Ravings and Ranting

Good Friday: Jesus offers forgiveness (Luke 23:32-43)

2026-04-03T16:01:00.002+11:00

Today I got to give the Good Friday talk for our festival in the park. This was a great opportunity to speak to a few hundred people in an open-air environment about the good news of Easter.

Welcome to our Good Friday Festival. I have heard stories about this Festival, but today I get to see it. Now, calling today “Good Friday” could be seen as a bit morbid. Christians call this day “good”, even though on this day we remember that our God died. Like, how is that good? What good comes from any death, let alone the death of an innocent person? Well, I guess, it all depends on what you know about it. Good can come from Jesus death, if you know that through it you have been forgiven. Today could be a good Friday if you let it. It’s all about good news if you accept it.

So today, I’m going to talk about the Easter story. And you may be thinking that you know this already. You might hear this every year. So do I. Yes, Jesus died on a cross. That is a fact. You can know that. But knowing this story personally can change you. There is a great deal of difference between knowing that you can be forgiven and knowing that you are forgiven.

On that first Easter Friday, Jesus, along with two other criminals, was led out of the town to be executed. Just before that, Jesus was run through a fake trial, and in the end, the powers-to-be found this King guilty of treason. Jesus was whipped and beaten and then nailed on a cross between two other criminals.

And so what was His response? What did He have to say through all this? I wonder what you would have said if you were arrested for things you didn’t do and were beaten up for no reason. What would your response be?

We are told in sentence 34, (its on our sheet in front of us.)

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

Lifted up and dying, arms stretched out wide, Jesus on the cross asks God to forgive the people who are killing Him. He is crying out, not insults or curses, but forgiveness for those who have put Him on the cross.

And in the rest of our passage, we see who was there and what they said to Jesus. The rulers sneered, the soldiers mocked, and one of the criminals also insulted Jesus.

The rulers were getting what they wanted. They were gloating that Jesus was caught and dying.

The soldiers were in it for a laugh. They thought it was funny to execute someone who thought they were a king.

And the dying man next to Jesus insultingly tested Him. If Jesus is really who He said He is, then prove it by doing what he says he should do.

And it was to those that Jesus said, “Father, forgive them”. Those who thought Jesus was a loser, those who didn’t take anything too seriously, and those who put conditions on God, Jesus says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”.

It is easy to sneer, mock and insult Jesus. Because that way, you don’t have to think too hard about Him. It is like a defence mechanism. It’s easy to hold Jesus at arm's length and to not really engage with Him. You can think Christianity is on a sinking ship, or that those who follow Jesus are silly for their misguided ways. You can put conditions on God, saying you will only believe in Him if he jumps through your hoops and follows your terms and conditions. It is less scary to think you are somehow entitled to put the ball in God’s court than to realise He has already acted, and the ball is in yours. You just have to respond, repent and go to Him.

To all who sneer and mock and insult, Jesus still offers forgiveness. Even today. His arms are out wide to welcome you. They are literally nailed there for you to come to Him, because He loves you, and God wants to be with you. The offer of forgiveness is there, but those who don’t see it will go home not knowing what they have done.

But maybe that is not you, you who comes to an Easter service. You don’t sneer or mock or insult Jesus. You might even know that you are in trouble. You know you have done wrong. You have hurt people with your deeds. You may think that the consequences of your life has brought you to a dead end. You may think you don’t even deserve forgiveness. Why would God accept you after all that you have done?

To those who think forgiveness is not open to them, look at the other criminal on the cross. In sentence 41 he says

We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” (Luke 23:41)

We aren’t told what this criminal had done. But whatever it was, he thinks it is fair and just that he should get the death penalty. He knows he has done wrong and is deserving of death. He knows his life choices have brought him to this dead end. There is nothing left for him on earth to do but to die.

And seeing Jesus’ innocence, the criminal turns to Jesus and asks to be remembered. He wants to enter in to Jesus’ kingdom. Which means he thinks Jesus really is a king. You can’t have a kingdom without a king.

And Jesus says to this dying criminal who deserves death, “Yes, salvation can come to you this day.” He was forgiven and will be let into God’s kingdom. There was nothing else this guy could do besides asking Jesus to remember him.

All those who think they don't deserve forgiveness can come to Jesus and receive it. You are probably worse than you think you are, but you are loved by God more than you know. Jesus sees you fully, knows you completely, and still moves toward you with forgiveness. That is why He came, to forgive you for all your wrongs.

Jesus cries out for forgiveness on the cross for all who put Him there, and we all put Him there. We live in God’s good creation and ignore Him and His desires for us. We live our own ways, ignoring Him. All our wrong doings, all our hurtful words and actions, mean we are storing up offences to God. And one day we will give an account for what we have done.

And so Jesus came to deal with our offences, so that we don’t have to. He endured the punishment our deeds deserved on that Easter cross. It was there He said, “Father, forgive them”. All of them. The leaders, the soldiers, the criminals and us. All of us who were responsible for His death on the cross.

And the forgiveness Jesus offers means we can be with God. The second criminal on the cross wanted to be remembered by Jesus and to be in His kingdom. He wanted to be known by God and to be with God. The final aim of our forgiveness is that we get God. He dwells with us now, and we will dwell with Him forever.

You know, Calwell, the suburb? It is named after Arthur Calwell. He was the leader of the Labor Party in the 1960s. On the 21st of June 1966, after a speech in Mosman, Calwell got into his car to leave, Peter Kocan walked up to his window, pointed a sawed-off .22 rifle at him and fired it. Calwell survived with a few scratches from the glass, and with the bullet was lodged in the lapel of his coat. Peter, the shooter, was immediately arrested and later sentenced to life imprisonment. He ended up in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. While there, Arthur Calwell forgave Peter for trying to kill him. And, Calwell didn’t just say this from afar, but went and visited Peter, and the two exchanged letters. Calwell even said, if there was some way for him to be helpful in reducing his sentence, he would. And Peter Kocan would be released 10 years later.

Arthur Calwell was a Christian. Calwell was able to forgive the person who tried to kill him, and be willing to be with him because he was copying, in a small way, his King. Jesus, after all, while on the cross, forgave the people who were killing him. Every time you go to Calwell, remember he was the guy who forgave the man who tried to kill him, mimicking Jesus who forgave all those who killed Him.

Jesus is really the king who comes and offers forgiveness to you. So the important question is, what do you do with Him? This Easter, will you know about this forgiveness or will you personally know this forgiveness?

To receive this forgiveness from God, you can pray something simple, like the guy on the cross did. You could say: ‘Jesus, remember me. Forgive me. Bring me into Your kingdom.’ And Jesus, as we have seen, is happy to answer that prayer.

A song is going to be played now, to give you some time to think and reflect. This song is about the love of God, and how Jesus was willing to be forsaken so that you could be forgiven.

(I’m going to be around for this whole festival, so please come up to me, anytime if you want to talk more about this. I would gladly hear you out.)

Palm Sunday (Luke 19:28-44)

2026-03-29T20:40:00.002+11:00

Below is the talk that I gave today. Lots was re-used from a previous talk, which also was borrowed from some other places. I should also say that I think bits of this has been taken from a previous Palm Sunday talk by Dr. Michael Youssef a few years back but it is uncited as the reference has been lost in the different uses of this talk. For a little bit of context, last week we were looking at the end of Luke 13, which followed really well to this Luke 19 passage.

Do you like a grand entrance? Have you seen a good one? Sometimes at weddings, the bride tries to make a bit of an entrance. Sometimes they time the music just right so it swells as she enters the hall. Sometimes they close the doors and open them at just the right moment for dramatic effect. And what people do when that is going on, they turn and look the other way at the groom. They want to see his face when the bride makes her entrance.

Today in our passage, Jesus makes a grand entrance into the city of Jerusalem. And if you look the right way, you will see that this entrance was a proclamation that Jesus is the great king, who brings peace.

We are looking at this passage as, in the church calendar, today is Palm Sunday. This is the day we remember when Jesus entered Jerusalem. It starts what is called Holy Week, which leads up to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Do you like that graphic? I picked it for this talk. It is a palm branch, because the story goes, the people pulled these down and waved them in front of Jesus when he entered Jerusalem. But we are doing Luke’s account, and Luke doesn’t mention the Palm branches.

Palm branches or not, the day Jesus came to Jerusalem was a big deal. Way back in the 9th chapter of Luke, Jesus had “resolutely set out for Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). And we saw in chapter 13 that Luke was reminding us that Jesus was still on His way to Jerusalem. For 10 chapters in Luke, Jesus has been heading towards this city. He was determined to get there, even in the face of death threats.

And if we zoom out a bit more, Jerusalem had been waiting for hundreds of years for God Himself to come back. Two weeks ago, I was at one of our Wednesday night Bible studies. In that, they are looking at the first 11 chapters of 1 Kings. In that section of scripture, Solomon builds the temple in Jerusalem, and God comes and dwells with His people there. But it didn’t stay like that. Through Israel's disobedience, God left His people, and that temple was destroyed. Ezekiel had a vision of God leaving the temple in Jerusalem. And since then, Israel has been waiting for God to return to their capital.

And so now, in chapter 19 of Luke, as the moment arrives, Jesus makes some plans to enter Jerusalem. Jesus sends two of them ahead to find a donkey so he could ride on it for His grand entrance. And all of what Jesus said in the process would happen, happened. It went just as He had told them. Jesus knew about this donkey. We aren’t told how, but He just did. Later this week, Jesus tells the disciples to make plans for His last meal, and what He said would happen also happened. Jesus knew what was going to happen on this day, and Jesus knew what was going to happen at the end of the week in this city.

Grand entrance

Now, there have been many grand entrances throughout history that have caused a stir. In 1656, James Nayler, a prominent early Quaker, entered Bristol on the 24th October riding a horse while his followers walked beside him, laying down their garments in front of his horse so that the horse's feet wouldn’t get dirty. They also were proclaiming “Holy, holy, holy” as he entered. At that time, the Quakers were a relatively new movement, only about ten years old, and they held a belief in this inner light, that the living presence of Christ could speak through believers. And Nayler’s followers saw him as a vessel of Christ’s voice.

And so, this entrance to Bristol created some attention. Because of the religious symbols and words involved, Nayler ended up getting arrested and tried for blasphemy. He was publicly whipped, and a B was branded on his forehead, and some other bad things were done to him.

And, it is all kinda bizarre that this prominent leader of this relatively small Quaker movement did something so public and drastic. It nearly ended the whole movement.

And that feeling of weirdness, of causing a grand entrance in such a heavily symbolic way, would have been present in our passage with Jesus. Here was a leader of a small religious movement entering the capital of Israel on a donkey. King Solomon entered the same town on King David’s own mule. When King Jehu was anointed king, his people laid their cloaks under his path (2 Kings 9:13). And here, Jesus’ followers are doing that and also proclaiming scripture about Him. What would everyone have been thinking about this entrance?

That Holy Week in Jerusalem, there would have been two grand entrances into the city.

From the west, Pilate would have come, draped in the glory of imperial power: horses, chariots, and gleaming armour. At the beginning of Passover, Pilate moved in with the Roman army to make sure nothing got out of hand. Insurrection was in the air with the memory of God’s deliverance of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 2 Homiletical Perspective)

And then this entrance in our story was from the East. Jesus came not with an army, not on a horse, not with any armour, but on a donkey with His disciples. Jesus did not come with much power or protection, but in humility. On a young donkey, and yet, here in this entrance, Jesus was proclaimed as King.

Jesus Proclaimed as King

Throughout Jesus’ life, He has been healing people and giving them a glimpse of His power over the Devil, disease, and death, but strangely, at some points, He has also been telling people to be quiet about it. But now, when Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the crowds treat Jesus like a king. Like a king in the line of the great Jewish King David. Like a king who has come to save them from oppression and slavery. And Jesus doesn’t tell them to be quiet about it. Jesus doesn’t tell them to stop, because they are right on the money. Jesus is a king and not just any king.

The naysayers, the Pharisees in the crowd, try to hush things up.

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” (Luke 19:39 NIV)

The Pharisees are noticing this stir and they ask Jesus to settle His disciples, and Jesus replies, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40). The rocks might be dumb, but they are not that dumb, they know who their king is. The unridden colt also doesn’t baulk under Jesus. He serves His master. Nature itself knows and needs to praise Jesus as “the King who comes in the name of the Lord”.

Jesus is not only in the royal line of a great king, but He is more than that. If you have eyes to see it, Jesus is claiming to be the great King who had been foretold hundreds of years before Him. The Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, has been looking forward to a messiah, a king to save them.

The most relevant Old Testament prophecy in this passage is from Zechariah, about 500 years before Jesus

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
... He will proclaim peace to the nations.
His rule will extend from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth. (Zechariah 9:9, 10b NIV)

Zechariah was looking forward to a great king who is lowly, who will come on a donkey, not just any donkey, but a colt, that is, specifically a young male donkey. This donkey-riding king is in view of the people from Jerusalem and is righteous and victorious and humble, and they will proclaim peace to the nations, to the ends of the earth.

Jesus is this humble king. Jesus humbled Himself for us so that we can be saved. Jesus is God, who left heaven for us, to become a servant to die on a cross in our place to save us from our sins; and His victory brought us peace.

In our passage, the crowds shout two things:

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38 NIV)

They call Jesus a king, and they mention peace. Have you called out to Jesus to save you? Is He your King?

A King is someone you pledge allegiance to. Some who you will follow and trust, and go where they tell you to go. You give up some autonomy under a king that you follow; you look to them for guidance and security. What they do affects you.

You may wonder why Jesus should be your King? Well, Jesus is like no other King. He is better than any king that has ever lived, and that will ever live. He has come to bring peace. When a king wins peace, it affects all of His people in His kingdom.

The offer of Peace

The Romans were very proud to have brought in the "Pax Romana", that is, peace across the Roman Empire. But Jesus life, has been all about peace on earth and in heaven. We have our choice to make, "Pax Christi or Pax Romana" (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 2 Homiletical Perspective)

Christ or Caesar. Peace with Christ or peace with the powers of this world.

With Jesus entering Jerusalem, the people are singing Psalm 118. It is a Psalm of praise, giving thanks to God, for His love endures forever. It says, it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes. Only in the Lord can someone find salvation. How well do the nations offer peace to all? Where do we turn to for peace?

Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus conquers all enemies, including Satan. He has no rival, He has no equal and one day all knees will bow to Him, and all tongues will confess He is King. Is He your king?

And Jesus is a good king. He is infinite in his wisdom, perfect in His character, merciful and just in all His rulings. He is the only true God and the only man who has conquered death. He is from everlasting to everlasting, from beginning to end. Jesus rules over all things, all places and all people. Is He your King?

Jesus promises to bring comfort to the suffering, to wipe every tear from the hurting, to give rest to the tired and to give everlasting life to those who trust Him. Do you trust Him? Is He your King?

Have you ever heard some misguided person say that “all religious leaders were really the same”? Would you tell them that Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Have you heard some nice well-meaning person say, “Jesus was a good moral teacher”? You can then tell them that Jesus is more than that, Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. If you watch the news and you see on your screen some disaster or crisis that looks hopeless, remind yourself that Jesus is King of kings and is ruling over everything, and one day will bring about total peace.

Have you accepted Jesus as your King? Have you welcomed Him to take the direction of your life and to give you peace? Is your allegiance with Him and none other, trusting Him for peace and security?

Jesus Pained by Rejection

Halfway down the Mount of Olives, there is a small chapel in the shape of a teardrop. It is called Dominus Flevit (Latin for “the Lord weeps”). It is the traditional location where Jesus wept over the city. (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 2 Pastoral Perspective)

Jesus weeps because Jerusalem would be destroyed.

Do you remember last week? At the end of Luke 13, Jesus’ heart breaks for the city of Jerusalem. He wanted to gather them in His arms, but they didn’t want Him. They were not willing to go to Him. They will not be able to see Him till they sing Psalm 118 and see Him as a king from God.

At the end of our passage in Luke 19, we are told that Jesus weeps over the city; His heart breaks for them. Their problem, we are told in verse 44, was that they “did not recognise the time of God’s coming”.

Like the Pharisees in this story, they couldn’t see Jesus as the King. They couldn’t see how Jesus could bring peace. Because they couldn’t see how peace could be achieved in Jerusalem, they would face war and destruction. And in 70 AD the city would be destroyed as Jesus had said. As Jesus knows what will happen to the colt, as He knows what was going to happen at Passover, He knows what will happen to this city that will reject Him, and it breaks His heart. He wants peace.

The Peace of God

Jesus is the peace of the world—not any kind of peace, but the peace that only he can give—and that peace cannot be found apart from the journey that leads to the cross, (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 2 Theological Perspective)

This peace that Jesus brings isn’t the absence of war or the aftermath of a military conquest. Jesus brings peace between humanity and God. Jesus mediates between us and God so that we can have peace with God. Jesus took all our sins on Himself and died with them on the cross. So now our sins have been wiped away from God’s eyes. He sees us as His pure and perfect children. We are at peace with Him.

The story goes that when Dante, the famous 13th-century poet, when he faced exile in Italy, he wandered around the country looking for someone to take him in. When Dante knocked at the door of a Franciscan monastery, he was asked, “What do you want?” He replied, “Peace!” (1000 Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching What Do You Want?)

We all want peace. We all want a settled peace, a secure place, where no matter what happens to us, we can be at rest and not anxious or restless. In Jesus, we have the King who brings peace. Even when things are in turmoil, even when things are uncertain, we can be confident that because of Jesus, we have peace with God. We are no longer enemies with God, but His friends, and we can find an eternal rest with Him. This can give us a stability in life now, knowing where we are headed, despite the messiness around us.

Imagine a massive cyclone tearing across the ocean. On the surface, violent winds whip the water into giant waves and create a scene of havoc and chaos. Yet, 10 meters below the surface, the waters are clear and calm. The fish there go on living their lives totally unaware of the thunderous turmoil just above them. When there is depth, there is peace. So it is in the Christian life (1500 Illustrations for Biblical Preaching Peace).

Through all our ups and downs on the surface, we can have a deep peace in Jesus. Because He is the King who brought us peace.

As we approach Easter, reflect on whether Jesus is King over your life? Do you have peace with Him? Will you look with eyes to see that Jesus is the King? He is the one who comes and saves us from sin and Satan and death. He comes to bring us peace with God. Jesus is the King who is sitting at the right hand of the Father and will come back again to judge the living and the dead; and all those who trust in Him will be gathered up and be with Him, in His new Kingdom. That is the hope we have, for all who trust Jesus as their King, will have peace, forever. Amen.

Almighty God, whose Son Jesus came riding on a donkey as the promised King,
Help us to see Him as the true King of Kings, who knows the beginning from the end.
Help us to have a secure peace, trusting that Jesus is right now ruling over this world and has dealt with our greatest need.

We give you thanks that He laid down His life for us on the cross, so that we can have peace with you.

Help us to lay down our things in front of Him, and to praise Him for what He has done.

This Easter, may your peace not be hidden from our eyes, and from the eyes of those who do not know you.

May we live in your Kingdom this day, with confidence and joy, because of the true story of Easter.

What good thing should I do? Why do I lack? (Mat 19:16-22)

2026-03-22T20:50:00.000+11:00

On Friday, I got to give another talk from Matthew's Gospel on following Jesus. This one probably came accross a bit more serious or stern, than my last one.

Welcome, thank you for having me back. Second time in one term. I love coming here, it's fun.

I wonder what you would say to someone who was keen to follow Jesus? If they asked you, “What must I do to be saved?” What words would you say to them? Maybe something about believing in Jesus, or about praying a prayer or something like that?

Today in our story, we have a guy who seems like a genuine seeker. He asks, of all people, Jesus, how to get eternal life. This is like the best evangelism opportunity there is, but in our story, the guy ends up going away sad and not saved, because of what Jesus tells him. What is going on here?

What must I do to get eternal life?

So let's start off by looking at this man’s opening question.

Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16 NIV)

This sounds like a good question. Now I know, those of you who have around church stuff can see that this question is coming at the issue wrong. Some of us may already know that you can’t do good things to get into heaven. You know, we can’t earn our way in by doing the right actions. If that were the case, then Jesus wouldn’t have had to die in our place for us. Jesus lived the perfect life for us because we couldn’t do it.

But most people don’t know this. Most people assume some sort of transactional approach to God. If I pray this thing, if I do the right tasks, or visit this special holy place, then God will be pleased with my actions. If I do some good, it will offset the bad. This guy seemed to think something like that, that there is something good he can and should do to be saved.

Jesus then answers this guy, essentially saying, “you know the rules. Keep the commandments.” Prying a bit more, the rich guys asked, "Which commandments are you talking about?" There were about 613 commandments given in the Old Testament. He wants to know what Jesus means. So Jesus listed some of the big 10. He lists commandments 5 to 9 and then gives a general one to love your neighbour as yourself.

These commandments come from God. Jesus says only God is good, so if you are looking for a good thing to do for eternal life, listen to the only one who is good and do their good commandments.

I think the guy was a little disappointed with Jesus’ answer. The guy was probably a Jew; he had grown up knowing the ten commandments and all the rest. He knew all of this. He was looking for a new answer, not an old one. He had heard this all before. So he asks quite a deep question.

Why Do I Still Lack?

“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?” (Matthew 19:20 NIV)

This guy has tried to do the commandments, and he thought he had done a good job at it. He was a good bloke who did well for his parents and neighbours. He hadn’t killed anyone or stolen anything. He kept the rules, but there was something he lacked, and he knew it.

In Mark and Luke, we are told this guy was also young and a ruler, while also being rich. By the world's standards, this guy has made it. He was good, he had power, responsibility, was young and was rich. He was like the high achiever. He probably was the school captain of the religious school that everyone loved, and yet in all these achievements, in all his doing good, this young guy feels like he is lacking something. He has made it to the top of the mountain, but he is not sure he has eternal life. After all of this success, why does he feel unsettled and not at peace? What else was there for him to do?

Follow me

And so then,

Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21 NIV)

Jesus says if you want to be perfect, which is a word that could also mean fully developed or complete (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. τέλειος).

If you want to get rid of your feeling of lacking and be whole, then give it all away. If what you have been doing has brought about a discontent, remove it, and start again with Jesus.

You see, this successful guy thought that Jesus would give him another thing to do. A side-quest to level up his religion, so that if he could just go up one more rung of the ladder, if he could just go a little further up that mountain top, then maybe he would be satisfied. But Jesus says, get off that ladder, get off that mountain. You can’t just add a bit of religion to your life and think you are ok. Jesus wants to destroy that whole structure. Start again with Him. Don’t try and add one more thing; remove all obstacles in your life and follow Jesus. And for this guy, money was that obstacle.

And that was too much for him, so he went away sad, because he had great wealth. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t follow Jesus. He was like the anti-disciples who dropped their fishing nets and followed Jesus. He keeps his stuff and walks away from Jesus.

For some people, money can be a snag. Money gives us a sense of security and freedom. Money can buy the fancy things and the cool brand names, so we can feel better than others with our stuff. But that is all fake.

I love this quote, from this American guy, Benjamin Franklin:

“Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.”

I love this quote because you know what they did in America? They put Benjamin Franklin on their $100 note. The guy who said money doesn't make you happy, the more you have, the more you want, they stuck him on their highest value note.

But this might not be you. You might not be rich. Jesus doesn’t tell everyone to give away all their money to the poor, he told this guy in particular, as that was what he loved more than Jesus. Jesus asks all who follow Him to depend only on Him. Last week, on a blog post I read:

What did you give up to become a Christian? What did you enjoy that you left behind for the sake of following Christ? For some it may be habits that gave you pleasure in former days, but which Jesus now forbids. For some it may be vices you indulged in, but which the Lord has called you to abandon. For some it may be lovers, for some it may be desires, and for still others, relationships with family members. But whatever it is, this much is true: none who have ever come to Christ have done so without surrendering someone or something.

Jesus says take up your cross and follow Him. To drop everything else you have. To not just see this Christian thing as an add-on in life, as one thing extra to tack on, so that you have a ticket into heaven by doing some good things (like coming here on a Friday, or going to church). No, Jesus wants to tell you to get off your own successful ladder, to not try and climb that mountain you love which you think will give you satisfaction. Jesus said give all that away, and follow him.

Treasures in heaven

And there is a promise, in v21: you will have treasures in heaven. This rich guy went away sad because he had great wealth, but he made a bad investment choice in the long run. He gave up eternal life. He gave up treasures in heaven for his own treasures on earth. He went back to all his wealth and still lacked.

We don’t think much about heaven, as we are so focused on our lives here. But in Matthew’s gospel is has been eye-opening to see that God cares about what we do in secret, and will reward us. That there are rewards in heaven waiting for us, and that some people will hear this saving message, but the worries of the world and the seduction of money will drag people away, like the guy tonight.

But that is so short-term. Forgive me if you have already seen this analogy; it is big in Christian youth groups (all stolen from Francis Chan - I had an actual rope in a bucket with a blue tip that I pulled across the room).

Pretend this rope goes on forever; it is your timeline, which lasts all of eternity. And the blue tip is your life here on earth, about 80 or so years. You have a few short years and then all of eternity somewhere else.

And some people, all they think about is this blue part. I can't wait to travel here, to get married here, I want to finish uni here. Their thinking is consumed by just this blue bit.

What about the eternal bit? How much do we think about this bit? As what I do in this little blue bit determines where I will be for eternity. Why would I think about trying to get as comfortable, as successful, as rich as I possibly can in this blue bit, and not think about my life afterwards?

Some people may look at your life and your decisions and think you are stupid as it will affect this bit in the blue section, but I think they are stupid as their decisions affect this eternal section. When faced with Jesus, it doesn't make any sense, but people live only for their blue bit.

