The Sermon Poole

Cry Freedom, Part 4. Free to Receive

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:40:00 +0000

Galatians 3:23-4:11

How do we find freedom?
An important influence on the way Western culture thinks was the great philosopher Nietzsche. He claimed that Christianity was weak, and enslaved people, entrapping those who should be free, by imposing morality on them. Not many people read Nietzsche, but his thought has influenced us in creating a culture that is individualist, self-seeking, and hedonistic.

In contrast to Nietzsche, the gospel says: You are slaves – and the way to freedom is through Christ. The gospel claims that the only way to real freedom is to receive it, not take it. Our culture claims that freedom comes by taking (be more assertive, demand your rights), but this too often leaves us in a position of trying to win, over and against someone else.

In the end, taking is what thieves do.

Real freedom happens when we are given our freedom. For example, the teenager staying out two hours after their curfew isn’t free, but in rebellion, and in trouble! But the teenager trusted to come home when they should, and given the keys to the car, is free!

Paul’s point to the Galatians is that we are slaves, and we need freedom. Before Christ came, at the best, people were like children with no real freedom. Paul illustrates this by describing true freedom as receiving an inheritance. Under the law, says Paul, you don’t get the inheritance, and so are not free. Living under the law is like being a son, who can’t get their hands on anything!

For Israel, the Law of Moses was a guardian, and the imagery Paul uses is that of a pedagogue. The pedagogue was a guardian, or manager, who escorted and controlled his masters children. The irony was that the pedagogue was himself a slave, so the child of the master (who would one day own all that was the masters) was captive to a slave!

Paul claims that this is the natural state of us all.

For Israel the guardian was the law, while for 21st century man the guardian is the “elementary principles” of the world (4:3,9). These are things like our own ethical standard, our worldview, our lifestyle. You should be the master, but in fact these things end up in control of you.

It is faith in Christ that frees you! Faith in Christ brings you into the full rights of sonship – as an heir – as we receive adoption as sons (4:5).

All this is stated by Paul objectively – as a fact; it is then proved by us experientially. You might believe Paul, or you might prefer Nietzsche, but believing Paul – and (more importantly!) Jesus – has profound implications…

Receiving freedom frees us to enter God’s story
Paul describes followers of Jesus as offspring of Abraham (3:29). This is not something we tend to think of much, but it is important!

It was important in the Galatian context because there were people coming into the church saying to Christians, “Be Jews.” Paul’s point is that Abraham was justified by faith, and received his inheritance by faith and the way we get into this is by faith too.

Because of what Christ has done ethnicity is no longer the issue. We become children of Abraham by the DNA of faith, not natural DNA. This is important because it means all Christians have equal standing as sons before God.

Receiving freedom frees us to get baptized
Baptism is the sign of entering this new status.

The Galatians were getting hung up on circumcision, but circumcision was something that only happened to Jews, and male Jews at that. But baptism is something that all heirs of God now do. Some commentators believe that “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (3:27-28) was pronounced at baptisms in the early church. If so, it must have had incredible power, as people who were Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, men and women, all got plunged in the same pool of water.

Receiving freedom frees us from inferiority
Pretty much everyone carries the secret fear, “Someone’s going to rumble me… What am I worth? Would anyone notice if I weren’t here?”

In contrast the gospel tells us we are redeemed (4:4-5). We have been purchased from the slave market and adopted as sons. We have been given the Spirit, so we cry, “Abba, Father.”

Children of the King are not inferior!

Receiving freedom frees us to celebrate diversity
The contemporary emphasis on diversity is a recent and shallow imitation of what is ours in Christ!

We recognize God’s creative genius in making the world diverse. We applaud a creator who has made some 6-10 million species of insect, including 5 million plus species of beetle! We celebrate a God who has so ordered the world that a single oak tree can host 500 species of insect. We look into the sky and see a galaxy with 100 billion stars: Blue stragglers, Bright giants, Carbon stars, Giant stasr, High-velocity stars, Hypergiants, Hypervelocity stars, Main sequence stars, Red dwarfs, Red giants, Runaway stars, Supergiants, Wolf-Rayet stars…

Slavery leads to uniformity, and fear (playing it safe) means always doing things the same. Free sons enjoy their inheritance in all its diversity! We don’t all have to become Jews – God’s people are multicoloured.

Receiving freedom frees us for relationship
Free people don’t view others as a threat or as rivals but are freed to enjoy life with others. We are brought into relationship with the Father and into relationship with our brothers.
In fact, we can only be free in relationship. Being sent into exile, or put in solitary confinement, are fierce punishments, because we are made for relationships, and need relationships.

God is free, and God is in relationship. God is one, but God is three – wonderful diversity and perfect unity in the most harmonious and complete relationship. We are meant to reflect God, and be in relationships of diversity and unity.

Receiving freedom frees us from going back to slavery
The Galatians were like cleaned up junkies going back to their addiction, and this makes Paul mad!

They kept going back to religion and moralism (4:8-11), rather than living by grace. Paul’s response to this is always, “No! The way to freedom is as sons!” As children of God we are free to receive all he has for us and live in a day-by-day childlike delight in all our heavenly Father’s good gifts. We don’t need to struggle and strive for his favour, but freely lay hold of all that he has for us in Christ!

Cry Freedom, Part 3: Free to Resist

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:13:00 +0000

Galatians 2:1-10

The apostle Paul was a fighter! He was quick to recognize attacks on his freedom and to resist them.

Today is Remembrance Sunday – a day on which we remember those who have died fighting against tyranny – who have resisted threats to our freedom. Of course, this is now somewhat muddied by the widespread ambivalence (and for many people, outright opposition) towards the current military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But while there is increased questioning about the purpose and value of these military operations, there seems to be also an increased desire to express solidarity with those who serve in the armed forces.

At the same time, there has been increasing controversy about the wearing or not wearing of poppies, with a particular debate about whether people on TV should all be wearing them. The irony is that a poppy – which represents the sacrifice made to gain our freedom – can itself become a form of legalism. Paul is making a similar observation in his letter to the Galatians.

Tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of Berlin Wall. This was one of the better moments of our recent history, when resistance to tyranny led to the collapse of an oppressive political system. Paul writes to the Galatians 20 years after the cross, and freedom was the issue, just as it still is for us. Paul’s message is that anything that compromises freedom needs to be resisted – the wall needs to be demolished!

Christian Freedom
Sadly, the all too typical impression people have of the ‘Christian’ is someone who is stiff, cold, boring and drab. This stands in stark contrast with the Biblical view of who a Christian is – someone who is free! Who lives a hi-def life of adventure, purity and compassion.

Why the difference?

The sad truth is that too often the Church has allowed Christian freedom to be robbed from the people of God, and Christians have indeed become stiff, cold, boring and drab!

This is weird, because Christianity is a story of freedom. We grow up on freedom stories: of Moses, David and Esther. And we sing in church each week about being set free by Jesus. Moreover the gospel promises us freedom: from the tyranny of emotions, the opinion of others, and our bad memories. But then we end up living in a strait-jacket.

Why?

Because freedom is dangerous! If we give people freedom, they might do things they shouldn’t! So freedom is suppressed for the best of motives – to preserve morality. The cart is put in front of the horse, and rather than purity resulting from a life changed by Jesus, morality tries to win the acceptance of God by being obedient.

We need to be acutely sensitive to these threats to our freedom. And we need to really believe the gospel. The problem for all of us is sin and suffering – the bad stuff we have done, and the bad stuff other people have done to us. The solution to both these problems is found at the cross. At the cross Jesus paid for our sin, and at the cross he carried our suffering. Only by the cross can we be truly free.

Threats that Paul faced: 1, Circumcise Titus
Titus was a Greek, and it was controversial to bring a Greek to Jerusalem. But Paul always worked in a team, and he always chose to travel with his team mates. Barnabas had been his first mentor, and was now his co-worker, while Titus was probably someone Paul had led to faith, the fruit of his ministry (see Titus 1:4).

As a follower of Jesus Titus was free, but the religious committee in Jerusalem wanted to run the rule over him. The expectation was that converts to Christianity should first convert to Judaism. For 2,000 years the Jews had been circumcising their sons, giving them a physical sign of a spiritual reality – that they were separated from the world, and joined to God – and they didn’t see why this should change. So for Titus to do things decently and in order, for him to be both acceptable and accepted, he needed to be circumcised.

This is what moralism does – it adds preconditions to the gospel. It says that obedience is needed to earn acceptance. Paul wouldn’t give an inch to these people! The gospel says, “You are accepted” and obedience – righteous living – flows out of that, not the other way around.

Threats that Paul faced: 2, Ministry to Gentiles
Paul’s ministry to non-Jews was controversial. Moreover, Paul didn’t fit the normal apostolic profile: He wasn’t one of the 12 disciples; he hadn’t been there at Pentecost; he had only spent 15 days in Jerusalem in the company of the other apostles; and he was going primarily to non-Jews.

At the same time, Paul was the best educated, the cleverest, the most able, the most Jewish of the apostles! He should have gone to the Jews! He should have run for parliament! But by going to the gentiles rather than doing what he was obviously qualified to do Paul aroused suspicion among the Jews in Jerusalem. They didn’t like his freedom. They didn’t like the way he broke the mould.

But the key thing was the gospel!

Peter, James & John saw that Paul was preaching the gospel and they welcomed him on the basis of the gospel.

The application of this for us is that we are free to minister wherever God has placed us. We can reach out to people who are like us (as Peter did with Jews) but we are also free to reach out to people different from ourselves. We don’t need to conform to any standard – except to the gospel! The gospel frees us! Very practically, this means we can just as freely go to either Sandbanks or Turlin Moor. The gospel is the ultimate agent of social mobility!

Paul resisted any threat to his freedom, and illustrates this to the Galatians powerfully with the story he tells in verses 11-14. This example is recorded in scripture so it might stand for all time – Paul doesn’t spare Peter’s blushes! Where Peter is a hypocrite Paul is unafraid to say so, and to keep on saying so!

Let nothing compromise your freedom! But this is a freedom that leads to fruitfulness…

Remember the Poor
Paul tells us that he went to Jerusalem in response to a revelation (v2). It is possible that this refers to the incident recorded in Acts 11:27-30, where a prophet warned of a famine that was to come, and the believers took up an offering for the poor in Judea. If this is the case, the very reason Paul was in Jerusalem was to serve the poor. Either way, it is clear from 2 Corinthians 8 & 9 that collecting a gift for the poor in Jerusalem was a major event in Paul’s ministry.

