart].

Just look at Peter in verse 28.  Jesus has sent the disciples away after feeding the five thousand.  They are sailing across Lake Genesareth when they are caught in a ferocious storm.  Around about 3am in the morning Jesus comes strolling past them.  The disciples are terrified thinking they have just seen a ghost.  They want Jesus to go away, but the Lord cries out, “Take courage.  It is I” which means the same as, “I am God!”  Peter replies, “Lord, if it’s you “tell me to come to you on the water.” Notice that Jesus didn’t ask Peter to do this.  Peter volunteers.  But Jesus says, “Come,” so Peter gets out of the boat and walks on the water heading towards Jesus.  But as he walks he begins to notice the waves and wind again and he is afraid.  He begins to sink and cries out, “Lord, save me!”  Immediately Jesus reaches out his hand and grasps him.  Together they climb into the boat, and the wind immediately dies down.  Then everyone in the boat worships Jesus for the very first time, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Now imagine how it must have been to be in Peter shoes.  Let’s consider.  Peter sees Jesus on the water and wants to join Him.  He gets out of the boat.  He is walking on the water.  He is literally walking on the water.  Then he realises what he is doing.  “Oh, heck, I’m walking on water,” and he begins to falter.  He begins to sink beneath the waves, but he has the presence of mind to cry out “Lord, save me!” and the Lord rescues him.  How well do you think the others in the boat felt they knew Jesus now?  Pretty good?  I bet they were terrified of Him!  They bowed down and worshipped Him.  But how well do you think Peter knew Him?  Peter now knew Jesus in a way that the others didn’t.  He had new confidence.  He had new insight.  Peter now knew beyond all shadow of doubt that Jesus was God and would rescue Him.  Simply because Peter stepped out of the boat and trusted Jesus He connected with God in a new way that the others never had!

And this is how it has been through the ages.  People who have trusted in Him and put Jesus to the test have discovered just how good He is.  They have got to know Him at a much deeper level.

Consider for example, my mother-in-law.  I’m not sure if I’ve told you, but she was a nominal Buddhist living in Korea.  We started praying that she would come to know Jesus personally.  In particular we prayed that she would start to watch Christian TV, enjoy it, watch it regularly and learn.  So you can imagine our delight when she told Nan Yong that she had found this incredible funny Christian preacher on television and she was watching him every night.  It turned out he is a famous Korean evangelist.  Anyway he encouraged his viewers to pray to Jesus and to ask God to help them with things.  So my mother-in-law, remember she’s the Buddhist one in the family, starts praying to Jesus.  The first week she rings up and says, “I’ve just prayed to Jesus and He’s answered my prayer.”  The second week we rang her and she says, “I’ve prayed for something else and He’s answered that as well.”  Finally after several weeks she had us in stitches laughing because my mother-in-law, who was not yet a follower of Jesus, was ringing up Nan Yong nearly every night to tell me, her Pastor son-in-law, to pray more because prayer works!  She was baptised last year and is a wonderful testament to the way in which Jesus rewards a childlike trust.

And as I look around the room I think we actually have many folk who know what this is like, but I want to single out one group of people in particular.  Did you know that PBC now has about 11-12 Bible in Schools teachers?  Annabelle and Rachel are the latest.  Let’s give them a hand.  I hope I’m not letting out anyone’s secrets here, but in order to do Bible Schools they must first ask their Pastor to sign a letter of recommendation that they’re affiliated to our church.  So I get to meet before they join.  Often the new volunteers will come to my office and say, “I’m not sure I really want to be here, but God has been nudging me for a long time and now I have to do something.”  Sometime God nudges them through people like Mrs Pang, you do a wonderful job, and sometimes He’s a bit it more direct, but often they also say to me, “But I’m not sure I can do it.  I don’t think I’ll survive very long!”  But do you know what?  -Several months later those same people are often doing so well that they wouldn’t dream of giving it up.  You see they’ve learnt is that God faithfully and God will be there when you call out to Jesus and step out of your comfort zone to do what He wants you to do.

C. So this week I want to urge you to put your best foot forward and to climb out of your boat.  Because at some stage you need to stop just believing in Jesus and actually start trusting in Him.  Call out to Jesus and climb out of your boat

The thing is the Bible tells us that if you are bored with Jesus, then you don’t know who He is.  You have no idea.  The town of Nazareth didn’t know who Jesus was because He was so familiar to them.  As a result they missed out on miracles from the man who could feed thousands, walk on water and stop storms.  Jesus raised the dead.  But they missed out on the adventure of a lifetime.  Don’t’ be like them!

And if you prefer your mate’s approval, the roar of the crowd, to following Jesus, then again you don’t know who really He is.  Herod had a party and He ended up killing a good man.  Jesus had a party and through a miracle gave free food to everyone.  What kind of life do you really want?

And if you are just ‘sitting and soaking’ -reading books, philosophising and reflecting, just listening to sermons and scanning the net, can I urge you to change?  You will never really get to ‘know’ God from the sidelines.  You have to get out and play on the field in His team.

Indeed if you want to really live life –to live the vibrant life that Jesus promised, the rich, rewarding, supernatural life that comes from connecting with His Holy Spirit -to know God from experience -you’re going to have to take a few risks along the way.  You’re going to have to trust in Jesus just like Peter did or my mother-in-law or our Bible in Schools teachers have and put your best foot forward and climb out of your boat!

So what crisis or challenge are you facing?  Is there some step of faith that God is calling you to?  Are you in the middle of something or is there an issue that you are facing?  Consider this -your next crisis could be the very place where you learn who He is.  Will you trust Him in this?

For instance some of you already know what God’s asking you to do.  Some of you know that its time now to give your life to Christ.  No more mucking around.  Several weeks ago I spoke on baptism and membership.  So maybe you know that it’s time to be baptised or to become a church member.  Some of us just need to step out and trust God for whatever He is calling us to do.  It might be to get married.  It might be something else.  Others of you must simply pray, and cry out to Jesus and let Him rescue you right now.

So I want to give you an opportunity this morning.  If you know that God is inviting you to step out in faith in some area of your life, can I invite you to stand?  You don’t have to say what it is.  You don’t have to come to the front.  Simply if God is calling you to have a greater trust in Him and a deeper confidence in what He can do, would you please stand now so that we can pray for you.  [Big wait –Stand now].  Would folk please gather around them and place their hands on their shoulders as we pray.

Prayer:

Father, I pray for these people who are standing… they are trusting in you by standing up.  Reward their trust.  Meet them at the point of need or opportunity.  Demonstrate your power.  Demonstrate your goodness to them.  As they step out this week show them who you are –a powerful and caring God.

And I pray for those in the seats   For the apathetic and for the scared who worry what following Jesus will be like –give the bored a new vision of who you are the courage to pursue it.

And for those who already know what I’m talking about Lord turn the intensity up.  As they trust in you may they meet you more deeply in their daily walk and have many stories of what you have done to bring back to their families and small groups this week.  In Jesus name. Amen!

Over the last few weeks I’ve been pondering the whole question of friends: ‘how do we make friends?  How do we make better friends?’

Last week as I was looked out over the Combined congregation I was pondering that same question.  We live in such an ethnically diverse community.  The experts rate Auckland as ‘super-diverse’ –even more diverse than Sydney.  Auckland can be a very lonely place to live in or move into, so how do we connect with people?

My answer last week was ‘hospitality.’  Show hospitality to each other, but what I realise is that we need far more than this.  What we need are the skills to know how to make new friendships and how to strength the old ones we have.

E.g. I’ve probably shared with you that at the start of the year I started attending the Pakuranga Running Club on Monday nights.  At 6pm a group of people gather for a 5km run.  It’s the first time in ages I visited a new group, so I turned up a few times, spoke to other runners, talked to the President and finally helped set up in order to get to know people, but nothing seemed to happen.  Finally I prayed “Lord, please help me to have just one really good conversation with someone.”  I did.  It turned out he was a visitor from another club just there for that night!  My friends said, “You need to give things more time,” and I agree, but I wonder if it is an issue for any others of us, ‘How do you break in?’

I mean, is it me or have you found yourself asking that same question?  You move up and into a new school and a new classroom.  You have to figure out how to fit in.  You change jobs.  There’s a new crew to get used to.  What do you do?  You might be new here at church, or it simply might be that you need to grow a wider circle of friends at church (this can often happen as groups change).  Have you found yourself asking the same question?

Because we all need friends. Just recently I’ve been reading a good book called ‘Educating Boy’s’ and it makes the good point that boys need friendships at different levels in order to thrive.  They need 2-5 close mates, a group of 10-20 other friends, 20 or more peers -and they’ll also have a wide group of contacts that is constantly changing.  But this is true, not just for boys, but for everyone.

For example, it was true of Jesus.  He had Peter, James and John who were His close mates.  He had twelve disciples and others who made a wider group of friends.  Then there were other peers, and beyond that was ‘the crowd.’  It’s fascinating how Jesus, the Son of God, still needed friends, and if Jesus needed friends, then do we.  As the old quote goes, “No man is an island…”

So how do we make friends and keep them?

Well one friendship that has always intrigued me in the Bible is Jesus friendship with Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  It’s unusual because they weren’t part of Jesus chosen band of disciples, and it’s unusual because in that culture two of them were women.  Martha and Mary were sisters who lived together in the village of Bethany, about 3-4 km east of Jerusalem.  Their brother Lazarus appears to have lived off and on with them.  Jesus built a good friendship with them and I think there‘s a lot that we can learn from them.

1. Their friendship begins in Luke 10:38 when it says “As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.” This tells us that ‘Good Friendships start with an invitation.’ Martha invited Jesus to visit her home.

Now it takes a lot of courage to approach a famous Rabbi like Jesus.  His followers would have surrounded him.  There may have been crowds around him.  He was only 3-4km from his destination.  He had more important things to do surely.  Why stop now?  But Martha displayed great courage to invite Jesus in.