Following Jesus costs. Jesus is not a simple add-on, He is not some extracurricular activity. But He is someone you give your all to.

This is a costly challenge to follow Jesus, when we only think about our life down here, but it is an easy choice when faced with our eternal life with Jesus forever.

Questions:

How would you answer the question, “What must I do to be saved”?

Have you ever experienced buyer’s remorse, ie bought something that you thought would be cool, only to find out it wasn’t? (tie their answers here back into the next question)

What things in life do you want to pursue or achieve? They might not be bad things, but ultimately, how might they still leave you unsatisfied?

What have you given up in order to follow Jesus? How was it costly? How was it worth it?

Jesus Heals a Crippled Woman on the Sabbath (Luke 13:10-17)

2026-03-15T08:11:00.000+11:00

Below is the talk that I gave last week. I was hoping to post this sooner, but things got in the way.

Welcome. Last week, we started a new series titled “Make every effort”, going through Luke 13. This line comes later in the chapter, where Jesus says

“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. (Luke 13:24 NIV)

There is a door, and Jesus wants us to enter it, and we are to try hard to enter it.

What could possibly be so good for us to try hard at getting through this door? What is on the other side? What is worth the effort?

Today, we will see that Jesus is offering something that people have been willing to die for, and He wants us to make every effort to get it too.

Setting: Sabbath and Synagogue

Our setting is on the Sabbath in a synagogue.

In the past, Israel was rescued from slavery, and God gave them the 10 commandments. The fourth commandment was to have a sabbath, a day off from work. This was to be a good day, one of rest and worship. When they were slaves, they did not get a day off, but their rescuing God said they were free to rest and spend time in worship.

Hundreds of years later, while in exile, the scattered Jews set up local gatherings on a Sabbath to hear from God’s word and instructions in how to live. This gathering was called a Synagogue. It was kinda like church on their one day of the week that they would have off.

And in our text, we find Jesus in a synagogue, teaching. It would have been great to know what He was teaching, but that is not what Luke wants us to notice.

The Woman

Instead, we are drawn to notice a hunchback woman.

Jesus sees a cripped woman, who has been bent over for 18 years. For eighteen years, this unnamed woman must strain to see the sun, the sky, and the stars. For eighteen years, she has become accustomed to looking down (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 3 Theological Perspective). For eighteen years, she could not see the people’s faces in front of her or look up and praise God.

And, Jesus sees this woman and her state, He summoned her, and then He said to her

“Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.”

Jesus reached out and touched her, and straight away, she was able to stand upright. This was something she could not do in verse 11, but in verse 13, she immediately could do it.

Jesus’ touch healed and restored her. His touch would have brought this woman back into the community. She was now able to look at the faces of the people in front of her, and she was able to look up and praise God. Jesus touch was like a restorative handshake, welcoming her to back into communion with others.

This was a great moment. In this Synagogue on this Sabbath, this lady was heald and responded in praise to God. It was just as the Sabbath was intended to be used for. But not everyone was happy about this.

I always find it interesting to see how people react to Jesus miracles. When Jesus calmed a storm that He and His disciples were stuck in, the disciples didn’t respond by saying “thank you”; instead, they were afraid. When Jesus heals a man that the townsfolk could not control, the people from that town don’t say “thank you”; instead, they ask Jesus to go away from them.

The Synagogue Leader

And in our story, it is the synagogue leader who is not happy about this healing. This is not what was on the meeting agenda for today.

This leader responds, not to Jesus, but to everyone else, and tells them

“There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

He says this mayhem. People are being healed on the Sabbath. Work has been done. This must be stopped!

By this time in Jewish history, some well-meaning folk put in extra rules around the Ten Commandments to ensure that no one was going to break them. Like an extra buffer to keep you further away from them. The extra rules were to define and divide what was and wasn’t considered work. Sometimes it got complicated and would be exhausting work just to figure out what work you can and can’t do on a Sabbath. And really, all of these excess rules became a burden around the people’s necks.

And somehow, when Jesus touched this woman, He worked. All he has done is to address the woman and touch her. (Luke Original Meaning)

So it really isn’t clear, from this leader, what work Jesus did. Maybe he thinks somehow the woman did some work? But she was completely passive in all this. She didn’t seek Jesus out; Jesus called for her.

Anyway, for some reason, work has been done somewhere, and the rules say this is the wrong day for it.

Do you remember last week, just before this passage, Jesus told a parable about a fig tree that didn’t produce any fruit. That fruit tree had one more year before it would be cut down. In the Old Testament, a fig tree was used as a symbol of Israel. And here, on the Jewish day of rest, in this Jewish synagogue, a Jewish leader is saying that this healing shouldn’t be allowed. The fruit, on display here, isn’t healthy. It isn’t good. These rules are getting in the way of helping others. These rules are restricting and controlling people. The Sabbath was meant to celebrate their freedom from slavery, and yet, the synagogue leader is using Sabbath rules to keep a woman enslaved to her condition.

Jesus responds

So Jesus responds. He wasn’t worried about what day it was to heal her.

The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (Luke 13:15–16 NIV)

Jesus uses a lesser to a greater argument. If it is ok, on the Sabbath to untie a donkey for it to drink, then why can’t Jesus heal this woman on the Sabbath? And notice how Jesus explains the woman and the healing.

This woman is a daughter of Abraham. Abraham was kinda of a big deal in Jewish history. He was known as the faithful guy who trusted in God's promises. God promised to bless Abraham and the whole world through Him. Abraham wasn’t perfect, but he trusted God and so was considered right before God. And all who believe in the promises of God are like Abraham. And this woman, who turned up to the synagogue, when she was healed, she immediately praised God. Is she so much more valuable than a donkey? She comes from the lineage of Abraham, the faithful one.

And this poor nameless woman, we are told, had been bound. A donkey on the Sabbath was bound for a day, but this woman was bound for 18 years.

Of all the days, and of all the places, surely on a Sabbath in a Synagogue, this woman from Abraham should be free from her disability after 18 years.

We aren’t told why or how she was bound by Satan. From last week, we can’t directly make any correlation between sin and punishment. Jesus might say, “Do you think this woman was any worse a sinner than anyone else?”

We are simply told that this woman was bound by Satan, and Jesus was able to untie her. We might not talk much about Satan and the devil and all that, so we might err on ignoring those spiritual dimensions in life, but also being consumed too much on this topic can be unhelpful. And so here, with a healing like this, it tells us to be aware but not afraid, for God is more powerful than anything such hostile forces can throw at us. (Luke Bridging Contexts)

With just a word, Jesus can free people from this dark power.

The first time Jesus taught in a Synagogue in Luke 4, He quoted from Isaiah, saying that

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free (Luke 4:18 NIV)

And here, the last time in Luke, Jesus is in a synagogue. He is freeing an oppressed woman from the power of Satan. This was what Jesus said He came to do. This is what Jesus is doing now.

The next bit in the chapter, Jesus goes on to teach what the kingdom of God is like, and here we get a bit of a glimpse. Where Jesus is, there is healing, there is freedom.

Where Jesus is, things begin to be made right. His ministry provides a foretaste of the coming kingdom. In the reign of God, the world will be repaired. (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 3 Homiletical Perspective)

Freedom

Jesus offers freedom to all who are bound. With our narrow door, we are to make every effort to enter it, and freedom is behind it. Freedom, real freedom, is what Jesus came to bring.

And this is great because we love freedom, people die for freedom, and Jesus is offering that.

Remember William Wallace from Braveheart? He said, “They may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom”. He fought and died for freedom.

You know how at the bottom of number plates, there are sometimes state mottos? I think we might have “The bush capital” or “The heart of the nation”. In the state of New Hampshire, their motto on all their license plates is “Live Free or Die”. Those are their choices.

We value freedom. We all hate to be restrained. But sometimes we don’t notice that we are bound and caught up in ourselves and in things we enjoy and are addicted to. Jesus’ freedom is a different freedom. It isn’t about being self-autonomous; it is about freedom from the power of sin.

Martin Luther said that sin was a curving in of self (incurvatus in se). Sin stops us from looking upward to God and outward to others. He said that we can even do good religious things to make ourselves feel good, and not for God Himself. Our hearts can be so self-absorbed that we don’t realise we can’t look away from ourselves in a mirror.

We may feel free to choose, but our wills are bent back towards ourselves. We do things that only benefit us and not others, we use people and things for our own enjoyment and create habits we like doing, but in the end, trap us. Binge-watch this show, eat this comfort food, visit that website.

You may feel bound already. You may feel like you have tread a deep path and are facing the consequences, and are trapped by them. That you have lost control. You may feel a great burden on your back, or be weighed down by guilt and shame, but the good news is that Jesus has come to free all who feel trapped.

Jesus came to free us from the powers of self, Satan, and death. He came to straighten up our focus from self to be able to worship God. And that is why the gate is narrow, even though on the other side is freedom; the freedom Jesus offers is not something some people want to give up so easily, and yet it is bigger and better than we realise.

Blaise Pascal said "It is not good to have too much liberty. It is not good to have all one wants." (300 Quotations for Preachers from the Reformation Too Much Freedom Is Not Good)

It is better to see a doctor who gives you what you need and not what you want.

As someone else said

"A man’s free will cannot cure him even of the toothache, or of a sore finger; and yet he madly thinks it is in its power to cure his soul." [Augustus M Toplady] (300 Quotations for Preachers from the Modern Church Deception of Free Will)

Jesus offers us true freedom from ourselves, sin and the devil. It is Jesus who has the power and the heart to grant rest to the enslaved, and we can, in response, praise God for what He has done and look out to the people in front of us, regardless of circumstance.

William Cowper, in the 18th century, experienced great loss in the first six years of his life, losing his mother and four of his siblings. Then he was sent away to school, and from then on felt the pressure and constraint to succeed in life (William Cowper: The troubled and talented saint)

He felt great pressure for him to become a lawyer, and so did the studies, but he really wanted to be a poet. After his studies, a friend arranged for him to get a job as a clerk in the House of Lords, which would require a public examination of his life. Facing this prospect, he broke under the pressure. He didn’t think he had what it took, that he was living a lie. On top of that, he had religious doubts; he thought he had committed an unpardonable sin and was destined to hell.

Under all this weight of career and religion, Cowper tried to take his life in at least four different ways. After that, he was sent to an Insane Asylum. During his time there, he read the Bible and in Romans he saw that Christ’s death was sufficient to pardon him, and was sealed in Jesus’ blood to complete his justification.

Cowper continued to struggle with depression, but he held on to his faith and went on to write more than 60 hymns (some alongside John Newton) and many poems.

In one of these poems, Love Constraining to Obedience

He described his life before conversion as:

How long beneath the Law I lay
In bondage and distress;
I toiled the precept to obey,
But toiled without success.

He goes on, and the poem ends with this:

To see the law by Christ fulfilled
And hear His pardoning voice,
Changes a slave into a child,
And duty into choice.

Cowper was in bondage and distress from expectations thrust upon him, and from what he was told about the judgment of God. But when he saw that Christ pardons people for their sins, He saw that in Jesus was set free. And now the weight of the law is gone, and Cowper was free now to choose to follow Christ.

And that can be true for us. Today, on this day, in this place, Jesus can set us free from the bondage of sin. Look to Him and see that His heart and mission is for those who feel oppressed.

Jesus has come to release us from our own entrapments, to help us to stop looking down at the dirt of our past and to start looking at the face of our liberator. Jesus is our only hope; no other can break our chains and rescue us from bondage.

In Jesus’ Kingdom, the rule and power of Satan is broken. There will be no disability. Everything that’s crooked will be straightened, and all glory will be given to God. (Exalting Jesus in Luke The Lord Announces the Kingdom of God with a Miracle (13:10–17))

So, let us make every effort to make sure that we are willing to enter that narrow door. Where we look to Jesus as the one who can give us real freedom from ourselves, so we can live for Him.

Lord we thankyou that in your Son Jesus Christ
With a single word and touch you can free anyone from bondage
We thankyou that the heavy weight of the law has been lifted
and that in Jesus our sins have been forgiven.
Give us the strength to seek freedom in you, and not in ourselves,
so that we can walk upright in your ways.
We ask all of this in your Son’s saving name, Jesus. Amen.

Invitation, Promises and Celebration (Isaiah 55)

2026-03-08T15:34:00.004+11:00

This weekend has been a big one for me. I spoke at a funeral on Friday, then a wedding on Saturday and preached on Sunday. The funeral talk I gave was pretty much reused from something in the past, so I won't be posting that. Below is the message I gave at the wedding last night. Later this week I will post the Sunday sermon. The names of the couple have been removed.

Isaiah 55 (NIV)

55 “Come, all you who are thirsty,

come to the waters;

and you who have no money,

come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

without money and without cost.

²Why spend money on what is not bread,

and your labor on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,

and you will delight in the richest of fare.

³Give ear and come to me;

listen, that you may live.

I will make an everlasting covenant with you,

my faithful love promised to David.

⁴See, I have made him a witness to the peoples,

a ruler and commander of the peoples.

⁵Surely you will summon nations you know not,

and nations you do not know will come running to you,

because of the Lord your God,

the Holy One of Israel,

for he has endowed you with splendor.”

⁶Seek the Lord while he may be found;

call on him while he is near.

⁷Let the wicked forsake their ways

and the unrighteous their thoughts.

Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,

and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

⁸“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the Lord.

⁹“As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

¹⁰As the rain and the snow

come down from heaven,

and do not return to it

without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish,

so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

¹¹so is my word that goes out from my mouth:

It will not return to me empty,

but will accomplish what I desire

and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

¹²You will go out in joy

and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and hills

will burst into song before you,

and all the trees of the field

will clap their hands.

¹³Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,

and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.

This will be for the Lord’s renown,

for an everlasting sign,

that will endure forever.”

Welcome everyone. I assume we are all here because we received a wedding invite. We have all come here because we were all invited; we have come to hear E and N make promises together, and we have come to celebrate in all of this.

As the guests for this wedding, we can miss out on all the planning that was involved, and simply enjoy. We are going to share in some food afterwards, and we will not be stuck with the bill. Tonight it is E and N's celebration, and they have said it is their shout. They want us all to enjoy this day together, to be present in witnessing their promises, and so they made a way for us to enjoy and celebrate with them.

This model of invitation, promises and celebration is what our Bible reading was about.

This bit was written in a low point in Israel's history, but God is promising that He will still look after Israel. God had not forgotten His people, but maybe the people had forgotten God.

At the start of the reading, God is inviting all who are thirsty, all who are poor, all who want satisfaction to come to Him. And this is the dream, right? We can be restless and unsettled, unsatisfied in life and thirsty for something more.

We can be hooked on our phones, scrolling, watching everyone else's filtered lives come at a never-ending feed, making us feel like we haven’t made it. We don’t have what they have. You might be single and want to be married, and while happy for N and E today, this can still be a sore point.

We might work hard, maybe trying to please others and doing more and more things, only to be tired and at the end of the week, feeling drained and demoralised, knowing that you have to do it all over again next week. Surely there is something more.

And God says come and be satisfied. There is wine and milk, not just bare necessities, but luxury items, that are free, that someone else has footed the bill for. God says, satisfaction is on the house. It is His shout for all who want in, for all who accept the invitation.

God is offering Israel, and us, a banquet of salvation and satisfaction. This is not an exclusive invite. It is "for all of us who are burdened by life’s failed expectations, by our own inadequacies, and by our sin, God says, “Come and eat!” For us who are afraid of death and who often feel as if we are slaves to circumstances beyond our control, God says, “Come and eat!” For everyone who is thirsty, here is water. To all of us who have no money—nothing to give—[God] still says, “Come and eat!” "
(The Lectionary Commentary, Volume 1: The Old Testament and Acts (The First Readings) Third Sunday in Lent, Year C (Timothy E. Saleska))

Soon, we are going to hear from E and N make promises. And it is important that they keep their word. Words lose their meaning from people who say one thing and do another. There needs to always be a connection between saying and doing, othewise trust can be lost. E and N are going to promise that they will faithfully love one another. This is a huge promise, as the future is unclear. We don’t know what circumstances and events are going to happen. But, moving forward together, if they know they are for each other, that if they keep their commitment to be together in the ups and downs, they have a security that they can face the unknown, with each other by their side.

And God says in sentence 3, something similar. He says He will make an everlasting covenant with His people. This covenant will be about His faithful promise to David. Like at a wedding, God makes promises. The Bible calls these covenants. And in the past, God promised David, who was one of their best Kings, that someone from his line would be on the throne forever. But, in the messiness of life, that didn’t seem to work out. David's line was no longer on the throne. But here, God is saying, He will remember His words. He will be faithful in His love for David and will keep His promises. His words will align with His actions.

And how this comes about is different to how we might think. It didn’t come with great power but in humble service and love. This is different to what might be expected, but God’s ways are not ours. We aren’t told extensively how God is different to us, but we do get a glimpse in this passage.

From sentence 7, God accepts everyone who seeks Him. He radically forgives the wicked and the unrighteous. He shows them mercy and freely pardons those who come to Him. This behaviour is different to what we might see in people. Forgiveness is hard, it is costly, it feels unnatural. We want to get people back for what they have done to us, so they know how it feels. But God offers mercy and pardon to those who are wicked; and God promises that those who come to Him, they will be received, well fed and at the end of this section, they will go out in joy and peace, with songs and claps. The unrighteous who come will experience forgiveness and then joy.

E and N, in your marriage, you may upset and hurt each other, maybe not even intentionally, but maybe through miscommunication or having different expectations on things. When this happens, can I encourage you to be God-like? That is, to forgive and pardon and then invite them back into a joyous relationship, because that is what our God is like.

The promised King was Jesus. He was known as the Word who became flesh. Jesus resolved the justice problem of freely forgiving the wicked without punishment. He was the Word who accomplished and achieved God’s purposes of saving humanity. Jesus is now the true eternal king from the line of David, who died but overcame death, so can He not be killed again.

And the Christian life is one of celebration in what God has done for us. It’s why they sing so much at their gatherings on Sunday.

And at the end of the whole Bible, in the last chapter of Revelation, there is another wedding, and our Isaiah passage is alluded to. At the end of the Bible, God offers the same invitation. He says

“Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. (Revelation 22:17 NIV)

E and N, may your wedding be shaped in the model of this Isaiah passage. One of invitation, one of promise and one of celebration. May it include forgiveness and joy. May it trust that God’s Word will not return empty, and may your marriage point to a greater marriage, an eternal one, where there are no weeds, where everyone is invited to drink and be satisfied forever.

Deeds done in public and secret (Mat 5:13-16, 6:1-18)

2026-03-01T15:48:00.001+11:00

On Friday night, I got to give the youth talk at our youth group. This term, they are going through selected bits in Matthew's Gospel.

Welcome, and thank you for having me tonight. This term, word on the street is that you are going through the Gospel of Matthew. This is a great book to start the year on, as it is all about Jesus.

Today we are looking at two passages that seem contradictory, and they both come from the same sermon Jesus gives. In the sermon, Jesus says be salt and light, so that people will see your good deeds. And then, in the very next chapter, in the same sermon, Jesus says to do some good things in secret so no one else can see them. What is going on here?

How are we to know how we are to act towards God and others? Are we to do good in public, or are we to do good things in secret?

It sounds contradictory, but really, this problem, and pretty much most so-called contradictions of the Bible, can simply be overcome if we pay closer attention to the text.

So today we are going to zoom in on our two passages, and then we will zoom out again.

Salt and Light

In our first passage, we are told to be salt and light. Salt was, and still is, a preservative, and it is used to bring out more flavour in a dish. Just a little bit added to a meal can really lift it. And Jesus said you are to be that salt. You might feel little, but you can stand out. But if salt loses it taste (as if that was even possible), and if it didn’t dissolve, it would be just sand in a meal. It wouldn’t do much at all; it would be useless to add something that didn’t do anything.

So Jesus says, don’t be useless. Don’t be unsalty salt. Be salt, let your good actions for God be seen. Which is the same point about being light.

Cities at night can not be hidden because of all the light they give off. They can be seen from space. When you turn on a lamp, you don’t immediately cover it with a bowl or an umbrella. That is not the point of lighting a room. Light is meant to shine. It is to illuminate, it is to push back the darkness and be helpful. You are to do that too. But notice in verse 16, which tonight is key for us

In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:16 NIV)

Notice the reason, motivation or end goal of doing good deeds. They are not so that people think you are good, but so that people can think God is good. Our deeds that we do should point not to ourselves, but to God.

So in chapter 5, Jesus is saying do good things, so people can praise God. Hold on to that idea.

Giving, Praying and Fasting

In our next section, Jesus starts off by saying

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. (Matthew 6:1 NIV)

Jesus then goes on to talk about three good things to do: giving, praying and fasting; but He says don’t let others know about it. For each of these, Jesus says what not to do and then what to do.

When you give to the poor, don’t let one hand know what the other is doing, let alone others to know that you are giving to the poor. Don’t boast about how good you are at giving away money. Instead, know that God sees what is done in secret and He will reward you.

On prayer, Jesus says don’t pray long, elaborate public prayers; instead, pray inside with simple words, and He gives us a model to pray.

And lastly, Jesus talks about fasting. He said if you do give up food for religious reasons, don’t let anyone know, don’t look sad or hungry. Instea,d know that God sees what you do in secret and He will reward you.

There is much that could be said about giving, praying and fasting. What if I don’t have an income, how can I give? What about public prayers at youth or church, are they ok? If you have a medical condition, should you fast? I would like to deal with that, but for the sake of time, we are going to zoom back out a little now and see how we reconcile these two chapters.

Together

In Chapter 5 we are to do good deeds so others will see and glorify God.
In Chapter 6 we are not to do good deeds so others will think we are good.

Both these instructions are saying the same thing about good deeds. We don’t do them so that others think you are great; we do them so people think God is great.

We are to shine for others, so through us they can know God. And we are to seek God privately, just for Him to see, so we can be humble and dependent on Him.

So how does this actually play out? What are we to do in public and what are we to do in private? Here, some actions might look the same, but it is what is going on in our hearts that God is interested in. What are our motivations?

At school, you should want to work hard, even when no one is paying attention. You might be smart and end up getting good grades, and people might know it; but don’t let your motivation for doing well to be seen as "the smart one". Instead, work hard, as in doing your school work, you are serving God.

You might be good at sports. But in your playing, don’t try to win so that you get the attention and everyone thinks you are the hero. Instead, try your best, but be humble about the outcome and give glory to God. Remember that God has made you with the strength that you have, and the chance you have to do sports.

In work and sport, know that you are not self-made, but God-made. He gave you a certain personality, and gifts and skills and the opportunities for you to use. So thank Him for your ability to learn, or for the strength He has given you.

At school, you might want everyone to know that you are "the helpful student". You might help pack up the room after class. That is good, but do not do it for your own reputation to be seen as the good one; do it because you follow the servant king. Do the thing, and don’t get upset if no one notices.

You can pray privately for school friends, or even teachers, if they are having a bad day. You can pray for yourself for the courage to do the right thing, to not conform to the rest of the crowd, but to follow God. You could pray for ways to show God’s love to others in practical tangable ways.

Jesus’ teaching is really digging into your motivation. Why do you do the things that you do? Is it for yourself, to be noticed, or is it so people will praise God?

We need to reorder our sense of self, to not be the Sun in the middle of the solar system, but to become a planet that goes around God’s Son, Jesus. We need a change of heart to do this. To move the gravity away from self and put the weight of our goals around God.

Imagine if you radically changed your life, you stopped talking about yourself, you started doing chores around the house in secret, writing anonymous notes encouraging your friends and family to keep the faith. Imagine if you changed so much that someone said, “What has come over you?” and you could say that you are basing your life on Jesus. That you are simply following His ways, so that when people see your good deeds, others can glorify God. That you know your heavenly Father sees what you do in secret, even if no one else does. Here you are seen, but point to God.

Don’t try to be a spotlight for your own glory, but do shine and reflect your life to God. Be like a mirror for God, show the world the beauty not of yourself but of God. Do good deeds to others, not so people will praise you, but know that God will be pleased with you, and that is worth it, for He will reward you in the end.

We are going to break into smaller groups and talk about how this passage might change your motivation, but first, we will pray:

Lord, help our motivations to do things to give you glory and not ourselves. Amen

Questions:

Explain how Jesus’ teaching about doing good deeds as salt and light is not a contradiction to His instruction to do other good deeds in secret.

Tell a story from when someone did something for you with an ulterior motive? How did it feel when you realised they wanted something in return? What would God think if we did good things with an ulterior motive for others?

What might you do (or change) so that your public and private deeds please God rather than people? In what areas of life might you need to check your motivations for doing things?

The Pattern is Christ (John 13:12-17)

2026-02-15T21:04:00.000+11:00

Today I got to give the second talk in a Just for Starters series. Below is more or less what I said. I do think it could have perhaps ended stronger, but it was already long enough.

Did you like those Undercover Boss TV shows? Where the CEO of some large company, like Dominos, works on the floor of one of their shops. They get to sees what working at their company is really like. There is something great about those who seem high and lofty, who come down to get their hands dirty with some real work. It is great is when you hear that Keanu Reeves catches public transport, and gives up his seat for others. We like the idea of those with status doing the same common things as us all.

Today we are talking about footwashing. Although, really it is more than. We kinda don’t do footwashing as a household thing. Last month my family went to the beach, and before we got back in the car, we would wash the sand from our feet. Even then, everyone is old enough to wash their own feet, so everyone did their own feet.