The Apostolic burden is for the poor. The gospel is good news for the poor – it just is!

Any so-called freedom that ignores, forgets or despises the poor is a bogus freedom. Our freedom in Christ results not in selfishness but in blessing to others. This is a freedom that affects even our wallets!

Our freedom to resist must include resistance on behalf of the poor. This resistance will often involve sacrifice – of our money and energy and time – but resistance always involves sacrifice. We are reminded of this on Remembrance Sunday. And we are reminded of it by the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most of all, though, we are reminded of it by the Cross – the greatest ever act of sacrifice, and the greatest ever guarantee of our freedom.

Let’s be true to the cross, and keep resisting in the cause of freedom.

Cry Freedom, Part 2: Free to Change

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:45:00 +0000

The change industry is huge. I found 93,166 books on Amazon when I searched for “change.” There are books about personal change, business change, political change, climate change, style change, fashion change, partner change, sex change… You name it, someone out there will tell you how to change it!

Constant change is here to stay but most people don’t like change. Only 20 per cent of people are innovators or early adopters. That means 80 per cent of us are wired to resist change!

At the same time many of us would like to change ourselves. We’d like to be happier, healthier, fitter, better looking, wealthier, more popular, more successful…

We live in a world where all is changing; and that change is happening ever faster. In order to survive in that changing world we have to adapt and change.

So we live with this tension, where we want to change but don’t like change yet need to change!

The story of the gospel is the story of changed lives. This is either good news or threatening depending on your perspective! In his letter to the Galatians Paul tells a story of how he was changed by meeting with Jesus. Before he changed Paul didn’t want to change, or see his need to change, but he was eternally grateful that Jesus changed him.

Galatians 1:11-24

Everyone has a story to tell, and this is Paul’s story (which is also told in Acts 9). Paul was on his way to Damascus to persecute the church, when he was encountered by Jesus (we get further details about this incident in 2 Corinthains 12:2-4). Paul (or Saul as he was then known) was blinded in this encounter, and then received his sight when a believer called Ananias prayed for him. As Ananias prayed, Paul received not only his sight, but also the Spirit. He was then immediately baptized in water, and then went off preaching in Arabia and Damascus. Three years later Paul went to Jerusalem, to compare stories with Peter. After a couple of weeks with Peter, he was sent off to Tarsus (in Cilicia).

We can imagine Peter and Paul sitting with their feet up in front of the fire, saying, “This is what happened to me…”

Where Paul had come from
Saul was a man who wanted to impose order on the world. The followers of Christ were disrupting the social fabric and needed to be stopped.

Saul was a religious man; an ambitious man; a proud man. These are dangerous men! Saul was someone who wanted to override other peoples stories. But Saul became Paul and as well as a name change was transformed into someone who changed stories, not by force, but by the grace of God.

Peter and Paul were very different. Paul was sophisticated, urban, educated, while Peter was rural, rough. Paul never met Jesus (except on the Damascus Road) but Peter had walked beside him. But both Peter and Paul had a story to tell of how Jesus had changed them.

Learning to tell stories
Everyone loves a good story.

A love of stories is not something we have to learn – it is just hardwired into human nature. My children have loved stories from as soon as they were able to communicate in any meaningful way. At first the stories children love are very simple – ‘duck goes for a swim’ – but quickly the stories get longer and more complicated. Small children (very irritatingly!) love to hear the same story over and over again. As we get older we like to hear the same story strung out over a long time, as in a two hour movie or a novel, or even over a lifetime, as with Coronation Street! Some of the best moments in my family are when someone says, “Remember when…” Stories are important to us.

The big story
There are many types of story, and they can take many different forms, but they can all be pretty much boiled down to just two broad categories: TheLove Story, and the Rescue Story. Everyone’s personal story will contain elements of these types of story, and everyone’s personal story can at some point be connected with the story of God:

The Love story: Boy meets girl. Fall in love. Live happily ever after.
This is probably the most common story of all, and is told and retold in countless forms from ‘high culture’ (Romeo & Juliet) to ‘folk culture’ (Snow White) to ‘pop culture’ (Sleepless in Seattle).

Most people’s stories will contain a lot of this story, because it is the story of relationships. Everyone has a story to tell of love fulfilled, broken or unrequited. This is the story that fills acres of newspaper print and celebrity magazines. It is the story other people tell us whenever we sit down together and say, “Tell me about yourself…”

The love story is also the story of the Bible because God’s story is about him winning for himself a bride, the love of his life, who he will lavish his love on forever. From Genesis to Revelation the story is all about a God of love and the consequences of that love. Out of the overflow of his love God created the universe and people to fill it. Out of love God pursues relationship with these people, even when they sin and mess everything up. Out of love God chooses a people for himself – Israel. Out of love God remains faithful to Israel, even when she divorces him. Out of love God comes to the earth in Jesus Christ to win his bride back for himself. The climax of the whole story is a wedding feast when Jesus and his Bride are at last brought together in the new heavens and earth.

Of all the types of story there are, this is really the one big story, because every other story is really in some way about our search for love.

The Rescue story: Boy meets girl. Fall in love. Girl captured by evil monster. Boy kills monster, gets girl. Live happily ever after.
Many of our most popular movies and TV shows are rescue stories: Die Hard, 24, The Matrix. A hero does something impossible and saves the day. Often the story ends with him getting the girl, but it might be something more than that, like Oscar Schindler rescuing hundreds of Jews from the gas chamber.

This story connects with us so powerfully because many of us (especially men) indulge a fantasy to do something heroic, and because in some way all of us need rescuing (from addictions, disappointment, mundane jobs, debt, etc.)

This is also a Bible story because Jesus is our great hero who rescues us from our most deadly enemy – Sin and death. Jesus does the impossible in going to the cross, but, just as the closing credits are about to roll, he bursts back into life unconquered and undimmed. The last enemy to be destroyed, as 1 Corinthians says, is death. This is the big one. In films, the last enemy to be destroyed is always the head villain (it wouldn’t be quite the same if Alan Rickman died half way through Die Hard, or if Jack Bauer killed the chief terrorist by 11am). The last enemy is always the most dangerous villain of all, and the reason why the other villains are there. It’s the same in Scripture. Death is the biggest of the enemies and the explanation for the others. If there was no death, there wouldn’t be any war or injustice or fear or sickness. So if you can abolish death, you can totally strip all the other enemies of their power.

And that’s the Gospel of Jesus and resurrection. On Easter Sunday, the biggest of all the villains was totally and completely undone. The tomb was empty, and it still is. And that means that at least one person has conquered the grave, smashed the last enemy, and overturned the curse of death that has afflicted every human since time began. A champion only has to be killed once. Death had a pretty strong track record, until it faced Jesus, to whom it had no answer whatsoever. His resurrection life was simply too powerful. So, as Paul taunted: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O grave, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

Telling our stories
Every other type of story there is (tragedy, comedy, parable, myth, legend, biography, fairytale, fable, mystery, whodunit, epic, etc.) will contain at some point these two greater stories.

The way that we get to know people is by listening to their stories. We need to listen to one another’s tales of love and rescue. We need to share together the stories of what God has done for us, and we need to help others see how God’s great story connects to their personal story. We need to help people see that they can actually become part of the story of God – that he is the one who loves them, and can rescue them.

Paul’s story
How was it that Paul had undergone such a dramatic change? Clearly, the vision on the Damascus Road was an overwhelmingly powerful experience, but there was more to it than simply that. In verses 15-16 Paul describes for us how God had changed him…

God was at work in Paul long before he was born. God always had a plan for Paul, even when he was living in a way that seemed hell bent on destroying the work of God.

Paul was called by God’s grace. This grace was undeserved but free. That’s the point about grace! Paul deserved only God’s wrath, but instead received his love.

And then Jesus was revealed to Paul, in that encounter with the Savior on the Damascus Road.

My story is different from Paul’s, but similar as well. I haven’t seen Jesus in an overwhelming vision, but I know I have been set apart, called, and Jesus has revealed himself to me. This has changed me! It means I have a story to tell; a story of a life changed by the grace of God.

What a story! What grace! What a change!

It doesn’t matter where you come from – whether you are a Saul, or a Peter – by the grace of God you are free to change!

Paul tells the Galatians that the end result of this change is that others will worship God. This should be our aim, that we live our lives and tell our stories in a way that causes worship to raise to the Savior who has changed us.

Cry Freedom, Part 1: Free to Curse

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:47:00 +0000

I Want To Be Free!
Galatians is Paul’s letter of freedom. Freedom is its theme, and freedom is the thing, which makes it an interesting letter to read in a culture like ours which places such high regard on personal freedom.

Whether at Woodstock in the ‘60s, the Hacienda Club in the ‘80s or Glastonbury in the ‘00s, our culture exalts freedom. This attitude was summed up by the character played by Peter Fonda in the 1966 movie Wild Angels:

We want to be free! We want to be free to do what we want to do! We want to be free to ride. And we want to be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man. And we want to get loaded. And we want to have a good time! And that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna have a good time. We’re gonna have a party!

This quote was sampled by Primal Scream for their 1991 track Loaded, which became the anthem of the acid house movement, and it sums up still our cultural expectations of freedom.

Our music, movies and print media all portray freedom as desirable and good. Whether it be Mel Gibson yelling out “Freedom!” with his dying breath in Braveheart, or the Jedi fighting against the evil empire in Star Wars, living in freedom is universally seen as positive.

We tend to take our freedoms for granted.

Some of our freedoms are more noble (freedom of expression, freedom of association), while others are more base (freedom of dress, freedom from moral restraint).

The unbridled pursuit of personal freedom is in many ways an extension of the American Dream, as American culture dominates popular culture throughout the western world. With the birth of the United States there was a new emphasis upon personal freedom, probably unique in the history of the world. The assumption became that I should be able to do what I want to do, as I want to do it, when I want to do it, without hindrance or interference from the state or anyone else.

But this freedom not easily attained. Even in America it has not been easily won, as exemplified by the great struggles of the civil rights movement to gain equal freedom for people of all skin colours. And we see the limitations of freedom, when America has tried to impose it on other nations such as Vietnam and Iraq. The codename of Operation Enduring Freedom to describe actions in Afghanistan and Iraq now has a somewhat ironic sound to it.