And that’s how all great friendships begin –they begin with a bold invitation.  You can’t sit around hoping that others will invite you.  Sometimes you have to take your courage in hand and take a risk in inviting someone.

In fact it doesn’t even have to be a very good invitation at times.  I remember the first time I asked Nan Yong out on a date.  It was totally klutzy.  She was the first Korean I’d ever meet.  There was a Korean Cultural exhibition on in town.  I said to her “I’m interested in Korean culture.  You’re a Korean.  Would you like to take me along?”  In the end we couldn’t get tickets and we wound up seeing “Sleepless in Seattle” instead.  She liked it.  I thought it was dreadful, but more importantly we are still friends!  That’s how our friendship started.

But also to put the shoe on the other foot, one of the things is that you need to do is to recognise invitations.  It might be that someone is making an invitation to you and you can’t see it yet.  You know so often we are looking at the people we want to be friends with and we completely miss the people who want to be our friends in the process.  Are you doing that?  I remember inviting a guy ages back to come along for a game of ten pin bowls.  He said, “no, but if you’re ever going to play pool, let me know.”  I’m not sure he understood what was actually going on.  It wasn’t so much about playing ten bin bowls or pool at all.  It was about getting to know him better, but he missed the cue.  So make (and learn to spot) invitations.

2. But then we notice that Martha offered Jesus hospitality.  The text implies that she made him a meal.  This was their way of inviting him into their lives so another step is that ‘Good Friendships begin with hospitality.’

But I think this is where many of us get stage fright.  We don’t know what to do.  You know “If I ask someone, and they say “Yes,” what do we do, and when do we do it?”  Have you ever seen the toilet cleaner advert where the mother in law comes over and the women of the house panics and rushes around trying to clean up her house in time?  Some of us are like that.  We make hospitality way too complicated.  We set the bar way too high.  It often much better if we just keep the hospitality simple.  So don’t clean the house (much.  Just a little).  Don’t cook a five-course roast meal.  Find something nice and straightforward.  The main thing is not to ‘do’ hospitality but to be hospitable in our attitudes.

So what about these for ideas?  Go to MacDonald’s or Wendy’s!  (oops, no advertising).  Check out a new restaurant in the Entertainment Book (“Hey, we’re going.  Would you like to come too?”)  Invite them over for X-Box –depending on their age.  Go out for a picnic (but not today).  Suggest a movie.  Catch up for coffee some day.  Watch the Warriors (if you dare).  Share the gift of Sky with someone during the Tri-nations.  Invite them along to a club you attend.  Take them on a hike or a bike ride.  Have them home for soups and sandwiches.  Get them to help you with a job around the house!  (Free labour!)

The main idea is to invite them to do just whatever you are doing.  Do you eat out?  Just add one or two.  Is your home group having a social event?  Just add one or two.  Are you going to watch sport?  Just add one or two?  Are you going to the WOW exercise group?  Just add one or two.

Okay, you do have to be a little careful in your choices.  I once asked a mate to come and match the movie ‘1984,’ the most depressing movie ever made.  We couldn’t talk to each other for a week after that, but generally most people are pretty forgiving.  Some folks will remember for years that you asked them out.  They’ll really appreciate your efforts as Jesus clearly appreciated Martha’s.

3. But as we carry on in the passage, notice what happens next.  A dispute arises between Martha and Mary.  Martha is busy in the kitchen preparing the food.  Mary is swanning around in the lounge listening to Jesus.  Luke 10:39-42 says, “She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.

But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.  She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?  Tell her to help me!”   “  Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

What happens is that Martha asks Jesus to be the referee and to tell Mary to help her in the kitchen.  Jesus says Mary is doing the right thing, so what is she doing?  [Pause]  Mary is listening.  Mary is practising the lost art of listening and Jesus considers this to be the better thing.

The thing is that there comes a stage in a friendship where one really needs to listen well.  Listen to these quotes.  Psychologist, Mary O’Reilly says, “Attention and deep listening are important.  People are dying in spirit for lack of it.”  Kathleen Fischer says, “When I listen to other women and they listen to me we get such tremendous hope from listening to each others stories.”  Writer, Eugene Peterson says “Listening is in short supply in the world today; people aren’t used to being listened to.”  People aren’t used to being listened to in this world, and if you can listen to a person, to what they are really saying, you have the opportunity to get to know them better on a deeper level.  That’s partly what Jesus was getting at.

So remember to ask questions of people.  Start with the typical ones.  Where are you from?  What do you do?  How do you feel about the netball?  What do you think of politics?  Maybe even throw in a few slightly unusual ones, like ‘what’s been one of the most exciting things you’ve ever done?”  Find out what gets the other person talking and then simply listen.  Don’t interrupt except to keep the conversation going.  You’ll be giving them a gift.  You’ll be offering them more than simply food.  It will be food for their soul.  ‘Good Friendships continue with listening.’

4. But notice also that Mary and Jesus had found a common interest.  We’ll assume it was there, but it’s natural to suppose that Mary and Jesus were interested in God.  That was probably why they were engrossed in conversation.  They had found a topic of mutual interest.  This tells us that ‘Good friendships share a common interest.’ They just go so much easier.  So look for that common interest with a person.  Look for that key.  Keep asking questions until you find them.  It might start with food, movies, travel, sport, and lead on from there.  It doesn’t matter what it is -it could be anything.  It could be computers, current affairs, fishing, kids, home repairs, cooking, and the things you’ve been learning about God.  If people are your spiritual brothers and sisters it will ideally be spiritual matters, but find something in common if you want to take the next step in friendship.

And do let others know your own interests and hobbies too.  What I mean is that it is very hard to befriend people who are like a blank wall.  For example, for quite a while Nan Yong and I tried to befriend a couple who we hoped would link up with our church.  What we realised though was that they had no real interests outside their kids that we could talk of.  So there was nothing to grab hold of.  There was nothing else we could discuss in conversation.  It was like trying to climb to the top of Mount Aoraki without any handholds.  Are you like that?

Then help people know what you’re passionate about.  And find out what they like.  One interest in common can lead to hours of fun and fruitful conversation, like for Jesus and Mary.

5. But we also need to give friendships time.  Because ‘Good friendships take time and investment.’ Good friendships take time and regular contact in order to grow.  Jesus friendship with Martha, Mary and Lazarus starts with this story, but what you’ll notice later is that Jesus often stopped in when going past to Jerusalem.  In other words, He kept up regular communication.  He stayed in touch.

This too is a key to friendships.  As I often say to people it can take 6-12 months to make good friends at church.  There’s a sense in which you have to stick it out and keep working at those friendships.  You have to invite, entertain, listen to and share your interests until those good friendships grow.

And when you do, the result will be a friendship that is significant and lasting for you.  For if you turn to John 11 there you’ll see how much their friendship really came to mean to Jesus -because as the time went by it became increasingly difficult for Jesus to visit Bethany.  Jesus first year of ministry is called the ‘Year of Inauguration,’ the second is called the ‘Year of popularity,’ but the third year is called the ‘Year of Opposition.’  By the third year of ministry Jesus was headed into deep conflict.  He was becoming a marked man.  The religious leaders of Israel were actively seeking reasons to arrest Him so when a message came from Martha saying “please come to Bethany and help us, Lazarus has died” the disciples thought Jesus was risking His life to help them.  “Thomas (called the Twin) said to his fellow disciples, “Let us all go along with the Teacher, so that we may die with him!” (John 11:16).  Yet Jesus went.

As it turned out Thomas was right.  Once Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead the Pharisees then decided to kill Him.  None-the-less Jesus made the dangerous journey up to Jerusalem to help his friends.  After all friends do that.  Friends help each another.  Friends take risks for their friendship.  And you’ll see that the favour was returned in John 12 when, despite the danger to Lazarus, Mary, Martha, they courageously gave a dinner in honour of Jesus.  They had built such a good friendship that nothing, not even the fear of death, could get in its way.

Isn’t this the kind of friendship that everyone would want?

So let me ask you a few questions.  Let’s do a quiet little audit to work out what your friendship index is like and what you might need to work on.  Answer these questions for yourself.

1.  When was the last time you gave an invite to someone?  Are there invites you have overlooked or missed?  2. Do you invite people to join you for meals or other events in your life?  3. Do I really listen?

4. Am I interested in finding out other people’s interests?  Am I good at sharing mine?  5. Do I follow up the friendships I have already begun?

Now don’t pick all five to consider.  Just chose one, that stands out to you as an area you need to work on.  It might be giving or accepting invitations.  It might be including other in what you are doing.  It might be learning to listen.  It might be finding out other people interests or sharing yours.  It might be following up on friendships that you have begun.  What is it for you? Can I encourage you to do that this week?

Because can you imagine how might it bless PBC if we were good at making friends?  And how might it help our neighbourhood, our school or our workplace, if we were better at starting friendships?  I think this world would be a much better, happier place if we did this, so let’s start today.  And if it’s in your heart to have healthier, happier friendships with the people around you, can I invite you to stand as I pray.  Let’s pray…

As I look around I can see people from many different ‘neighbourhoods’ and backgrounds.  One thing about these combined services is that there is a whole lot of variety amongst us.

For start we have five main languages: English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Samoan, and Korean.  We represent many different nations, different ethnic groups, different villages, different suburbs, different social classes and different backgrounds.  Even amongst people who look the same we can be different.

For example, when I was learning Maori, they had words for ‘live in,’ ‘work in’ and to come from.  There was a word like “toku Kainga”, which spoke of your place of belonging, your ancestral roots, and your mountain.  The other day I was with three Europeans when we realised that we were all from the South Island, and not from Auckland originally!

But all this variety raises a big question -as Hamish Keith said in a recent art programme, “We all came here in different boats, but now we are all in the same boat.”  So how are we going to get on?  How do we get on as a nation and as Christians together when we are all normally proud of the different ‘neighbourhoods’ and traditions that we come from?