Back in Jesus day, before Nike and heavy road work machinery, shoes weren’t as covered or durable and their roads weren’t as sealed as ours. Their roads would be dusty when dry or muddy when wet, so either way, your feet, the part closest to the ground, would easily get dirty as you travelled.

Ancient houses would have a pot of water at the front for you to wash your feet with before you came in. Sometimes there may have be a servant who would wash your feet for you. And this footwashing servant, they would be at the bottom of the food chain. In Jewish households, a Jewish servant wasn’t even to do this task.

[ Cut this bit, but I thought it was interesting:

There is one story, when a Rabbi returned home from the synagogue and his mother wanted to wash his feet. He refused on the grounds that it was too demeaning. She ended up taking the matter to the rabbinic court, saying that she viewed the task for her son as an honour (The Gospel according to John 1. Jesus Washes His Disciples’ Feet (13:1–17)) ]

Footwashing was a task done by the lesser for the greater. Peers didn’t wash each other feet. And yet, Jesus flipped this practice on it’s head. Jesus who was considered the disciples' teacher and master, went low, and He did this at His last meal before He would be crucified.

Today we are to see that we don’t move away from Christ in content and in action. Jesus is the foundation of our faith and He is the example of our faith. Christ purchased us and He sets the pattern for us.

Our structure, which you might see in the Start Up booklets, is that we are going to Understand Christ’s Pattern, Do Chris’s Pattern and then we will think about how we can know and do both.

Understand Christ’s Pattern

Our passage starts off, just after Jesus had gotten up from the meal, and taken off his outer clothes, and used a basin and towel to wash His disciples' feet. We picked it up form verse 12:

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. (John 13:12 NIV)

This act that Jesus did was to teach the disciples something. Rather than just telling the disciples something about serving, Jesus wants them to witness it. His wants them to see that His words match His actions, for them to know and see Jesus as a humble servant.

So, Jesus presses the question for them to know what just happened. “Do you understand what I have done for you?”

He Has All Things Under His Feet

In verses 3 and 4, John sort of adds his own editorial comment as to why Jesus did this. He says

Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. (John 13:3–4 NIV)

Notice the “so” in the passage. Jesus knew He has all things under His power, that all things were under His feet, so He stripped off and washed their feet.

Jesus knows who He is, so He served.

He was the great undercover boss who owns the whole company, so He came down to do the customer service.

Jesus knew His time had come, so He acted. Jesus is the creator and sustainer of all things, and yet He didn’t use His status for His own glory or gain, and instead He gave Himself in service to others. He is exaulted and so He humbled Himself and became a servant. Jesus knew He has all things under his feet, so He got low and washed the others' feet.

Jesus didn’t just sit back from afar and say, “You should love one another”. Or “you should be kind to others”. He came and did it Himself. He modelled how to live. He is the pattern we are to follow.

Despite His status to the disciples as their teacher and lord, He stooped down, with a basin and towel to wash their feet.

He Washes Others’ Feet

Jesus humbled Himself to serve the disciples, and He did this for you too. He came down from God, became a Man and humbled Himself to die on a cross (Phil 2 ish). This was a painful and humiliating experience, and Jesus did that for you.

Do you understand what Jesus has done for you? He came to scrafice Himself for you. He willingly came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mat 20:28). He didn’t come for His own gain; He came so that we might gain from His giving.

Jesus knew the path to our salvation wouldn’t be pleasant or glorious, but would be painful and gory. And He did it to save you. He humbly put Himself in your place. Do you understand what Jesus has done for you?

Jesus went low for His disciples by washing their feet. He went low for us by dying on a cross for us.

If you were to ask what God looks like, here in this meal, the answer would be “a servant”. God is the guy with the basin and towel wrapped around Himself, serving others.

Do Christ’s Pattern

Jesus was humble, and we are to follow this pattern of our Teacher and Lord.

Jesus gave this teaching:

Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. (John 13:14–15 NIV)

Jesus sets the example. We are to do what He has done.

Some take this very literally and say that footwashing should be a sacrament, as it is something Jesus commanded His people to do.

Jesus told us to eat bread and drink wine in remembrance of Him, Jesus told us to baptise people in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so why don’t we formalise footwashing like we do with Communion and Baptism? Jesus told us to right?

In church history, most haven’t taken it this literally. Most see that this footwashing was an example for us to follow, not a specific action to copy. This wasn’t simply about cleaning dirty feet, but about taking on the form of a servant for others. By showing love for one another. Jesus’ tangible example of footwashing was just one example to show that we are not to laud our status over someone, but are instead bow down low for others.

Jesus’s example was to be a servant and to have humility towards others, and we are to do the same.

Servant

If we are to follow our master who becomes a servant by footwashing, we too are to become a servant, but not directly to Jesus. Jesus doesn’t say “now that I have washed your feet, you are to wash mine”. Instead He says “you are to wash one another’s”. And so, in washing others' feet, we are obeying our master who is the ultimate footwasher.

In our passage, Jesus said

Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. (John 13:16 NIV)

If we are to follow Jesus as our Lord and master, we need to recognise that we are not greater than Him. We are under Him, and He sets us an example of being a servant. Our pride might get in the way, so we might not like the idea of being a servant or being a slave to someone, but Jesus did it.

In the ancient Roman world, Aristotle said that some people by nature are slaves. They are simply living tools, and some people by nature are to rule over them. But Jesus smashes this idea. If anything, He models that rulers are the ones who are to serve.

Our pride makes us think we are somehow too important for some tasks or some people. That those little tedious dirty jobs are not for me. Jesus, of all the people on Earth, had the power not to do any demeeing task, and yet He served. He washed people’s feet. He died a humulitating criminials death for others.

And so, as we follow our master who was a servant, we are to be servants too. We are not above our master, so we are to get low like He did.

Humility

And in serving others we, will need a mindset change. We will need humility to consider others better than ourselves.

The Roman world did not consider humility a strength, instead they saw a task like footwashing as a sign of weakness or even a character flaw (Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible Humility)

And yet, it was in that world that Christians said humility was a positive trait to put on (Col 3:12, 1 Peter 5:5). Like getting dressed every day, we are to put on humility, for that is at the heart of Christ’s character.

Paul tells the church in Philippi

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. (Philippians 2:3–4 NIV)

Paul goes on to say we are to have this same mindset of Christ who humbled Himself like a servant, to even death on a cross.

Our mindset is to have this same pattern of Christ, which will overflow into serving. We need the right thinking to do the right serving. We need to know who Jesus is, so we can act more like Him. He is God and the humble servant. He is who we worship as Lord and Saviour, and He is who we model our behaviour on. The pattern is Christ.

For All

And so, a sort of pointy technical question is: “Who are we to serve”?

Jesus said we are to wash one another’s feet. Who are the "one another"? Is that for those who are followers of Jesus, like the disciples or the people in the church or is it for all?

I think it means, wherever we find ourselves, at home or work or in the shopping centre, we are to be servants of everyone in the room. Jesus bent down in front of everyone in that room, including Judas. In this chapter of John, we learn that Judas was already planning on betraying Jesus, and Jesus said Judas wasn’t really clean, and yet, Jesus went low for Him. Jesus also washed Peter’s feet, who said He would never fall away, and later that same night Peter denied knowing Jesus three times. And all the other disciples, in a few hours, would distance themselves from Jesus.

But still, Jesus washes everyone’s feet; not based on their heart, not based on merit or their intentions. If this passage tells us anything, no one is above serving and no one is below being served (Exalting Jesus in John Jesus Gives Us an Example of Humble Service (John 13:1–5))

Martin Luther opens up a famous essay (“The Freedom of a Christian”) with these two points:

A Christian is a free lord of all things and is subject to no one.
A Christian is a dutiful servant in all things and is subject to everyone.

And Luther is sort of stealing this from two bits that Paul said:

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. (1 Corinthians 9:19 NIV)

and

Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. (Galatians 6:10 NIV)

Paul wants Christians to use their freedom to serve others and do good to everyone, to win them to Christ and to help believers. We should be on the lookout for how we can serve everyone. Ask yourself, “How can I be willingly inconvenienced for someone else's sake?”

Knowing and Doing Christ’s Pattern

At the end of our passage, Jesus gives this line

Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. (John 13:17 NIV)

Knowing and doing are sides of the same coin. If in some way, on a coin, you could separate the head from the tail, the coin would be worthless. Likewise, if you separate your knowing from your doing, both become worthless.

Knowing without doing doesn’t help anyone and may puff up your pridful intelligence. Doing without knowing can lead to lots of activities, but also puff up your pride as you think about all the good things you are doing when compared to others. Both lead to pride, the opposite of humility.

We need to join the two together. In knowing the humility of Christ, we then do the serving of Christ. Without this grouding we might be building on ourselves and not on the foundation of Jesus.

Blessed

And Jesus says we will be blessed if we know and then we do. That sounds nice, but what does that mean? Being blessed comes with the sense of being favoured or praised.

If you were to ever to give your blessing to someone, you are saying that you are positive toward them, and you want it to go well in what they are doing, that you support them in their activity. When God blesses you, He isn’t just hoping it will go well with you; He will be with you, and He approves of what you are doing. He favours you.

This doesn’t necessarily mean it will always be rainbows and unicorns.

Richared Weymouth said ‘People who are blessed may outwardly be much to be pitied, but from the higher and therefore truer standpoint they are to be envied, congratulated, and imitated.’ (cite in The New Bible Dictionary, Third Edition Blessed)

If you know and do what Jesus says, even if your circumstances are not comfortable or glamorous, God will be pleased with you. A blessed life comes from knowing Jesus and then serving others, because of Jesus.

We are not to merely listen to God’s word, but we are do what it says (Jame 1:22). For this is how God wants us to live. This is His good design, and it pleases Him for us to do what He says.

This Year?

And so as this year sort of winds up, we come to these two questions

How might you know Jesus more this year?
How might you humbly serve others this year?

Reflect on your life and various roles, regardless of your work title, if you are a public servant or not, how might you be blessed? How might you know Jesus and serve others, following Jesus' example? There is something godlike in serving, because that is what our God is like.

Our government, at least in titles, wants to be an organisation filled with servants, with people working for the good of others. And our church is the same, full of people who are willing to serve others, full of people willing to go low for others, to grab their own types of basions and towels for other people.

Every week I see people who welcome us, who make the tea and coffee, who set up the room and sound gear. Every week there are those who serve us in prayer, Bible reading, kids and youth leading, Bible study leading. Our church is full of people who serve, and I love that we have this culture. Let's ensure our activism is based on Jesus.

Jesus knew who He was, so He got up and served.
Because of Christ, know who you are, so that you can serve others.

In knowing more about Jesus this year, if you haven’t already, you might want to join a Bible Study. We have a new one starting up on Tuesday nights. Or you might want to find someone to read the Bible together with. If you haven’t already, you could start a daily Bible reading plan. There are many apps to help with this. Have a think, and make a plan on how you could know Jesus more this year.

And how might you want to serve others this year? This doesn’t have to be in some formal sense of being on a roster or anything like that. You could aim to have someone over for a meal once a month, you could consider how you act in the workplace and do the coffee run for others, or to really listen to people’s lives when they are sharing something significant with you. You could consider how you might serve your boss and workmates in the tasks you have set before you, without grumbling and complaining.

You could help out at the Gordon Community Centre. There is a playgroup on Wednesdays that needs people to help with, and there is the pantry that provides relief to those in need.

And yes, you could serve people here on a Sunday, with welcoming, morning tea, sound and projector, set up, music, praying, Bible reading, and hosting. Or visiting people throughout the week. There are opportunities here, and if you want to know more about anything I have mentioned, please talk to me afterwards. I would love to support you in this.

So let's remember, the pattern is Christ. We are to understand what Christ has done for us, and we are to copy His example of humble service to others. May we be a community full of servants who follow Christ’s pattern.

Let pray:

Lord,
We thankyou for sending your son,
who rules over everything to show us your way of humility.
Help us to be humble servants for others, going low for them,
as your Son did for the disciples.
Help us to find ways we can know more about Jesus and
how we can serve others here and beyond,
through your power, modelled on Christ.
In Jesus name. Amen

Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West

2026-02-01T22:07:00.000+11:00

In the last half of last year, I heard Richard Chin mention this book twice. He thought it was a great book to explain why our society thinks and acts in certain ways. We normally assume that what we think and know is universal and that all people from all time think the same logical thoughts, but that is not the case. And the author of this book says in order for us to understand who we are, we have to go back to 1776, for in that year, it triggered a few things that shaped our current way of looking at the world.

You may have heard that we in the West are WEIRD. Wilson adds an extra ER to the end of that to say we are actually WEIRDER: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian, and Romantic.

For some reason:

Humility in others is more attractive to you than pride. Love is more appealing to you than honor.

you see your identity as something you choose and construct for yourself rather than something you are given.

You do not barter, and you do not store most of your available wealth in physical form. You may never have seen a dead body. You have never offered an animal sacrifice.

You have been educated in a wide variety of subjects that make very little difference to your day-to-day life.

Because you are literate, you will continue to learn superfluous information throughout your life without thinking you are wasting your time (which includes reading books just like this one).

By law, you have the right to vote. You take it for granted that your governments have the right to tax you, and that you have the right to boot out your officials if you disapprove of them.

(and this selected description goes on for a whole chapter)

This book seeks to work out why it is we come to assume a bunch of things that are not universal. This is a history-of-thought book, a little like The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman and Escape From Reason by Francis Schaeffer, and I loved those kinds of books.

After the introduction chapters, it starts out by asking

Why was it that Europeans had sent a ship to the Pacific islands, carrying guns and botanists and telescopes, rather than the other way around?

What was it about the English who sought to travel the world for trade, resources and scientific discovery and not the Islanders who were making boats and sailing for Rome? A bit of the answer was the climate, and if the land produced enough resources for people to then spend time in the arts and science. Pretty much life was on hard mode for the Aboriginals, but in both Europe and China, the climate meant food and supplies were easier to come by. But that is not the whole reason. While China had plenty of rice, wealth, resources and technology, they did not need to explore and find anything more. They had everything they needed. While the Chinese had the better techolonogy it didn't ensure they would dominate the world. All private trade was illegal, and they operated really as a central system for those in power, who were big enough and happy enough as they were. The English, by comparision were much smaller, but had a more curious (or expansionist) temperament and willingness to learn and trade.

There was a very long chapter on the Declaration of Independence, removing some myths about the day and who was doing what. I didn't learn about that in my primary school, so a lot of the details were new to me. But what was interesting was that in 1775, no country claimed to be democratic, and yet today only six countries claim not to be (Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Brunei, which has technically been under martial law since 1962. The last is Vatican City.) Whether the other countries are actually democratic is another story, but for some reason, everyone wants in on this democracy thing. Why is that, since it is a relatively new thing to come across human civilisations?

America was breaking away from the English monarchy and so sought a different path, but one steeped in a whole new set of assumptions. Government was meant to be for the welfare and happiness of all people. And people themselves should be free to seek their own happiness. What they were doing was mixing stable English ideas with French revolutionary ideas, and somehow they found a way forward that didn't implode.

The great basis for most of this was the idea that we have self-evident rights independent of any religious system. However, this book points out that is simply not true and not self-evident. These ideas come from a particular theological belief.

They are neither innately obvious axioms nor universally accepted empirical truths nor rational deductions from things that are.

They are Christian or maybe even Ex-Christian ideas that have been run through the Enlightenment and Romantic period. But nevertheless, the root is Christianity and not Confucianism.

There was much more in here on inventions and the seeking to discover and test things; our view of love and sex and the individual, along with commerce, free trade and an explanation on how these might have come to be valued today. But for the sake of time, what I found helpful, beyond just learning a bunch of superfluous information that might not have much impact on my day-to-day life, was the last chapters on how the Church can respond to this world that we are in.

Since our world is one made up of our own choices, it means we need to find ourselves, work hard, use our privilege well and that we really have no one else to blame when our hopes and dreams do not happen. This is why people may turn to substances, have mental health issues and high suicide rates.

In a world powered by works and measured by achievement, there is something deeply refreshing about the unmerited, transforming favor of God, given without regard to the worth of the recipient.

God's grace can powerfully speak into our lives. Because of Jesus, God freely takes us in, for those who do not deserve it. We don't work or achieve any of our salvation; it is by God's grace alone. Our identity, then, isn't self-constructed, but it is given to us. We become a new creation in Christ.

Freedom is something that is valued and praised today. Those on the right want freedom from the Government, and those on the left may want freedom from the systemic historical structures that oppress people. In these, oppression is external to the person; we are constrained by governments, laws and systems. But we are also restrained by internal things like sinful desires and so to be truly free we need freedom to choose things that help us grow. We need to be free from lust, pride, greed, envy etc so we can make wise choices. And Jesus came to save us from being slaves to sin.

Truth is still kinda of a big deal. Truth and power are tied up in a tangled mes. Today, people are arguing over what is fake news, or AI slop and what is actually true. Different outlets see the same bodycam footage but come up with different narratives of what actually happened. Jesus entered our world, who didn't just claim to be speaking the truth, but was actually the truth. Pilate asks, "What is truth?" not really wanting an answer, and Jesus shows love and integrity, and challenges the power and dies. And yet He rose again, and now we can have certainty about who God is, and how creation is coherent and created with a purpose that can be known, and history is going somewhere. The implication for know this truth was historically "known as knowledge, dignity, providence, and hope. Today we call them science, human rights, meaning, and progress."

I did like this book and Wilson's take on history and our contemporary society. This was perhaps a little American-heavy, although James Cook did get a bit of airtime. The idea about the year 1776 sort of works in a sometimes tenuous way, in that one thinker may have been alive at that time, but perhaps their seminal work wasn't written in that exact year. But it was quite interesting to think so much went down in the latter 1700's, and the shadow it cast. It would be hard to think that ideas and events from 2000 to 2050 will still be impacting the world 400 years later.

The Great Siege of Malta

2026-01-25T22:20:00.004+11:00

I read this book while I was on holiday in England; something about being closer to the location might romanticise the events even more.

Before that trip, maybe in the lead-up to my dad's 80th, I had heard on some podcasts an American academic, Marcus Bull, talking about his new book on this subject. He sort of demythifies and downplays the whole siege. He argued that if Malta was really such a significant location for talking Europe, why didn't the sultan come back the next year and wipe them out, as Malta was in ruins? To which I reply, "humbug". As a half-Maltese, I say the future of the entire universe would have imploded if Malta fell to the Turks or the Nazis in World War 2. The islands signifiance in world politics can not be underestimated :P

The other book I read on this was by Englishman Ernle Bradford. Bull said that Bradford's book was a bit of propaganda for the English. At the time of Bradford's book, Malta was under British rule and had come out of World War II victorious, just like the previous siege in 1565. And there was an element of English triumphalism in this. This may be, but it did make a good story. Anyway, for some reason, I didn't read Bull's book; it may not have been avalaibe or this one was cheaper at the time, but that discussion re-sparked my interest in this story again.

This book starts 44 years before the siege with another one in Rhodes. This was the one the Knights lost, and so they were in limbo for a time before being relocated to Malta. There were 7 chapters over this 44-year period, which framed the battle a lot more than Bradford's book. As a sort of military Christian army, they had vowed to not kill any Christians. This meant they were useless to rulers in Europe who were starting to flex their own national strength against other neighbouring "Christian" countries. These framing chapters helped introduce a lot of characters, and I must admit that it took me far too long to realise that "Turgut" was "Dragut". Allen and Bradford used different spellings for this Turkish admiral.

When it comes to the numbers of the Great Siege, Allen often tries to be as clear as he can and gives the high and low numbers, and then he goes with somewhere in between. He has the initial numbers as

Contemporary reports take the Ottomans from a high of 80,000 to a low of 24,500—the latter figure being part of a report late in the siege. The figure of 35,000 men, 12,000 of them trained soldiers, is likely about right. That is against the 6,100 to 8,655 Christian defenders, of whom perhaps half were professional—at best a three to one advantage.

Once the siege starts, Allen describes each battle well, and the numbers that fell in each battle, along with a few great quotes, showing the knight's willingness, in the face of large odds, to fight to the end. He explains the series of problems the Ottomans faced, their internal struggles, along with the Knights plannning and their doubts.

Very early on La Rivière, a knight, was captured and tortured for information.

La Rivière suggested this was pointless: “What will you get by torturing me? You will never learn anything other than that you will never take Malta, because it is very strong and well provisioned, its captain is exceedingly valorous, its knights and soldiers valiant, and as is their obligation, they would sooner die for their faith and their Order than to show weakness.”

Under torture, he lied to them and led their armies into their most defended area, leading to many Ottoman deaths and the knights not losing any. This was almost the tone for the rest of the battle.

The Ottomans assumed they could take Fort Elmo in under five days, but due to the landscape, the structure of the fort, the grit of the defenders and the fact that the Grandmaster Valette could ferry in new soldiers and the wounded out at night, kept the fort up for 29 days. This bought the knights more time to prepare the other larger fort, Angelo, and to write letters asking for more support to come. By the time they came to the other fort, the Ottomans were demoralised, and their key admiral was killed by a stray rock from a cannon blast.

Grandmaster Valette, who is a hero in managing his army, has some great quotes from primary sources:

Valette called to his entourage, “Come, my knights, let us all go there and die! This is the day!” He went as far as the gate that led to the breach, where Romegas and other senior captains urged him to stay back. He refused.

Valette threw himself into the thick of the mob, shouting, “Brothers, my children, in the name of God, let us all go to die together, with weapons in hand—today is our day!”

Allen put the new influx of men who snuck into Malta one night from the Piccolo Soccorso as the key move that won the victory for the Knights:

It can be argued that the Piccolo Soccorso, more than any other strategic decision, determined the outcome of the entire siege.

Valetta had been writing many letters asking for more reinforcements, which only came right at the end, when the Turks had really lost the will to take the island anyway. However, just after Fort Elmo fell, a small relief of 42 kingths and 600 men came in under the cover of fog and darkness to help reinforce those that were left.

By the end of the whole campaign, Allen points out that

as of September 9, Birgu and Senglea were defended by no more than six hundred able-bodied men—a hundred fewer than the Piccolo Soccorso.

The amount that was added to their number was about the amount that made it through to the end.

When I was in England, my wife's cousins were saying how they loved visiting Malta as it has great weather and beaches. They weren't aware of the Great Siege at all. I think battles where the underdog, who is vastly outnumbered, comes out on top are always a good story. So I told them about both books on this. Either one of those is worth reading.

Compared to Bradford's book, this one added more context to the lead up to this siege, painted the Knights as kinda pirated in the Mediterranean, and unlike Bradford, this may have downplayed the idea that all of Europe hung in the balance if Malta fell. Bradford's version perhaps created more tension in moments, and is shorter, but this one is probably more detailed and tempered in its statements.

Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age

2026-01-11T07:58:00.000+11:00

I read this book as it may have been on some past year's short list, and I thought a book about Church would be helpful in my new role. This book looked at technology and its use and then offers some reflections on how in a church setting it can help or hinder. I appreciated that this was coming from a minister in Silicon Valley, somewhere close to technology, and not some rural, remote church that may not have the resources, skill or access to implement some of the things in the book.

This is not an anti-tech book, instead it puts technology in its place and frames its use, and also its limitations. Today, technology allows us to have speed, choices and individualism, but this advantage hasn't been a boon for our characters:

The speed of the digital age has made us impatient.
The choices of the digital age have made us shallow.
The individualism of the digital age has made us isolated.

And the church hasn't been immune to these pulls. The analogness of church can be a strength for a world caught up in these changes. Church can be a place

To gather when the world scatters.
To slow down when the world speeds up.
To commune when the world critiques.

Marshall McLuhan came up with the Four Laws of Media, and in the last one, when media is pushed to the extrem a paradox is presented, in that it subverts the thing it sets out to achieve. We can see this with phones that allow us to connect with more people, especially with social media, but instead, in real life, you have people glued to screens, not paying attention to the people right in front of them at restaurants or at family gatherings, as they are on their devices.

Kim points out a story when they were doing video sermons, he was asked to look into the camera to "connect" with the people who weren't even in the room.

Putting technology in its place, Kum says, digital informs, analogue transforms. "If the goal is to inform, video away! But if it is to transform, then we must lean into analog approaches as much as possible." With sermons, we need to move away from entertaining to engaging and change those from watching to witnessing. "When a sermon is delivered via video, no matter how dynamic and gifted the communicator may be, the sermon is inherently a watching experience, not a witnessing one."

Coming from an IT background, and in a post-COVID world, I was already on board with most of what was said in this book. There is something about the embodiment of believers that you can not get through digital medium. I have said that virtual church isn't church. It is not a spectator sport. You don't participate when you watch footy on TV, you spectate. I don't understand why it is different with a sermon via a screen. Yes digial talks and podcasts are helpful, but it is not church. There is more to the embodiment of believers than individually absorbing a talk. Kim calls it an exchange not of information but of presence.

He draws on the Greek word for church, ekklēsia, and defines what the New Testament means as "almost always a group of people who gathered regularly to worship, share their lives with one another, and learn and live the way of Jesus together." The bible talks a lot about how we are to care for "one another" about 50 times, and you can't "one another" people online. You need to be present in the flesh, the gather. By its very nature, the church is analoge, it isn't about communication but communion. Another thing done together to represent the one body.

On the Bible, Kim points out that there is a lot of shallow thinking, instead of deep work, happening because of technology. Because of our short attention spans, people are reading less, and Christianity is kinda a bookish faith. What he encourages is for Christians to stop reading the Bible like Dawkins does "in bite-sized morsels, detached from the epic and beautiful scope of the entire narrative arch." We should spend the time to read it. In trying to understand the Bible, "The secret ingredient is 'slow'". There is even a chapter on how to read a book.