Freedom is not only difficult to attain, but is fragile, and always under threat. Threats to our freedom can lead to actions that themselves limit our freedom – hence the bitter debate about the rights and wrongs of ID cards. Sometimes our freedoms collide with one another – one persons freedom to get drunk and have a good time can impinge on someone else’s freedom to not have their peace disturbed late at night.

Freedom is difficult!

The Situation in Galatia
The world of the New Testament was very different to our world, but also shared many similarities.

It was different because there were many different social assumptions, and attitudes towards rights and responsibilities. It was different because society was so much more segmented, with Roman citizens, freemen, and slaves all in the mix. Yet it was similar, because while cultures change, people don’t change. It was also like our world in that it was a multi-cultural, multi-religious society, and a world in which commerce, entertainment and sport were regarded as very important.

Galatia was an area in Asia Minor (now Turkey) that had been settled by Gauls. Paul’s letter to the churches there is possible the earliest book of the New Testament, written in the late 40s or early 50s. This was within 20 years of the death and resurrection of Jesus, which is something we should bear in mind as we read it.

Freedom Is The Focus
Freedom is not only an issue in culture, but in the church.

The claim of the gospel is that in it is true freedom. This freedom, too, comes under attack, and when it did in Galatia Paul went on the attack against the attackers…

Galatians 1:1-12

Why Does Paul Curse?
Galatians is one of Paul’s angriest letters, and Paul is angry because the Galatians were tolerating teaching that compromised their freedom. It seems that false teachers were coming into the churches and teaching that to be a Christian, believers first had to become Jews. Paul – who was a Jew, and had no issue with Christians who were Jews keeping their Jewish customs – was furious about this teaching, because his claim was that the gospel of Jesus Christ alone brings freedom.

Paul states that his authority as an apostle is outside the normal human system, it is not from men nor through men… His focus as an apostle is on the fact that Jesus has been raised from the dead.

Paul greets the churches with, Grace to you and peace – which is the normal apostolic greeting. The order of the words is significant, and has to be this way around. Grace is what we receive because of what Jesus has done at the cross, and it is grace that enables us to be at peace.

So how do we receive grace and peace? By what Jesus has done. Jesus has won for us freedom! This is the claim: true freedom is only found in Christ and his rescue. For Paul, faith is not a set of behaviours, nor mere acknowledgement of certain statements but a radical transformation – we were held captive by sin but Jesus has broken its power by his death and resurrection. Because of this we can know true freedom! Not the shallow, second rate freedom of a ‘free society’, but ultimate liberty because the ultimate enemy has been destroyed.

This means the church should be the freest place on earth! Which is why Paul is angry: The Galatians are not living in freedom!

What, then, does Christian freedom look like? It can’t mean just a free for all. Paul makes it clear later on in this letter that our freedom is meant to result in good works (E.g., Gal 5:13). Freedom must operate within certain parameters, in the same way that team sports are only fun to watch and play when played within certain parameters. Paul is fighting with the Galatians for where those parameters lie, and it is all set by this: Jesus’ victory over sin!

Religion seeks to impose its own parameters – it tries to say, “salvation is found in Jesus plus…” This makes Paul very angry!

Galatians 1:6-9 is one of the most extraordinary passages in the New Testament, as Paul calls down anathemas on false teaching. Paul is furious because the Galatians are deserting the gospel. They are deserting the path to freedom and allowing other parameters to be imposed upon them.

But Christians Aren’t Meant To Curse…!
Paul himself tells us this in Romans 12:14 where he instructs us to bless our enemies rather than curse them. So when is it OK to curse?!

Biblically speaking, disobedience to God leads to coming under a curse. (Examples of this can be seen in Genesis 3 & 4; Deuteronomy 11:26-28; Malachi 1:14 – 2:2; Matthew 25:41-43; Mark 11:12-14, 20-21.) Disobedience leads to a curse – it leads to death.

But the great glorious promise of the gospel is that Jesus has carried this curse for us!

So what Paul curses is anything that would threaten this gospel. Anything that would say, “this is the way to salvation” other than Jesus is to be cursed. A curse on anything that denies the sufficiency of the cross! A curse on anything that would keep us from enjoying God’s grace!

Burning heretics was a big mistake, but so is welcoming them! Tolerance can be overrated. You would not tolerate someone raping your wife, and we shouldn’t tolerate anything that compromises the freedom of the gospel – which is a rape of the church.

Believing this gospel and cursing anything that compromises it will not always lead to popularity (Gal 1:10-12). The gospel is not popular because it comes from Jesus, not man. Paul was often a very unpopular man…!

What this gospel claims is that you are under a curse if you have not come to the cross and been delivered. But come to the cross you can! Rescue can be yours!

And what this gospel claims is that if you have come to the cross, you should curse the things that would keep you from freedom. We followers of Jesus are meant to live in freedom, confidence and liberty. We don’t need to feel guilty, because Jesus has defeated guilt at the cross. You don’t need to make a payment yourself – you are free. You don’t need bad stuff to happen to you – the bad stuff has already happened to Jesus so you can be delivered.

This is good news! And a curse on anything that would deny it!

Get in the Game, Part 5, Body Life

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:06:00 +0000

Ephesians 4:1-16

The last part of this series pulls together all the other parts, because Body Life defines how we play football (Friendship, One-anothering, Outreach, Teaching, Body Life) together.

Paul’s favourite metaphor for church is the human body. Ephesians 4 is one of Paul’s great appeals for unity and the flow of gifts, with the human body as an analogy. (The other passages in which he does this are Romans 12 & 1 Corinthians 12.) This has been a key passage for many churches over the past 30 years as we have sought to recover “Ephesians 4 ministries.” And it is a key passage for understanding Christian maturity – which only happens in the body.

1. Body Life: responds to grace
Any gifts that we have come from grace. This must be the starting point for believers: it is all grace. Our natural gifts are God’s grace, as are spiritual gifts. Without God’s grace, we wouldn’t have them! Gifts are not earned – they are gifts!

It is easy to start thinking our gifts are earned, or the result of our own skill. If we start to think like this we will start to use the gifts for our own ends, rather than for God’s. But the gifts are given, and they are given for the common good.

As well as God distributing different gifts amongst his people, he gives different measures of grace. This can feel unfair to us. We might ask, What if someone else has the same gift as I do, but more of it, so I never seem to get to use my gift, because all the focus is on them?

The answer to this is that we are to live as Paul instructs us in this passage, with humility and patience and love. If it feels like we are a little finger while someone else is a thumb, we are not resent them, but trust God that he will use what he has put in us, for his glory and the good of his people – because its all of grace!

So the question is, What is your gift? Or, put another way, What is your grace? Whatever God has given you grace for, it is to be used to his glory and the service of the church. Rather than say, “Lord here I am, send my brother,” you need to use the grace you have been given, in the measure to which it has been given.

2. Body Life: results in growth
Growth is dependent on grace, and grace’s mechanism for growth is gifts.

Ephesians 4 describes the “5-fold ministry gifts” that are needed when churches are started and to help in their on-going health: apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. These are grace gifts given to build up the church, and we gladly welcome such gifts to Gateway. But the point of these gifts is they equip the church so we can grow ourselves – the aim is that, the body builds itself up in love (v16).

In this all the glory goes to God, but God works through people. God doesn’t bypass the physical in order to impart the spiritual. Rather, he works through the physical. We see this in many of Jesus’ miracles (such as making mud to heal someone who was blind), and in any area where we want to grow it will take gifts of grace working through the people of God.

We want to be a growing people, therefore, we need to use our gifts!

3. Body Life: requires others
By definition, gifts are worked out with other people. God gives gifts for the good of the body, and the bigger the body gets the greater the range of gifts we should see in operation. Body life is about seeing all the gifts in operation to strengthen the body

I once visited an orchard with over 500 varieties of apples, and was told “taste whatever you want!” This is very different from a typical supermarket with only three or four different sorts of apple. Church should be more like that orchard! We need to see a release of creativity, with everyone bringing their gifts to the table.

Let’s do Boby Life together!

Get in the Game, Part 4: Teaching

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:29:00 +0000

Teaching is one of the core values around which we want to build our Life Groups. Teaching is one of the “one-anothers” (Col 3:16) and it is important that our meetings together have content. We want the word to be central in our meetings because we want Jesus to be lifted up. Jesus’ instruction to his disciples was that they should, “Go and make disciples.” Disciples help one another follow the teachings of their master, and we want this to happen in Life Groups through the application of the preached word.

Why is teaching so important to the Christian faith?

Matthew 28:18-20

1. The centrality of teaching
When Jesus said “Go!” he said “Go teaching.”

Christianity is a message: There is something to be taught! What we teach is Jesus – all he has commanded us and all that we know about him. Jesus himself is the Word (John 1:1), so when we use words to teach about him we are not just airing opinions or merely engaging in philosophical discussion. No, we are dealing with a person, the living word of God.

This is why the phrase, The Word, is used in the book of Acts to describe the spread of Christianity:
The word of God continued to increase (Acts 6:7)
The word of God increased and multiplied (Acts 12:24)
The word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily (Acts 19:20)

There is a sense in which the word about Jesus and the word who is Jesus become inseparable.

As we read the New Testament we also see that Jesus taught, and there is at least as much an emphasis on his teaching as there is on the miracles he performed.

For example, Mark tells us that, Jesus saw a large crowd and had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began to teach them many things (Mark 6:34). The way Jesus showed compassion was by teaching!

Even after his resurrection Jesus still taught. Rather than overwhelming the disciples with supernatural tricks, Opening the Scriptures he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself (Luke 24:27).

In the first years of the Church we see that the Apostles had a high view of the preciousness of the message they had been given to share. This message resulted in,
• High levels of commitment among the believers: They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching (Acts 2:42)
• Power to transform lives: You who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed (Rom 6:17)
• The qualification by which the apostles measured themselves: This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Cor 4:1). We have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts (1 Thes 2:4).

The message is about Jesus! It is not ‘thought for the day’ or a ‘moral message’ or even a ‘great teaching’ like the teaching of other great teachers. Instead it is the story of how I can connect with God’s story. It is the message of how I can be made right with God; not because of what I do but because of what Christ has done.