1. Jesus addressed this issue one day in a parable. It’s the lectionary reading for this Sunday.  When someone asked Him ‘who is my neighbour?  Who are the people I’m supposed to love and care for?”‘  He told them the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:30-37.

(30) Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers.  This road was very steep, rugged and it was easy to ambush people on the bends. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.  (31) A priest who had been worshipping in Jerusalem happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.  (32) So too, a Levite, a Temple worker, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

(33) But a Samaritan, who was despised by the Jews as a half bred and a heretic, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.  (34) He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.  Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him.

(35) The next day after looking after him he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper.  ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

(36) Jesus “Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”  (37) The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”  Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

2. So we are faced with the question ‘who is my neighbour?’ and we must respond.

The thing is that we can be very proud of our churches and our traditions.  We can feel very secure in our cultures and our churches ways of doing things, but Jesus calls us to reach out to the strangers and newcomers amongst us.  He asks us to go beyond our comfort zones.

So how do we do this?

Well the young people told us earlier in their readings –through Hospitality.  Romans 12:13 says “Practice hospitality.”

Here are three suggestions on how you can do this:

1. Simply cross the room

Early last year we did a course by Bill Hybels called “Just cross the room…”  It was about how he can help people come to faith in Jesus.  He said the key is to just walk across the room and to greet someone new.

That can feel a little artificial thing, but you can make the right choices.  Instead of looking at the floor as you walk past someone, smile and greet them.  Instead of just reading the banners on the wall, turn and say hullo to the person beside you.  Or once you have said “Hullo’ then ask some questions like where are you from, and what do you do?  The Samaritan crossed the road and so can we cross a room.

2. Secondly invite a stranger at church for a meal. Invite them to a restaurant (Yum Char) or your house for sandwiches or a church meal, like an umu or hangi.

You might have to spend a bit more on money on food, but you were probably going anyway, and it’s important to do this because we have to invite newcomers not just into our churches, but into lives and our homes, and eventually into our hearts.

The Samaritan paid for the man’s food and bed.  He gave hospitality.  That’s what we can do.

3. Thirdly we must suspend our stereotypes long enough to get to know each other as people. We must get past our prejudices and appreciate the good in people.

E.g. The Samaritan had a battle with the Jews.  When a Samaritan village refused to welcome Jesus as a Jew his disciples said, “Lord, why don’t you nuke them?  Or call down fire from heaven and destroy them?”  The Jews would never dream that a Samaritan would treat a Jew like this, but he did!  Here was something the Jews could have learnt from him, and there is always something that we can learn from others.  Every tradition, every background, every person has something interesting and valuable that we can learn.

The Samaritan showed compassion to the Jew.  I wonder, what the world would look like if did that for each other?

C. The supreme example of hospitality of course is this one [Hold up wall hanging of Lord’s Supper]. In our prayer chapel we have a faded wall hanging.  It’s a Jewish scene set in medieval European style on a Pacific Island (?) medium.

In the middle we have Jesus:

1. God from heaven –who crossed the road (came to earth) to us

2. He is offering a meal to his disciples.  God and man are sat down at the same table.  It is symbolic of God offering us each eternal life.

3. But note the key things: your side of the table is open –open for folk like you and me, for the whole wide world, to come in!

Now I don’t know what Pastor James wants to say about The Lord’s Supper, but right at the heart of the Christian faith is God’s hospitality to us, so we must take Jesus words from the Parable of the Good Samaritan and “Go and do likewise” this week.

Looking at our new sermon series today I suppose we should be talking about football.  Football would be very topical at the moment (wouldn’t it), but I think the ‘Sex and the City’ movie released in NZ recently raises a whole lot of stuff that we need to talk about as Christians.  How many of you will confess to seeing it?

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, it is kind of fun because it’s focused upon fashion and you get to see the very latest in fashion styles, but it is also quite disturbing.  As an elderly woman (a heroine of mine) explained when she was interviewed about the movie, she said, “It’s about a group of women who are more concerned about which dress they will wear than which man they will sleep with.”

Maybe there is a generation gap, but somewhere in last 40-50 years something has gone seriously astray in our society.  And not just for the general public, but also for Christians.  We have become unsure about our standards of sexuality.  Over the last year people have asked me a number of questions about what do Christians think of sex.  For instance, is it okay for people who aren’t married to sleep together?  What about gays –are they welcome at church?  How about divorce and remarriage?  So I want to try and answer these questions from a Biblical and evangelical perspective over the next three weeks.

Now I’m aware though that culturally some of you will be uncomfortable.  “No sex please, we’re British.”  Or “No sex please, we’re Asian or Kiwi or whatever.”  But can I encourage you to bear with us, because the question is whether you and your household would rather get your guidance from the media, from shows like ‘Sex and the City,’ or from the wisdom contained in God’s word?

-Anyway one of the major facts that we all have to face is that this world has changed forever since the 1960’s. We cannot simply put things back in the box and go back to the way things were.  There is no going back to the past.  Western society is in the middle of a major social change right now that is affecting personal relationships right across our planet.  Other civilisations like Islam are only just beginning to grapple with it, but you and I are in the middle of it.  What is this change?

Well George Friedman, a leading futurologist from the United States says that the situation facing women has changed so thoroughly in the last few years that life will never be the same again.  For example, in the 1800’s the average number of children per woman in Europe was what?  6.5-8 kids!  Now not all those children survived, but it made economic sense to have as many kids as you could, because the more hands you had working down on the farm the greater your security in old age.  Since women died relatively young in those days, this meant that they spent most of their lives raising kids.

But compare that to now days.  Today most women tend to marry much later in life, around about 28 or older (if they marry at all) and they might have on average two kids before going back to work (usually when the second child starts school at 5).  This means that the total time when childbearing is the ‘primary’ activity of a woman is now only eight years.  Given that modern women tend to live to 80 years on average –this means that the modern woman is only engaged in full time childbearing for just 10% of her life!

Okay it’s not as easy as it sounds, but the net result is that today’s women quite simply don’t need men and marriage as much.  As one bumper sticker said, “A woman needs a man in the same way that a fish needs a bicycle!”  Quite simply the time in which women need a man’s support and his money is now much more limited, and with an adequate social welfare system there is little or no economic necessity for marriage.  So why do people get married and stay married now days?  It’s for love -and we all know how fickle love is, don’t we?  The old social pressures on how one should behave (like village life with everyone telling you what to do), the financial constraints of having kids for years on end, and a legal system that once favoured marriage over being single are now mostly gone.  There is a remarkable degree of freedom for folk to hook up with whoever, whenever, “whatever” and that’s clearly what large numbers of folk are doing.  The question you have to answer is ‘how do we as God’s people adjust to this new reality that we live in?’

-Well one major argument is that while the world has changed a lot, human nature and spirituality have not changed that much! In some sense we have been in this quandary before!  The passage that we read earlier, for example, was addressed to the church in Corinth, which was a city in southern Greece, which sat on a 6km long strip of land between northern and southern Greece.  This city was morally corrupt even by Roman standards and it was renowned for its depravity -because high above the city on an acropolis stood the Temple of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.  At one stage her temple housed over 1,000 priestess or religious prostitutes who would come down after dark and offer their ‘worship’ in the city at night.  This was a very popular attraction for travellers and locals alike.  (Think of Las Vegas –what comes to mind?  Gambling!  Think ‘Bangkok’ –what comes to mind?  Maybe rioting, but also prostitution?  Think ‘Corinth?’  You get the picture).  Life expectancy in Corinth was around about 25-35 years tops and with all the free sex going on in the streets the idea of staying faithful to one person for life was quite novel.

So imagine growing up in this culture and then becoming a Christian.  What would it have been like?  They lived in an over-sexed culture.  They must have found it very hard to break free of this mindset.  Much like many children today –these people did not know of any other way of life!  As a result they had a man in their church fellowship who was committing incest with his stepmother and no one batted an eyelid.  In fact they felt kind of proud to have him around to show just how modern they were, and just to complicate matters further Christianity had given greater freedom to the women.  God had given women spiritual gifts and they were playing a leading role in this new movement.  But now some married women in the fellowship were wondering if they could take their newfound freedom a wee bit further by asking, ’is it okay to ditch my unbelieving husband for a higher spiritual purpose?’  So the apostle Paul is forced to offer a crash course in Christian sexuality in order to bring everyone up to speed.  And this is where it gets interesting for you and I because of what Paul does and does not do.

1. What Paul does is that he reminds them of what is right and what is wrong. Whether they are supposed to know right and wrong already, I’m not sure, but he does not try and fudge things.  He doesn’t try and minimise the issue.  Paul just lays everything right out there in the open for everyone to see.  You know sometimes we can be tempted to be very gentle and to downplay things – “It doesn’t matter.  It’s not that bad.  You didn’t know.  You had a good excuse to sin,” but Paul blows the trumpet loud and clear.  Verse 18 is the key.  He tells them that you should not be involved in any kind of sexual immorality at all.  “Flee from sexual immorality.”

The Greek word he uses here for “flee” means ‘to run away, escape, or vanish’ and the word he uses for sexual immorality, ‘porneia,’ covers every kind of sexual behaviour you can conceive of, except for sex between a husband and a wife.  So sexual sin like prostitution is out, adultery (having sex with someone other than your spouse) is out, sex before marriage is out, sex with animals is out, and so is pornography too -pursuing any insatiable lust for sexual pleasure is out in full.  In fact Paul makes matters very clear.  God’s standards have not changed or moved because of their context.  Just because you are Gentile Christians living in the Sex City of the ancient world, you do not receive a special exemption clause.  You are not free to violate any of these values.  This is what is acceptable and unacceptable to God [square].  God has very clear boundaries.