I appreciated this book for how it explained the use of technology in how it can appropriately be used, and ways that might cut against a bigger purpose. My current church has some digital tools, but for the most part, it is analogue. Weekly sermons are not uploaded, the idea is we have a small sample so people might get an idea of what they are like, but if you want to hear them reguarlly you have to come. We don't have a building, so every week to the tech is set up, and so sometimes the clicker might not work, or the sound might not be perfect, but people love it. They love the community, and so they come every week to this slow-paced event in a (sometimes very cold) school hall, because they know how to "one another" each other.

Devoted to Jesus - J. C. Ryle

2026-01-06T16:46:00.002+11:00

At my church, in January, the sermons are shorter, and they add a biography talk. Last Sunday, I got to give one, and I picked J. C. Ryle as I am a bit of a fan. Below is mostly what I said, which is really a cut-down version of a previous talk I had given. That link has all the footnoting.

In 2008, I was asked to give my first Sunday sermon. It was on the persistent widow from Luke 18. So like any new preacher, I googled sermons on Luke 18 about prayer, and I found one called: A Call to Prayer by J.C. Ryle. What I heard really cut me to my heart about prayer. I was really challenged to pray more, and I appreciated how this guy was very direct and clear.

So after that, I looked up this Ryle guy up, and I found out that the person I was listening to wasn’t J.C. Ryle, it was some random who was reading from an old track from the late 1800’s, as Ryle had been dead for like 110 years.

And so that sparked my interest in this guy even more. Now I could go on about J.C. Ryle, but I really want to briefly comment on the three things I like about him, to encourage you to check him out as well. I appreciate that is he was an equipper, he is an Anglican, and his mission zeal.

Equipping

Even though Ryle wrote in the 1800’s he is still very much accessible today. He could be considered blunt or direct. If he thought the Bible said something, well then he believed it and said so, no matter the fallout.

After Ryle became the first Bishop of Liverpool, a story goes that an older lady went to church to hear him speak. Afterwards, she said, “I never heard a Bishop. I thought I’d hear something great. . . He's no Bishop. I could understand every word.” Ryle took that as a compliment.

Ryle saw it as an important task of the church to equip everyone in the church. He lamented once that it seems like the laity had taken their seats on the right train, and are told only to sit quietly while the clerical engine drives them to heaven. In his first parish, at Helmingham, the population was only 287, and Ryle tried to visit everyone, every week. He would distribute reading material to one family and then pass that on to the next family when they were done with that.

One of the things he wrote was Expositional Thoughts on the Gospels, which were originally aimed at families to do as a devotion together. He would slowly go through each of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, taking around 12 or so verses at a time, point out a few things from the text and then ask a probing question or give an encouragement. As he went through the gospels, his footnotes got more and more extensive, and they sort of turned into a technical commentary where he would show his thinking, leaning on past theologians.

Not only did he produce these commentaries/devotions, but he also produced many tracks. These were mostly sermons converted into a readable format for wider distribution. It is estimated that perhaps 12 million copies of his tracks were printed over his lifetime. Today, some of them have been collated into books.

In all Ryle’s tracks, he would specifically aim to address three types of people: non-believers, the confident believer and those weak in the faith or who are about to come to Christ. Ryle’s heart was for the lost and for the building up of believers. And this really is the main strength or influence Ryle has today. He is on about forcefully applying Biblical truth to believers and non-believers. In short, he was an Evangelical.

After I discovered Ryle, I found out that the main book he is famous for is Holiness.

When J. I. Packer was asked about the most influential books in his life, first he listed Calvin’s Institutes and then Holiness by Ryle. Hannah gave me a copy of this on our honeymoon. That’s love, right?

This book is a big challenge to people who say they are Christian but lax in what they believe and how they behave. Ryle looks you in the eyes and tells you to pull your socks up and to enter the fight against sin, for how you live your life will set the pattern for your life everlasting.

He doesn’t sugarcoat the Christian life. On counting the cost of following Jesus, he addressed the “light” believer and said sternly:

"What does your Christianity cost you?" Very likely it costs you nothing. Very probably it neither costs you trouble, nor time, nor thought, nor care, nor pains, nor reading, nor praying, nor self–denial, nor conflict, nor working, nor labor of any kind. Now mark what I say. Such a religion as this will never save your soul. It will never give you peace while you live, nor hope while you die. It will not support you in the day of affliction, nor cheer you in the hour of death. A religion which costs nothing is worth nothing. Awake before it is too late. Awake and repent. Awake and be converted. Awake and believe. Awake and pray. Rest not until you can give a satisfactory answer to my question: "What does it cost?"

That should give you a little sense of his style.

Anglican

Now Ryle was an Anglican. While Holiness is Ryle's most well-known book today, back then, Knots Untied was Ryle’s most popular book. This was because it dealt with some contentious issues of the day. A while back, I couldn’t find this book in print, but for one of my birthdays, Hannah found some place that would print it for me. Again, if that is not love, what is?

In Knots Untied, I can’t say I agree with him on everything, but that is ok. He touches on infant baptism, the lord’s supper, the use of the Sabbath, the 39 Articles and other Anglican points of doctrine.

Ryle praised the Anglican system when it went well, but was also blunt when he thought the system got in the way of evangelism or was frivolous.

This is not a major point, but I did find it helpful and comforting to know that in the tradition that I was swimming in, it had room for the likes of Ryle. That he, and many like him, were fiercely evangelical, and they could think, act and operate as such

Mission

At the age of 64, Ryle became the first Bishop of Liverpool, England. And this presented a massive mission field for him. Liverpool had rapidly expanded with the Industrial Revolution. The building of the railways and large docks meant an increase in production and caused a massive gap between the rich and the poor. Church attendance in the area was considered abysmal, with estimates of about 80% of the area being unchurched of any denomination. The local paper once said, “look at the problem which way you will, the Man in the street will not, and never will, go to church."

The population of Liverpool was around 1.1 million. This was a big change from Ryles's last rural parish of about 1500 people. In this new diocese, he inherited 340 clergy. For comparison, the diocese he came from had about 1160 clergy for a population of 660,000.

Faced with these challenges, Ryle was undaunted. He said that the person in Liverpool would be saved the same way as they were in his old parish, that is, by the proclamation of the Gospel.

His basic plan was to set about not building buildings, but by building up more people who could proclaim the Gospel. He broke up parishes into smaller areas of 3,500 people and deployed a team of three people (with at least one woman on the team) to that area. They were to go door-to-door proclaiming the gospel and to plant a church that could be self-sufficient within five years[17]. This meant he was sending people into some priest’s turf. But Ryle saw that gospel priorities should trump church regulations. He lamented having many church events that weren’t useful. Real church work, he said, was when the people pursued holiness, neighbourly love and direct personal effort to convert sinners.

In the 20 years of being bishop of Liverpool, Ryle ordained 535 deacons and 541 priests, set up around 44 new churches and 85 “mission rooms”. He failed to build a cathedral (he had lamented that the money could be better spent on churches and mission halls[20]). He also set up a pension fund for clergy and supported around seven social groups that were aimed at helping the poor.

Us now

And here at Lanyon, we can learn from Ryle, in his simplicity and boldness. People are saved here same way they are anywhere: by telling them the Gospel. Jonathan, Skye, Lochalan and I only have one mouth each, and that might not be enough mouths to tell the gospel to our whole valley. We need more.

Our mission field consists of 18,100 people who only have a choice between two churches in their local area. Our task is still the same as it was in the apostles' day, and the same fight against sin and the devil is still going on. Ryle would say that our task as churchmen (and women) is to pursue personal holiness, show love to others and speak the gospel. May it be so.

Good News to Share (Col 1:21-29)

2025-12-28T20:59:00.005+11:00

Today I gave the last talk for the year, wrapping with Colossians 1. I feel like this talk had some promise, but it sort of only came together. I think I didn't so much as teach the passage as repeated the passage, and I wish I painted a better picture of the Gospel story, to show how good the news is. But below is more or less what I said. At the 10 the theme linking wasn't so good, and at the 4:30pm I fumbled a bit.

Welcome to church over this summer break. As we finish this year, we are wrapping up our series in Colossians 1. This has been a great little series, and this chapter would be worth a re-read. It has been about prayer and encouragement, it has been about Christ over creation and salvation and today it is about the Gospel. “Gospel” is a bit of a Christian word, and it simply means good news.

We are wired to share things with others. When we see or hear something good we like to include others in on it. This the bread and butter of all social media. Young kids frequently grab their parents attention to point out things they find interesting. In most WhatsApp chat groups, there is always that one person who floods the chat with memes they find funny and want to share it with the rest of the group. We love to share good things with others.

And as Christians, we have good news to share. That is essentially our mission. This mission is exactly why Paul wrote to the Colossians. Even though he had never met them personally, he heard from Epaphras how they heard the Gospel and believed. Paul thought this was tops, so he wrote this letter in which he keeps talking about Jesus. As Christians we have experienced something that is good in Jesus and so we should want to drop Jesus into our chat with others.

In our passage today, we will see that the news we have is about our present and future condition, it is about our inclusion in God’s plan and the news is about Jesus our Christ.

So that is our structure: our condition, our inclusion and our Christ.

Our condition

The passage today starts off quite frank and negative. Paul tells this church in Colossians

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. (Colossians 1:21 NIV)

Paul points to the churches past. They were once alienated from God. That is they were far from Him, they were separated from God, they were estranged and distant from Him. And that wasn’t a neutral thing. They weren’t God’s friend, they were enemies to Him. In their minds they didn’t want God at all. They ignore Him, they avoided Him, they didn’t acknowledge His existence and you could tell they were like this because of their behavior. Paul calls them evil. They were doing the opposite of good.

You can tell generally tell when a line is crooked, especially when placed next to a straight line. And God is that ultimate straight line. He is the standard of good, and so when we ignore Him, and don’t pay attention to His standards and when we go our own way, far from Him, we move away from the good. We become crooked and forget or ignore His standard.

This isn’t just a thing for those in Colossae, everyone apart from God are in these categories. Everyone wants to do their own thing, ignoring God; and so live separated and opposite lives to God. This is the natural state of all people. That sounds rough right? No one wants to hear they are evil, but the passage goes on to some very good news

But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation (Colossians 1:22 NIV)

But now; Paul turns from talking about their past condition to their present condition. But now, they are holy, without blemish and free from accusation. Now because of Jesus, they have been reconciled to God. They are no longer enemies, they no longer can be accused of being evil. They are in a new condition, because of what Christ has done for them.

He went through death for them. He did this, so that they can be friends again with God. He died to rescue and save them from their ways that were leading them further and further away from God.

Because Jesus died in their place the debt for their sins has been paid. God now sees them as holy, or pure. They are spotless; no one can now accuse them of being enemies and evil. No one can say they are not forgiven. Because of what Christ has done, they are completely forgiven and right in God’s eyes.

This is the good news for everyone, not just for this ancient church. We were all lost, we were all in rebellion to God, but through Christ, the creator and savour of the world, He has made us right. We are now found, we are now made right, we are now friends with God.

This is the basic message of Christianity. It isn’t about doing good, it isn’t about giving money or visiting certain holy places, or saying the right things. It is about Christ. Christ is the one who did the good, Christ is the one who was given up and died on our behalf. Christ is the one who came down to us, to help save and restore us to God.

This is life changingly good news and we can invite all people to come to Him. All people can get on this and be brought close to God, they too can have their guilt removed and be clean and free from any accusation. Would you like this? As Christians we want all people to trust in God’s forgiveness, in His goodness and in His ways to live.

There are about 18,000 people who live in this valley. Apart from Christ, they are enemies to God, but God wants all people to not perish, but to be forgiven. God wants all people to know that they can be pure and spotless, free from any accusation. Christ died for the people of Lanyon Valley. This is good news for all people.

And so, this message is available to all, but the truth is not all eventually will accept this good news. Paul says this is for everyone

if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. (Colossians 1:23 NIV)

This news isn’t just an intellectual idea, but something you have to continue to hold on to. And all those who stand in this message and do not move from it, all those who continue to hope in the message of Jesus will be saved.

Christianity is all about Christ, and what He has done for us, but we still have a responsibility to do something; and that something we have to do is to not move. We continue in the faith by not moving away from this hope, or from the message of the Gospel. Paul warns this church to stay where they are. To keep trusting in Jesus, in all the ups and downs in life.

There will be hard times, there will be distractions. In the parable of the four soils, Jesus said some will not continue in the faith. Some will not build deep roots and so when hard times come they will fall. Some will get strangled by the worries of life, or by riches or by pleasure and they will not grow (Luk 8:13-14). But we are to be planted in Jesus. We need deep roots in Christ. All those who are planted, will hold on the message of the Gospel. And all who continue, we can say with confidence, as night follows day, in the end they will be found without fault or blemish in God’s eyes.

Not only will some not continue in the faith, but some will actually be hostile to the faith. Paul is experiencing this when He writes this letter, as he is in prison for declaring this good news.

Our inclusion

Paul preached a message of inclusion and this turned the religious systems on its head. It said that your genetics doesn’t make you special. It said your behaviour doesn’t earn you a place in heaven. It said that you were bad, but Jesus took your punishment for you, and this gracious offer is available to everyone who can see that they are not perfect and in need of rescue.

And so Paul, in prison, was willingly suffering for this message because it was true. He had seen the risen Jesus. Death didn’t hold Jesus down. Because of Jesus, Paul knew that his previous ways of trying to live by his own efforts was rubbish. Paul was willing to suffer for this message because it helped build up the Church; and all those in Christ are part of a body that belongs to Jesus.

Paul preached a message of inclusion which in the past was a mystery that had now been revealed.

the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:26–27 NIV)

“Mystery” here is about something that was hidden but is now public knowledge. Like the production of a new movie, for a period of time it is under wraps, but when the time comes, the marketing team wants everyone to know about the new blockbuster. God had chosen the Gentiles, those who are not Jews, to be included in His plan and receive His riches which is Jesus. It was a mystery, but now it is known.

In the Old Testament there are hints and allusions to the whole world being saved by God, but they didn’t quite know how. Through Abraham all nations, not just one, would be blessed. The whole nation of Israel was to be a kingdom of priests, meaning they were to mediate God to the rest of the nations. The prophets would speak of how all the nations would one day worship God, but the plan wasn’t quite known. But now, this mystery of inclusion is known.

Not only are the Gentiles included into God’s plan, but they are including into God. God doesn’t just look at those who trust in Him as blamless and pure. He doesn’t just say “they are mine” He also says “they are home”. Christ dwells in His people. This is why Paul was willing to suffered for God’s church, because they are God’s people. They are people who Christ is in. So Paul serves the church in any way he can.

So as you look around this room and see believers, know that they are holy and blameless to God, and that Christ is in them.

Christ, the firstborn over creation, the one who made everything and who holds all things together. Christ, the beginning and the end of all things. The one who conquered death, is in us.

How might that change your idea in what is happening here at church? Or how you relate to the people in this room? New Year's is coming up, people start to think what big plans they might do in 2026. Where does your connectedness to church fit in with this? How might you serve the church next year? What might that look like, knowing that as you serve those in our community, you are serving those who have Christ in them.

With Christ in us, He is helping to transform us, He is helping us to stand firm in the Gospel, so that in the end we will be completely restored and in the presence of God for eternity.

All peoples are all included by God. God is not just God over one nation. God doesn’t dwell in certain temples around the world, God dwells in all beleivers all over the world. And we have a hope that we will be with God in glory.

Our Christ

Our good news is about Christ. Through His death, He has made us holy in God’s sight. This message about Christ is huge, and invites us on a mission, to share it with others so they can experience this too. This might not be an easy task, but it is such good and important news, that sharing it might override our own comfort.

Paul finishes this chapter with

He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. (Colossians 1:28 NIV)

See here, Paul isn’t moving from Jesus. He doesn’t want to stop talking about Christ. His goal in talking about Jesus is that all who keep hearing will be mature in Christ. All those who hear the gospel will be complete in Christ. There is no need to look elsewhere to be perfect in God’s eyes. Just stick with Jesus and you will be mature in Him.

And so this Gospel is great. But it isn’t a life of comfort. Post-Christmas time comes with the sentiment of comfort and relaxation. You can vege out and watch the cricket (if its on), or travel to the beach, or binge watch those shows you wanted to catch up on. Especially this week, it is a time for slowing down and a chance to get away. But the first Christmas was the opposite of comfort and relaxation.

God gave up His comfort and glory and came down to earth to be born in a manger. The manger smelled of animals, there wasn’t even a bed, it was a stuffy room in an already overcrowded city. And Jesus life didn’t get much easier after that. He was despised and rejected and hung on a cross. This wasn’t a comfortable story, but it is good news.

The Gospel is about Jesus. He is the hero who, leaves behind His riches and goes to a foreign place to saves a group of people from disaster. He sacrifices Himself, overcomes the enemy and comes back victorious. We are the benefactors of Christ’s victory. (I got the gist of this from Tim Keller)

And so now we have a great story to tell. Our lives are wrapped up in this great epic. We are called in and through this message. How can we not share this news with others who don’t know this story? It might not be comfortable but it is still good news.

Others can also be caught up in this story. All people can be included in this message. They can hear how they can be free from blemish and accusation in front of God. Others can know that Christ can come and dwell in them and transform them.

Getting this message out can come with a cost. Not all people might like to hear that they are enemies to God. Some may not like the radical forgiveness and mercy and grace offered and feel like they have to somehow still pay back or earn some sort of merit to be deserving.

If you say this message, you may lose reputation points with family members, or others you know. As you continue your life around this good news, you may make different spending decisions, and may not go on so many holidays in the summer. Despite all of that, the message is worth it, for this is the greatest story every told, and it changes people's condition before God for eternity.

So getting this message out sounds like effort and struggle and work. But there is one last verse in our passage. It says we are not alone in what we do.

Paul says, in trying to speak the gospel

To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me. (Colossians 1:29 NIV)

Paul is working hard, but Christ is powerfully at work in Him. Christ is in Him, and helps him.The same power that raised Christ from the dead is at work in all who believe (Rom 8:11).

We are not on our own. Christ is at work in us. Yes, it can be scary to drop Jesus in to a conversation, we might not know where it will lead. We might not have all the answers. We might say something wrong or silly. Those can be fears, but know you are not on your own. Christ is powerfully at work in you.

Use your effort to promote the Gospel, but don’t depend on yourself, depend on God to work. His message is powerful, it has changed you from being an emeny of God to being His friend. It can do the same for others.

So as the new year starts, maybe you might want to think about how you can continue to not move on from the Gospel. How you could proclaim Him, trusting not in your own energy, but in Christ who works in you?

"Remeber our responsibility is not to win but to witness." (My Favorite Illustrations Evangelism/Witnessing)

How might you share the good news of Jesus in your chats next year? How might you continue in the Gospel and see how good the story is, so much that you want to share it with others, so much that you can’t help but not share something good with your friends?

Our condition and inclusion is in Christ. Let us not move from this message, but be moved to share it with others, so they too can know what Christ has done for them.

Heavenly Father,
We thankyou for the good news that we are no longer your enemies but your friend.
We thankyou for Jesus who died in our place so we are now without blemish.
Help us to continue in this good news, trusting that you are in and with us.
Thankyou for including all people in to your saving plan.
Help us to share this good news with others, so all people can be mature in Christ.
Help us to trust your power to work through us
So that more people can praise your name.
In Jesus, our Savour, Amen.

Firstborn over Creation (Col 1:15-17)

2025-12-26T10:38:00.001+11:00

Below is the talk I gave at our Christmas Eve service. We are doing a series on "Firstborn" from Colossians.

Merry Christmas everyone. I am really glad you have come tonight. In the time we have tonight, we are going to be thinking about Jesus, the baby we remember at Christmas and why this little baby is such a big deal. Jesus was so unlike anyone else in the history of the world, so much so that, we break our timeline of history around Him. We measure our years based on how far away we are from this Christmas event.

Jesus was Mary’s firstborn son (Luke 2:7), which was pretty significat for Mary, but Jesus is also so immensly significat us and our world. This little baby that we remember is bigger than we think. And so, as we come to Christmas, we are not so much as asking what this baby means, but more this baby is telling us what we mean. Jesus answers our most deepest and profound questions of life. Who are we? Why are we here?

We beleive that Jesus was born of a virgen, and this make so much more sense and gives us way more meaning to life, than to say the whole universe was virgen born; that everything came from nothing and that all things are eventually heading right back to nothing.

Martin Heidegger said the fundamental question of metaphysics is “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, and in our short passage we get the answer and more. We find out who we are and our purpose.

He is the image of the invisible God

The first thing we learn about Jesus in our passage is that

The Son is the image of the invisible God... (Colossians 1:15 NIV)

In one sense, this isn’t saying too much. All people are made in the image of God. In creation, God made people, male and female in His image. We all reflect something of God in how we create, communicate and care for each other, although we don’t do that perfectly.

But in another sense, this is saying so much more. This is saying, God who is invisible is now visible in Jesus. When we see Jesus, we can see God. He is the exact image, or reproduction or “visible expression,” of God Himself. (Philippians, Colossians, Philemon Jesus: Lord of Creation (1:15–17))

A few verses later we are told that

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him (Colossians 1:19 NIV)

All of God was in this Christmas baby. "He shared the same substance as God and made God’s character known" (Philippians, Colossians, Philemon Jesus: Lord of Creation (1:15–17)) brining "clarity to our hazy notions of the immortal, invisible God" (Colossians and Philemon The Image of the Invisible God, the Firstborn over All Creation (1:15–17))

When the shepherds went to Bethelam to see a baby in swaddling cloth, they saw God. On it’s own, it is wild to think that God would come down to earth at all. But to be born as a baby, and not to just to turn up as some sort of superman with all their super God powers. Instead, God came as feeble, weak and dependent. He came as a cute little baby, with little baby fingers that can wrap around an adult finger, that is something else for God to be.

God entered His creation as one of us. So that must tell us something about God’s value for people. He cares about us, He can idenity with us, He knows first hand about our human condition. We are not ignored or forgotten by the God who made everything. We are valuable in His sight.

Jesus is firstborn over creation

But while Jesus entered creation, we also learn that He is over and above creation. Like how a builder isn’t part of their building, but can enter what they made. The rest of our first sentence says Jesus is

...the firstborn over all creation. (Colossians 1:15 NIV)

The word “firstborn” in this sense, doesn’t mean Jesus was the first thing made in creation, that he was part of creation. Instead it is saying He is cheif over all creation, He is superior over everything.

“Firstborn” is a word used in the Old Testament that can be about status. Israel is called God’s “firstborn” (Exod. 4:22), and God calls David in Psalm 89 (:27) the “firstborn” among the kings of the earth (Philippians, Colossians, Philemon Jesus: Lord of Creation (1:15–17))

These aren’t talking about biological order, but priority. It was a way of saying that both Israel and David had a preeminent role in God’s plan, not that they were somehow born first on a timeline.

My friend Carlos was my sons under 11 soccer coach this year. In a sense, Carlos was over my son’s soccer team; he was not part of the team, he was not under 11, instead, he directed where everyone should go. Jesus is firstborn over all creation. He rules over all creation, directing where it should go and is not part of creation. And yet, at Christmas, we remember that Jesus didn't stay on the sidelines. He reduce Himself when He entered His creation. Jesus was so far above everything, and yet He came down as a little baby. He joined the team and submitted Himself to the laws of creation. He is bigger than we might think.

Creator and Sustainer

To flesh Jesus bigness more, the rest of the passage talks about how Jesus is over and apart from creation, while still sustaining all of it.

For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:16–17 NIV)

We see that in Jesus, everything was created. Think about a thing, the Andromeda galaxy, a kangaroo, the presents under the tree tomorrow. All things have been created through Jesus. He made everything from nothing. We humans, we rearrange things, using chemicals, or supplies from Bunnings, or coloured paint or Lego pieces to create, but Jesus made all the things in creation from nothing, with no raw materials. Even the things we can’t see, like gravity and electic forces and dark matter. Everything. We live in His creation, in His masterpiece.

Jesus is the supreme power over the universe. He has no rival, good or bad; all powers are under Jesus.

Not only that, in Jesus, everything is being held together. Without Jesus, everything would fall apart. We have all sorts of universal constants like gravity and magnetic forces and the speed of light, but all of those things are fundamentally working away because Jesus is holding it all up.

"Without him, electrons would not continue to circle nuclei, gravity would cease to work, the planets would not stay in their orbits." Colossians and Philemon 2. The Heart of the Gospel: The Supremacy of Christ in Creation and Redemption (1:15–20)

“He keeps the cosmos from becoming a chaos.” (H. C. G. Moule cited in Colossians and Philemon The Image of the Invisible God, the Firstborn over All Creation (1:15–17))

This means all the good things we have have been made by Jesus. The baby we remember on the 25th of December is the creator and sustainer of the world. He is the one holding all the Christmas tress up He is enabling the fairy lights to work; the Christmas lunch that you will eat tomorrow is being sustained by Him. And Jesus is holding all things for a purpose.

Before and For All Things

Our passage says He is before all things, and all things have been created for Him.

Jesus is the beginning of all things and is at the end of all things. He is at the centre of the universe, as He has a plan for where everything is going. This universe was no accident.