Teaching this teaching requires words. There is an oft-quoted, but misquoted and misapplied statement attributed to St Francis, “Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary use words.” Yes, our lives should ‘preach’, but there can be no real preaching without words, which is why Paul says that “faith comes by hearing” (Rom 10:13-17). Which leads to my second main point…

2. The purpose of preaching
Preaching is an important part of how we teach Jesus.

Jesus claimed all authority for himself, and preaching is an authoritative act.

Jesus preached; the apostles preached; and the history of the church has been shaped by preaching. Yet in our day preaching often comes under attack. It is derided as not being relevant, and being not visual, and being too long…

The thing is, we need to submit ourselves regularly to the authority of preaching because so much of the time we are receiving messages from elsewhere, that often are not at all helpful for us. A report from Ofcom reveals that, Every day in 2007, an average UK consumer spent 7 hours and 9 minutes watching TV, on the phone, using the internet or using other telecom services.

We need to listen to preaching and not just the telly!

Sitting under preaching is a necessary act of submitting to the authority of the word, and was taken very seriously in the early church. We see the importance attached to preaching in the life of the early church in the shockingly un-pastoral response of the Apostles to the complaints of widows who were being overlooked, It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables (Acts 6:2). The apostles knew that even more important than the material care of widows was faithful preaching of the message.

When preaching is weak, the church is weak. Moralistic, 10 minute homilies do not save souls! In contrast, times of revival have been times of mighty preaching. O God give us those days again!

It is probably helpful at this point to deal with some misconceptions about preaching…

1. I don’t remember everything that was said
No problem! Preaching is not a lecture. A lecture is about transferring information, while preaching is an appeal to the heart as much as to the mind. Preaching is about lifting up Christ! Even if you do not remember what is preached, consistent listening to preaching over time has a shaping and moulding effect on us, just as water dripping onto a stone eventually shapes the stone.

2. Lets have less preaching and more time for the Spirit to move
D’oh! The Spirit doesn’t leave when the word is preached! He comes among us. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:16-17).

One of the longest sermons recorded in the New Testament is that by Stephen, just before he was martyred. Stephen preached, and Stephen was full of the Spirit! (see Acts 6:10; 7:55)

3. Isn’t 40 minutes too long?
I normally preach for about 40 minutes, so we’ll use that as a measure… Truth is, everyone concentrates for longer than 40 minutes on the stuff that interests them – whether it is a TV show, or a football game, or whatever. If we are devoted to the word 40 minutes will not seem to long to listen!

Also, it doesn’t matter if you dial in and out of the preaching. The important thing is that you are sitting under it. We can’t set the length of sermons according to the minimum attention span of the most inattentive church member – our standards need to be higher than that!

So, why preach?

Because in preaching we lift up Jesus!

In the Party Political conferences that are happening at the moment all the attention is on the leaders closing speech. Christian preaching is very different from this. It is not about the personality of the preacher, or about the preacher trying to sell his program. Instead real preaching is all about Jesus! Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ (Col 1:28).

This is a message that has power to change lives: I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved (1 Cor 15:1-2).

Get in the Game, Part 3, Outreach

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:31:00 +0000

Thinking like a missionary

1 Corinthians 9:19-23

If there is one word we would use to sum up what the church is about it is, “Mission!” Like the Apostle Paul, we need to learn to think like missionaries, always being on the lookout for ways by which we can connect the story of the gospel to peoples lives.

Anyone who is a follower of Jesus is a frontline missionary! Missionaries are not only people slogging it out somewhere in Africa, but all of us are called to be on a mission right where we are.

Mission: the heart of the gospel
God’s sovereign plan is to reach all peoples (tribes, tongues, and nations) through the church. Jesus’ last command was to “Go!” The Holy Spirit was poured out in order that we would be empowered to go. The church exists to make Jesus known.

This Jesus is returning again for a people – for worshippers. The cosmic end game is that the people of God should be gathered in worship before him. And the amazing thing is that we are sent to do the gathering! As Paul puts it in Romans 10:11-15, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

The gospel is blessing! This is good news!

Mission: of Global Importance
The goal of mission is that, “the nations be glad” (Ps 67). We need to get a heart for global mission because mission is of global significance.

It is sometimes hard to feel a passion for what is happening in other nations – it can just feel too far away – but there are things we can do to help stir this passion in us. Reading books about mission, and praying for other nations will help. Giving money to mission will help! Join a mission trip or a Life Change Team. Even going on holiday to a different country can help stir a passion for world mission in you.

As a church we need to be praying for people from other nations to join us, which will help us feel a greater connectedness with those nations. Our expectation should be that we will send out increasing numbers of workers into other nations. We need to be committed to church planting, which is the strategy to reach the nations. And we can be inspired by the example of others. For example, I was challenged by an interview with Rick Warren, leader of Saddleback church in California, in which he said that Saddleback is, “The first local church in Christian history to send members as missionaries to literally every nation.... We have 58 nations left to go to and already have the 2,000 more who've volunteered to go to those before the end of 2010.”

Incredible!

Even if you never go to a different nation, you need to see yourself as part of world mission.

Mission begins at home
While we need a passion for world mission, we need to understand that mission starts where we are!

The apostle Paul was always thinking about the gospel. It didn’t matter where he was or who he was with – the gospel was what he was all about.

This passage in 1 Corinthians shows how Paul did what we now call “enculturation.” Wherever he was, he found ways to connect with people. Paul repeatedly compromised his own culture and comforts in order to never compromise the gospel!

Two striking examples of this are found in the book of Acts. In Acts 17:16-20 we read that Paul shared the gospel in the synagogue, and in the marketplace, and in the Areopagus. These three places represented very different cultures. The synagogue was a place where Paul would have felt at home – with fellow Jews, doing what Jews the world over did. The marketplace was a different story – it was the place where pagan life was in full view, in all its colour and sin. The Areopagus was different again – the greatest seat of learning in the Greek world. But to Paul it didn’t matter – whether he was talking to (in our terms) church folk, or prostitutes, or university professors he was able to connect the story of Jesus to their story.

Another example can be found in Acts 21:17-26. Paul had returned to Jerusalem and agreed to go through Jewish purification rituals in the Temple. As a follower of Jesus Paul didn’t need to do this – but as a follower of Jesus who was also ethnically Jewish he was free to practice Jewish customs. He did this in order not to compromise the gospel.

We need to be more like Paul!

Freedom in the gospel
It was Paul’s freedom in Christ that allowed him to fit in so easily in such different cultures. Paul didn’t engage in peoples sin, but he did engage in their culture.

We mustn’t fear pagans! And we mustn’t go all weird and spooky. We must believe in the power of the gospel. Paul was able to walk confidently through all kinds of cultures and situations – he had beautiful feet and knew the power of God, so he didn’t get freaked out by the idol worshippers and pimps, the MPs and professors. He just got on with talking about Jesus.

If you are a believer you are called on a mission. This is not just for professional missionaries, or pastors or evangelists, but for every Christ-follower.

You might not have Paul’s missionary gift, but you are still called to mission! You are a representative of Christ right where you are.

At Gateway this means we need to be people who do not view culture as dark and dangerous and something to hide from. Neither are we to end up simply reflecting the culture, but redeeming it. We are to be a bible-believing, Jesus-loving, mission-focused, people-loving church. We are to live differently from the world, but not in an adversarial way.

Living like a missionary
Living like a missionary means thinking about the mission! It means being alert to opportunities as well as creating opportunities. It means praying about the mission, and investing time, money, and energy into it.

It means that we don’t just talk about the gospel, but are in on it!

Application for Life Groups
We want our Life Groups to be Communities together on a mission for Jesus.

This means that our LGs are not just a meeting in the week, but something that gives Christlike shape to life. Life Groups are places where friends introduce their friends to our greatest friend – Jesus. Life Groups are places where we share in the blessings of the gospel together.

Get in the Game, Part 2, One-Anothering

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:47:00 +0000

‘One-another’
The Bible contains many instructions for Christians to ‘one-another’ one another! These include the following:

• Love one another
• Encourage one another
• Instruct one another
• Live in harmony with one another
• Welcome one another
• Greet one another (with a holy kiss!)
• Care for one another
• Comfort one another
• Agree with one another
• Serve one another
• Bear one another’s burdens
• Bear with one another in love
• Be kind to one another
• Be tenderhearted towards one another
• Be forgiving to one another
• Sing to one another
• Submit to one another
• Teach one another
• Admonish one another
• Exhort one another
• Stir up one another to love and good works
• Confess your sins to one another
• Pray for one another
• Show hospitality to one another
• Serve one another
• Show humility to one another

These ‘one-anothers’ are not lovey-dovey or soft, but robust. And they are not, ‘Its all about me’. Rather, they illustrate that Christianity is a team exercise. The aim of these instructions is that the body (the church) should be built up – the health of the body is always in view.

Today we are looking at a passage that emphasises the ‘us’ and ‘we’ of being a Christian.

Hebrews 10:19-25

Jesus Our Priest (vv19-23)
The writer to the Hebrews says we can be confident when we come to God. Confidence makes a big difference to performance. In sport, confidence is hugely important – who wins out of two roughly matched individuals or teams often comes down to which is the most confident. Confidence creates an atmosphere of freedom. Paul says something similar in Ephesians 3:12 where he tells us that in Jesus we may approach God with freedom and confidence.

Because of what Jesus has down we are now free to enter the holy places. The comparison being made is between the old priestly system and the new covenant. Now we can come right into the presence of God, whereas before the people of Israel had to make animal sacrifices and were separated from the holy place by a thick curtain.

The blood of the sacrifice demonstrated the seriousness of sin. Sin is so abhorrent to God that it is only solvable by death. And Yahweh was understood to be so dangerous that people had to be kept out of his presence – just as you wouldn’t want to enter a nuclear reactor, no-one wanted to go beyond the curtain where the Ark of the Covenant was kept.

But Jesus turns everything upside down!

Jesus is our priest! He is the one who has stood in our place and been our substitute. He died for our sins so that we don’t have to. It is Jesus who intercedes before his Father for us. It is Jesus who makes it possible for us to come into the presence of God – with confidence! Now, we can come close to God because Jesus has cleansed us. He gets to work on us, body and soul, and makes us presentable to God, inside and out.

In response to what Jesus has done, and the promises he has made, we are to persist in our faith. As a community together we are to hold on to the faith and faithfully follow our great high priest. In fact, it is only possible for us to do this as part of the body – it is in the communion of God’s people that we are held in faith.

Provoking One Another (vv24-25)
What Jesus has accomplished for us has then to be worked out by the way we do life together.