However, where Paul is different is that he tells them why -because the temptation here would be to simply tell the Corinthians (and along with them us too) “do not touch, do not go near, do not get involved” in any kind of sexual sin because I tell you to.  I mean this was Paul’s background in Judaism.  They had some very strong social controls.  After all the Jews knew the score.  He could have threatened these Gentiles with the Ten Commandments, all the punishments of the Old Testament (in Exodus and Deuteronomy), and even the fires of hell.  He could have told them to do what your parents, the church and other authorities tell you to do.  Like a parent he could have said, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord (Col 3:20).”  In other words, he could have tried to assert some form of social control.  He could have put them in a pastoral headlock – “Do as your Pastor tells you to do,” but as we all know being bossy very seldom works.  Don’t we?  Most of us like to make our own way in life and to figure out for ourselves what we need to do, and so Paul offers some reasons why they should go in this direction.

In short Paul’s answer is that, “You are responsible for what you do with your body.  You are responsible for what you do with your body.”

2.  For a start (v12-13) you are responsible for any harm that you do with your body. No one else is.  You are the one.  If any damage is caused through your willing sex with somebody else, then the responsibility usually comes back to you.

The thing is that the people of Corinth had a saying that basically meant ‘I have the right to do anything I like with my body.  I am free.’  Paul says, “Yes, you are free, but you are not free to do harm to yourself or to others.  Even something that is good can enslave you and do harm to others so beware.”  In other words, don’t believe all of the ‘spin’ that you hear.

I don’t know how many of you have heard this story, but recently an Australian woman discovered that her great-Uncle was not only a famous horse thief, who was sent to the Melbourne Gaol, escaped and then robbed the Melbourne-Geelong train six times, before finally being convicted and hung in 1889, but she also discovered that he was the great-uncle of the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as well.  This is the only known photograph of the man, Remus Rudd, standing on the gallows in Melbourne Gaol.

So she emailed the Prime Minister asking him for information and a member of his staff replied: “Remus Rudd was famous in Victoria during the mid to late 1800s.  His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Melbourne-Geelong Railroad.  Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to government service (that’s when he was in prison), finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad.  In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the Victoria Police Force.  In 1889, he passed away during an important civic function held in his honour when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed.”  Now that’s spin for you!

In a similar way Paul points out that you need to be cautious about all the spin surrounding sex.  Sex is not always good all of the time.  There is ‘bad sex.’  For example, we know that you can damage your health through sexually transmitted diseases like Chlamydia, syphilis, or gonorrhoea, or as a large number of women recently found out on TV in Australia you can contract aids by sleeping with strangers.  The wrong use of sex can also destroy homes.  Marriages that were intended for life can be broken, often beyond repair, and children devastated so that they carry the emotional effects well into adulthood (just ask Tiger Woods).  Ultimately the wrong kind of sex can also destroy your soul through guilt, and the loss of friendships whose trust you violated, and it can increase your sense of isolation.  Some reports I have read recently say that sex before marriage actually reduces your chances of being married in the future, reduces the odds of your marriage being a success once started, and raises the likelihood that you will have an affair once married.  I have had to tell quite a few young couples, “You have damaged your future marriage by living together beforehand.  Now what can we do to fix this?”  It would have been far better if they had simply avoided the trouble in the first place.  The bottom line from Paul is don’t believe everything you see at the movies or read in the magazines about sex!  It is only wise within one context and that context is marriage.

2. But more than that Paul goes on to say that you are responsible spiritually for what you do with your body (v13-17).  You are spiritually accountable for your sexual activity.  This is because the Corinthians were saying that ‘Well I can do whatever I like with my body.  It doesn’t affect me spiritually or change me as a person.”  How many of you have heard this expressed before?  In effect they were saying, “Sex is just like food.  Food is made to be enjoyed.  It simply goes into your stomach.  It’s the same thing with sex.  It’s just a physical pleasure to be enjoyed.  Sex is natural.  It’s no big deal!”

However what Paul argues is that you cannot separate the physical from the spiritual and psychological quite so easily.  The holistic view is far more complex.

For instance, did you know that you are your body?  It sounds like an odd comment doesn’t it?  But Paul says that your body is very much a part of who you are and who you will be in the future.  Sorry folk, you can’t get away from it!  For example, your body is not like some disposable container that gets thrown away when you die so that your spirit can float off somewhere else to be with God.  What you do in your body stays with you.  How do we know this?  Well such is God’s care and respect for the body that He raised Christ’s body physically from the dead and one day if you trust in Jesus He will raise your body to new life too.  Although your new body will be different in certain ways from your old body, just as Christ’s body was different in certain ways from before, it will still definitely be the same you.  There will some form of continuity.  People will know that your resurrection body is you.  According to the Bible you have an eternal bond with your body.

Secondly did you know that whenever you have sex with someone else you are united with him or her at a profoundly deep level?  However it happens there is a merging of one human being with another so that, in effect, where there were previously two people, now there is only one.  As Jesus says in Matthew 19:4 “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”  Here the word ‘one flesh’ means that you are cemented or glued at a very deep level with another person, and according to Paul that union can be formed just as easily by a one night encounter with a prostitute as on the first night of marriage.  I don’t think we yet know all that this means, but I think it means that us humans carry around in our flesh the memory of everyone we ever willing slept with.  It remains a part of who you are -for better or worse -forever.

Thirdly, when you become a Christian you receive the Holy Spirit and are spiritually united to Christ.  Again in some profoundly deep way your body and soul become a part of the body of Christ.  There is a bond formed between you and Christ who sits at the right hand of the Father (and incidentally a bond is also formed with the rest of us).  So whenever you have sex Paul says you spiritually drag Christ right in there with you -so you’d better make sure you’re having the right sort of sex at that time!  Don’t take God with you on a misdemeanour!  Again we don’t know everything this means, but it’s enough to say that nothing is ever hidden from the eyes of God.  Stay holy.  Stay holy!

Anyway the guts of Paul’s argument is this.  The Corinthians are saying, “Sex is nothing.  It simply affects your body.  It is only skin deep.”  Paul says that on the contrary sex affects you at the very deepest of human levels, so be spiritually responsible in the use of your body.

3. And then finally Paul points out that you are responsible for the good that you can do with your body. Your body has tremendous potential, so use it for good -use it in the right way, use it in the way for which it was intended.

The thing is that if you let it, this world will try and squeeze you into its mould.  It will try to tell you that your body is just a toy -that you are in fact just a toy, just a bundle of uncontrollable appetites just needing to be fulfilled.  That’s the message that the Corinthians heard.  “If it feels right, if it feels good, if it’s convenient, then just do it.  Just do it!  It’s your body and you’re going to die one day so have sex whichever way –whatever way you can.”  This world if given its way will often try and turn you into some kind of animal or sex object.  Paul says ‘Don’t let it!  Don’t let it!”  You are worth so much more.  You are worth so much more.

I hope you know it.  The men and women of this world certainly need to know it.

Look quite a number of years ago I heard a young woman speak who had been a groupie, I think with Mick Jagger’s group, but I could be wrong.  She described how she had come from an abusive background.  Her father had sexually abused her at 13 and so she’d grown up thinking there was only one reason why she would ever appeal to men.  You can guess what it was and she decided to exploit it.  She was attracted to the lights and glamour of the rock world and so she began to hang around various groups.  In the end she was taken in by one of the men and she would just make herself available whereever she was needed, if you know what I mean.

For a long while it looked good on the outside.  On the outside, living with the gods of the rock music life looked really good, but one day she said she realised that the sex, drugs and rock and roll really wasn’t really cutting it.  She figured that there had to be more to life than this.

Maybe she was growing up, but one day, somehow, I don’t remember how, someone told her about Jesus, and she began to catch of glimpse of what that was.  She heard about how Jesus came and died for her on the cross –so she could have an eternal relationship with God.

It was then she realised that God was different.  God loved her for herself, not just for her body.  Right away she stopped sleeping with the guys.  She couldn’t do it anymore for she discovered that she had become the Temple of the Holy Spirit.  God was changing her inside, making her different, and making her to want things that she had never wanted before.  Like to be holy.  Like to be pure.  Like to be good.  She began to realise that she needed to treat herself and her body with new dignity, new respect and a new worth.

In the end she left and got board with a Christian family.  She joined a local church and got good Bible input.  She sorted out her life and then around the time of her baptism decided to dedicate her life to God’s service.  When I last saw her she was travelling around the world with YWAM telling young people about God’s goodness, telling everyone she meet about God’s awesome love.

I simply mention her because what the men and woman of this world really need is a higher vision of what life is all about.  They need to lift their eyes a little.  If you have only eighty years to live, then you need to know that you are worth so much more than just your body’s appetites.  You are so much more than just sex.  You are God’s beloved children.  You are God’s beloved people.

See things from God’s point of view.  See things from God’s perspective.  In the end your body doesn’t belong to you any more.  Christ purchased you on the cross.  You and your bodies now belong to God.  Your body is simply back on loan.  God has made you a dwelling for the Holy Spirit.  You are now part of His church dedicated to the service of God, so make sure that your whole life is used for this highest of callings.  Make sure you treat your body with the dignity and respect it deserves and serve God and His purposes.  Verse 20 is a key.  Serve God with your body!  Glorify God with your body!  Honour God with your body!  Give Him your very best!  Make your choices, but whatever you do, do it all for God.  In the end you are responsible for the use of your body to God so offer your best for His highest.  Let’s pray…

Some of you will remember that just before Christmas I gave you all a challenge.  I challenged you to look at four different areas of your life (the social, physical, mental and spiritual) and to make goals in each of these.  Being a man who wants to practise what I preach I did the same exercise myself.  I sat down and decided that I needed to make changed in the ‘Physical’ are in particular.  You see I was just playing at doing fitness.  I did a little swimming here, a little walking there.  I stuff around.  I decided that I needed to compete in something and I decided to train for a half marathon.

So I downloaded my training schedule and commenced 4 months of training.  And the result was that last weekend I competed in the 30^th Huntly Half Marathon and came in 1^st (wait) -801^st.  Okay 801^st doesn’t sound as great as 1st, but it was a great effort for me.  My aim was to run 21km in just under 2 hours and I did it!  On top of that it was the 30^th anniversary of the race and they promised a medal to everyone who finished the course, so I can also honestly says I won this silver medal!  It was a great experience and I encourage others of you to do it.