When it says everything was made for Jesus, this doesn’t mean it is to meet some unmet need that He didn’t have before creation. That God lacked something and needed creation to satisfy Him. No, everything is for Him in the sense that

"Jesus is the goal of all creation. Everything exists to display his glory, and ultimately he will be glorified in his creation." (Philippians, Colossians, Philemon Jesus: Lord of Creation (1:15–17))

As we sing:
fields and floods, rocks hills and plains
repete the sounding joy
repete the sounding joy

All creation sings and points to Christ as the creator. He is the source and sustainer of it all, and this points to Him. Just as the Mona Lisa points to Leonardo’s skill, or the Sistine Chapel ceiling shows Michelangelo’s genius. Creation’s existence points to the ultimate artist and exists for Christ’s glory.

And so tomorrow, as you gather around a meal, and open the presents, all of that points to Christ. Christ is for family, and for food, and for fun, and all of those good things point beyond themselves, to Jesus. He is the one we can be thankful to; for all of creation and all that is good. He is the one who wants to adopt us into His family, who has prepared a banquet for us where we can enjoy Him forever. He wants us to enjoy His creation and to thank Him for it.

Since all creation is made by Jesus, and is held up by Jesus and is for Jesus, this also includes us. Like the universe, we are not self-sufficent but we depend on Jesus, and we are made for Him. He has a plan that includes people.

That is why He came as a baby on Christmas. We can look around and see some very good things, but we know there are also very bad things in this world. Those are not how it was planned; that was not how creation was made; but that is the reason why Jesus came into His creation. Things are in disarray, they are broken and strained, which is why we need restoration, reconciliation, and recreation.

So at Christmas, Jesus came as a person, taking on humanity so that He could bring about peace on Earth through His blood on the cross. Our God died for us. In doing this, we recieve forgivenss and a relationship with God. To hear more about this, come back tomorrow as that is the next bit in our Colossians passage.

So the goal of creation is Jesus. Everything was made by Him, and it is for Him. He is the end, the reason, the goal, the purpose of creation, and this includes us.

We were made for Jesus. To give Him glory, to thank and sing His praises for all the good that He has done. This little baby in the manger is bigger than you think.

A theory of everything

Scientists have been working on a theory of everything. They have come up with a formula that, if you put all the right variables in it, they will be able to predict any possible experiment. The formula is complicated and unfinished; it’s one of the reasons why they built the Large Hadron Collider, to find the Higgs boson.

And so the hope is that one day, with a unified theory of everything, scientists could go back in time and work out the Big Bang, or they could go forward in time and build a predictive model for any experiment we want.

One of the scientists who worked on the Hadron Collider, Brian Cox, said they do all these experiments to work out a theory of everything so that “We can stare at the face of creation.”

It’s interesting that he wants to put a face to creation (this was taken from Glen Scrivener). This is something we don’t have to go looking for. This is what we celebrate at Christmas, as Jesus, the firstborn of Mary, is the firstborn over creation. He is the image of the invisible God. He came to us, so we can see His face and what He is like. This little baby is bigger than we think.

Jesus gives us a real and better explanation for everything. Because Jesus is the creator, it means that we didn’t start out as nothing. That nothing exploded in a really careful way to accidentally produce life on this mineral-rich planet. Because we are sustained and made for God, it means we are not at the hands of random chance and impersonal forces. It means God started this whole show, and it is going somewhere.

Because of Jesus, there is something rather than nothing. Because of Jesus, it means we have meaning and purpose, not wrapped up in ourselves, but in a baby in a manger. You were made for God. Jesus is the end goal of everything. He came down to rescue us because He cares for us in His creation. And all those who are in Him have nothing to fear. The creator of the universe has rescued us, there is no greater power that can contend with Him.

And hands down, that is better than nothing.

Enjoy your Christmas, and remember that the baby in the manger is bigger than you think.

The Catcher in the Rye

2025-12-14T21:02:00.006+11:00

In one of Five Iron Frenzy's songs, there is this line, "I sometimes feel like Holden Caulfield", and for a long time, I never really knew the reference. Later, I found out it was a Catcher in the Rye reference. This book is meant to be a classic, one of the best novels ever written, so I thought I might give it a go.

It was hooked at the beginning of the book. It is written for a first-person perspective from Holden, and I really like the voice and style; it captures well what a teenager might say and think. I laughed out loud in a few bits in the way the character would talk, but overall, I thought the book could have been shorter, for it really doesn't go anywhere. That may be the point, a little nihilistic of simply capturing a weekend of a troubled kid with no point. Some more character development or facing of consequences might have left me with more positive feelings from the book.

This story traces the weekend of a kid who is about to be kicked out of a boarding school, and his parents aren't going to find out till Wednesday. (This is all set in a time before mobile phones, smoking was more acceptable, and generally everyone seems a little nicer and less hurried.)

So before Holden's parents find out that he is getting kicked out of another school, he skips out of school and travels to New York, where he lives, but instead of going home, he stays in a hotel. (He does sneak into his apartment to see his sister at one sta.ge). Through the weekend, he gets cabs and walks around and goes to clubs and people's places and talks to cab drivers, people in clubs, calls friends, but nothing is really pushed. Things don't work out for him, but the consequences don't seem to really cost anything. He invites a woman to his hotel room, but he is too scared to do anything, and her pimp takes twice as much money. He buys a record for his sister, but it breaks, and he gives that to her anyway. He runs low on money and visits an old teacher of his, but he turns out to be a bit pervy, so he leaves that place. But through these moments, Holdeb sort of just plods along with it all, and they don't really impact anything.

Holden hates hypocrisy and sees most people as fakers and posers. So he is trying to be true and real, and yet he boasts how good he is at lying to people; he doesn't want to face his parents about his schooling and generally is running from himself. I get the teenage angst, and how many people could relate to this. I think in this aspect, it is captured very well, but overall, after watching this very busy weekend, we are where we were before.

One of Holden's brothers died earlier, and another kid at a previous boarding school also committed suicide, so there is lots for Holden to process, but he doesn't seem like he wants to do that. This weekend trip brings up memories, but moving on and dealing with those problems, or his unwillingness to do school work, is still a thing that Holden needs to do.

Maybe nihilism was the point. Maybe it's a reflection of us all to think about our hypocrisy, maybe it is just a marandering story and nothing more. Maybe the ambiguity of it all makes this book a success.

It reminded me of the scene in the movie Adaptation (language warning) where the main character has to adapt a story about orchards into a movie, and in his mind, nothing happens in the book. He asks a screenwriter expert, "What happens when you are trying to make a movie, and nothing happens, where people don't change, and nothing is resolved, just like the real world?", to which the expert replies, "Sounds like you will bore your audience to tears. And what do you mean, nothing happens in real life? Every day, people make decisions that affect their lives, and if nothing happens in your movie, then why are you wasting my time with that movie? I don't have any use for it." (sort of the clean version of his reply) Maybe this book is the exception to the rule.

Maybe I was too old to appreciate the angst where nothing get resovled. Perhaps a combination of its uniqueness, combined with the cultural moment when it came out, makes this stand apart. The book had its moments, but could have been shorter.

God's King is a SAVING King

2025-12-07T20:54:00.011+11:00

Today I spoke again about the King in Psalm 72 and how that is fulfilled in Jesus. I was a little disappointed in the output of this talk. I just felt like it never really came together properly. The topic of being saved or salvation is such a big one in the Bible, but here I didn't think I really nailed it. Anyway, below is more or less what I said.

Today, we are finishing our series of looking at the King in Psalm 72. This Psalm "sums up everything Israel’s history expected and needed in a king." (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B, Volume 1 Theological Perspective)

So far, we have seen, from this Psalm, that this king is just, they are enduring, and they are the king of kings. Today we will see they are a saving king.

We want a saving leader that cares

This sounds nice. We would like a King who would save his people if they needed saving. We might love a ruler who would get their hands dirty in the saving work. We might love the mythical idea of the old kings who would ride into battle and fight personally for their country and people. So they know first-hand the struggle and the victory. Alexander the Great, William the Conqueror and Napoleon charged into battle on horses, putting themselves in danger.

But of course, today it is not like that at all. Today, our leaders still save their citizens, but in different ways. Kylie Moore-Gilbert was a political academic from Melbourne who went to a conference in Iran. But on her way out of the country, she was detained and charged with espionage. Some 804 days later, the Australian government was able to negotiate an agreement to get Kylie back home. Our government still saves and rescues its people, but not through battle, but through diplomacy. It's a different type of rescue.

In our Psalm today, the longing is that the King may

defend the afflicted among the people
and save the children of the needy; (Psalm 72:4 NIV)

Israel and probably us too, want a ruler who would defend those who are hurt, and to help save the needy children. This is a great calling for a leader, to consider the weakest. Bob Hawke said, “By 1990 no Australian child with be living in poverty”. While that was not achieved, he did reduce child poverty by 30%. It was an honourable sentiment. It’s great to have a leader who cares for the weak, and not for themselves or for the rich and the powerful. This is what we think a true and noble leader would do.

Later in this Psalm, it continues along with this desirable leadership trait, we read

For he will deliver the needy who cry out,
the afflicted who have no one to help.
He will take pity on the weak and the needy
and save the needy from death.
He will rescue them from oppression and violence,
for precious is their blood in his sight. (Psalm 72:12–14 NIV)

The children are not mentioned here, but now it’s simply the needy, the afflicted and the weak are to be the focus of the king. He will hear their cries, have pity on them, save and rescue them from death and violence. For those who have no one to help, the King will help.

And we are told His motivation here, “for precious is their blood in his sight”. This king is moved simply by love for the people under him.

The king has pity on the weak and the needy. He doesn’t withhold compassion when He sees their need. "this king has a sentiment of concern on steroids—he acts on his attitude and puts feet to his feelings!"(Exalting Jesus in Psalms 51-100 Appeal to His Compassionate Heart (Psalm 72:12–14))

He values those who are oppressed and experiencing violence. Not because they have royal blood in them, not because they are useful to him, but because they are in need and He is able to help. Their blood, what keeps them alive, is precious to him.

Jesus is this King

Israel was waiting for this King. Israel, throughout its history, experienced slaverly, deliverance, and then Exile, and then lived under other nation-states. They wanted a King to save them, and they knew one would come, for God had promised one would. And they trusted that one day they would come.

We know that this King, the perfect King, is Jesus. He is the saving King, who hears the cries of the needy and rescues them. He is the saving King who can rescue you.

We are in need of salvation

Now you might be thinking, I don’t need saving. I am not needy. I have a stable job, I don’t need anything. You may also be too proud to even want to ask for help, as asking for help may feel like it puts you in someone’s debt. You might think, I can do life on my own, I have worked to be self-sufficient. Ignoring the fact that this king says will save you from death, something you can not overcome.

And Jesus says, those who want to live in His Kingdom, under the perfect King Jesus need to be needy. They are to be poor and humble, admitting that they lack something.

Jesus said

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3 NIV)

Those who are poor in spirit, those who know they are needy and lack something, maybe not financially, maybe not socially, but spiritually. We all need a different type of rescue. Those who know they need God’s help will get to enter into this new kingdom.

Do you know the story of Zacchaeus the tax collector? He was this little rich guy, who people didn’t like. Zacchaeus became rich by taxing everyone more than what was needed and he kept the excess. One day, he wanted to see Jesus, and it turns out that Jesus wanted to see him. Jesus invited Himself over Zacchaeus’ place. And that caused a stir; people muttered about this. But after meeting with Jesus, Zacchaeus changed his ways and promised to repay anyone he had ripped off, with interest. At the end of this story, we have Jesus’ mission statement.

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. (Luke 19:10 NIV)

The title "Son of Man" is Jesus’ name for himself, and Jesus said, He came to seek and save the lost. Zacchaeus wasn’t poor, but he was still needy and far from God. In meeting Jesus, he was saved. He found his poorness in spirit, he saw his neediness and in doing that, he found his salvation in Jesus.

The truth is, we are all spiritually needy. We can be so lost from God that we don’t realise we need to come back to Him. We have all wandered away from God. We appreciate the world He has made and the experiences we get but we do not acknowledge that all this good comes from Him. We like His gifts, but not Him the Giver. We forget Him, we ignore Him. We live our own ways, and our own ways end up owning us. We go after things like power, money, status, family, but those pursuits don’t satisfy, they don’t last and they consume us.

We can end up getting trapped by our own freedoms. We may not even notice it, but our desires and appetites can be our own entrapment. We may not feel like we live in North Korea or in the book 1984 but we are still in need of rescuing. We are all salves to something. We can enjoy food or sex or rest or money too much and it can control what we think and do. Our desires can end up consuming us. Either if we get what we want and we binge out on that, or if we fail to get what we desire and get angry or sad when comparing ourselves to others who have what we want.

In a spiritual sense, "We were the oppressed, needy, and poor because of our sin. We were weak and had no helper." (Exalting Jesus in Psalms 51-100 Appeal to His Compassionate Heart (Psalm 72:12–14))

We all sin, Jesus said, everyone who sins is a slave to sin (John 8:34), but He came to save us, to set us free, and to bring us back to how we are meant to live. So that we are not controlled by the things we seek after, not controlled by what the crowds think, but to be free to live for God. Rightly ordering our desires.

But only those who know they are trapped will see they are in need of saving. Only those who know they haven’t lived how they ought, only those who want to face up to their regrets and guilt and controlling desires, only those who put aside their own self-reliance will be saved. Know that you are needy, know that you are poor. We are all in need of saving.

Jesus Saves

And the good news is that Jesus came to save. He came to save us from the power of sin over our lives, and from the ultimate consequences of sin, which is death and judgment from God.

The good news is that Jesus came for those who are not complete, those who haven’t made it, those who are not well put together, those who are needy. He came for you and me, and He will deliver those who cry out to Him. He will take pity on the weak and save them, even from death. The letter to Titus tells us

when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. (Titus 3:4–5 NIV)

The reason why God, our King, saved us was because of His mercy, not because of any good things we had done. We didn't take the necessary steps to be worthy and meet God halfway. It was all because of His mercy. We now have the hope of eternal life. Our king will save us from the great enemy death. This is the best news there is. We were in need, and the King of the universe has been merciful to us.

Country singer Colin Buchanan is mainly known in Christian circles for his kids' songs, but he does do some other stuff, in one of this songs for adults he says:

Seeing all my wretchedness drives me to the savoir.
I’m no where, I got nothing, I got no one else but him.
What the lost need the most is the way
What the fool needs the most is the truth
What the dead need the most is the life
It all comes down to Jesus. (Colin Buchanan, It All Comes Down to Jesus)

We need saving from God. We are trapped in our own ways; we are in chains to sin, but Jesus saves us. He frees us.

If you see your great need for help, you can cry out to God and He will save you. If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36). Jesus is able to save completely (Heb 7:25). He did this by dying for us in our place, removing the power of sin that traps us.

Jesus split His own blood for ours, because we are precious in His sight. He didn’t save us through negotiations or ordering others to do the work. He got His hands pierced and bloodied for us. Normally, it is the King who would send their citizens off to war so they can die for the sake of the kingdom, but Jesus, our kind King, He died so that we could be citizens of His kingdom.

And Jesus didn’t stay dead. He rose again and gives us His victory over death. When the King wins a victory over an enemy for their country, the citizens get the benefit of peace from that enemy. In Jesus we get saved, we get that rescue from death.

In the 1990s Christian song What Would You Do for a King?, it talks about a victorious king who won all the battles and kept every promise and the last verse end with:

And what would you do for a king
If He took off his crown and agreed to die
And as you tried to understand it
He looked you in the eye
and said "This is for you"
Well, what would you do?

Praise Him

What can we do for a King who has done everything for us? What do we do?

We can praise Him. "May we never cease to praise and thank him for his mercy and compassion!" (Exalting Jesus in Psalms 51-100 Appeal to His Compassionate Heart (Psalm 72:12–14))

The great thing we are told in this passage is that the king hears the cries of His needy people. God hears what we say to Him. This means that He can also hear the praise of His people too.

In our serial reading today, Mary breaks into song. She praises God for He is a God who lifts up the humble, fills the hungry with good things and keeps His promises.

God is for the poor and needy, Jesus came to save the lost, which we were. And all those who are found in Him can praise Him.

Remember the application Jonathan challenged us to do? To say “Praise God” or “Praise the Lord” out loud? How are you going with that? We can still aim to do that this week, and the next. As Christians, we have much that we can praise Him for.

America recently had their Thanksgiving Day, and one blog article I read had 48 ways to show thankfulness. On it were very helpful things to exercise our praise muscles:

3. Write a prayer that is only thanks and praise—no requests.
17. Thank God for a bad habit he has enabled you to overcome.
18. Thank God for a good habit he has established in your life.
22. Go for a walk and find a dozen things to thank God for.
38. Take a photo every day of something you are thankful to God for. Make a gallery.

Maybe you could try one of these. Then you could tell someone else about what you said or did. In turn, they could then say “praise God”. See, in giving praise to God and sharing it with others, that increases even more praise, for good things are best shared, and it only increases more joy.

From this Psalm, think of some marvellous deeds God has done and praise Him. He has saved us. He has seen us in our need and acted and showed us mercy. He has stepped in and taken our punishment for us. That is pretty marvellous.

Now, because our King hears us, we can also cry out for those we know who need to cry out to God. We can ask our God to save family members, workmates and friends. We can ask the Lord to take pity on those we know who need saving from death. We can ask the Lord to help those who are lost to see their great need and ask to be saved.

Salvation belongs to the Lord. Salvation is found in no one else than Jesus.

Ask the Lord of the harvest to save those you know. He will deliver the needy and have pity on the weak.

Our Lord is in the business of marvellous deeds. He can save people from death to life. Let us praise Him, for our King is a just king, He is an enduring King, He is King of Kings, and He is a saving King.

Heavenly Father
Thankyou for Jesus, our true King who hears our cries and saves us.
Thankyou that He died in our place, because of your mercy towards us.
Help us to praise you, for you alone offer salvation.
Turn the hearts of those who don’t know you, towards you,
So more people can priase you for your wonderful deeds. Amen.

Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl

2025-11-30T19:49:00.001+11:00

It has been some time since I finished this book, sermons and holidays have slowed down this blog. I have a bit of a backlog of books that I have finished that I haven't written about, but I have been looking forward to revisiting this one.

I liked Death by Living a few years back and knew this book existed, but I found it hard to get hold of it. But I was glad I did get to read this. This book is a little like a philosophy book, written by a Christian from Western Sydney. They don't care about the status of the ancient thinkers, but instead, they look at what the classic thinkers said and poke holes in them. A summary of this from the intro is a little like this:

Plato, the first true pope of philosophy (sorry, Socrates), argued for a World of Forms above this reality—a transcendent plane of perfect essences, pure and lovely, where nothing ever gets muddy (including the essence of mud). No football.
Skipping centuries to the modern Enlightenment, Descartes, the Frenchman, had a little trouble knowing that he existed. But then he looked to the Little Engine That Could and learned that all he needed to do was think that he was, and he would be. Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. Say it often enough, be willing to help out other trains in trouble, and you’ll be fine. I think I am. I think I am. Descartes cogitoed himself (and the rest of the world) into being. Because of the mental ace he found in his mental sleeve, the modern world was built. Its foundation? Reason can get you anywhere.
Leibniz, a bit of a Boy Scout, thought this world had to be the best of all possible worlds (since a perfect God could create no less). Easy enough.
Voltaire made good fun of him. Even easier.
Immanuel Kant wrote books with words like prolegomena in the title and thought morality was dependent upon (and monitored by) the ethereal laws of logic.
Aztecs thought they had to rip the hearts out of living victims on top of ziggurats if they wanted the sun to keep coming up.
Heidegger was a Nazi. Can you think of a better reason to pay him no mind?
Wittgenstein was a beery swine (according to the authorities in the Monty Python brain trust). I can’t believe it. Beeriness would have made him more readable.
Nietzsche—a weak, but strongly mustachioed, Lutheran pastor’s son—defined evil (in The Antichrist) as “whatever springs from weakness.”
David Hume, the Scot, (knowingly) declared God and knowledge impossible without any apparent sense of irony.
French existentialists, wise men all and examples to philosophers everywhere, killed themselves.
Marx called religion an opiate, and all too often it is. But philosophy is an anesthetic, a shot to keep the wonder away.

While this may seem a bit oversimplistic, it doesn't mean it's wrong. So if you appreciate this sort of cheeky take, calling out the lack of clothes on the emperors of philosophy, then this is the book for you.

Throughout, Wilson gives his take on the problem of existence and meaning. The book flows through the seasons, with each section dealing with some existential issue and capturing a simple moment from the season. It could be watching a snowstorm, fixing the roof before the wind comes, people watching at the traffic lights, the life cycle of bugs, or dealing with an ant's nest in the way of the lawn mower. Just everyday things to help explain everything.

There is a fiercely Christian worldview presented throughout, pushing hard against the idea that life is a meat grinder with bad things happening for no reason. It takes on the thinkers who suggest we came from nothing, are (perhaps) moral, but meaning is only true by consensus. Just really, the everyday assumptions culture has about everything.

You see, for me, llamas are entirely consistent with the personality of an easily amused God. A prank on the Andes and everyone who ever needed to use the long-necked, pack-sweaters. Surly, pompous, comically unaware of their own looks, spitters. Perfect. Tell me a story about the great god Boom. Tell me how he accidentally made llamas from hydrogen.

As a writer, Wilson sees this world through the lens of words, story and characters. We are all spoken by an over-the-top generous God who makes snowflakes, millions of different ones, in one night, only for them to melt away in the morning. We are all characters in a story. But what type of character are we? Are we listening to the warnings around us? Are we being heroic and overcoming evil? What is our story arc? What do we do with the tragedies we face? If God is the author of this big story, what do we make of Him?

Aeschylus was a Greek tragic storyteller. He (perhaps) came up with Prometheus, whose punishment was to have an eagle eat his liver every day, and it would grow back every night. Aeschylus's own life came to an end when a vulture dropped a turtle on his head. "Eagles are involved in both stories, but who was kinder to their character?"

What do we do with the bad in our lives? How can we do serious art without dark paint? Characters develop through tragedy and suffering, and this by no means points to there being no God.

The existence of evil in Hamlet in no way implies that Shakespeare lacked control of his art, or that he was evil. The implication that Shakespeare didn’t exist is even more outlandish.

It has been a few months since I read this book, but the main thing I remember is how Wilson tackled the problem of evil through a story of him removing a rock from his lawn so that he could mow it. There were ants under it, but he had bigger plans. The ants must have thought something terrible had come to their ant city, and maybe the earwigs were behind it, so they attacked them. But something bigger was going on.

The problem of evil is a genuine problem, an enemy with sharp pointy teeth. But it is not a logical problem. It is an emotional one, an argument from Hamlet’s heartache and from ours. It appeals to our pride and our nerve endings. We do not want to hear an answer that puts us so low. But the answer is this: we are very small.

While we are like small ants, it doesn't mean God doesn't care about us. God became one of us because He cares about the suffering we face. When thinking about this, the question Wilson presents:

But would you be willing to die for the ants: "Hell no. Never. I have more self-regard than God does. I have less love for the characters beneath me."

God has spoken this universe into existence. We are spoken in this world too, and are characters in this big story. There are developments to be had, and evil to overcome, and hope for the future because the Word also took on flesh. He walked through the filth and insults and sacrificed Himself for us. He is the good King, who rescues His citizens from the enemy of death. This can give us hope, even in this real world of troubles and pain.

We are dying. We must die. The road is well traveled. We need not fear the dark, for the way is lit with Christmas lights.

Why and how should I grow in my love of others? (Mark 12:31)

2025-11-23T08:29:00.005+11:00

On Friday, I got to speak at our Youth group. They are doing a "Why and How" series on things, and my topic was on loving others. I did go off script a bit and put in more personal things, but more or less is what I said here. At the end are also the questions I sent to the leaders for a discussion afterwards to go with the talk.

Tonight we are talking about love. The topic of love, you would think, would be easy to talk about. Love is everywhere. It is in the movies and the songs we consume all the time.

Taylor Swift can’t stop singing about her love story and her lover. Oliver Dean, whom I had never heard of, is also currently in the charts, and she sings about how easy it is to fall in love and that you can’t hurry love. Since the beginning of time, love songs have always been on the charts.

Love is a good thing. It is just that I think as a culture, we don’t really know what love is, or we use the word in so many different ways, it loses its meaning.

I love hamburgers, I also love my mum, and I love Hannah, my wife. No,w when I say these things, you would be foolish to think that I love all these things in the same way with the same seriousness and intensity.

The problem is, we use the word “love” in lots of different senses. The Greeks had at least four different words for love. There is a friendship love, which is like a certain sense of affinity for each other. Sometimes this is based around a common interest, like sport, school or music tastes. There is a family love, that comes with a built-in structure to it, like a mother to a daughter. And there is the love our culture is trying to sell us all the time. This is your strong romantic or sexual attraction love. Our culture makes this love the ultimate. People think this Love is God, when really it's the other way around, God is Love.

So, when it comes to Christian love, what are we talking about?

So last week I heard you looked at the great commandment from Mark 12

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ (Mark 12:30 NIV)

That sounds like an effort love. One that you have to put something into, one that may not come easily, and yet it could come easily, if your heart, soul, mind and strength was filled with God’s own Spirit.

But for tonight, we are looking at the second commandment that comes in the next verse

The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:31 NIV)

This love for your neighbour is sometimes called the Golden Rule. Some point to these teachings of Jesus and say, well really, this is not new, others have also said the same thing. This is just standard human behaviour and how any civilised society would act towards another. And sure that might be true-ish. Have a listen to other teachers before Jesus

Hillel, the Hebrew rabbi, said, “Do not do to thy neighbor what is hateful to thyself.” Socrates, the Greek philosopher, said, “What stirs your anger when done to you by others, that do not do to others.” Confucius, the Chinese teacher, said, “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” (Pulpit Pages: New Testament Sermons The Principle of the Golden Rule # 22 (Matthew 7:12))

They all sound kinda the same right? And I find that really interesting that this all seems to work in their different religions and philosophies from Hebrew, Greek and Chinese, but that is not what Jesus said. These guys aren’t saying what Jesus is saying. They are saying don’t annoy your neighbour, don’t do things you wouldn’t want done to you, but Jesus is saying something different, something more. He is saying, love your neighbour as yourself. This is harder than not just annoying someone. It is something that takes effort, that initiates and is self-sacrificial.