The word that is translated as ‘stir’ or ‘spur’ in our English Bibles could also be translated provoke. The Greek word is ‘paroxysmos’, which only occurs in the Bible here, and in Acts 15:39. There is it used to describe the ‘sharp disagreement’ between Paul and Barnabus that led to them separating from each other.

‘Oxys’ means goad, so what the writer to the Hebrews is saying is that we are to spur/stir/provoke/goad one another into doing the right thing. He tells us that we are to consider how we are to do this – that is, we need to think about it!

The truth is that often we need goading into showing love and doing good deeds, because we tend to get passive, and we tend to be selfish. We all need the body around us, helping us to be healthy members of the body.

Because Christianity is a team exercise we have to meet together. If we are to provoke one another we need to be together in order to be provoked! I would say that coming on Sunday and attending a small group is the minimum amount of meeting together that any believer should do.

This a very clear instruction from the Bible: Meet together! Why do we need to do this? In order to encourage one another. Why do we need to do this?! Because life is tough!

Meet together; encourage one another; help each other to live for Jesus.

Application to Life Groups
How – practically – can we spur one another on to love and good works? How can we help each other be fruitful?

Life Groups will help us!

The first thing to understand is that pastoral care happens through small groups. Pastoral care doesn’t primarily happen by one pastor running around after everyone, but is an exercise in community. We are meant to care for one another, so if you are not in a Life Group it is going to be hard to look out for you.

There are many practical things we want Life Groups to do in order to spur one another on. It might be that someone in the group needs financial help, and you can give them some money. It might be that you encourage one another to invite your unchurched friends along to a Life Group social event, or to church on a Sunday. Life Groups will hopefully be places where there is honesty and a godly correction of one another. And we want spiritual gifts to flow in these groups – prophecy is very useful in encouraging and spurring us on!

We want our groups to be communities together on a mission for Jesus where together we help one another live faithfully for the gospel and the good of our neighbours.

Get in the Game, Part 1: Friendship

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:55:00 +0000

Launching Life Groups
We want the Life Groups we are starting this autumn to be built around five core values, which are represented by the acrostic FOOTBALL: Friendship, One-anothering, Outreach, Teaching & Body Life.

In addition to the preaching series I am doing, we have a set of daily bible study notes prepared to run alongside this series. These are available here.

We want Life Groups to be a place to grow friendships, because we all need friends.

Sometimes people take fairly extreme steps to try and find friends. The son of 88 year-old Jack Hammond advertised in his local Post Office for a friend to take his father to the pub. This ‘job’ paid £7/hour, and not surprisingly got a lot of applicants.

Hopefully we don’t need to pay people to sit and drink beer with us, but we need to see how friendship is possible for all of us because of what Jesus has done.

John 15:12-17

The awesomeness of God
Friendship with God is the most remarkable thing. Too often our view of God is too small – we have a shrunken, shrink-wrapped Jesus. Because we live in a casual culture, where we call everyone by their first names and don’t stand on ceremony we are in danger of reducing Jesus to our ‘mate’.

In the Old Testament only two were people described as a friend of God: Abraham (2 Chr 20:7; Is 41:8; Js 2:23) and Moses (Ex 33:11). No-one else! Not David, or Elijah, or Samuel. This should make us stop and think…

The people of Israel lived with an awareness of God’s awesomeness. They were so afraid of over familiarity that they wouldn’t even say the personal name of God (‘Yahweh’) when reading out the scriptures, for fear of profaning it.

So, what changes with Jesus?

The Cross changes everything
This passage comes just before Jesus goes to the cross. It was at the cross that God made his plan for the salvation of the world clear, and it is the revealing of this plan to the disciples that enables them to be described as friends.

Abraham and Moses had unique revelation of God; now the plan of God has been made clear to all his people.

Paul describes this in Ephesians 3:9 as the The mysterious plan brought to light; and in 1 Corinthians 2:16 says that we now, have the mind of Christ. Disciples of Jesus are no longer kept in the dark, as servants are, but have been let into God’s plan, as friends are.

How has this happened?

The gulf between sinful humans and an awesome God is indescribably huge. Recent images from the Hubble space telescope reveal something of the enormity of the universe, but the gulf between us and God is even more huge.

The good news of the gospel is that God reconciles us to himself. We are sinners deserving God’s wrath, but this wrath was dealt with at the cross, so we can be at peace with God: For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21).

Because of the cross we stand in this new position where God calls us friends.

Being a friend of God
Even though God calls us friends, we still need to know awe at who God is. This is not a relationship of equality! It is Jesus who calls us friends; not the other way round. It is Jesus who chooses us; not the other way round.

We are still slaves of God! But slaves to whom he has revealed his plan. We are slaves who stand in a place of friendship with our master.

What does this friendship with God result in? Jesus gives us two answers: Love for his people, and fruitfulness. Jesus’ command is that we love one another and he chooses us in order that we might be fruitful.

How does this work out?!

The challenges of friendship
There are several challenges to building friendships in the church.

Some people are EGR people (‘extra grace required’). But the reality is that most of us require extra grace at times! All of us have the potential to irritate and upset others. Church can be messy, because we are messy people.

Another common problem is that we buy the lie that “no-one cares about me.” If we start to believe this lie it makes it very hard for others to reach out to us and demonstrate care.

We can also have expectations that are too high, while our efforts at making friends are too low. It is easy to think that being part of a church should mean our every need and concern will be taken care of, which won’t happen! At the same time we can be so focussed on whether other people are meeting our needs that we fail to meet the needs of others.

There is also the reality that it tends to get harder to make friends as we get older. As we get older it takes more effort to reach out to new people, and many people stop bothering.

And then there is the challenge of building biblical community in 21st century Britain. We live in an individualistic culture, and often in a very isolated way. It is hard for us to be open to other people because it is not what we have been conditioned to do.

Expectations for Life Groups
What, then, are our expectations for friendships in Life Groups?

First, we must begin with a theological understanding of what Jesus has done for us.
Because God has reconciled us to himself, we can be reconciled to one another. Jesus has crossed unbelievable barriers to reach out to us – by his grace we can cross the much smaller barriers that would separate us from one another.

We want Life Groups to be a place for friendship, more than intimacy. Intimacy is good, but it takes a long time to develop. Most of us can probably count ourselves fortunate if we have half a dozen truly intimate friends over the course of our lifetimes – people who really know us inside out. Jesus only had three – Peter, James and John. Also, the thought of ‘intimacy’ can actually be very off-putting to many people – it just sounds too intense. So lets pitch at friendship instead.

We want Life Groups to be a place to have fun! As God is revealing his manifold wisdom through the church, the church should specialize in multicoloured living! We should know how to celebrate and enjoy life. Life Groups should be places where we can tell our stories and listen to the stories of others. And Life Groups should be places where we eat a lot of food together, because that is what friends having fun do!

Friendship results in fruitfulness because the Christian life can’t be lived alone. All the things we have been called to do as disciples of Jesus we can only do alongside other believers, as part of the Body of Christ. Like Jack Hammond we need friends, but Life Groups mean we shouldn’t have to pay people to befriend us. We want Life Groups to be, Communities together on a mission for Jesus, where we love one another and are fruitful.

VISION SUNDAY

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:29:00 +0000

It felt good to be back in the saddle at Gateway today, even if after ten weeks of not preaching I was a little rusty. Numbers are a long way from being everything, but it was encouraging to have the largest congregation in attendance since I joined the church – especially as this is the day on which I try to spell out what we are aiming for over the next few months. And what a joy to consider the vast scale of what God is calling his church to from Ephesians 3:8-12…

v8

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ

It is grace to be able to talk about Jesus! This is a message for all nations, and the very least Christian can help preach it.

What we preach is unsearchable in the sense that it is beyond measure. It is like looking into the skies and trying to count the stars – simply too vast for us to get our minds around. The trouble is that when we think of ‘riches’ we tend to think too narrowly. We imagine riches as owning a Ferrari, or a football club, or buying our dream house, or being able to have an exotic holiday whenever we want. But compared to the riches of Christ, these things are like comparing a street light to the stars.

We mustn’t have a shrink-wrapped Jesus! What we have to preach about him is the most important and precious message in the world.

v9

And to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things

God is working out a plan! This plan has been in planning since the creation of the world.

Planning is good, but our plans inevitably never work out as we plan them to! As Dwight D. Eisenhower put it, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

The difference between our plans and God’s are that not only is God’s plan good, but it is working out perfectly.

God’s plans were secret but have now been made public. In the build up to Overlord in the Second World War (the plan to retake occupied France from the Germans) everyone knew something was happening, but not when or how or where. In a similar way the angels knew God was forming a plan of salvation, but they had no idea of its vastness – that it should reach even so far as to touch someone like me.

v10

So that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Why is it that God is unveiling his plan? Paul tells it is so he might show his manifold wisdom to the rulers and authorities. To describe God’s wisdom as ‘manifold’ is to say it is like the facets of a diamond, which make the stone shine with a brilliant and unique light. God’s wisdom is brilliant!

Who, then, are the rulers and authorities to whom God is displaying this great wisdom?

The Christian lives in a world of both physical and spiritual reality. We live in a fallen world, which is under the power of the devil, and all around us we see the evidence of his rule. But we are also citizens of the new world – where the victory of Jesus is already assured.

This means our experience in this life is one of both victory and difficulty. We are ‘more than conquerors’ (Romans 8:37) but we also flesh and blood, who still sin, and still get hurt.

The “rulers and authorities” Paul speaks of are those spiritual powers that are still fighting against the inevitable victory that is Christ’s.

So how does God show his wisdom to these powers?

Through the church!

Now this is weird! It is not at all the method that we would choose. We are far too aware of our failings! Surely it would be better to choose something more impressive than the church?

But God’s choosing of the church reflects the upside down rules of the kingdom of God. God chooses the unlikely, the weak, the despised, to make his wisdom known. His wisdom is different from worldly wisdom, and he uses different weapons to win his battles.

The reality is that simply by being the church we are engaged in spiritual warfare. We don’t need to address the spiritual powers; but we do affect them.

v11

This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord

It was always God’s plan to do it this way! It was in order to work out God’s plan that Jesus’ came into the world – there was nothing random about it. All of history was always leading to the cross, and all of history now is an outworking of the cross in the life of the church.

v12

In whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

As members of the church, we have free access to God. We can be bold and confident, the qualities of a good soldier. We need the qualities of good soldiers because we are engaged in battle; and we can be bold and confident in this fight because we are on the winning side!