And what I learnt from it was several things about the importance of setting goals and just getting on with getting things done.  I mean we can be great procrastinators can’t we?  But what I discovered is that: a. setting a goal means we can finally complete what we have been meaning to do.  I’d been pottering around for years hoping one day that I would get healthy.  Setting a goal meant I finally got one with it.

b. There were benefits along the way that I didn’t quite expect.  I lost over 5kgs.  I feel fitter and leaner.  There’s the satisfaction of having done the race.  c. And chasing the goal has brought me to a place with new horizons.  One goal I have is to walk across Mt Tongariro.  In the past I was reluctant to do it, thinking I wasn’t fit enough, but now I know I can do it, so I will.  There’s also a kind of madness that’s associated with running.  On the way home I was praying, “O God, it hurts so much!” and then in the next breath, “Lord, when can I do this again?”  Hopefully in the Auckland half marathon in October, but what I’ve learnt is the power of goals -of simply getting on with things.  Maybe you have discovered this in other areas of your life?

Which kind of leads me on to this question: Why aren’t more people in a hurry to be baptised?  Why do some people keep putting off and putting off their baptism sometimes even for years?  Jesus says very clearly in scripture, Matthew 28:19, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” If people can see the obvious power of achieving goals in other areas of their life like career, health, relationships, and travel, then why not get on with the essential spiritual goals?  Why shouldn’t you be baptised?

I. To answer this question we are going to look at the story of two men who wrestled very briefly and yet decisively with this question.  The main character was an Ethiopian eunuch, the financial manager of the Queen mother of Ethiopia.  This was a very well connected man.  In our account in Acts 8 he was travelling from Jerusalem where he had been worshipping God back to his home.  He was a convert to Judaism.  He was travelling along in a chariot, which was rare to own in those days, so he was essentially travelling business class, and reading aloud from his Bible as he rode along.  (Reading out loud was the custom in those days).

Two things stand out about this man from the text: a.  He was someone who was spiritual, even religious.  He clearly had an awareness of God.  He had acted on that knowledge by becoming a Jew.  b. Yet he was still lost.  He had not found God.  He still had a hunger and a willingness to learn.  He did not have a closed mind, but was open to new information that would help him.

So God sends the second character, Philip, to speak to him.  Philip walks alongside his chariot and gets talking with him.  ‘What are you reading?’ he asks.  It’s a very natural question.  (Talking openly about your faith is a natural thing).  So the Ethiopian invites him up into his chariot where Philip talks to him about Jesus and shows him how Jesus is the answer to His spiritual questions.  The Ethiopian agrees right away.  He’s an intelligent and practical man.  They come upon a pool of water and so he immediately requests baptism.  He says, “Look, here is water.  Why shouldn’t I be baptised?”

Now this is interesting because it shows that baptism in water was part and parcel of following Jesus at that time.  From earliest days of the church it was simply expected that if you believed in Jesus you would be baptised.  It’s not some later invention thought up by water loving clergyman.  The church didn’t invent it later on.  Jesus Himself commanded it.  “He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.  Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned (Mark 16:15-16).”  And the apostles practiced it as well.  When the people said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”  Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.  And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:37-38).

So baptism is expected, but this raises for Phillip a very important question that we would do well to ask, ‘What ought to delay someone from being baptized, and what should not stop someone from being baptized right away?’

1. To address one issue at a time -there appear to be two, possibly three reasons, why a person should not be baptised. In other words there are 2-3 pre-requisites for baptism.

a. The first is that you must have faith.  If you do not have faith in Jesus Christ, you should not be baptised.  In Acts 8:37 Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may” be baptised.  The eunuch answered, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God” and so he was baptised.  Jesus Himself also stressed the importance of faith.  As we read before in Mark 16:16 there is always a pattern.  You believe and then you are baptised.

It may helpful to mention here that there are several popular views of baptism.  From the first perspective baptism is like an automatic operation.  This view believes that when you are baptised, regardless of what you believe and whether you believe, you are somehow changed.  Whether you want it or not, like it or not, believe it or not, this theory goes that baptism changes you as a person.  Some churches like the Roman Catholic Church have at times believed something close to this.  When a baby is baptised ‘hey presto’ (wave the magic wand) they somehow receive forgiveness and the Holy Spirit at that moment.

There is another view of baptism, however, that says that baptism actually does nothing.  It changes nothing at all!  This view says that baptism is simply an outward symbol of an inward invisible change that has already taken place.  The important work has already been done.  Baptism is simply a drama -a dramatic way of telling everyone.

In some ways these views are at opposite ends of a spectrum.  There is a third view that says that the truth is somewhere in between.  In this view baptism is like receiving your entitlement to a promise.  You might receive the gift of forgiveness and the Holy Spirit, which Jesus has promised to you, before, during or after your baptism, but in your baptism it is yours by right in faith!  If nothing has already happened, then by faith you now have it!  The major thing for our discussion today is, though, that you need to have faith in Jesus before you are baptised.

2. The second thing is that you should not be baptised if you have not repented.  You need to repent first.  Repentance is the second major pre-requisite for baptism.  Repentance basically means to have a change of heart and mind that shows itself in regret and in a change of conduct.  It’s where a change of heart and mind leads to a change of lifestyle.  We often associate such a change with sorrow over our past sinful actions, but this is not the main point.  The main point is simply that you have changed your mind about life and that you want to serve God alone and to go God’s way.

In the Ethiopians case this probably wasn’t such a big deal because he had already decided to go God’s way.  It was his beliefs about Jesus, not his lifestyle that needed to change, but I’m sure Phillip could have quoted the words of Acts 3:19 to him if he had needed to.  “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord (Acts 3:19).”  What’s clear is that you can’t carry on as you did before.  You can’t be baptised and merely pay lip service to doing what God wants!  There’s genuine repentance that’s needed.

3. And the third reason why you should not be baptised is if you don’t have enough  [pause] water!  Look I know this is a bit of a ‘no-brainer’, but you need sufficient water in order to be immersed.  The Greek word for baptism, Baptizo, means to dip under, to plunge into or to immerse.  A literal translation of baptizo into English is “dipping” or “plunging” or as we sometimes like to say ‘dunking.’  This requires plenty of water.

Baptizo also happens to be the same word that the ancient Greeks used for washing the dishes[1].  Baptism is to do with washing away your sin.  Acts 22:16 says, “Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.” How much water do you require to baptise your dishes?  Enough to wash them in!  It’s the same with baptism.

So if there is no water, then that hinders baptism, but with all the rain that we have had in the last few weeks that is hardly going to be a problem, so there are only two things that need hold up baptism –genuine belief and repentance.

2.  Yet the truth is that people often allow other things to keep them from being baptized. They let other unnecessary things get in the way of getting on with their spiritual lives.  Let’s take a quick look at some of the things that should not slow you down from baptism.

a. There is pride.  Some people are too proud to admit that they need forgiveness and that they need to be baptised.  They don’t want to be humble and knuckle down to God’s way of doing things.  Naaman, the Syrian general, was a man like this.  He went to the prophet Elisha and asked for his help to get rid of a dreadful skin disease.  Elisha sent a message telling him to get baptised seven times in the Jordan River.  Naaman was very angry and insulted.  He said the Jordan is a muddy ditch.  We have much nicer rivers at home, but his servants said to him, “If he asked you to do something great or heroic, you would have been glad to do it, so why not do this simple thing that he asks.”  So Naaman swallowed his pride, was baptised in the Jordan River and his skin was completely healed!

There will always be people who think that they deserve a different method or they should be made a special exception, but there are no exceptions.  The Ethiopian man could have argued his case for being a very important man and not needing to be baptised, but he probably knew that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6).”  Pride keeps God at arms length.  Pride should never be allowed hamper someone from being baptized.

b.  And sometimes there is family.  Some people are concerned about what their family will say if they are baptised, and they might be afraid of being disowned.  I don’t know that this was much of a problem for the eunuch.  Sometimes it’s easier being single, but people do worry.  I worried what my parents would think.  I hesitated before being baptised by immersion, although I shouldn’t have bothered.  They didn’t mind.  I think now days it’s becoming less of a problem, but Jesus made it clear that family should not prevent us from doing what He wants.  Sometimes you simply have to decide what’s your top priority.  As Jesus says in Matthew 10:37-38 “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; (38) and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” The bottom line is you have to figure out what is ultimately important –God or your family.  Family should not hinder anyone from being baptized

c.  Likewise some people worry about peer pressure.  They are afraid that people will laugh at them or brush them off because of their faith.  You might worry about what your mates at school or work will say.  Certainly peer pressure kept some of the Jews from following Jesus.  They were afraid of what the Pharisees might say.  They were concerned that they might get kicked out of their synagogues.  Again Jesus makes it clear that we should not let what others think not sway us.  He said, “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels (Luke 9:26)” so peer pressure should never be a reason for not being baptised.

d. Some people of course argue though that they have already been baptised –as an infant!  This is another reason some people offer to put baptism off.  Now the Bible clearly says, “Believe and be baptised,” not “be baptised and believe” so there shouldn’t be any much argument over this one.  Do you follow the clear teachings of the Bible or the teachings of man?  But you may wish to consider this.  Although the majority opinion is that the eunuch was not yet a Jew, there is some opinion that this man was already a full convert to Judaism.  The eunuch may already have been a baptized by immersions as a Jew, but this did not stop him from being baptised again when he became a follower of Jesus.  So in the same way you might have been baptised as an infant –before you personally heard of Christ, but we are happy to baptise you now that you have.  Many of us here were baptised as babies and have chosen believer’s baptism.  Don’t let this reason put you off.

But in the end I think the two of the biggest reasons why some people put off baptism are these:  e.  Some people believe that they do not know enough to be baptized.  They think that they don’t have nearly enough information.  They assume that someone must know just about everything that the Bible teaches before they are baptised.  But how much is enough?  E.g. Do you need a PhD in theology?