Why love others?

So I’m here to answer the question as to why we should love others. First off, Jesus says so. This seems pretty clear: we should love others because Jesus asks this of us. But deeper than that, it is because Jesus loves people. Jesus goes to the effort and initiates self-sacrificial love for others.

Sometimes, if you are attracted to someone, you want to know what they are interested in. You want to know about their hobbies and music interests and favourite sports team, and you do this because you are interested in the person who likes those things.

If you are a follower of Jesus, know that Jesus is into people. He is God, who came as a man. He took on humanity in Himself and is still the God-man today in a resurrected human body. He likes people so much that He became one of them, to save humanity. He did this, not because He was lonely, not because He needed something to do on the weekend, but because He loves. He loves His creation and He loves the people in it. He made us, and He wants us to know that He loves us.

We people were made in God’s image. That is why we are different to all the other animals. We have language, and art and morals. So every person you meet is made in God’s image, fallen though we are. But Jesus came as a man to save us and to bring us back to God.

So why should we love others? Jesus asks us to love others, and God loves others. If we follow Jesus, we will do what He does, which is sacrifice for others, which is to love others, putting their needs first. It is an act of God to love others. We do it because that is what we were made to do. To love God and love others.

How to love others

Now, how are we to love others? There are different words for love. We aren’t talking about romantic love for everyone, are we talking about friendship with everyone, are we talking about having feelings for everyone, trying to empathise or sympathise with everyone and to feel what they feel? How are we to love others?

One way from the command itself is to think about what you would like and do that for others. We might all want to be known, to be talked to, to play that game. Well, go and talk to the kid on the outside, the one who isn’t known and talk to them. Play that game with your friend that you are over and don’t want to. Do that thing for your parents without grumbling, as I bet you don’t like people grumbling at you. Consider how you are treating others, and think, would I like others to be doing that?

And this is hard work. This is not easy, and I think it might just border on the impossible. In fact, John said we can’t love others through our own strength.

We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. (1 John 4:19–21 NIV)

We only love because Jesus first loved us. When we know that God is for us, that He will not give up on us, that He will forgive us, is when we can share in the same type of love with others.

The love we are talking about isn’t a feeling; it is an action. It costs and takes effort. Love put Jesus on the cross; loving others might mean you miss out on something, as it might mean you do something that clashes with another thing you wanted to do. It might mean you use some of your money on others and not yourself. It might mean you act differently to the rest of your group, and you might lose some cool points.

So what does love for others look like? There is no one exact way, and people can disagree in how this can happen, but 1 Corinthians 13 is a pretty key chapter to get us thinking. This passage is sometimes read at weddings, but it's not really about marriage; it is about how people in a messed-up church might act. It says

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13:1–7 NIV)

Being smart at something counts for nothing if you don’t have love. Doing good things to virtual signal counts for nothing if you don’t have love. Love is relational and seeks the best for the other. It forgives, it encourages, it keeps the peace.

Jesus of cause is the great example of this. You can replace the word “love” for Jesus to say something like, Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind. He does not envy, he does not boast, he is not proud. Jesus doesn’t dishonour others; he is not self-seeking, not easily angered. Jesus keeps no record of wrongs.

But if we are in Christ, if we love God, we can love others, and you can put your own name in there. I wonder how you feel about that?

Andrew is patient, Andrew is kind. Andrew is not self-seeking, Andrew is not easily angered. Andrew keeps no record of wrongs… What is your reaction to that when your name is there? What do you struggle with in this area? What might you want prayer for to help with how you can love others?

So we love others, because God is love and loves others, and if we love God, we will love all those who bear His image. We do this love, by any and all ways of putting others first and sacrificing ourselves for them, in a smaller way, mimicking what Jesus did for us on the cross.

Questions:

How is it different to say “do not annoy others in the same way you don’t want to be annoyed” compared to “love others in the same way you want to be loved”?

When talking about loving others, what does that love look like or involve?

Looking at 1 Corinthians 13, when you put your name in there, are there any areas that you think you might need to work on?

Are there people on your radar that you think you should love more? How might you go about that?

God's king is a JUST king (Psalm 72)

2025-11-16T20:53:00.003+11:00

After a long holiday, I am now back and got to give the start of a 4-part series called "Long Live the King", looking at Psalm 72. It took me too long to write this talk; I should have really had it finished on Wednesday, but maybe I was a bit unwell, or I forgot how I used to do it before the holidays. There are things that could be tweaked to be tighter, but here is what was said today.

Life is not fair, isn’t it? We are told this over and over again, and we know from experience, even from a young age, that life is not fair. On Twitter, someone posted the reason their toddler cried that week, they were:

I wouldn’t let the dog drive him to daycare
the bath was “too wet”
he wanted syrup for breakfast… just syrup
his sister “keeps looking at him”
he wants shoes like his friend Jacob (there is no Jacob)

This post then triggered a whole bunch of other parents sharing the unfairness that their little ones had endured that week, bringing them to tears.

But the unfairness of life doesn’t only come from us not being able to do our own thing. Life can seem to be not only unfair but also unjust. I remember when I was at uni, I thought how wrong the world was, in that I could always afford to have $20 in my wallet when most of the world could not. The uneven distribution of wealth and resources across the world really messed with me. There are wickedly complex systems across our world that mean some people are disadvantaged and even mistreated, and taken advantage of. It’s not fair, it's not just.

We all yearn for a world that is fair and just, and we look to our leaders, those in power, to help. Justice is a key factor for the stability and prosperity of our society. How fair something is for all people is a good indicator of how good or bad a government is. Do the powerful take and control, and do their wrongs go unpunished? Australians pride ourselves on the idea that regardless of status, income, class, we all want a fair go for all.

Over the next four weeks w,e are going to be looking at Psalm 72 - it is about a king. That is how ancient Israel was governed, by one person at the top. This system could be a very good thing, or a very corrupt thing. It all depends on the character of the person calling the shots.

There are lots of themes and ideas in this Psalm, but today we are looking at this king through the lens of justice. We will see that this Psalm is calling out for a king who is endowed with God’s justice, who judges people fairly and who crushes the oppressor.

The subscription at the top of this Psalm says it is “Of Solomon”. This is a little ambiguous, is it by Solomon or for Solomon? If you scroll down to the last verse, it says

This concludes the prayers of David son of Jesse. (Psalm 72:20 NIV)

This addition line is closing book 2 in the Psalms. Psalms have five books to it, this is closing the second. It is ending a section on David’s public prayers. So this Psalm could be a prayer by David for his son, Solomon, the next king, or it could be a prayer from Solom about the role of the king that was passed down to him from David.

Either way, this Psalm is about a king. It is asking God to grant the king with special traits and characteristics, for the good of the people and the land. If the king is fair, if he protects the weak, there will be blessings, and the people will want his rule to continue. If the king behaves like God, who is just and kind, it will go well for everyone.

And this is still true today. While we live in a different governmental system, we still want those in charge to also possess these qualities. We still want our leaders to be people who are just, people who help the afflicted, people who bring prosperity to their people, and who treat everyone fair and equally across the whole country. It would be worth thinking about how do you pray for our rulers? What do we ask God to grant them in their role over us? Psalm 72 could be helpful in this area.

Now, when we look at what is said of this king, in this Psalm, the words are quite grand or even over the top. It is almost asking too much of this person. It is asking this king to rule over other kings, to last as long as the sun and the moon. This Psalm is asking for someone like Abraham to come, so that in sentence 17, “all nations will be blessed through them”.

Who can live up to this? Was this prayer answered in Solomon? Well, Solomon’s reign started off quite good. He had peace throughout his borders, and other world leaders came and paid him tribute and they were astonished by his wisdom. There was great wealth in the country. In 2 Chronicles, it says

All King Solomon’s goblets were gold, and all the household articles in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold. Nothing was made of silver, because silver was considered of little value in Solomon’s day. (2 Chronicles 9:20 NIV)

To those under Solomon, silver was like stones (2 Chr 9:27). He built the temple and the palace, and was a wise king.

But the end of Solomon’s reign wasn’t good. He turned to idol worship and away from the Lord. And after him, it only got worse. His sons fought for power and they split the kingdom in two. And then the rest history of Israel's kings wasn’t great, I think in their history there were about 4 good kings before they got conquered by other nations.

So how does this Psalm fit with Israel's history? This is poetically expressing what a good king would be like. It is hopeful in how a king would act. Some think this was quite possibly used as a prayer for the newly anointed king of Israel perhaps during a coronation service (Psalms: An Introduction and Commentary Psalm 72. A Prayer for the King).

The words here are a good charge for a newly installed monarch, and the English still use it today. Did you watch the coronation of King Charles III? In that service, there is lots of pomp and ceremony, and the new King get given a bunch of symbolic things with the traditional words said for each. When King Charles was given the Sword of Offering, there was a chant sung in Greek which quotes the start of this Psalm.

When the king received this sword, the archbishop tells him [to do justice, protect the holy Church of God, defend the widows and orphans and to restore what is good.]

“With this sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the holy Church of God and all people of goodwill, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss, and confirm what is in good order” (The Presentation of the Regalia)

These are good charges to start your reign. But we all know, the proof will be in their ruling.

Later, in the history of ancient Israel, after the country had been conquered and the nation was in exile under the Babylonian King Darius, Zechariah quotes this Psalm when talking about a future king who would come on a donkey, who would take away the armies and

His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth. (Zechariah 9:10 NIV)

That is a quote from sentence 8 in Psalm 72. Even after the long line of kings in Israel, the nation was still looking forward for this great king to turn up.

And you might want this too. You might look around the world, read the news and wish for a just world leader. One who is not self-interested, but who looks after the weak, who ensures justice is given to the afflicted and the oppressors are crushed so they can not harm anyone anymore.

We have these yearnings, but are they just idealistic and not realistic? C.S Lewis said,

“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water.”

We desire justice and world peace, and a good world leader, yet we don’t have it. And feel frustrated that we don’t have it. Perhaps we were made for something more than where we are now. Perhaps there is a realm where we yearn to live, that will satisfy this desire.

Israel desired this king to come one day; they called that king the Messiah. And we know that this king is Jesus. He is the just King that this Psalm is talking about, but not in a poetical, idealistic way, but in a realistic way. Jesus meets all our unmet desires for perfect justice. Jesus really is the royal son who fulfils all of this Psalm.

Justice and Righteousness

The Psalm starts off asking for the royal son to be just and right.

Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness. (Psalm 72:1 NIV)

Jesus is God’s righteousness. Jesus was the royal son, born in the line of David and Solomon (Mat 1:6). Jesus was perfectly right and lived God’s ways all the time. So as a King, His reign is perfect, and His rules and judgment are always right. And so in His perfect kingdom, He asks for people to also be perfect to live in it. He wants the people to be holy as God is holy. To be righteousness as He is righteousness.

Jesus said His Kingdom was near but, unless your righteousness is better than the best religious guys of his day, then you will not enter (Mat 5:20). A righteous and just King wants a righteous and just people.

How might you go in a kingdom that asks for perfection? The other side of righteousness is judgment. Falling short of the right things. How might you live in a place where justice is always perfectly met?

In God’s kingdom, He wants you to have a perfect relationship with the King, to obey what He says. To trust that He knows what is best. He wants your heart to be aligned with Him. Jesus, the king, said it is an offence to look lustfully at a woman, or to lie, or to hate your neighbour and want what they have. How well are we at listening and obeying the King's words, and how much are our hearts in rebellion against Him?

The next sentence cuts both ways

May he judge your people in righteousness, your afflicted ones with justice. (Psalm 72:2 NIV)

This Psalm asks for the king to judge His people with righteousness and judgment. In the Apostles Creed, the one thing left for Jesus to do is to judge the living and the dead.

One day, Jesus will judge everyone and give His just and right judgment for what everyone has done. And when we think of the powerful and the abusers who look like they get away with it today, we can take comfort knowing that Jesus will right every wrong. He sees all the evil and wicked things, and those who are not prosecuted, those who manipulate the system to get away with it, those who keep things hidden from people, and Jesus one day will expose all of that. That is what a just and fair King does.

But we sometimes shy away from thinking about ourselves. We want jutice for others, but when faced with being judged by a perfectly just God, we might get nervous.

We know we are not perfect. We might say that we are not that bad. But that does me we are some bad. It conceds the point that we have done wrong, and so, in doing wrong, or failing to do what is right, we face God’s judgement.

Apart from Jesus there is no perfectly rightouse King. Apart from Jesus is there is no perfectly righteous person.

This might not sound too good, that we are all facing a just judgement. We are now needy not for justice, but for mercy and grace. And the good news is that all those who trust in Jesus are given His rightousness. Jesus, the good and fair King, redeems us, and gives us His goodness.

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished (Romans 3:25 NIV)

God can’t just simply forgive people who do wrong without punishment. That would be unjust. What would you say to the victems of crime if a judge kept forgiving people who pleaded guilty and didn’t give any fine or sentence to the perpetrator? The victems would feel like there had been no justice at all. That what they have suffered seems of little value to the judge.

We have wronged others and God, so it would be unjust for God not to punish the wrong things that we have done, but Jesus on the cross took our punishment on our behalf.

It’s nearly summertime now, and in Australia it soon will be bush fire season. And what we do to help prevent fires is to backburn. This is the process of burning a strip of land, so that if a fire comes through, it will stop at that previously burnt stretch of land. This is because fire can't burn the same place twice.

Jesus took our punishment for our wrongs on Himself, which means, if we go to Him, we won’t be punished again for them. You can’t be puniched twice for the same sins. God doesn’t sweep our sins under the rug and simply forgives us, Jesus takes our sins for us and endures the punishment for them, so we don’t have to.

This way, Jesus can still be fair and just to declare us right, because He is the one who makes us right through His own death.

Under Jesus we can now live, in His Kingdom right now. We can be citizens of heaven here on earth. We can live now, how we want, in preparation for when Jesus will come back again. And as we see injustice in world, we can speak up, and get involved to help right some wrongs, for that is the nature of our King. We can mimick Jesus now, doing what pleases Him. We can participate in this restoration when we pray “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mat 6:10) and then, think how we might be an answer to that prayer.

Crushed oppression

We can help to bring about justice here, under our new King, for we have a future hope knowing that Jesus has already won the victory over our great enemy. Jesus is the one who has, in sentence 4, he crushed the oppressor (Psalm 72:4 NIV)

Way back at the start of the Bible story, we meet Satan and after the fall, God promises that someone will come and crush his head (Gen 3:15).

Not only did Christ redeem us, take our punishiment for us, and give us his rightness, He also disarmed and triumphed over the Devil (Col 2:15).

While it may not seem like it now, with all the injustice around, we can take comfort that God has dealt with evil and will complete the task when He returns (Rom 16:20)

So, as you do look around the world, read the news and wish for a just world leader, know that there is a just King ruling over this world. He will judge everyone one day. He has crushed the great oppressor and will come back and finish the task of removing all evil from this world. One day a new world will come, where tears, and pain, and suffereing, and sin and death will be no more. It will be a place greater than Solomon's, where the road base will be made out of gold, and it will last forever.

Praise Him

So let us praise God. He has done marvelous deeds. He is the just King, who is rightouess. Jesus is the one who is just and who justifies us.

He is ruling now in heaven and one day He will come back and rule this world forever.

If you haven’t noticed in the shops, Christmas is coming. Some of us are already counting down the days - for it to come or to end already. With Jesus returning, we can be like a young child, excitly wating for Christmas to come. As a kid, Christmas comes with a lot of excitement and waiting and looking forward to Christmas Day. There will be presents, and food and family. A day of fun and enjoyment. While we await our just King to return, let us also look forward to Him, where our desires for a just world will be realised, and there will be no more oppression. It will be when the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and Amen.

Proverbs 9 - Choose Life

2025-09-21T19:39:00.003+10:00

Tonight I gave the last talk in our series on the start of proverbs. I wouldn't have picked this as a series for my first bulk of preaching from, but I have enjoyed wrestling with what an interesting part of scripture has to say to us. The world, and our lives, are always in need of more wisdom.

So we have come to the end of our series in Proverbs, and here we are giving a final choice. Who are we going to hang out with? Which path are we going to go down? What type of person are we going to choose to be? Will we pick Wisdom or Folly? Life or death?

And framing it in those terms, is obvious that life is the best choice, like who is going to pick death? Who wants to say, when presented with wisdom and folly, that they pick folly, as that sounds best? Well, many people actually do.

This choosing is explained at the start of the movie Transpotting, in the main character's opening monologue, where they cynically defines our consumeristic culture:

Choose Life. Choose a job.
Choose a career. Choose a family.
Choose a ... big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers.
Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance.
Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments.
Choose a starter home. Choose your friends...
Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth.

And at the end, he concludes

I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you've got heroin?

That character can’t give a reason why he doesn’t choose life, but we see, in our passage, that in choosing folly, the side of death, it doesn’t ask you to change, it doesn’t ask for any long-term consequences, and it promises a good time, even if it is bad for you.

And so, we are brought to the end of this prologue in Proverbs, and the book is almost asking: will you continue on? Will you feast on the proverbs and wisdom ahead? Or will you mock? Will you not seek correction and stay where you are?

So today we are going to have a final look at Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly, and in the middle, there are some proverbs for our learning, if we are willing to hear them

Lady Wisdom offers wisdom

We see wisdom again as portrayed as a woman,

Wisdom has built her house;
she has set up its seven pillars.
She has prepared her meat and mixed her wine;
she has also set her table.
She has sent out her servants, and she calls
from the highest point of the city,
“Let all who are simple come to my house!”
To those who have no sense she says,
“Come, eat my food
and drink the wine I have mixed.
Leave your simple ways and you will live;
walk in the way of insight.” (Proverbs 9:1–6 NIV)

We see this wise woman who is resourceful and industrious. Her life seems put together and ordered. In chapter 31, Proverbs will also end with a woman who is like this. The ways of wisdom are resourceful. Not idle but productive.

Here, Wisdom has built a large house and organised it so that people can come and have a meal in it. She has made the preparations, cooked the meat and mixed the wine, with maybe honey or herbs to make it spicier (Song 8:2) (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B, Volume 3 Exegetical Perspective)

She sends out her servants to invite all those who are simple to come and eat the food and wine. They are called upon to change their way of life, leaving their ‘simple ways’ to follow ‘the way of insight’, which is the way to life. The invitation is a call to conversion or repentance. (Proverbs 9:1–6 Wisdom’s Invitation)

Wisdom wants to share what she has, so others can learn the ways of wisdom; so others can be resourceful and industrious. She doesn’t want the simple to stay where they are, but instead wants them to grow and learn. There is a giving of herself to this invite.

Will you accept wisdom?

The real question is if the simple want wisdom - for those that come, they will have to admit that they don’t know it all, that they are simple, that they need to change something about themselves. This will take humility; this, in and of itself, will take wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is to know you need to get wisdom (Prov 4:7).

And so we see in the next bit how some people receive instructions

Whoever corrects a mocker invites insults;
whoever rebukes the wicked incurs abuse.
Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you;
rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Instruct the wise and they will be wiser still;
teach the righteous and they will add to their learning.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
For through wisdom your days will be many,
and years will be added to your life.
If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you;
if you are a mocker, you alone will suffer. (Proverbs 9:7–12 NIV)

Did you hear the contrast between a mocker and the wise? The mocker will not accept correction; they will hate you for it. The mocker will not be rewarded but will suffer in the end.

But the wise, they hear correction and become even wiser; they want to add to their learning. They will love you for correcting them. The wise will live well and be rewarded.
The point here is that if you cannot accept a rebuke, it is not just because that is your personality type; it reveals your heart and your mind. It shows your pride and what you think of yourself. You could have an idol of self. (Exalting Jesus in Proverbs The Marriage Supper of Wisdom (Proverbs 9))

So it is worth asking, how teachable are you? How do you respond to correction? Do you automatically get angry or defensive? Or do you listen and try to see the truth in it? Do you have any relationships where someone has the freedom to ask you tough questions? Wisdom is the ability to hear and respond correctly to criticism so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes. (Exalting Jesus in Proverbs The Marriage Supper of Wisdom (Proverbs 9))

And in the centre of these sayings, and the centre of this chapter, is verse 10, which is the key verse of this whole book. We have seen it before

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. (Proverbs 9:10 NIV)

God knows everything. He made this world, so He knows how this world works and how it is meant to be lived in. We need correction from Him to really have any wisdom. And He is offering His wisdom for all to know it.

In this chapter, we have two voices calling out, but in reality, we are bombarded daily with so many voices. Our family, workmates, news reporters, political commentators, YouTube influencers, and actors on TV.

Who do we listen to that we value? Who do we let entertain us and shape our thinking? Really, whose voices do we trust? Do we trust others' wisdom, or do we think we can know it all ourselves?

There are sort of two ways we can know things. One is through experience, and the other is through facts. This is clear in every sporting event on TV. The player on the field, they know what it is like to be in the game, they are making quick decisions and putting all their effort into the game, they know it. And then there are the commentators, with the microphones. They may have played that sport before, but they offer their knowledge on the sidelines and say what the player should have done- they know, without being on the field, how to play the game.

Both ways of knowing things are good, but sometimes we overvalue experience, we overvalue self, we think we need to learn everything out for ourselves. My wisdom and my experience is true. But the wisdom that is offered in Proverbs is so that you don’t have to learn the hard way. So that you can avoid certain experiences. I have never experienced heroin, but I trust others who say that it is bad. One way of knowing helps me to avoid another way of knowing. Last weekend, while we were away at Synod, David Adams told me, “You don’t have to drink the entire ocean to know that it’s salty.” You can learn things without experiencing everything.

And so in Proverbs, it is offering wise teachings and correction before we go down a certain path, when it says things, it means we have to trust the one who is speaking. Do we trust this king's advice?

How much did you, or do you trust your parents when they give advice? I’m sure they had some wisdom when you were young, but did you trust that they knew what they were talking about? Did you trust them?

Mark Twain said, “When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.”

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. How much do you trust the one saying that correction is good? That being lazy is wrong and working hard pays off? That adultery leads to death? That we need to guard what goes in and out of our hearts?

If we don’t respect the one who is saying it, we won’t listen. Instead, we will do what we please, because that pleases us more than pleasing the one telling us.

When it comes to this wisdom from the Bible, it all comes down to who we fear. Who will we trust and respect? Who are you willing to submit your life to - Yourself or God? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Lady Folly offers death

And, finally, one last time we hear from Lady Folly, this time I think the curtains are pulled back and we see her for who she really is

Folly is an unruly woman;
she is simple and knows nothing.
She sits at the door of her house,
on a seat at the highest point of the city,
calling out to those who pass by,
who go straight on their way,
“Let all who are simple come to my house!”
To those who have no sense she says,
“Stolen water is sweet;
food eaten in secret is delicious!”
But little do they know that the dead are there,
that her guests are deep in the realm of the dead. (Proverbs 9:13–18 NIV)

In this chapter, Wisdom is presented as constructive, Folly is destructive. (Proverbs 9:13–18 Folly’s Invitation)

Folly is a parody of Wisdom.

She perhaps is the ultimate mocker of wisdom. She uses the same Facebook marketing campaign as wisdom, by using the same words at the same targeted audience. She and Wisdom say, “Let all who are simple come to my house”. They are attracting the same people, but they are not the same.

Folly herself is simple, and so is not asking for change, but offering mear meal of stolen goods. The stolen water and secret meal may be an allusion to an adulterous relationship as we have seen earlier, and with that we are told, again and again, that what she is offering is a way to the dead.

Folly’s inactivity is indicative on who she is. Folly is lazy. She does very little; she only “sits” at the opening of her house (9:14) and offers food that she did not prepare. (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B, Volume 3 Exegetical Perspective)

And there is one last similarity that I really want to highlight. Both Wisdom and Folly in this chapter are at the highest point of the city. They are neighbours or even their location could be a metaphor for the same place.

Back then, the highest point of the city would be reserved for the temple, pagan or otherwise. In this metaphor, there is a contest for who you will worship. Which temple will you go into and eat?

I don’t think this is a direct reference to this story, but having to make a choice between two temples on a hill reminded me of Elijah on Mount Carmel. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah challenges the 600 prophets of Baal up a mountain where they make two altars and the real God was to answer with fire to show that they are true. At the start of these preparations, we have Elihah’s charge to all the people:

Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” (1 Kings 18:21 NIV)

And we get to the end of this chapter, and it is saying, who will you choose? How long will you flirt with Folly or like the idea of Wisdom? Who is to be at the highest point of your life? Pick one and follow them. Don’t waver, pick a lane and stay in it.

Choose Life

The options are life or death, so be wise and choose life.

It has always been that choice. In the beginning, there was the tree of life, but sin was chosen, and it brought in death.

Moses, at the end of his life, just before Israel was to enter the Promised Land says:

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Deuteronomy 30:19–20 NIV)

If you know the story, you know that after they had settled in the land, they did not choose life. They did not listen to the voice of God. They chose death, and followed other gods and even sacrificed their own children (Judg 11:29-40, 2 Kings 16:3, 21:6, Ps 106:37-38)

Logically, you would think that choosing between life and death is an easy one, but it’s not, because we all love the darkness. Our sin has affected our hearts, which affects our minds and what we do with our bodies. We don’t value the voice of God, so we don’t listen to it. In John’s gospel, when talking about Jesus and us it says:

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. (John 3:19–20 NIV)

We would rather stay where we are, simple and in the dark, rather than see that change is needed and head into the light.