Application to Gateway
What can we apply from this to our situation at Gateway Church?

Lets plan, but not worry too much if our plans don’t always work as expected! Lets trust God to help us through whatever difficulties we face. Lets see ourselves as members of the bigger plan that cannot fail. Lets worry less about our weakness and wonder more at his grace. Lets live multicoloured, wisdom displaying lives. Lets recognizing the darkness and pain of the world around us but live fully, as new creations in Christ Jesus. Lets commit ourselves to living lives of Adventure, Purity and Compassion. Lets love the cross, and love the church. And lets be bold and confident because of his grace, rather than our performance.

Gateway Goals

On this Sunday last year I set out a number of goals that would act as signposts, helping us to gauge whether or not we are making progress. Today is a good opportunity to review those goals.

1. Small Groups
Relaunching our small groups system is something we have wanted to do for a long time, but it is also something over which we have wanted to take our time. We are finally launching new groups – Life Groups – in October, and I am planning to spend the next five weeks preaching into this.

Launching Life Groups also helps us in one of our other goals of wanting to see more leaders develop, as we need lots of leaders to lead the groups.

2. Youth
It is a year since we put new leaders in charge of our youthwork, and over that time we have seen some significant progress. Our young people were particularly impacted by Newday and we want to build on this by seeing a number of them baptized in the coming weeks.

We have also now moved all our youthwork to Friday evenings.

3. Membership
Over the past year we have put a renewed emphasis on church membership, and so far 79 people have done at least some part of our Finding Your Place course.

4. Prayer
Prayer is an act of spiritual warfare, and over the past year the prayer temperature of the church has risen a few degrees. It can still be much better though! This week we have three evening prayer meetings, and as well as attending these I would encourage you to fast this week as we seek God’s blessing on us.

5. More weddings & babies
We are still low on weddings! Part of the long term strategy to change this is our desire to reach out to students – many of whom will hopefully settle in this area once they graduate, get jobs, marry, and have children.

Over the past year we have seen our student group grow from virtually nothing to 15-20 and today we are setting a new goal to see a group of 30-40 students with us over the next year.

We have done better with seeing more babies born! And this Friday we are launching a new toddlers group – Little Gators – which is an exciting development.

6. More salvation & baptisms
This is still an area in which we need to do better! We have seen a number of people respond to the gospel, but baptism is the point at which I really like to count them.

Between September 2007 and August 2008 we had nine baptisms. In the same period for the last year we had seven. My prayer is that we see the line on this graph going upwards from now on!

7. More training
We have had a large number of church members attending various training courses to deepen their understanding of scripture and theology. This has been great! And we want to see it continue.

8. More money
Pretty much everything we do costs money, and the good news is that we are doing better in this area.

On the previous years giving figures we had predicted a deficit budget for this financial year of £38,000, but so far this year our income is meeting our expenditure. It would be wonderful to get to April next year with a balanced budget!

9. Big news
The big news in 2008 was our change of name from Alder Road Baptist Church to Gateway Church. There is nothing quite so dramatic this year, but our big news is that from January we are planning to go to two morning services.

We are doing this because we want to grow, and we just don’t have the physical space to do that at the moment. It is something we have been discussing as elders for over a year, and it is something that people we respect who have visited us have advised us to do. It has its risks, but we want to trust our plans to God, knowing that his master plan cannot fail.

In all these things we want to act with boldness and confidence over the next 12 months, because of our faith in Jesus!

NOT JUST FOR SUNDAYS: EXPERIENCING THE POWER & PRESENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:29:00 +0000

PART 5. WHEN THE BAND ISN’T THERE

In a nutshell: God gifts musicians and worship leaders to help his church worship him, but we should not be dependent on these gifts in order to worship. Every part of our lives should be offered in worship to Jesus. Everything we do should speak of his praise. In the final part of this series on the Holy Spirit we will see how we are called to worship in Spirit and truth even when the band isn’t there.

The power of music
The death of Michael Jackson this week has dominated our news, despite all the huge issues affecting the world, the death of a musician is what we are most interested in. Music has great power. It fills our lives, and many people are seemingly incapable of living without it – turning off the music is life taking a pacifier from a baby.

Although often abused, or made into an idol, music is God’s gift to us. Music is something uniquely human, and we are meant to worship with music.

The question for us though is this: Can we worship when the band isn’t there? Are we able to produce worship of our own, without someone else providing the notes?

The trouble with words
The words we use are so often helpful yet unhelpful at the same time. For example, it is helpful to talk about “Church” because we know what someone means when they say, “I’m going to church,” or, “My church is here.” But it is also incredibly unhelpful because talking about church in this way reinforces the wrong notion that church is a particular building, a particular place, at a particular time, when what church really is, is God’s people.

We have a similar language problem when we talk about having an “evangelistic opportunity.” Yes, there are moments of intentionality, when we deliberately try to evangelize, but the point is that we are called to be missionaries all the time.

And when we talk about “Worship” what we are usually referring to is the time in our meetings when we are singing – but worship should be all that we do. We do gather to worship – but the whole experience of being gathered should be worshipful: singing together, talking together, storying together, eating together, praying together, learning together. “Sunday worship” is everything we do when we are together on a Sunday! We talk about “the worship” and “the preaching” because we need terminology to describe what we are doing. But our terminology also fails us, because it is not just the “worship” that is worship – Preaching is worship as well!

The woman at the well: John 4:1-26
This is the story of someone who had got this all wrong. She thought worship was about a particular place. She hadn’t had her real need for worship satisfied.

Everything about the story is wrong! Jesus was in the wrong place, the woman’s ethnicity was wrong, and her gender was wrong. Jesus should not have been there talking to a Samaritan woman.

Jesus was not looking for an “evangelistic opportunity” but he was always ready to rescue lost sheep. Empowered by the Spirit he was always ready to touch peoples hearts. Jesus identifies the woman’s real need. Her invisible heart need was more important than her obvious bodily need. Her obvious need was for water – she needed a pump and a pipe to get the water to her house so she wouldn’t have to lug it from the well every day. But she had a greater need than this.

Jesus sees the woman’s need and opens up her heart with a word of knowledge. She doesn’t like this, and throws in a red-herring question to knock Jesus off her trail: “Which mountain should we worship on?” The woman wants to make this conversation safe again, which is what religion does – it erects neat walls and creates control; it creates “ins” and “outs”; it makes it obvious and clear where the battle lines are drawn.

The Samaritans were a mixed race people, the descendents of Jews and other tribes who had been moved into Samaria by the great powers that had conquered Israel. The Samaritans worshipped on Mt. Gerizim, on which they believed many key Old Testament events to have happened, and there was great animosity between them and the Jews. In 128BC the Jews destroyed the temple on Mt. Gerizim and in AD6 the Samaritans desecrated the Jerusalem temple by spreading human bones over it during Passover.

Jews and Samaritans had many similar beliefs, but where you worshipped had become the key thing for them, so the expected response at this point is for Jesus to have a theological argument about why Jerusalem is superior to Gerizim.

But instead Jesus says something unexpected. He does affirm the Messiah will be from the Jews (the Samaritans were looking for one of their own), but he shifts the argument from the place of worship to the how of worship.

“Never mind Gerizim and Jerusalem – what counts is that you worship in spirit and truth.”

It is important to note that “Spirit” and “Truth” are not two separate items. God is spirit; and God is truth. We cannot worship truly unless we worship in the spirit, or worship in the spirit if we are not worshipping in truth.

What Jesus does is to promise never ending water, which is a picture of the Spirit. He says the day will come when people will worship by spirit and truth. And – outrageously! – he says he is the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed Anointer, the one who will pour out this Spirit.

Because of what Christ is doing, everything changes. Whereas for the Samaritans and the Jews all the focus was on a particular place, a place where God’s presence was meant to be, when the Spirit was poured out God’s presence goes wherever his people go. Christians are meant to be scattered around the world, not gathered in Jerusalem! The Land and the Temple and the Holy of Holies are no longer the thing – the presence of God in his people is the thing!

Application for us
What we do not need is mere moralism. We need heart transformation. The woman didn’t need moralism – she didn’t need just to be told to sort out her domestic arrangements; she needed a new heart. In what Jesus said to the woman he was tearing down the walls of religion and terminology.

When she said, “I have no husband” she was lying with the truth. It was true that she had no husband, but it was also a lie! And Jesus took her terminology apart to reveal her heart.

She needed an experience of the Spirit that would transform everything. And so do we.

When Jesus gets hold of our hearts and pours out the Spirit on us we are transformed. Transformed people become worshippers, who worship in spirit and truth, 24/7.

So the question is, “Can you worship when the band isn’t there?”

It is essential that we gather in corporate worship. Saying only that, “We are church wherever we are” and never actually gathering with other believers to deliberately worship is nonsense. And we need to honour the musicians and worship leaders because they are God’s gift to us and use their gifts in serving us. But when the body comes together we are to come with our many gifts – it is not all dependent on the band.

We have to keep using our terminology because we need terminology to explain things (“children in for the worship, out for the sermon”) but we need to keep fighting for the heart – for a heart of worship.

Application Questions
• What does it mean to be a worshipper?
• Why is it important that we gather in corporate worship?
• Have you ever previously thought about preaching being worship?
• What is the difference between moralism and the gospel?

NOT JUST FOR SUNDAYS: EXPERIENCING THE POWER & PRESENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:52:00 +0000

PART 4. SPIRITUAL GIFTS

In a nutshell: What are spiritual gifts and how should they be used? Do I have to be weird to use spiritual gifts?! God gives his people gifts of the Spirit to enable them to serve him and one another. For the health of the church we need to have a clear understanding of what the gifts are and how to operate in them. We need to see the presence of God working through his people.

My simple definition of a spiritual gift: When we are filled with the Spirit, we are given gifts that enable us to do things which we could not previously do. The Spirit also breathes on our natural gifts and enables them to be developed to their full potential, to the glory of God. The difference between operating in these grace gifts and operating in our own strength is like the difference between watching a small, fuzzy, black and white TV and watching a giant hi-def plasma screen.

Romans 12

Normal Christian Life
Romans 12 describes normal Christian life: Worship of God; Serving the Body; Witnessing to the World.