The baptism of the eunuch, like most baptisms in the New Testament took place after only one discussion –one discussion.  Most baptisms took place pretty smartly.  They did not muck around.  The early church leaders assumed that you would learn all you needed to know later on.  In fact Jesus stated that a lot of the teaching comes after, not before, baptism.  Remember the words of Matthew 28:19-20?  “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” The bulk of teaching follows baptism -so if you believe in Jesus and are willing to follow Him as your Master, then you are ready.

f.  But some people believe that they are still not good enough to be baptized.  Some people think that they must sort out their lives or clean up their act before they be baptised.  Ever felt like that?  Again this isn’t an obstacle.  Just remember this key: baptism is not for the saints.  It’s for sinners.  It’s for ordinary fallible people like you and me.  Why if I was to walk around this auditorium this morning and ask all of the people who have already been baptised to share with us the sins that they are struggling with now, it would be surprising.  It would be very surprising, wouldn’t it!  You would be very surprised.  But the reality is that much spiritual development actually occurs after salvation, not before it.  Baptism is like joining kindergarten.  It’s not a university graduation.  For example, you are not going to display the fruit of the Spirit –love, joy, patience, peace, etc. until after you have received the Holy Spirit and learnt how to resist temptation.  So if someone has repented (that is if they have changed their mind and want to serve God) that is enough.  You are ready.  You see misunderstanding about these kind of things should never hinder anyone from being baptized

f. So how old do you have to be some people ask?  Some people worry that you have to get baptised at the right age or the right time.  They think that it can only take place at certain times.  Let me just say that if you are at secondary school/college or older PBC will baptise you.  And you don’t have to wait until there is a special invitation at the end of a sermon or for a baptismal service to ask for baptism.  You don’t have to wait until you feel like doing being baptised.  The eunuch’s baptism shows that baptism can be done anywhere, anytime.  Time and place needn’t prevent you being baptised, and so if you have not been baptised as a believer, the right time is now.  The right time is now.

C. Look after the eunuch was baptized, he got up and went on his way rejoicing.  The Message Bible says, “When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of God suddenly took Philip off, and that was the last the eunuch saw of him.  But he didn’t mind. He had what he’d come for and went on down the road as happy as he could be (Acts 8:39)”. The eunuch believed that Jesus was the Son of God who died for his sins.  Although it doesn’t say it, we can assume that he repented of his sins, so he was baptised.  He then got up out of the water and got on with his faith.  God had new things for him to do in Ethiopia.  There were new spiritual horizons to be explored.

So if you want that same joy and to get on with your spiritual journey with God, don’t let anything stop you obeying God in this way.  Don’t take this subject lightly.  John Stott says ‘it is the duty of every minister to press upon his or her congregation the obligation and privilege of baptism.  It is the duty of every professing Christians to ask for baptism for themselves.’  Baptism is a gift that Christ and His church offer you.  It’s something that we ought to gladly receive.

c. So I urge you -be baptized as soon as possible, as soon as you believe in Jesus and have decided to follow Him.  This is the first of three very basic spiritual decisions or steps that we need to take in the spiritual area.  I’m talking about the next one next week.

You know the power of setting goals and of simply getting on with things, therefore just get on with baptism if you haven’t done it already and move up to the next level with God.   Here’s a suggestion.  I always put my goals down on a chart.  Today I want you to do something similar.  I find that many folk use ‘Post it’ notes to remind themselves of what to do.  You can put them on your dashboard, your fridge, your treadmill or your Bible.  (Put them on your forehead if you want to).  Would you please open your newsletter?  Would you grab a pen or a pencil?  Write these words down on the post-it note inside the newsletter.  “1. Be baptised (x2).”  Please speak to myself, Pastor Gareth or Pastor Marjory after the service if you would like to learn about how to be baptised.  And as we conclude please keep in mind the words that Ananias said to Paul when he first became a follower of Jesus.  “And now why are you waiting?  Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.” – Acts 22:16

Just this week I heard a joke that I quite enjoyed.  Apparently there was a man who decided to get a talking parrot to keep him company.  So, he went to the local pet shop and spent a fortune on a parrot that the manager guaranteed would talk.  However, when he got the bird home, no matter how hard he tried, he could not get the bird to say a single word.  The next day he went back to the pet store and complained to the manager, but the manager said, “Look, don’t worry about it.  The parrot will talk.  What he probably needs is a ladder to climb upon.”  He bought the ladder home, and it didn’t work.  So he went back to the pet shop and said, “It still doesn’t talk!”  This time the manager suggested that he buy a swing because this would make the bird happy and then he would speak.  But again the same problem occurred.  The bird remained silent, and this pattern continued for several weeks.  Every time the owner complained to the pet store manager, he would suggest that he buy one more gadget for the silent bird.  So over the weeks a series of mirrors, plastic trees, and shiny parrot toys were brought home, but still nothing worked.  The bird flatly refused to speak.  Finally a week later the bird died and the owner sadly returned all the near new gadgets to the pet shop.  The manager was very surprised because the bird had always been so talkative.  He asked, “Did the bird ever say anything…I mean, did he ever utter even one single word?”  The owner replied, “Well actually as a matter of fact, he did.  Just before he died, as he lay on his back, he looked up at me and asked, “Don’t they sell any food at that pet shop?’”

That joke’s a reminder that sometimes we need to get back to the basics.  You need to stick to the basics before you get involved in all the fancy stuff, and last week I talked about the importance of baptism and of simply being obedient to Christ.  No doubt a few of you have got post-notes with the words ‘Be baptised’ stuck up somewhere around your house.  I hope you’ll talk with us soon about setting a date for your baptism, because not being baptised is a bit like running forwards with a bungee cord attached to your waist.  You won’t make the spiritual progress that you want to until you’ve got this matter sorted out with God.

But the issue that I want to talk about this morning affects every one of you, and it’s something that follows hard on the heels of baptism.  Not only is it foundational to your spiritual life, but also it’s the springboard to everything else.  Everyone needs to understand this part well so we are going to look in Romans 12 at this issue.

1. Now just for a bit of background, many people consider the Book of Romans to be the most important book in the Bible.  It’s the famous book in which Martin Luther discovered that you can have peace with God, not through your own efforts, but through His efforts for you.  This insight changed has the whole way we look at God, but unfortunately it has obscured one of the main reasons why the Book of Romans was written in the first place.

You see there was a problem going down in the church in Rome.  The problem was that at the very beginning many of the first Christians were Jewish.  At one stage about a third of the Jews in Jerusalem were Christians and the Roman church reflected this.  The Jews were the largest group in the church.  But in 49AD disputes broke out between Christian and non-Christian Jews in Rome, and the Roman Emperor used this as an excuse to kick all the Jews out.  When the Jews finally filtered back into Rome under a new Emperor they discovered that other people from all over the Empire had occupied many of their seats at church.  Imagine this scenario.  This group (1/3^rd) are Jewish.  This group (2/3^rd) are Gentile.  The Jews are no longer the biggest bunch in church.  The Gentiles have taken over, and they are looking down their noses at the Jews thinking ‘more of us are becoming Christians than of them;’ while the Jews are thinking ‘we want to be Jewish Christians –Christians in our own culture.  Maybe we don’t belong here in this church anymore.’  In effect the church at Rome was starting to come apart at the seams, and so Paul writes to them with some very clear directions.  He has some very strong things to say as he reaches his climax in Romans 12.

Does Paul just suggest that they all head off in different directions and form their own congregations?  No!  Does he say, “Sure, go ahead -do it your own thing!”  Again, no!  What Paul says is (verse 1) firstly offer yourselves to God.  That’s where it all starts.  He says commit yourself heart and soul, boots and all to being a part of God’s will and God’s work.  Like a living sacrifice offer yourself to God as an act of worship by hanging in there with the church in Rome.  Paul says lots of folk have missed out on salvation so far; don’t opt out of the church yourself!  Instead commit yourself to God and to His people.

Then he urges them to change their minds (v2).  He says don’t think the way the world does.  Don’t adopt their standards and behaviour.  You’re not like them in the first place so don’t go down that track.  Let God teach you what to think and then your behaviour will follow.  Then you’ll know what’s best and right to do in this and in every situation.  Humble yourself a little bit more (v3).  Don’t think of yourself as being better than each other.  Don’t think of yourself as a Jew or a Gentile more highly than you ought.  Learn to submit to one other.  Don’t be all high and mighty.  The only difference between you is the quality of your faith.

If you do these things what you’ll see is that you are part of one body, one people (v4-7).  You are part of one organism and organisation called Christ’s body.  You belong to each other.  You have spiritual gifts that God has given you to use together.  So if you can prophesy, prophesy.  If you can serve, serve.  If you can teach, teach; if you can encourage, encourage; if you can give, do it generously; and if you can eld, eld!  Don’t stand on the sidelines.  Be involved.  Be an active part of the body.  Then he concludes with a whole lot of other words, but the gist of them is ‘Love each other (v8+).’  Love one other.  So Paul says to the church in Rome, offer yourself to God, change your minds, humble yourself a wee bit more, recognise that you are part of the body of Christ, and love each other.

Look conflict is normal in any church, but what I hope you can see in what Paul says is that God wants you to be committed to His people. God wants His people to be as one.  You see the reality is that Jesus didn’t just come to save persons.  He came to save a people.  He didn’t come just to rescue individuals and to see them baptised.  He’s come to make us one at a very practical level –congregation by congregation.  The message to the church at Rome is that God has taken the Jews and Gentiles and grafted them into one family with gifts and abilities meant for each other, and so if you want to be close to God, you must draw close to this group of same people!

2. And this truth hasn’t changed in over 2,000 years.  You can see this same principle in other parts of the Bible.  For instance the Bible speaks of the ‘Universal’ church and the ‘local’ church.  The universal church is the sum of all Christians everywhere.  Jesus talked about this in Matthew 16:18 when He said, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” When you are baptised you are ‘added’ by the Lord Himself to the ‘universal’ church.  Like Acts 2:41 “Those who accepted His message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.”