But Jesus came into the world to rescue us from all that. In Jesus, we see the wisdom of God. Through Jesus, God was able to work out a way for sinners to meet with a holy God. We were separated from God because of our sin, and we were unable to approach Him. And God came down to Earth as a man, in Jesus, as our representative and took on our sin, so that we could be brought back to Him. God made a way to reconcile sinners with God. God’s wisdom found a way to bring these mutually exclusive groups together through the death of Jesus. That is the wisdom of God. It is considered foolish to the proud, but to the humble, it is wisdom.

And Jesus, the real personification of Wisdom, He also invites everyone to a meal

Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35 NIV)

If you feed on Him, if you go to Him for sustenance for life, you will be satisfied. What Jesus offers is for those who know they are fools and who want to grow in wisdom. Have you accepted Christ’s invitation? (Exalting Jesus in Proverbs The Marriage Supper of Wisdom (Proverbs 9))

Jesus went into the grave and came back in victory three days later. He invites you to accept forgiveness from him. If you do, he will transform you into a wise person. The choice is yours! (Exalting Jesus in Proverbs The Marriage Supper of Wisdom (Proverbs 9))

20 years later, they made a sequel to Trainspotting (this is not a recommendation that you see either movie). But in the sequel, some of the characters have aged and wised up, others haven’t. There is another “choose life” monologue, and again, after mocking our consumeristic culture, the guy pivots to reflect on his life and the path he had chosen and says:

Choose unfulfilled promise
and wishing you'd done it all differently.
Choose never learning from your own mistakes.
Choose watching history repeat itself.
Choose the slow reconciliation
towards what you can get
rather than what you always hoped for.
Settle for less and keep a brave face on it.
Choose disappointment.

And God says, No! Choose life. Always choose life. Life is available and can be found. Turn from your simple ways, go to Jesus, the bread of life and He will not disappoint, but satisfy. Trust His words, trust His wisdom, trust Him. He comes into the darkness and offers light. He came to the disconnected and offers love. He went down to death and offers life. He is calling and wants you to come. So come. Follow Jesus. It might be the hard way, for you have to admit that you need to change, but it is the wise way, which doesn’t lead to death, but resurrected life, forever.

God of wisdom,
you invite us to your table and call us to choose life.
Teach us to leave behind foolishness,
and to walk in the way of understanding.
Make us humble to receive correction,
and be joyful in learning your truth.
Keep us from the path of folly,
that we may fear the Lord,
who is the beginning of wisdom,
until we share in our eternal home, with you
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:17-27)

2025-09-15T18:49:00.002+10:00

This morning, I got to speak at a year 7-10 school assembly (the year 9s were at an excursion). I was asked by a friend as he wanted a talk on the resurrection, and he thought I might have been a good fit. Below is pretty much what I said.

On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.

“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” (John 11:17-27)

In our passage today, Jesus goes to a funeral. How is that for a setting for the start of the week? To kick off this week, we are with people crying at a tomb. What a contrast to today. Its getting warmer, the holidays are nearly here, you are all so young and full of potential, death is the furthest thing from your mind.

And we don’t want to think about death. We don’t see it around us. Our experience is, if you die in a game, you just respawn. Our meat comes from the shops. The production line before that doesn’t exist in my world; it just appears in Wollies. The elderly get put in age care places and die in hospitals, away from us all. In the past, houses used to have a formal room called the parlour, which had many uses, but one would be to store the coffin in your house of a dead relative if the need arose. We don't do this any more, which is why we have living rooms instead. Death for us has become abstract, something hidden in the background.

This makes our funerals even worse today, as we are not familiar with death; we don’t know how to talk about it. And so it is awkward when someone dies. What do you say? I have done a few funerals in my time, and the worst was a suicide for a guy in his 20s. Sometimes I wish there was a script we could all read along with, so we knew what to say in situations like that.

When Jesus gets news that his friend was sick, he delayed coming for another two days. When he made it to the house, his friend was dead, and both his sisters say the same thing to Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died”. Jesus, the great healer, was too late to heal. He had healed others but not this time. This time, he was too late. His friend had been in the tomb for four days.

What do you say? Jesus says, “You brother is going to rise again”, which Mary takes to be some sort of end-time, resurrection thing years from now. Some sort of religious comfort, that sure one day he will rise again. This was basic Jewish theology.

But then Jesus says something stupid, something you don’t say at funerals.

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25–26 NIV)

Jesus makes the outrageous statement that He is the resurrection; that He is the one who gives life. That if you believe in Him, you will not die. That is just nuts. Who does He think He is? Maybe Jesus should have been given a script of things to say at a funeral, because this is not what you say.

If the story ended there, we would think He was crazy, but it doesn’t, and spoiler, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Jesus shows that He has the power to raise the dead. He is stronger than death.

I remember once I was talking to a kid in year 8, and trying to work out what makes him tick, and he said, he has to win. Winning is everything. He plays soccer, not for the social, but for the win. In an argument, he has to win. On the field, he has to be the strongest or the fastest. I asked him, “How was that working out for you?”, and being in year 8, it was going fine. So I pressed and asked what happens when you are older and when things are harder and you come up to an immovable force that you can’t win against? He didn’t think there was such a thing, so I said, "What about death?"

You can't beat death. However strong you are, whatever trophies you have, those will not save you from death.

To steal some lines from the movie Taken: Death is an enemy. Death does not care who we are, or what we want. Death is not after a ransom or money. Death has a particular set of skills, that he has acquired over a very long career, that makes him a nightmare for people like us. He will look for us. He will find us. And he will kill us.

I don’t mean to unsettle you first thing this morning, but that is the truth. That is certain. And if you are not prepared to die today, can I urge you to think long and hard on your eternity... You can’t beat death -- but as Christians, we know a guy who did, who gives us His victory.

When it all comes down to it, this is about trusting. Trusting if Jesus knows what it is He is talking about. Is He telling the truth or not? Is he the resurrection and the life? What would He know about any of this anyway?

I think we can trust Jesus, for less than two weeks after this event, He was dead in the tomb. The one who said He was life was dead. But after three days, He rose again. That first Easter, He walked out of the tomb, never to die again. He had tasted and swallowed death. And now rules over everything. He had passed through and conquered death and has now made a way for us to get to God.

Jesus doesn’t say you have to be a good person to get eternal life. Or that you have to give a certain amount of money to charity, you don’t have to visit certain Holy Places and perform special rituals to earn eternal life. Jesus says the only way to get life is through Him. We just have to believe in Him. We have to trust him.

This week you are going to be asked a whole bunch of questions in maths, geography, science, English, whatever. If it all goes well, you crush might ask you out; your friend might ask if you want to go over theirs, you are going to get a bucket load of questions this week, and you will have to work out how to answer them. But right now, at the start of this week, before you get decision fatigue, the question Jesus asks here is the most important question you will be faced with. He asks Mary, and by extension us: "Do you believe this?"

Do you believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life? Do you trust what He says? Is He King over your life, not just an important thing in your life, but the ruler over your life? Do you think He has power over death and is able to grant life? That His ways of living are the best way of living?

Now I am the new guy at Lanyon Valley Anglican Church. If you don’t already attend a church, you're welcome to come along, it's a great church. And since I have started there, people are all trying to get to know me and my family. I have a wife and three kids, two boys and a girl. But what most people don’t know yet is that we had another son between our two boys. His name was David, and he died at 20 weeks.

We buried him on the 26th of August 2015. It was raining, the minister spoke on John 11, and then we had Turkish for lunch. We have a proof of birth certificate and a 20-page autopsy report saying that medical science does not know why David died. From all their tests, the report lists the many things he didn't die from. But let me tell you why David died: he died because he had lived.

When Josh asked me to speak on this passage, he didn’t even know this next bit, but here is David’s plaque, and you can go see this in Woden Cemetery, in the rose garden where they bury all the small children.

On that plaque, you can see the same verse we looked at today.

Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, thought He die, yet shall he live… Do you believe this? (John 11:25–26 NIV)

I bank my life on Jesus and His resurrection. There is far too much historical evidence to prove that He got out of the tomb. It is true. We live in the same real world, or Marvel timeline, where Jesus walked out of the grave. I know that because He rose again in a real, physical, material body, I too will rise in a real, physical, material body. Jesus took the sting of death away. Death now may hurt, but it isn’t fatal.

I believe that life is found in Jesus so much that we put it on a plaque in a cemetery, surrounded by death, because what better place is there to say that Jesus has conquered the grave?

Some of us here don’t like talking about death; they avoid it, because they are uncertain about what there is afterwards. But Jesus tells us the grave is not the end for the believer; there is a resurrection, in Him there is life.

Do you believe this?

Psalm 126 - Past and Future Joy

2025-09-11T20:27:00.001+10:00

Below is a talk I gave today at an aged care place. It was only small, and I did leave my notes a bit to be more casual, but below is more or less what I said.

Psalm 126

A song of ascents.

1 When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,

we were like those who dreamed.

2 Our mouths were filled with laughter,

our tongues with songs of joy.

Then it was said among the nations,

“The LORD has done great things for them.”

3 The LORD has done great things for us,

and we are filled with joy.

4 Restore our fortunes, LORD,

like streams in the Negev.

5 Those who sow with tears

will reap with songs of joy.

6 Those who go out weeping,

carrying seed to sow,

will return with songs of joy,

carrying sheaves with them.

We find ourselves in an age care facility, which means we have lived out most of our lives. What has come before us now are memories, and we can look back with nostalgia. Did you ever ride on the back of a ute, with no seatbelt? Did you ever play in the sprinkler on a summer's day? When it was cold, did your pipes ever freeze? Remember how you lived your whole childhood with the need for the internet.

But now, in this age care place, what is there left to look forward to? Most of the sand in the timer has nearly run its course. What is there now?

In this Psalm, there is a looking back and a looking forward that remains very relevant for us today.

This Psalm, people think, comes from a period after the return from Babylonian exile (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 2 Exegetical Perspective)

Israel has come back to the Promised Land, and the temple is restored, and so they remember what the Lord has done for their nation. Not only are the locals pleased, but the nations can look at Israel and see that the Lord had done great things for them.

Joy is mentioned twice in the first three verses. The people of Israel are looking back at the good old days, when it seemed that their dreams had finally come true (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 2 Pastoral Perspective)

And now they are living proof that God has not forgotten them, for the restoration of things has begun.

The Psalm will pivot to looking forward, but not before going through the present. There is some white space between verses 3 and 4, and in that blank space, in the present, there is silence.

The Psalm will call to God to use that same transforming power for the future, because in the present, while they have a restored history, there is still a drought and tears and weeping.

There are shifts from remembered happiness to expressed sorrow in the present crisis. (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 2 Pastoral Perspective)

In verse 4, by requesting that God “restore our fortunes,” they acknowledge that restoration has not come fully. The community leans into a ... sense of restoration—it is already here, but not yet. (Psalms, Volume 2 Bridging Contexts)

They would like their streams to flow and their seeds to grow. They want God to continue to look after them, as He has done in the past. And they are trusting in the character of God, they are not pessimistic about what will happen. They have great trust that God will come through, because He has before.

Although they will go out weeping, sowing with tears, they know that come harvest time they will return with songs of joy. The seeds of this joy have been planted in sadness and watered with tears. (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B, Volume 1 Pastoral Perspective)

"What began in weeping will end in rejoicing. God will come and restore the fortunes of his people such that a present moment defined by barrenness and sorrow will be transformed into a future filled with shouts of joy and arms full with the harvest." (Psalms, Volume 2 Petition for God’s Work of Restoration (126:4–6))

Australian farmers know drought. It can be devastating to see the barren land that should have produced a crop that would feed many mouths. The trouble is they don’t know when the drought will break and the rain will come. The farmer will still plant, in the hope that it will grow. The rain will come, but they don’t know when. Joy allows them to smile in hope for the future outcome.

[Cut this bit: G.K. Chesterton said joy was the gigantic secret of the Christian.

"Gigantic joy is not impervious to pain or inattentive to heartbreak. Gigantic joy doesn’t laugh in the middle of tsunami sorrow, broken promises or the irrevocable consequences of sinful rebellion. What gigantic joy does, is give the Christian a bottomless pool of hope that allows the Christian the energy and steadfastness to not grow weary in well doing. This kind of joy is the secret of being able to face sin and sorrow honestly and still end the day singing the doxology" (Themelios: Volume 30, No. 3, Summer 2005 The Last Word: Joy, the Gigantic Secret (Robbie Castleman))]

It’s like coming home to the kitchen, and it is a mess, and just that morning you cleaned the whole thing. The youngest daughter has been “cooking” in the kitchen, and the flour and dirty bowls and utensils are all scattered around. That feeling of annoyance can come over you, how frustrating, but as you investigate the mess and the damage, you can see a note with dirty fingerprints on it saying “I’m making something for you” with a love heart drawn at the bottom.

In the midst of that mess and chaos, despite your annoyance, joy can spring up. Your attention is redirected to the daughter who is demonstrating her love for you. You can experience some joy among that mess.

The same is true of our joy in the Lord. Many times, life looks rather messy; I can’t find much to be happy about in my circumstances. Nevertheless, we can take comfort in knowing that God is behind all of it and is working through it all, making something for you. (750 Engaging Illustrations for Preachers, Teachers and Writers 342: Joy)

We can look back on what God has done for us through the ups and downs of our lives. The hardships and the blessings. The laughter and the crying. God has carried us till now. And in the present, there may be more tears. God doesn’t deny our weeping, but instead He will redeem it and transform it. That is what He does.

And we do not simply hope for a restoration but a resurrection. (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 2 Pastoral Perspective)

We have this hope that God will restore us, because we can see in Jesus that He took on sin and death, and conquered all of that, so that we can be righteous and have eternal life. In Jesus, we see that death has been defeated, and we will be resurrected to be with Him forever.

As one person put it "we are a people of hope because our tears will give way to an empty tomb. We remember that story so that we might hope, so that we too might return with songs of joy." (Psalms, Volume 2 Contemporary Significance)

Remember God’s care for us in the past, and His presence is still with us in the present, and He will receive us in the future in the place that He has prepared in advance for us.

God is doing something now, and between the resurrection and His second coming, we can have joy, even in tears, because we know God restores, renews and resurrects.

I pray,
O God, to know you, to love you, so that I may rejoice in you. And if I cannot attain to full joy in this life, may I at least advance from day to day, until that joy shall come to the full.
Let the knowledge of you advance in me here, and there be made full.
Let the love of you increase, and there let it be full, that here my joy may be great in hope, and there full in truth.
Lord, through your Son you command, no, you counsel us to ask; and you promise that we shall receive, that our joy may be full.
I ask, O Lord, as you counsel through our wonderful Counsellor.
I will receive what you promise by virtue of your truth, that my joy may be full.
Faithful God, I ask. I will receive, that my joy may be full.
Meanwhile, let my mind meditate upon it; let my tongue speak of it.
Let my heart love it; let my mouth talk of it.
Let my soul hunger for it; let my flesh thirst for it; let my whole being desire it, until I enter into your joy,
O Lord, who are the Three and the One God, blessed forever and ever. Amen.
ANSELM OF CANTERBURY (400 Prayers for Preachers A Prayer for Rejoicing in God)

The First 90 Days

2025-09-09T16:41:00.001+10:00

After I announced that I was changing churches, someone reached out to me and suggested that I read this book. This is not a Christian book, but it is a useful resource for thinking about transitioning from one workplace to another. It takes time for someone to settle into a new place, to learn the culture and how it all works. This can cost companies lots of money. Some people can misread the culture or their boss, and this can be detrimental to how they start and are known. This book, written by a PhD from Harvard Business School, is for those going through a job transition to help them start well and to give them tools and exercises as they go through different phases in their first three months.

In general, there is nothing that seems extraordinary or unusual in what is said in this book. It may seem like common sense to prepare and learn as much as you can about the company before you start, to make a plan when you start, to understand your boss and direct reports, to get to know the people and culture before making big decisions and to win people to your side, but it is helpful for someone to say it by someone who had thought about it a lot.

One warning over and over again in the book, which I took to heart, was that your biggest mistake will be to import everything from your previous job into the new one.

"It’s a mistake to believe that you will be successful in your new job by continuing to do what you did in your previous job, only more so."

When I first started, and to some extent still, I find myself saying "At St Matt's we would..." This is because that is my main framework of ministry, but with this book in the back of my mind, I would always try to allow for the differences and not try to change anything.

The book would like you to set certain goals every 30 days as you try and sort out the culture and understand the people in your new organisation.

Your key outputs at the end of the first 30 days will be a diagnosis of the situation, an identification of key priorities, and a plan for how you will spend the next 30 days.
At the 60-day mark, your review meeting should focus on assessing your progress toward the goals of your plan for the previous 30 days.
By the end of the first few months, you want your boss, your peers, and your subordinates to feel that something new, something good, is happening. Early wins excite and energize people and build your personal credibility.
Each wave should consist of distinct phases: learning, designing the changes, building support, implementing the changes, and observing results.

One key thing they stressed was to work out what state the organisation is in through a grid of four different types of models. The Start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth and realignment. Each of these models came with its own challenges and opportunities, from changing the culture, to recruiting and resources, and how teams work at different phases.

Another key thing was to learn your boss's communication style and to take 100% responsibility for that relationship. Key conversations to have with your boss are on the theme of your situation, expectations, resources, style and personal development. For each of these categories, there were suggestions on how to go about those conversations early on.

There was a whole chapter on creating alliances, which I am not sure how political that was needed for my role, or ideally would not be needed in my role at a church. However, it is good to know who does have influence over things, even if they are not in some sort of direct reporting line.

I also appreciated a section on your family, as they also undergo a transition, more so maybe in ministry, when they have to leave one community they have been a part of for another. Friends and support networks are removed, and you have to start finding those people all over again. This was one of my biggest fears of the transitions, but by God's grace, I think my family have integrated better than I expected.

The book said "The most important decisions you make in your first 90 days will probably be about people", and that is probably more true in a church setting. People are key to the very existence of a church; they voluntarily give their money to come and give up their time to serve there. You can not threaten layoffs, and you can not encourage with bonuses. They serve because they are willing. The meaning of the word "minister" being "servant" is key here, for the role I am to do is modelled on the Servant King. He sacrificed for others and not for his own gain.

Over all I thought the book was helpful in some areas, and in others, not in a church setting. With the primary meeting of everyone happening only once a week, getting to know people is much slower than if you worked with everyone five days a week. Because of that, I think things move more slowly, so 30-day goals can be harder, as you try and meet with those people who are available during the week and then try and speed date as many people as you can on the Sunday. Thankfully, there is a coffee break during the service, so there are two main mingling times where you try and learn people's names (coffee break and after church).

For my own unique situation, I came on for 6 weeks, and then my boss is away on long service leave for 6 weeks, and then I go away for 6 weeks, with no overlap. This meant going in, I was trying already to learn everything I needed to from the get-go, while perhaps at the expense of getting to know people. I am nearly at the 90 mark, and I might have made a quick win here or there, without any disastrous blunders (or no one has told me about them - the people are quite charitable to me so far). Because I did have a long trip already planned, that meant I wasn't going to make any (intentional) change till I come back, so in the short term I would just try and learn how things are. It is still early days, and that is probably all that the book covers.

Proverbs 7 - Temptation and the heart

2025-09-07T19:50:00.001+10:00

Here is the third last talk in this Proverbs series, it is my second last talk, as next week I will be away, so someone else is doing Proverbs 8. In this talk, I reused a previous introduction and a little bit about God is love.

We are nearly coming to the end of our series through the first 9 chapters of Proverbs. These last chapters are like the closing arguments in a debate. Today, we are going to hear again from the seductive lady. Next week, we will hear from Lady Wisdom, and then in chapter 9, both give their closing arguments, for you to decide which way you want to live.

And today, it may feel like we are covering the same ground we have seen before. In chapter 5, it said adultery is wrong, and here again we have another adultery story. Why do we have to do this again? It’s already one of the ten commandments. It's like the teacher is trying to make a point. Solomon thought this was a key lesson for his son to learn. Repetition is good education so that this point can stick. Solomon himself came out of an adulterous relationship; maybe he knew first-hand what trouble this causes.

The main difference in this chapter to Chapter 5 is that we get to see more of the temptation, so we might be able to see how we can avoid it. So today, we are looking more at temptation and the heart.

Temptation is more than an intellectual problem. People know that adultery is wrong and yet they still do it. This contradiction in behaviour is trumped by certain assumptions about self-fulfilment, and being true to your feelings and self-entitlements to unmet needs. This is not just in the realm of sex, but we also can justify our actions and behaviours through this self-frist grid all the time.

This is not how society has always thought. Rousseau from the 18th Century has dramatically shaped the West’s way of thinking about ethics. His basic idea is that humans are naturally good and free and uncorrupted. He championed the native and indigenous people in primitive conditions, having escaped the corruption of society. Yet he still desired to live out the rest of his life in France.

Rousseau wrote a book called Confessions, and in that, he talked about stealing some pears as a youth with some mates. The reason he did this wasn’t because he needed them but because he was peer-pressured into doing it. In this sense, we see that it was society that corrupted his way. You see, being in a community provokes envy, hatred, lying, competition for the other etc. And he would say, in our own natural state - our free state - we do not feel these things, but when we have to relate to others, that is when restrictions and shame and punishment are put on people. ‌

You may see this today. Peer pressure is a real thing, which is why any good parents ask their teens two very important questions when they are about to go out. They ask, “Where are you going?” and “Who are you going with?”. ‌ You might also find the corrupting nature of society in the workplace. You might be doing something just fine, but when someone comes along doing the same thing, then there may be envy, comparison or competition between the two. The effect of having more people around can corrupt your mindset and actions. ‌ But the problem with Rousseau and this dominating idea we have today is that it is foolish. I’m not just talking about the obvious observational bias he - and everyone who agreed with him - had about how good and pure they are. Of course, everyone wants to think that left to themselves, they will be good; Rousseau just said what everyone wanted to think. But the main problem with Rousseau was that he was ripping off Augustine.

Augustine, in the late 4th century, wrote a book called Confessions, and in that, he talked about stealing apples when he was a youth with some mates. He didn’t even want apples, and they didn’t even taste that good, but there was something inside of him that just enjoyed the thrill of eating stolen apples, which is why he did it. ‌ Rousseau blamed society for corrupting people, as he thought that deep down, people are good. Augustine blamed his own internal desires for corrupting him and saw that he needed an external change for him to do good. ‌ Ethics in a Christian context begins with a belief in the depravity of humans and their need for repair and restoration. Because Adam took God’s credit card and put it in the negative, we are all born into his debt. We all need new external help, for we can not do it on our own.

And Proverbs is all about living, how can we live a new life. We are reminded of this in the opening verses

Path of Wisdom (v1-5)

My son, keep my words
and store up my commands within you.
Keep my commands and you will live;
guard my teachings as the apple of your eye.
Bind them on your fingers;
write them on the tablet of your heart.
Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
and to insight, “You are my relative.”
They will keep you from the adulterous woman,
from the wayward woman with her seductive words. (Proverbs 7:1–5 NIV)

To live we, are to keep these commands, we are to guard and bind and write them in our eye, and fingers and heart.

Wisdom is to be kept in the family. We are to keep her close because this family member will protect. And in particular, they will protect from seductive words.

We are in a battle for words here; we need the words of the teacher and their commands - that is how we can combat the many seductive words around us. We need the right words bound in our heart. We need to know that the seductive words promise much, but deliver only death. Before we hear these seductive words, the teacher sets up the story.

Path of Deception (v6-13)

At the window of my house
I looked down through the lattice.
I saw among the simple,
I noticed among the young men,
a youth who had no sense.
He was going down the street near her corner,
walking along in the direction of her house
at twilight, as the day was fading,
as the dark of night set in.

Then out came a woman to meet him,
dressed like a prostitute and with crafty intent.
(She is unruly and defiant,
her feet never stay at home;
now in the street, now in the squares,
at every corner she lurks.)
She took hold of him and kissed him
and with a brazen face she said: (Proverbs 7:6–13 NIV)

There were a group of youths who were described as “simple”. They might be young, and they don’t know much; they are directionless. The issue with the simple in Proverbs is whether they are teachable or not. The teacher then sees one who breaks away from the group to walk down the street, in the dark, at twilight. Not to go home, but in the direction of her house. He is perhaps testing the waters or putting himself in harm's way.

This is tieing a few things we have already seen in Proverbs, the warning of the wrong company, being idle, not fleeing and going down a different path, nor listening to the teachings of parents.

This simpleton, perhaps, might like the cover of darkness, hoping that no one else will see, but the lady sees and comes out to him. Exposing much, but not who she really is. She is dressed in a revealing way, and yet with her crafty intent, her heart is not revealed.

The young man doesn’t flee at this point, the complete opposite of Joseph in Genesis, who, when put in a tempting situation like this, fled right out the door, leaving his coat behind. There is something in this young man that is keeping him where he is. He perhaps likes her assertiveness and or her attention, so he stays to hear her out.

Path of Destruction (v14-23)

Her seductive words are now said:

“Today I fulfilled my vows,
and I have food from my fellowship offering at home.
So I came out to meet you;
I looked for you and have found you!
I have covered my bed
with colored linens from Egypt.
I have perfumed my bed
with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon.
Come, let’s drink deeply of love till morning;
let’s enjoy ourselves with love!
My husband is not at home;
he has gone on a long journey.
He took his purse filled with money
and will not be home till full moon.”