This is different from the world of the Old Testament where three special types of people represented the nation of Israel before God: Prophets, Priests and Kings.

• Prophets spoke God’s word to the people – often in judgement – and moved in signs and wonders.
• Priests interceded to God on the people’s behalf.
• King’s represented God’s authority among the people and to other nations.

By definition, these roles were reserved to only a very few people, but the Old Testament covenant promises pointed to a day when these roles would be open to all God’s people. For example, God promised Moses, You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:6).

Now, because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross, this promise has been fulfilled. The curtain in the Temple was torn in two and the Holy Spirit poured out on the Church. Now God is building a living temple.

The best answer for the search for spirituality and significance in our society is found in the church of Jesus Christ. Our Prophetic task is to declare this good news to the world around us. Our Priestly role means we can approach God ourselves with confidence. Our Kingly role is to demonstrate the kingdom of God amongst us. All this is made possible by the work of the Spirit among us, and has profound implications for how we organize church life:

Leadership: The role of church leadership is, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:12) NOT to do all the work themselves or try to solve everyone’s problems. Church leaders are to help people see the grace of God operating in their lives and teach them how to minister one to another. It is this that makes it possible to build large churches and ongoing church-plants can be a reality.
Buildings: Buildings are not sacred. People are the church, not buildings. So we use and appreciate our building for the way it helps us in advancing our mission, but we recognize that the really important building is the living temple God is building through his people.
Every member ministry: Every member of the church has a responsibility to discover and exercise their gifts, so that God is worshipped, the body blessed, and the world witnessed to.

Normal, Not Weird
Romans 12 paints a picture of believers living well-balanced lives. It presents an experience of spiritual gifts that avoids the error of seeing them as merely ‘talents’ and also the error of thinking that being spiritual means being weird.

Charismatics can be prone to weirdness (look at the example of Corinth) but this doesn’t mean we should back off from spiritual gifts. The antidote to misuse is not disuse but proper use. What Paul does in Romans 12 is to describe the gifts being used in the context of a regular life of high character. He describes a number of characteristics that are all directed towards living in a way that is attractive to others and blesses others.

Normal Means Variety
Gifts of the Spirit are gifts of grace and we all have different measures of grace; and of faith. There are several ‘gift lists’ in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 12:7-11, 28-30; Ephesians 4:11; 1 Peter 4:10-11) and they are all different! None of them is an exhaustive list.

The point is that whatever gift God has given us we must use it to glorify God and bless his people. There is variety in the type of gifts we have, and variety in the level of faith and grace we have to exercise those gifts. But, whatever they are, we must use them!

A body is made up of many different parts, but those parts are co-ordinated together so that the whole body is strengthened. This is how it is to be with spiritual gifts in the church.

Normal Means Not Just on Sundays
The whole thrust of Romans 12 is “this is normal, 24/7 Christian life.” This means that spiritual gifts are not just for Sundays! Normal Christian life means an expectation of the gifts operating anywhere. We should look for opportunities to use our gifts throughout the week, to worship God, bless his people, and witness to the world.

Application Questions
• What are your spiritual gifts?
• How are you using your gifts?
• Why is it important to understand that these are grace gifts?
• Where would you like to grow in your experience of these gifts?

NOT JUST FOR SUNDAYS: EXPERIENCING THE POWER & PRESENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 14:31:00 +0000

PART 3. BAPTISM IN THE SPIRIT

In a nutshell: How do we receive the Spirit? Do we receive all there is to receive when we are born again? Is there a second filling? Are there more fillings than that?! What is baptism in the Spirit and why is it important? What am I missing out on if I haven’t had this experience? How can I be filled?

My story
I came to faith in Jesus at an early age, and grew up in a church that was beginning to experience greater spiritual freedom. A growing number of people in the church had experienced “baptism in the Spirit,” and this was changing everything.

By the time I was 10 I had a great desire to speak in tongues. I didn’t really understand what it meant to be filled with the Spirit, but speaking in tongues seemed to be the thing. At the Downs Bible Week, in 1980, I was desperately asking God to give me the gift of tongues. This didn’t happen, but one night, as we sang Jesus We Enthrone You, something changed in me. When I got home the immediate obvious effect was a greater freedom in worship, and I also found myself speaking in tongues!

The Spirit at Gateway
In any of our church meetings there are people with a wide range of experience of the Spirit:
• There are some who are not believers at all, but are looking in. These people need the Spirit to spark new life in them.
• There are some who are ‘charismatic’ because the church is; but haven’t really ever experienced the power of the Spirit themselves. These people need to have a power encounter.
• There are some who are confused, maybe, like me as a child, thinking this Holy Spirit stuff is just about whether or not you speak in tongues. These people need to come into a greater understanding of what the Spirit works in us.
• There are some who are fearful and need to be released into a confident freedom in the Spirit.
• And there are some who have encountered God in the past… but it is the distant past. These people need to have a fresh encounter with God.

We want everyone at Gateway to experience God’s Empowering Presence!

No Spirit = No Church
Acts 1:4-5; 2:1-18, 32-33
The New Testament church was born through a powerful experience of the Spirit. It was a powerful, bold community that pulsated with the life of the Holy Spirit! In the first ever Finding Your Place Course Peter explained at the outset that God’s intention for the church was a place where the Holy Spirit is welcome to have His way. Right up front, Peter said that things like tongues, prophecy, dreams and visions were to be part and parcel of church life. And the book of Acts records repeated instances of people being filled with, and operating in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The presence is the thing!

In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:22)

At Gateway this means:
• We believe in the ministry and gifts of the Holy Spirit
• We believe in the importance of each believer being filled with the Holy Spirit
• We believe the Spirit empowers and equips us for service

What is baptism in the Spirit?
Being filled with the Spirit is not just a warm feeling, but a promise of power, because the Spirit is God and God is powerful! This filling results in a release of spiritual gifts, which God gives us for the building up of his Church.

The New Testament uses a number of different terms to describe this empowering:

John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now (Acts 1:5)

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you (Acts 1:8)

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:4)

Even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy (Acts 2:18)

Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearingì "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." (Acts 2:33-39)

Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. (Acts 8:14-17)

Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit." (Acts 9:17)

While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. For they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter declared, "Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" (Acts 10:44-47)

What this demonstrates is that the terminology that we use to describe this experience is not so important as the experience itself!

What does baptism in the Spirit achieve?
Assurance: It means we feel the truth of what has happened to us:

It is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. (2 Corinthians 1:21-22)
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs - heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:15-17)

Outward expression: Whenever someone is drenched in the Spirit in the book of Acts there is always some kind of vocal response – whether it is speaking in tongues, or prophesying or preaching. The Spirit brings us into a freedom which causes us to open our mouths!

When does baptism in the Spirit happen?
This kind of encounter with God should be part of the normal order of salvation. In the book of Acts new believers were always filled with the Spirit, but there was variety in when this happened…

The Samaritans (Acts 8:4-25): Philip preached to them; they believed; were baptised in water; but did not receive the Spirit until Peter and John came and laid hands on them.
Saul (Acts 9:1-22): Encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus; then Ananias laid hands on him to receive the Spirit; then he was baptised in water.
House of Cornelius (Acts 10): They were filled with the Spirit even before they had had time to confess their faith; then baptized in water.
The Ephesians (Acts 19:1-6): They believed the message; then baptized in water; then they received the Spirit.

Clearly there was no strict pattern in the order of events, but there was an expectation that all who responded in faith would be plunged in water and the Spirit. Conversion, baptism in water and baptism in the Spirit should all happen close together. We have made the process longer than it was in Acts!

Can I be a Christian but not baptized in the Spirit?
It is not possible to be a Christian without the action of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who enables us to come into spiritual life. But it is possible to be a Christian and not know the power of the Spirit in your life. This was true of the disciples before the day of Pentecost; of the Samaritans before Peter and John prayed for them; of Paul before Ananias prayed for him; and of many believers today…

How can I be baptized in the Spirit?
The first thing is to respond in faith to Jesus!

Having believed, we need to continue in faith. In order to receive there needs to be belief that this is the promise of the Father to all who believe. Believe that this experience is for you personally. Believe that God has not excluded you from his promise. Then, have an expectation of experience. God loves to move in response to faith, and if you have no expectation, you are unlikely to have an experience.

Although not always the case, the Spirit is normally given by the laying on of hands by another Spirit filled believer. God loves to work through the members of his body and having someone lay hands on us demonstrates that we are open to receive the gift of God.

Finally, ask! Jesus said, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink (John 7:37). So get asking and get drinking!

Keep on being filled

Do not get drunk in wine… but be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18)

This is an imperative – we are to keep on doing it!

Being filled with the Spirit is not a one-off event. Like a sailing boat we can turn our sails to catch the breeze, or let the sails down and just drift in the current. Too often we can fail to keep our sails trimmed, and cease to live a Spirit empowered life. But instead of drifting, we are to be a church where the evidence of the Spirit is as clear as when people drink too much wine!

Keep on being filled!

Application Questions
• What is your experience of the Spirit?
• Where do you need to know a greater empowering and equipping from God?
• What will be the differences between a church which “keeps on being filled” and one that just drifts in the current?
• What are the dangers of being charismatic in style, but not in genuine experience?

NOT JUST FOR SUNDAYS: EXPERIENCING THE POWER & PRESENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:03:00 +0000

PART 2, MY PRESENCE WILL GO WITH YOU

In a nutshell: Christianity is not just a set of beliefs, or even simply a way of living: Faith in Jesus means coming into the presence of God. God’s covenant promise to his people has always been that he will be with them. We experience this through God’s empowering presence, his Holy Spirit: By the Spirit we come into an understanding of what it means to be part of the people of God.

The Presence is the Thing
How do we explain what church is to those who have no experience of it? One pithy description should be this: “We are a people shaped by the presence of God.” The presence is the thing!

The story of the Bible is the story of God making himself present by His Spirit. Right from the beginning this is how it was:

Genesis 1:2 the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters

Man came alive when God breathed his spirit into him; God walked with Man in Eden – he was present with them. The Fall led to separation from the presence of God, but God has always reached out to people who he wants to draw into his presence. We see this with Abraham who walked with God, and to whom God made a promise of a people who would be God’s and know God.

The presence is the thing!

One of the places we see this most clearly is in Exodus 33:12-17

Moses’ plea to God is: I want to know favour.

In response Yahweh promises: My presence will go with you.