A ‘local’ church, however, is a specific group of Christians who function together as a congregation, like in Acts 14:23 where “Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord.” The Bible makes it very clear that involvement in, and commitment to a local church is essential for Christians.  Throughout the New Testament, the pattern of the Christians is to meet in local congregations (e.g. Acts 2:46; 1 Corinthians 14:26; Ephesians 4:16; 1 Timothy 3:15) and in some verses we are even commanded to do so.  “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the Day (of the Lord) approaching (Hebrews 10:25). “  Once you are baptised you should join yourself to a ‘local’ church and when you move joining a new church should be automatic.

There is, in fact, a divine purpose for the local church that impacts every Christian.  The New Testament pictures us belonging to each other, having fellowship together, submitting to elected leadership, building each other up through ministry, being accountable to the Lord through the local church and meeting together regularly.  The classic passage for this is Acts 2:42-47 on the early church.  “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.  All the believers were together and had everything in common…  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.  They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people.” So Christians are obligated to participate faithfully in the life of a local congregation, where-ever possible.

3.  But like the Romans this is something that we frequently struggle to do. Quite a number struggle in this way.  For instance I was very angry to read an article in the newspaper this week that claimed that the younger generation today is one of the most selfish there has ever been.  It said that computer games have made them hard and unfeeling towards others.  I wanted to yell “No way!  That’s not true.  We all struggle.  We are all self-centred.  We all want to float along without getting too involved in the lives of others.”  For example, there are an estimated several thousands believers in Auckland who float around from church to church each Sunday without ever putting their down spiritual roots.  Rick Warren rather unkindly calls them “Bunny believers” because they hop from church to church, and it’s symptomatic of our western culture.  We have become so infected by individualism that we often do things on our own in our own way and we tend to live like spiritual lone rangers.

So what are we to do?  Well God calls us to be obedient and Paul gives us the guidelines in Romans.  Firstly, he says you must commit yourself to God and to His people.  Offer yourself as a living sacrifice.  Commit yourself heart and soul, boots and all to God’s church.  I mean the local church is the hope of the world.  There isn’t some other means.  2.  If necessary, change your mind Paul says.  Don’t think in the way that the world does.  Get God’s perspective.  3.  Humble yourself if you have to.  Learn to submit to one another.  Often people don’t join a church out of pride.  They don’t wish to come under authority for instance.  1 John 4:20 says, “If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar.  For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” In the same way if you cannot submit to your brother or sister whom you have seen, you cannot submit to God who you have not seen.  4.  God also wants to recognise that we are a part of one body.  You belong in a local church with every one else.  We each have spiritual gifts and abilities that each other needs.  And finally 5.  we are to love each other.  In this day and age we need to follow the advice that Paul gives.

4.  But we also have a special tool to help us do this. There is special way in which you can express your commitment to the body of Christ, and this tool is simply called “membership.”  Every Baptist church has a membership and joining the membership is simply the tool that the local church has used for hundreds of years for to help Christians achieve these spiritual goals.  Membership encourages, inspires, clarifies and shapes your commitment to God’s people.

In some ways it’s similar to marriage.  The promises and vows that you make if you marry support and sustain your good intentions through the good times and the bad.  In fact you become a different person by making such promises.  It’s more than just window-dressing.  The ritual of getting married or becoming a member doesn’t just symbolise something; it also enacts it!  You are shaped by the commitments that you make.

For example, I remember when Nan Yong and I got married in February 1995.  We stood in front of two hundred people in the front of church and I made a pledge.  “I, Andrew, take you, Nan Yong, to be my wife.  Where you go, I will go.  Where you live, I will live.  Your people shall be my people, and your God shall be my God.”  In making that promise I become a different person.  I made a commitment that wasn’t there before, and it has made a huge difference in my life.  That commitment has been a source of great joy on many occasions, and it has protected me when I have needed it most.  You know our God is a God of love and faithfulness.  Proverbs 3:3 says, “Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.”

And it’s a similar thing with membership.  It formally binds you into the body of Christ.

Of course some people don’t want to become members.  Some people simply don’t want to get involved or to make that kind of commitment.  That’s sad because they are opting out of something that Christ wants.  There are others, however, who don’t support their churches style, approach, doctrine or beliefs.  Maybe they don’t like some of the members either.  All I can say is that there must be one church somewhere they can approve of!  They must find it and join it!  But maybe they’re not Christians.  In that case it’s fair enough, not to join the membership.

But as Andy Stanley says there must come a time in your life as one grows up where you stop dating the ‘local’ church and you become a member, so I encourage you to become a member of PBC.

C. How do I become a member of a local church?  The first step is investigation.  At most churches they have a newcomers night like we do.  You attend ‘Exploring PBC’ and if you believe you are eligible and want to become a member, you let someone in leadership know.  Then there’s a discussion.  You will be interviewed regarding your Christian faith, church background, present circumstances and plans to participate in the church.  A report is passed on to the elders.  Following a favourable discussion at Elders Board the name of the prospective member is advertised in the church newsletter and church members are invited to comment confidentially on their application.  Finally once the Elders Board approves the application you are welcomed into membership at the next available communion service.

Today we have two people who have done that just recently and we are going to welcome them into the membership of PBC in a moment.  But before we do could you please take the Post it ‘note’ in your newsletter and your pencil and write down today’s theme: “Apply for membership.”

Just to conclude this message I want to show you a clip that Keran sent me this week.  Those of you who are Apple fans will love it.  Take a close look at their instrument and spot what’s different.  You might enjoy it, but the significance for me is that this is a beautiful illustration of what the local church is like when we are all on the same page and working together.  ‘How Great is Our God’ clip -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaJ4A7mXJH8

If you’re interested in world missions, then this is a very exciting time in which to be a Christian.  Although Christianity has remained pretty-much static as a percentage of world population there have been some profound changes happening in recent years.  You don’t get to see or hear much of it here in little old N.Z., but spiritual changes of great magnitude are taking place around the world.  Whatever you might think of the countries and the faiths that I mention consider these facts:

In 1900 Africa had a population of 10 million of which 9% were Christian.  Today the population of Africa is 400 million of which 46% are Christian.  In China where accurate data is very hard to obtain the percentage of Christians is estimated to have grown 20 times since the 19^th century.  There are an estimated 50-70 million Christians in China today.  An official Chinese government report in 2006 put that figure much lower, and yet still reported a 60% increase in just ten years!  In Russia churches of all kinds doubled from 7,500 to 15,000 in the 1990s.  It is reckoned that 20% of Russians moved from atheism to some profession of Christianity at that time, including many leading politicians.  South Korea has become Asia’s first protestant nation.  In 1901 1% of Koreans were Christian.  Today around 40% of South Koreans are.  They support 14,000 missionaries around the world –the second largest group after the USA[1].  However, Singapore (anyone heard of Singapore?) has become a key mission-sending base.  They have one of the highest sending ratios in the world.  And India?  India could soon be competing with Korea as the second-largest missionary-sending country in the world, although the vast majority serve within their own country

In 1960 no Christian was officially allowed to live in Nepal.  Now there is a church in every district of Nepal with estimates of over half a million believers[2].  The number of Christians in Indonesia has grown from 1.3 million forty years ago to over 11 million today, and the US State Department estimates that Protestants in Vietnam may have grown by 600% in the last decade.  South America?  In 1900 it was 100% Roman Catholic with only 50,000 Protestants.  Today it is 15% Protestant, comprising over 64 million people.  And what about other areas of the world?  Although it is always notorious difficult to gauge, the evidence seems to point to more Muslims becoming followers of Jesus in the last twenty years than at any other time in history.

So dramatic changes are happening on the world scene, but what I want to ask you is ‘do you allow your feelings to influence your support of missions?’  These numbers are thrilling, but do you base your support of mission upon how you feel things are going?  The reason I ask this is that a number of years ago I was enjoying a pleasant BBQ with a Korean Buddhist friend, and he turned to me and said, ‘Why are you a Christian?  Not many white people seem to be becoming Christians.  The churches in Europe are quite empty!’  Well, not being used to these kind of conversations I did a momentary panic.  I thought ‘why am I a Christian indeed?’  All of a sudden I forgot my deep Christian heritage, my professional training, and the personal relationship I have enjoyed with God for over 30 years, but then I had to laugh.  This was a version of the numbers game where the team with the best numbers wins, so I simply said, “But Korea was recently reclassified as a Christian nation, so why aren’t you a Christian?”  (Touché!)

-But what about your support of world missions?  Is it like a thermometer?  Do your prayer, support, and giving rocket up and down with the temperature of your feelings?  Are you (dare I say this) like a Warrior’s supporter?  The issue is that world missions and missionaries cannot advance on the strength of your feelings.  They can’t move forward –stop, start, stop, start -depending upon whether you feel good about things.  I believe that what each of us need are good solid reasons for missions that help us focus and support our good intentions in the good times and in the bad.

I believe that some of these reasons can be found in Matthew 13, which we have been examining over the last few weeks.  The thing is that I never saw it before, but during this episode in Galilee the crowd is wavering.  Will they or won’t they follow Jesus?  Opposition is polarising.  Anyone like the disciples could easily ask “Jesus is it worth it?  This nation is too tough.  This effort is too dispiriting.  Why keep going with this part of the mission?  How about we have a break for a cup-of-tea and a nice bikkie?  Let’s stop for a Kit Kat.”  Yet in seven incisive parables Jesus gives us four good reasons for missions.

1.  In the first parable, verses 3-9, Jesus tells the story of a farmer who goes out and sows seed upon his fields.  You’re familiar with it.  Some seed falls on the hard paths and the birds come and carry it away.  Some seed falls on shallow soil, so that it springs up fast, but then dies equally quickly away.  Other seed falls amongst thorns and as it grows up, the thorns choke the living daylights out of it, and finally some seed falls on deep, well-ploughed soil and it produces an excellent harvest –one that is clearly blessed by God.