With persuasive words she led him astray;
she seduced him with her smooth talk.
All at once he followed her
like an ox going to the slaughter,
like a deer stepping into a noose
till an arrow pierces his liver,
like a bird darting into a snare,
little knowing it will cost him his life. (Proverbs 7:14–23 NIV)

Here we see the bait and the hook.

Her words are the enticing bait. She comes forward with a little religiousness; she has been to the temple and made sacrifices. Back then, if you made the fellowship offering, you could take the meat home with you, and you had to eat it that night. She was saying, “Come, I have meat, eat with me, it will be tasty.” She then moves from the dining room to the bedroom. She has luxury linen from Egypt, and it has been prepared for all the senses. She says, “Come and experience all of this, and then we can enjoy ourselves together till morning”. And she reassures there is nothing to fear about being caught, for her husband is away on business for the whole month.

This is enticing, arousing a fantasy of pleasure and enjoyment. She has meat, clean sheets, promises of sex, and it’s risk-free. There will be no consequences. But that is not true. God always sees, and sin always entangles and complicates things. What she is offering is only for marriage; it is all a lie. She has compartmentalised her religion and her marriage, and her inner desires, so these things do not have to relate to each other.

And so we see here that the bait works, and the young man doesn’t know what it is costing him. The hook is spelt out. It is like an ox going to the slaughter, it is like having a noose around your neck, or an arrow in the liver. It will cost him his life. This sin leads to death.

In verse 21, we are told again, it is her persuasive words, and not her appearance, that has led him astray. She seduced him with her smooth talk, and he took the bait.

This enticement that plays on the heart is as old as human history.

In Genesis 3 we are told how our first parents fell. There is one line about the attractiveness of the fruit

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Genesis 3:6 NIV)

But before this act, there was a conversation, and there we see the enticement from the serpent.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1 NIV)

The serpent, like the woman, was crafty. He simply asked a question, Did God really say what it was that he said? He is just asking, just checking and perhaps throwing a little bit of doubt. Are you sure that is what God said?

And then after her answer, the serpent again just rejects out of hand what God said

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4–5 NIV)

The serpent rejects and reframes the situation. He says, even though you are made in the image of God, God doesn’t want you to be like Him. God is holding back on you. He is mean. He doesn’t really know what you want. God has His own agenda that He is keeping from you.

These persuasive words are how sin works. It reframes the situation, it rejects God’s word; it questions the character and wisdom of God.

We sometimes can get ensnared by the bait of sin, thinking it will be pleasurable, it will be easy, it will not cost anything, no one will know.

Temptation to sin is as old as the creation story, but while it is old, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. We still haven’t got rid of it, and that is because we do not pay attention to how to avoid it.

What websites do we visit? What shows do we binge-watch? How much money do we hold on to, and how much do we give away? What is going on in our hearts when it comes to ourselves? How do we try to justify what paths we slowly walk down, only to get enticed and then ensnared?

Path of Deliverance (v24-27)

The teacher ends their warning about this

Now then, my sons, listen to me;
pay attention to what I say.
Do not let your heart turn to her ways
or stray into her paths.
Many are the victims she has brought down;
her slain are a mighty throng.
Her house is a highway to the grave,
leading down to the chambers of death. (Proverbs 7:24–27 NIV)

We are told that this is not a one-off; many people have gone on this highway that leads to death. The key issue here is that the son is to pay attention to what the father says, and not to let their heart turn to these stray ways.

This simple guy is not an innocent victim in this story. The women didn’t corrupt him and make him do it. The adultrous woman has her own things going on, but the guy is persuaded because he wants to be. His heart wanted to go down that path. The fault is not with a problem out there, but it is with his heart inside.

It sounded good, so he went that way. He didn’t think about anything broader; he may in principle think cheating is wrong, but when the woman put it in her words, he thought it was ok for him to cheat.

The external temptation exploits an internal condition. And we all face this.

We do the things that we love, and today in the West, we even elevate our own self-love to define who we are. We are proud of what we love. Whether it be our nation or who we are attracted to. Our culture says your attractions are your identity. It says that who you love is who you are. It says “Love is God”, but they have it backwards because we know “God is Love”.

If we base our identity on something from within, we are at the whim of our own fickleness and our own hearts, which can be deceitful. Instead, we should base our identity on something beyond us. John, the Apostle, identifies himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. His identity was based on who was loving him, not who he loves. This is a more stable and comforting identity based on who we are, for it is not based on something within, but from something external. If we are in Christ, we are dearly beloved.

In writing to the messed-up church in Corinth, Paul says:

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. (1 Corinthians 6:18–20 NIV)

(I didn’t fact-check this, but) I think it was C.S. Lewis who said to picture society as a lake with a bunch of large boats on it. And on this lake, we generally think, if we are not bumping into others, we can do what we want on our own boats. We can add this modification here, we can use the sail as a bedsheet, or even use the mast for firewood if we want to. If it isn’t harming others, then we are free to do what we please. We can board other boats, as long as they consent to it, but doing anything by force is bad. Lewis said this seems very true, but what happens if we find out we don’t actually own the boats, that we are all renting them from the owner? Then we can’t do anything we want on the boats, we can’t tweak it how we want, it doesn’t belong to us. And that is our bodies. We have been given these, and will be judged by what we do with them.

If you are a Christian, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. God has come and dewlls in you. He has given you a new heart, and an external one has come internally.

When you become a Christian, you become joined to the Lord Jesus Christ, in body and spirit, through his finished work on the cross. He gives himself to you completely by grace, and you give yourself to him completely by faith… From head to toe, all that you are is not only for Christ but also of Christ. That includes your sexuality, married or single, because you are married—to Christ. You have been joined by grace to the Lord. (Proverbs—Wisdom that Works Where to Find the Love We Long For)

Elsewhere in the Bible, married couples are considered to be one flesh, but here, with Christ, we have become one spirit, which is even more profound and deeper and richer.

God has sent His Spirit to renew our hearts from the inside, so that we can walk in His ways that keep us from giving in to temptation. May we not listen to the seductive words of the world, or go to be put in situations that might entice us, but instead listen to Jesus’ voice, knowing that it is in Him that we have our identity and that He loves us and wants what is best for us.

Faithful God,
write your commands upon our hearts,
that we may love your wisdom as our closest companion.
Keep us from the snares of temptation,
and deliver us from voices that would lead us astray.
Turn our eyes from fleeting desires,
and fix them on your ways that bring life.
Grant us purity, steadfastness, and joy in you,
until we find our eternal rest in Christ. Amen.

Proverbs 6:1-19 - The Softie, The Sluggard and The Scoundrel

2025-08-31T19:56:00.001+10:00

Below is the next talk in our series on Proverbs. I cut the end of the chapter as we will pick up the topic of adulty again next week.

Would you rather to be able to see the future or be able to detect lies? If you could have either what would you do? Would investments be easier? Would you steer clear of things? Both would be some sort of superpower. It would be good if we knew who we could trust. However, if you have lived some time in this world, it is clear that there are some bad actors that do not have your best interest in mind.

Since the start of this year, Scamwatch says $173.8M has been taken from Australians.

People are trying to get you to trust them or invest in their new scheme. There are Nigerian princes out there who want to give you lots of money. There is a part of us that would really like this to be true; if it is, we wouldn’t have to work anymore, it would be grand.

Throughout this series in Proverbs, we are seeing what it is to live wisely in this world. Living wisely is the way God intended us to, it is going back to the garden in the beginning.

Adam and Eve were given the task of stewarding the land they were given. They were told to till and work the earth, and they were told to multiply and build community. These were good things, but now, since the fall, we are in a world where work and community are frustrated.

Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Proverbs is bookended by warnings against adultery, and in the middle we have today's passage. Here we see some other personifications of folly.

Today we are only going to go to verse 19 in this chapter, and here we will meet three different people. The Softie, the Sluggard and the Scoundrel. These characters make more appearances in Proverbs, and we will just touch on those appearances too. We are given these negative examples so we can know the opposite, which is wisdom. It’s like we get a bit of a “warning label” on what we are to avoid.

We will see that we should not go into debt for someone else, we shouldn’t be lazy, and we shouldn’t stir up conflict.

The Softie: Do not go into debt for someone else

The first person we meet in this chapter is someone whom I’m calling a softie. They might be big-hearted, or naive or maybe even a pushover, so they are put in a situation where they financially back someone else's plans.

My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor,
if you have shaken hands in pledge for a stranger,
you have been trapped by what you said,
ensnared by the words of your mouth.
So do this, my son, to free yourself,
since you have fallen into your neighbor’s hands:
Go—to the point of exhaustion—
and give your neighbor no rest!
Allow no sleep to your eyes,
no slumber to your eyelids.
Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter,
like a bird from the snare of the fowler. (Proverbs 6:1–5 NIV)

This softie has hastily entered into a deal and gotten into debt. We aren’t told how or why. Maybe because they wanted to help a are friend, or they might have felt sorry for them, or they might have wanted to be their hero. The other party could have also been very good a persuasion, maybe even offering a little cash incentive if they funded their schemes.

This softie has offered their money for someone who is first called a neighbour and then a stranger. They might not be well-known to them.

Whatever the circumstances, the instruction is to not go into debt for something you are not responsible for.

The rest of Proverbs has much to say about putting up security for others, all along the same theme

Whoever puts up security for a stranger will surely suffer,
but whoever refuses to shake hands in pledge is safe. (Proverbs 11:15 NIV)

One who has no sense shakes hands in pledge
and puts up security for a neighbor. (Proverbs 17:18 NIV)

Do not be one who shakes hands in pledge
or puts up security for debts;
if you lack the means to pay,
your very bed will be snatched from under you. (Proverbs 22:26–27 NIV)

The danger is, that other people’s debt becomes your debt, and if it all goes south, which you can’t control, you could lose everything.

Notice the use of hands here. This person's hands have caused them trouble. They have shaken hands together in a deal, and now they are in the debtor's hands, which have become like a hunter's hand.

The instruction here is; if you have entered this type of deal, you are to end it as fast as you can. Go to the point of annoyance to the neighbour, do not rest; hurry and get out of it. Even if you have to eat humble pie. You are like a wounded animal in a trap, be single-minded to get out of it as soon and as quick as possible.

Technically, this is not a warning against loaning to another but against pledging security for another, perhaps someone you are not close to. (Proverbs Bridging Contexts)

You might co-sign a loan for your child, but not with a stranger you don’t know. How good their credit is, are lying, how well do they save? If the banks, with all their calculations, won’t give someone a loan and they then come to you to help, what makes you think your judgment will be better than the banks?

If you have promised a pledge for an amount that you may not even have at the moment, get out of that predicament as soon as you can. Repay quickly if you have to.

There are many people asking for your money. If you are not responsible for their outcome, don’t back their plans. You don’t know the future of your own finances, let alone someone else's. Don’t speculate on a get-rich-scheme or a side hustle for someone else.

You are to "remain free of entanglements, especially those entered with the idea of quick and easy gain" (Proverbs Bridging Contexts)

This is different to caring for the poor. Being kind to the poor is encouraged in Proverbs (Prov 19:17). It is a task our church does and should be minful of.

With our money, we are to mimic God. God is rich in mercy; He wants to give to His children. He doesn’t want to loan them His grace or give them love that they have to pay back.

Probably the most famous verse in the Bible says:

God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 NIV)

Our God is a giver, and He alone offers us security and life. In Hebrews, Jesus is said to be the guarantor for us for a better covenant (Heb 7:22), that is, Jesus Himself was the down payment for us. He didn’t co-sign our loan. He paid it in full with His own blood, so that we could be saved.

We should use what we have generously, like our God, and not foolishly, by rushing into other people’s debt.

The Sluggard: Don’t be lazy, be an ant

The next person we meet is the sluggard. As their name suggests, they are a bit of slug.

Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.

How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
When will you get up from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest—
and poverty will come on you like a thief
and scarcity like an armed man. (Proverbs 6:6–11 NIV)

This sluggard makes a few appearances in Proverbs. They are lazy, with no future thinking. They don’t work now, which means down the track, they will have nothing:

Sluggards do not plow in season;
so at harvest time they look but find nothing. (Proverbs 20:4 NIV)

They even make silly excuses as to why they can’t go to work

The sluggard says, “There’s a lion outside!
I’ll be killed in the public square!” (Proverbs 22:13 NIV)

If the sluggard doesn’t do any work now, they will come into poverty later.

To the first person in this chapter, the one who would shake hands in a pledge, the teacher says, “Save yourself, free yourself! Do not sleep, or you will become the prey of a hunter.” In this story, the one who would fold hands in rest, the teacher says, “Rouse yourself! Do not sleep, or you will become the prey of that robber poverty.” (Proverbs Go Learn from the Ant (6:6–11))

Now, we have to be a bit careful in seeing what Provers is saying here. There are very strong warnings that "laziness will make one poor, but Proberbs never claims that the poor are lazy (cf. 24:30–33)" (Proverbs Bridging Contexts)

Not all poverty is the result of laziness (14:31; 17:5; 19:1, 17, 22; 21:12; 28:3, 11). (Proverbs: The Tree of Life Comments on Proverbs 6:1–8:21)

There is oppression that can lead to poverty, circumstances beyond your control that can mean you can not work. Also, if given a choice, sometimes it is even better to be poor.

What a person desires is unfailing love;
better to be poor than a liar. (Proverbs 19:22 NIV)

Better the poor whose walk is blameless
than the rich whose ways are perverse. (Proverbs 28:6 NIV)

When dealing with the sluggard, their issue is they have opportunity and they do not use it. They are lazy and only consider their immediate comfort and not what is down the track. Like most of Proverbs, wisdom is thinking things through, and not just the immediate, even if it seems to taste good.

It was unloving to the family or community for someone who was able to work and didn’t f,or they would then have to look after them, as there was no government safety net.

The sluggard is instructed to go outside and pay attention to nature and the world around them, by visiting the ant's nest. They are to change from being a slug to an ant.

The ants show wisdom in how they work. They have self-discipline and diligence. They go about their day tirelessly without a boss looking over their shoulder all the time.

They build up their food provisions in summer, so they will be able to live through the winter. The lazy does not prepare for the future, so scarcity will come at them.

To the extreme, this is not justifying someone to be a workaholic. That isn’t the solution. That is going too far in the other way of not resting. People over work for profit, or identity or avoidance of other things, such as their home life.

To those who are busy, they may feel trapped by their busy schedules, but it would be worth considering what our commitments are and asking if they give us an excuse to neglect what is most important in life (Proverbs Contemporary Significance)

We should "avoid those responsibilities that are not ours so we can be free for those that are." (Proverbs Contemporary Significance)

For us, good commitments might include the rest and worship of God, unhurried time with family and friends to build strong relationships, and schedules planned far enough in advance to ensure that what we do, we do well. (Proverbs Contemporary Significance)

I want to say something here, but not as a boast or a complaint or for sympathy, as it can come across that way, but I want to say this as a confession. Most months I see a professional supervisor, and when I started, very early on, he told me that I am responsible for my timetable. And this week, I haven’t had a full day off. I can try and justify why this happened, but I am responsible for what I do and I need to get the right balance again.

Work and rest are good things from God, as long as they are rightly ordered. Too much of either will bring ruin in different ways. So, including me, lets have a wise balance of rest and work; avoid being lazy and a workaholic.

The Scoundrel: Avoid schemers, don’t cause conflict

Lastly, we move on to someone who is called a troublemaker and a villain. In the NRSV, it translates the word “troublemaker” as “scoundrel”, so that worked with the alliteration of these points. This scoundrel is to be avoided; this person is not someone you are to become. We read:

A troublemaker and a villain,
who goes about with a corrupt mouth,
who winks maliciously with his eye,
signals with his feet
and motions with his fingers,
who plots evil with deceit in his heart—
he always stirs up conflict.
Therefore disaster will overtake him in an instant;
he will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy. (Proverbs 6:12–15 NIV)

This scoundrel, or plotter, also appears a few times in Proverbs, never in the positive.

A scoundrel plots evil,
and on their lips it is like a scorching fire. (Proverbs 16:27–30 NIV)

Whoever plots evil
will be known as a schemer. (Proverbs 24:8 NIV)

This “scoundrel” is someone who works to undermine social and personal relationships for his own benefit (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs Laziness (6:1–11))

They use their body, their mouth, eye, feet, fingers to stir up conflict. They are seeking political capital to undo the harmony of the community for their own desires. They may signal and motion or gesture to others secretly to help with this division.

And like the person caught in others' debt, or the sluggard, this troublemaker will also find disaster, and this time, suddenly. We aren’t told how, but we do know that in the end, those who do things that God hates will face the punishment for them. As we see in this last bit:

There are six things the Lord hates,
seven that are detestable to him:
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up conflict in the community. (Proverbs 6:16–19 NIV)

This framing of 6 things and then 7, is a common literary device; it appears three times in Proverbs 30 and in Job and elsewhere. It is a way of saying something is not a complete list. You could probably add some more in here, like stealing or adultery. The meaning is ‘there is a number of things the Lord hates; for example …’ (Proverbs: Everyday Wisdom for Everyone 4. Seven Deadly Sins (vv. 16–19))

In the 6th century AD Pope Gregory I refined a list of vices to seven, giving us the seven deadly sins. Here, more than a 1500 years before that, we have what might be "considered the Israelite version of the seven deadly sins." (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs Laziness (6:1–11))

"The first five things the Lord hates are body parts set in a sequence that moves generally from the head to the feet (eyes, tongue, hands, heart, feet), and the last two are specific types of persons (the false witness and the troublemaker)" Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs Laziness (6:1–11)

Lying, murder, scheming, evil - these are things God hates. We may not like the idea that God hates something, but this is a good thing. It is good that God doesn’t just accept everything. God only likes everything that is good. He is against evil. And if you do evil, if you lie to others or stir up conflict in the community, God is against that.

We should "begin to hate what God hates so that we can love the way God loves." (Proverbs Contemporary Significance)

"When reading this list, we must not think of others. If these sins are a part of our lives, we need to look within our hearts and ask the Holy Spirit to convict us" (Proverbs (King James Version) G. The Wise Path of Life (Part 7): Avoid the Pitfalls of Life, 6:1–35)

Ask yourself, what goes on in my heart? How do I use my imagination? What arguments am I playing over in my head so that I can win and beat my opponent? Do I set people against each other, or try and show that I am better than whoever I am talking to?

Our communication to others should be true and honest, and we should be quick to do good and to bring about unity. We should do this because, in the way the world works, this is best for all. Even Sam Harris, the atheist thinker, has written a book about how we shouldn’t lie to others. He has discovered that honesty is the best policy. Who knew?

But tapping deeper into this, truth and unity are best for all, because that is who God is. God is the Truth and God is united in Himself. God is at the heart of the universe, and so the universe works when we are more like Him.

Jesus, in his wise sermon on the mountain, gave us the beatitudes in Matthew 5, in these we can know the traits of what God blesses, they are the opposite of what God hates. Blessed are those who are meek, those who look to do good, those who show mercy and those who are peacemakers. They are the ones who will see God, who are His children, who will live in the kingdom of heaven.

Through Jesus, we can now have peace and unity with God and each other. Jesus Himself is our peace. He has brought us together as a church, as one new group of people to be made one with God through the cross (Eph 2:14-17 ish).

It is hard to be united, as we all jostle and try and get our own way. But it is on Jesus’ own heart that we be united. Just a few hours before Jesus went to the cross, He prayed for those who will believe in Him. He prayed to God for us. He prayed “that all of them may be one” (John 17:20-21).

The Summary

So this week, we have much to consider as we try and navigate our lives, and seek to walk in a wise way.

Consider the warnings here. Free yourself from another person’s debt. Do not be lazy; instead, make provisions for the future, and do not scheme and cause conflict. All of these ways will end in disaster.

Instead, steward what you have, see the opportunities in front of you and take responsibility for them. Work and rest in a balanced way, and seek to build peace and community. In doing these things, we will be living how God intended us to.

We may fall short, and slip into debt, grow lazy and cause division. But remember the good news: Jesus has stepped in as our guarantor. He has paid our debt of sin, He strengthens us when we are weak, and He has made peace through His cross. In Jesus, we can find forgiveness when we fail, and in Him we can find the wisdom to live as God intended us to.

Let's pray.

Mercify Lord,
save us from foolish decisions that may ensare us in debt.
Teach us not to be lazy or to overwork
Keep us from those who have wicked intent and who stir up trouble
Help us to build peace and community,
Caring for one another, and stwearding what you have given us
Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who you gave for us. Amen.

Psalm 125 - Peace and Safety

2025-08-28T18:53:00.005+10:00

Today I got to give a talk at an aged care place. This week I have felt a little under the pump, so this is quite short, and probably could have been tightened a little. Below is mostly the flow of what I said.

Psalm 125

A song of ascents.

1 Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion,
which cannot be shaken but endures forever.

2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem,
so the LORD surrounds his people
both now and forevermore.

3 The scepter of the wicked will not remain
over the land allotted to the righteous,
for then the righteous might use
their hands to do evil.

4 LORD, do good to those who are good,
to those who are upright in heart.

5 But those who turn to crooked ways
the LORD will banish with the evildoers.

Peace be on Israel.

Safe and secure like mountains

On Tuesday, I went for a walk around Condor, and all around me I could see the mountains in this Lanyon Valley. It was lovely. (I even saw some kangaroos). Today our Psalm is one of ascent, which is a song that pilgrims going up to the temple would sing. As they would approach the temple in Jerusalem, they would be able to see the mountains all around them, like the Lanyon Valley.

In this Psalm we are told, “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forevemore” (Ps 125:2).

We may feel like we are surrounded by hardship, by temptations and even by disappointment in ourselves, but we can take comfort, for the Lord surrounds His people, like those huge immovable mountains around us. We are not to look at the evil in this world, but to what we have with God.

"Our relationship with God provides a security as real and as certain as the strong, solid, physical landscape of Mount Zion and the hills of Jerusalem." (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B, Volume 4 Pastoral Perspective)

We are safe in His arms.

It’s like a 3-year-old in his father’s arms in the middle of a pool. The Dad starts walking more and more to the deep end, saying “Going deeper, going deeper” as they move closer and close to the deep end the kid starts to panic and holds more tightly to his father, who, of course, easily touches the bottom.

Had the little boy been able to analyse his situation, he’d have realised there was no reason for increased anxiety. The water’s depth in any part of the pool was over his head. Even in the shallowest part, had he not been held up, he’d have drowned. His safety anywhere in that pool depended on Dad.

At various points in our lives, all of us feel we’re getting out of our depth—problems abound, family and health issues, someone dies. Our temptation is to panic, for we feel we’ve lost control. Yet, as with the child in the pool, the truth is we’ve never been in control over the most valuable things of life.

We’ve always been held up by the grace of God, our Father, and that does not change. God is never out of his depth, and therefore we’re as safe when we feel like we are “going deeper”. (750 Engaging Illustrations for Preachers, Teachers and Writers 609: Security)

The good and the bad

The Lord is in control over this world, even if it seems like the wicked hold the sceptre or power. But God has the power to remove their power, and their rule will not be permanent.

There are two truths in this Psalm, the world can be a dangerous place, and God can be a sure refuge. (Psalms, Volume 2 Bridging Contexts)

God does good to those who trust in Him, and will banish the evil doers in the future.

At the end of this Psalm, there is a contrast between the upright and the crooked. Those who do good the Lord will keep; those who do evil will be banished. They will receive the consequences of their actions.

This contrast between good and evil reminded me of something Proverbs would say. Proverbs is all about the choice between the straight path and the crooked path. It is about how best to live.

In knowing the right way, we need to look towards Jesus and see that His ways are the wise ways. We need to listen to Jesus and see that His teachings are the wise teachings. That in Jesus is the wisdom of God and instructions on how we get life.

Peace

Right at the end of this poem, we are told that there will be peace on Israel. This is the great final hope of our faith, that not just in Israel, but that there will be peace all over the Earth. One day, God the Almighty will do this.

The righteous long for God to come and restore the world. Right now, they admit that all is not right, but this Psalm tells us that God is bigger and that He shows concern for those who tust in Him, and that Peace will await His people.

The Christian faith does not ignore the world, nor does it seek to escape the trouble inherent to it. Christianity readily accepts that such is life in a broken creation that has sin in it (Rom 8:20–22). (Psalms, Volume 2 Bridging Contexts)

But in the midst of all that, we also know that we can have peace with God, through

Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. Paul writes to the Romans, “Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1 HCSB). You can have peace with God through Jesus, who forgives sins and grants eternal life. And you can know the peace of God through daily resting in him. (Exalting Jesus in Psalms 101–150 Those Who Trust in God Know His Holiness (125:5))

Jesus tells His disciples, on the evening before He was to be crucified, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you” (John 14:27). Jesus sought to bring peace. Peace between us and God; and peace between each other.

Let’s trust God and experience his stability in the midst of chaos. Let’s trust God and experience his security in the midst of fear. Let’s trust God and experience his goodness in time of need. As we trust him, we can know his peace even in times of anxiety. (Exalting Jesus in Psalms 101–150 Those Who Trust in God Know His Holiness (125:5))

God’s words are good and true, and He promises that all those who trust in Him cannot be shaken but will last forever.

Lord our protector,
Surround us with your steadfast love,
as the mountains surround Jerusalem.
Keep us safe from the hands of the wicked,
and establish us in righteousness and peace.
Do good, O Lord, to those who are upright in heart,
and lead us in your ways forever.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.