The conclusion we could easily reach from this parable is that three out of the four soils failed to produce a good harvest.  This is considered normal so in the same way you should not be discouraged if everyone does not accept the good news of Jesus.  You could argue that not everyone will want to follow Jesus, but since Jesus expected and experienced this, we shouldn’t give up and feel down when the same the thing happens to us.

The only thing is that this is like playing in a minor key.  Are you familiar with minor keys on a piano?  My impression of think of them is that they are kind of nice, but sad, rather mellow and not that strong.  This argument is okay, but this is not the point of the parable.  Jesus is not feeling ‘blue.’  Jesus is not excusing the three soils -rather Jesus is excited.  Jesus can see those who are actually responding.  Jesus is excited over those who are producing an abundant harvest.  Jesus in this parable isn’t looking at those who fail to grow.  He’s looking at those who do!

Because there is nothing more exciting than to watch and to work with those who want to grow.  There is nothing quite so fulfilling as seeing people reaching for their full spiritual potential.  The Bible says that all heaven rejoices over one sinner who turns to Christ for forgiveness, but what you may not know is that God also rejoices over those who chose to grow!  Nothing is quite so exciting as people who are in spiritual bloom.

I don’t know about you, but one of the most exciting things for me is seeing people get something for the first time.  I don’t know if you’ve had the privilege of praying with someone as they become a follower of Jesus, but it’s an amazing moment as they step from outside the circle of faith into the middle.  It’s like they finally understand.  They finally get it!  Some you here have been through that experience.  Maybe 5-10 years later on you can look back and be amazed at your progress.  It’s this kind of thing that motivates us.

Do you remember the old story of a person walking along a beach covered in hundreds of dying starfish?  Every footstep they would take one and throw it back into the waves.  Someone who was watching said, “Why are you bothering to do that for?  There’s too many.  You won’t make a difference.”   They reached down threw another starfish back and then another one, and said, “It made a difference to that one, and to that one too!”

There is nothing so exciting to see people spiritually growing and developing as they were meant to.

2.  But the next parable provides a different kind of reason, and the parable of the wheat and the weeds (v24-30) needs to be paired with the parable of the dragnet (v47-50) in order to get the full picture.  In the parable of the wheat and weeds an enemy comes and sows seeds in their farmer’s field.  The wheat and weeds grow up together and to their horror the farmer’s workers realise that the two types of plant are growing together.  They offer to pull out the weeds right away, but the farmer say, “Don’t do it because you will also harm the wheat.  Wait until the harvest and then we can sort them out into their separate piles.”

Now again with this parable there are multiple interpretations.  One interpretation that supports missions is that you need to keep sowing wheat seeds.  If you see a patch of bare soil or a receptive soul do not neglect it.  Sow while you still can or you may miss out on the best chance.  I’ve had that unhappy experience.  I remember visiting my best friend at university one day.  He was nearly on the point of accepting Christ as Lord.  We talked a lot, but being polite I didn’t want to push it, so I thought we can talk tomorrow and then he’ll decide to follow Christ.  That afternoon Mormon missionaries came to his door and debated with him.  By the time I saw him the next day, he was so spiritually confused that he never made that decision.  He never got around to it.  I don’t know if He ever did.  I wish I had been a bit more urgent that day, so we need to be urgent.

But the real reason for Jesus urgency here is something greater.  It’s because there is nothing sadder than those who miss out.  Nothing is sadder than those who miss out on the kingdom of God, and wind up, as Jesus says, in the parable of the drag net, in the furnace of fire.

Now I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but many years ago I asked the Lord to give me a vision of hell.  A crazy request I know.  I don’t know why I asked, but amazingly within 30 seconds of asking my request it was granted.  I was there.  I had the most vivid picture of hell in my imagination.  Now I don’t know for sure if it was the Lord or I, but people have asked me “What did you see?”  I say, “It was like looking down on a massive dire straits concert!  You could make out great numbers of individuals in the grey murk surging and swaying together as the light swung across them.  But the most important question is ‘what did it feel like’ and it was awful, simply awful.  I’ve often reflected upon that sense since then.  Jesus said they “will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 8:12).”  The Greek word for gnashing means grating the teeth in pain or rage, and I think that’s the key to it.  You see I always thought the pain in hell was from being tortured by the flames, but now I think the pain might come from something worse.  Have you ever had that experience of when you could have won something, but you made the wrong choice and missed out?  Or you could have done something, but you knew you stuffed it up and you didn’t have another chance?  Have you ever had a stomach churning experience where the only way to describe it is you wished that you could kick yourself?

Just this week a Phd student left all his samples, his computer and backups in his car boot.  The car was stolen.  Without those back it is impossible for him to get his PhD and pursue his career as a lecturer.  Imagine how he felt.

Then just imagine getting to the end of your life and having the creator of the universe, the Mastermind Himself, telling you that you missed the boat –that your life has completely missed the point.  In Matthew 25:10 Jesus said, “While they (the bridesmaids) were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived.  The virgins (bridesmaids) who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.  “Later the others also came. ‘Sir! Sir!’ they said. ‘Open the door for us!’  But he replied, ‘I tell you the truth, I don’t know you.’”  There’s nothing sadder than those who miss out, so that’s the second reason for mission.

3. Moving right along the parable of the Mustard Seed and the parable of the Leaven give us another reason.  The parable of the mustard seed says that the kingdom of God is going to start out small, but like a giant tree eventually people of every variety are going to come and sit in it’s branches.  It’s going to be an international, who knows, maybe even intergalactic, family.

The parable of the leaven just after this tells us that like yeast the message of Jesus will permeate the world until the whole world is changed for the better.  The good news of Jesus will in the end influence everything.  Nothing will miss out.  There is going to be a whole lot of good that comes from Jesus life.  He will unite the people of this world in a new way and He will transform human life on our planet.

Okay, is it being a little idealistic?  But we need that don’t we –you need a bit of idealism in life.  I think we all need to feel a part of something bigger than ourselves and we all want in some sense to leave this world a better place than when we found it.  Most people long to make a mark or leave a legacy, so you can join Jaycees if you want, support Forest & Bird, coach kids soccer or fund wells in Africa, but what I think Jesus is saying is that in the end this is a cause worth fighting for!  This is a cause worth living and dying for.  I mean, what other cause is greater than the Kingdom of God?

The only other option is to back the losing horse!  In Jesus day you could have supported the Romans.  You could have sided with the Sadducees and Pharisees, but they aren’t around here any more.  As U2 kind of sung, “Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall, but you (God) you go on.”  What are you going to do to make your limited time on earth worthwhile?  I can’t watch TV all the time!  Jesus invitation is, “My Kingdom is going to go on forever, and you too can be a part of it!”

4. And finally the parable of the Pearl of Great Price and the Hidden Treasure remind us of a couple of things that we need to treasure.  As I mentioned last week there are two ways to interpret these parables.  In the first form a man finds a great pearl while searching through a market while another man accidentally discovers hidden treasure buried in a field.  Both finds are so incredible that the men rush off and sell everything they have in order to get what they want.  Interpreted this way Jesus says that the Kingdom is worth every sacrifice you make to be a part of it.  It is worth everything you give to it.  When you surrender what you have to God, then you are making the right decision.

For example, how many of you have heard of Jim Elliot and the Auca Indians?  If you want to learn more about them I have a short DVD from the conference yesterday.  On 8 January 1956 the Auca’s killed Jim Elliot and four other young missionaries by a river in Ecuador.  These five young men had left their wives and children, the comfort of the United States, and decided to build a base a short distance from an aggressive Indian village so they could share with them the gospel.  They were approached by a small group of Indians and even gave a plane ride to one curious Indian who they nicknamed “George.”  Encouraged by these friendly encounters, they began plans to visit them without knowing the danger they were in.  Soon afterwards a larger group of 10 warriors arrived and the missionaries were speared to death.  Elliot’s body was found downstream.  The story is famous because members of their family then went back to those same Indians who had killed their loved ones and introduced them to Jesus.  It’s an amazing story of sacrifice and love, but in Jim Elliot’s diary is a famous entry that summed up his entire attitude that mission work was more important than his life.  He simply wrote in his diary, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

But as moving as that is, I think the second interpretation is even more moving.  In this version of the parable you are that pearl of great price sitting unrecognised in the market and you are that surprising treasure buried deep in a field.  Jesus is the man who gives up everything He owns in order to be with you.

You see you have incredible value in God’s eyes.  The reason for mission is that nothing brings greater joy to God than you and other people who come to follow Him.  Nothing matters more to God than people.  And if God’s Son has to die on a cross in order to bring your attention to God, then God’ll do it.  That’s why Christ died for you.  That’s why Christ died for us all –to bring you back to God.  And if Christ died for you, then wouldn’t you want to tell others what Christ has done for them too!  Wouldn’t you want to tell others that God loves you?

Just to finish Nicky Gumbel tells the story of a man who wanted to become a Christian, but he was very self-conscious and didn’t think he could tell anyone if he became a Christian.  So he put it off and put it off until one day he spoke to his minister and explained the problem.  The minister said, “In your case we are going to make a special exception.  You can become a Christian, but you don’t have to tell anyone.”  So the man went home to his family, went upstairs, knelt beside his bed, said the sinner’s prayer and gave his life to God.  After that he was so excited he run downstairs, burst into the kitchen and said to everyone, “Guess what!  You can become a Christian and you don’t have to tell anyone!”

So the four main reasons I take from chapter 13 on why do mission are:

1.  There is nothing more exciting than to work with those who want to grow

2.

There is nothing sadder than those who miss out

3.  This is a cause worth fighting for

4.

Nothing matters more to God than you and other people.

So let me ask you, which one do you think will become most important for you?  Please turn to the person beside you and have a go at choosing one.

[2] Operation World