Moses then makes a second plea: If your presence isn’t with us I’d rather not go!

The reason Moses says this is because he has had a revelation, that it is only the presence of God that makes Israel different. Without God’s presence they are just another rag-tag group wandering in the desert.

Now, the claim of the church, is that God’s promise to Abraham and to Moses is completed in us. We have received this favour from God.

What an audacious thing to claim!

Yahweh’s Presence in Israel’s history
When Moses led the people of Israel through the wilderness, God went before them in a pillar of smoke and fire. Yahweh also made himself present to Israel through the Law. His presence was then represented amongst the people by the Tabernacle and Ark of the Covenant, which was made by an individual who was filled with the Spirit (Exodus 35:30-33).

Later in Israel’s history the Ark was placed in the Temple and that came to be the place where God was seen to be present (2 Chronicles 7:1-3).

And at times there were specially favoured individuals who knew the Spirit in a more personal way: Bezalel, Joshua, Gideon, Samson, Saul, David, Elijah, Daniel…

All these signs of the Presence made Israel distinct, BUT, the prophets saw something more to come. They saw all these things as signs, not completion. They saw a day when the Spirit would actually indwell his people (Jeremiah 31:31-33; Ezekiel 36:26-27; 37:14).

The Presence is the thing!

Jesus: The Anointed Anointer
Jesus came to complete all the promises that had been made to Abraham and Moses and the prophets. He came in order that the Spirit might be poured out on the church (Acts 1:4-5; 2:1-4).

From this point on the presence of the Spirit has been the essential, defining characteristic of the church of Jesus Christ.

What the Presence of the Spirit Means
1. Means we have free access to God
Before Jesus caused the Spirit to be poured out, being part of God’s people meant being identified as Jewish – which meant observance of the Law; circumcision; and Temple worship.

Now the identity marker of the people of God is the Spirit – all ethnic, social, and gender barriers have been demolished.

2. Means that God dwells among us
1 Corinthians 3:16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
Ephesians 2:22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

Once the people of God had the ark and temple in their midst. Now the Spirit is present in the midst of God’s people.

3. Means we are able to please God
The promises of “hearts of flesh” and “a new spirit” have now been fulfilled.

2 Corinthians 3:3 And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

Paul was writing to non-Jews who had been transformed by the power of the Spirit. We now please God not by following the Law but the Spirit:

Romans 8:3-4 God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

It is the Spirit who makes us alive:

2 Corinthians 3:6 For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life

Jesus has made relationship with God possible through his death and resurrection, and it is the Spirit who makes this a fulfilled reality in us.

4. Means the Spirit is not an impersonal power
The Spirit is not merely a “force” or “influence.” He is the fulfilment of God’s promise to presence himself amongst his people.

The Bible describes many personal characteristics of the Spirit:
• Grieves over human sin (Ephesians 4:30)
• Persuades and convicts (John 14-16)
• Testifies (John 16:12-15)
• He is self-effacing, drawing attention to the Son (John 16:12-15)
• Intercedes with groanings (Romans 8:26-7)
• Has a mind (Romans 8:27)
• Calls out, “Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6)
• Speaks (Mark 13:11)
• Creates (Genesis 1:2; Luke 1:35)
• Instructs evangelists (Acts 8:29, 39)
• Can be blasphemed (Mark 3:28-29)
• Lying to him is lying to God (Acts 5:3-4)
• He creates the confession that Jesus is Lord (1 Corinthians 12:3)

Water Baptism is a Sign of the Presence
Baptism is the response of faith. When we read through the book of Acts we see that whenever people came to faith in Jesus the first thing they did was get baptised. Baptism is how we demonstrate we are entering into Christ’s death and resurrection. Baptism is the means be which we enter into the people of God – a people of the Presence.

Application Questions
• How would you explain your church to someone who doesn’t know it?
• Why is it so crucial that we know the presence of God among us?
• How does the presence of God make the church different from any other club or association?
• How should being a member of the people of the presence affect the way we live?

NOT JUST FOR SUNDAYS: EXPERIENCING THE POWER & PRESENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 31 May 2009 13:51:00 +0000

PART 1, WORSHIPPING TRINITY

In a nutshell: God is full of joy and love. God delights in himself! Our worship of God is a reflection of this delight. Our worship is no more and no less than a participation in Christ’s own perfect worship of the Father, empowered by the Holy Spirit. As we worship we are drawn into the very heart of who God is and what he does. We need to experience the Spirit’s power at work in us so that we can enter into the place of true worship.

We need to understand God as Trinity, although it is impossible to understand! Even though we can never fully grasp how God is One and Three we should accept it; stand in the good of it; and be shaped by it. If we are to understand what it is to worship we must start with an understanding of God’s self-delight and worthiness of worship.

What is True Worship?
It is right to worship what is worthy of worship. All of us are worshippers – we like to bring attention to the things we consider praise-worthy; and God is ultimately worthy. God delights in himself and is right to do so! True worship is joining in with this activity of God’s.

The Sin Problem
How can sinful people offer worship to a perfect God? God requires worship from us but we, because of our sin, are unable to offer it. How can this problem be overcome.

Hebrews 9:1-14

How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

God provides for us, in our High Priest Jesus, the very worship we could not offer. Sinners can now offer worship to a perfect God because their sin is atoned for. The response God required has been made by Christ – Christ worships God on our behalf! God is not simply the one who is worshipped but also the one who worships.

There is a Greek word that has been used to try and describe God’s Trinitarian worship since the earliest centuries of the church: Perichoresis. Our English words perimeter and choreography help explain what this word represents – that God exists in a dance-like relationship, in which there is the diversity of the persons, but such a unity of movement that the three look like one, and the one like three. In worship God pulls us into this dance.

Christian worship is our participation through the Spirit in the Son’s communion with the Father. It is God’s self-action that allows us to serve – worship – him. As The Message expresses it: Through the Spirit, Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable, so that we can live all out for God.

How Should We Worship?
We are inclined to view worship as what we do, but, it is first and foremost something the triune God does. Christ is the one true worshipper and our worship is a participation in his. Worship is not our act, but God’s gift. The Spirit gifts us to respond to God. This means it is not dependent on how we feel, instead, the Spirit gifts us to respond to God. Something like this happens when my children buy me a birthday present – the gift is from them, but as all the money they have is money that I give them, I am actually the one who pays for it!

We shouldn’t ‘sing it as if we really mean it’ but surrender to the Spirit and allow him to conform our worship to Christ’s.

What then is true Spirit-led worship?

1. True worship is a response to God’s own worship
Our response to God is a participation (enabled by God) in God’s own response to God. We worship because it is good! Worship does us good. As we worship we are coming to Almighty God – we are coming to power – and this leads to fruitfulness. In worship we enter into fellowship with God.

We come into God’s presence through thanksgiving. Worship is our primary calling and as we thank God we worship him and come into his presence. This means we need to grow in our appreciation of God, because we only praise what we appreciate.

2. True worship joins in Christ’s intercession
True worship joins with Christ’s high priestly prayer, when we pray, by the Spirit’s power, for unity and for love.

John 17:26

I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.

True worship prays these Trinitarian prayers! God invites and encourages us to pray. God chooses us to be askers – he loves us to come to him and ask, to ask him for his Spirit’s power and presence to be with us.

3. True worship is not about merit
True worship is not something we offer to God in order to gain merit. It is by grace that we are saved! Worship isn’t something we do in order to gain favour with God; instead worship is a gifted response.

How Does an Appreciation of the Trinity Helps Us to Worship?
1. Coming to Father
Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father.” God is not a distant, cold being but our heavenly Father who loves us and cares about us. We are not God’s employees but his children.

2. Seeing Jesus as Servant, Sacrifice and King
God has given himself to us. In worship we consider Jesus’ life on this earth, his death on the cross, his resurrection from the grave, his ascension to glory and his rule over the universe.

3. A Spirit empowered people
God the Spirit dwells within us and empowers us. God himself comes to us by the Spirit. The Spirit sanctifies us, making us more like Jesus.

Christian worship is our participation through the Spirit in the Son’s communion with the Father, and this is a gifted response.

Application Questions
• How is understanding worship as a ‘gifted response’ different from how you may previously have thought of it?
• Why and how should our worship be Trinitarian?
• In what ways does it help you to know that Jesus is the one true worshipper?

Warrior Jesus 5, Jesus Defeats Injustice

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 10 May 2009 19:50:00 +0000

In a nutshell: Every human being is hardwired to detect injustice – as soon as we sense it, our alarm bells start ringing. Sometimes this sense of right and wrong has its wires crossed and we are too aware of sleights we receive while not having sufficient empathy for real victims of injustice. But often we see mankind at its best when there is injustice – when people care passionately about fair trade, about Darfur, about sex trafficking, about corruption in government. We know that the world is not as it should be, and we want it to change. But no matter how much campaigning or fund raising we do it seems there is always a fresh injustice springing up somewhere. We need one who is not only able to judge perfectly, but has power to implement the verdict. This judge is Jesus. Jesus defeats all enemies. Jesus defeats injustice.

Our sense of justice is an echo of God
All of us have suffered injustice at some level and all of us are born with a sense of right and wrong. We see this in children whenever they say, “its not fair!” Often our sense of injustice is perverted by our selfishness, but the ability to recognize injustice is a consequence of us being made in the image of God.

We also see people at their best when they have a right reaction to injustice. We should kick out against injustice. We should want to do something about it.

Campaigning against injustice is fashionable
Since Live Aid in 1985 there has been a new attitude to injustice, and the springing up of many campaigning organisations – Fairtrade, Stop the Traffik, Jubilee 2000, Make Poverty History, Comic Relief, etc.

The irony though is that even this can be twisted. We start to think there is salvation through wrist bands, or through drinking fair trade coffee. We start to see visible adherence to these things as a distinguishing mark of being fashionable, of being socially acceptable.

We start to miss the point.

The campaigning will never stop
Why can’t we fix injustice? We have laws, law enforcers, and lawyers in abundance, but there is still injustice. The more we talk about ‘rights’ the less generous towards others we seem to be. And even when we do manage to deal with some gross injustice another is always ready to spring up and take its place – we dealt with slavery, but got apartheid. We dealt with apartheid, but got genocide in Rwanda. We have cleared some third world debt, but the global depression will hit the poor hardest of all.

We all want things to be put to rights but don’t seem able to do it. In the end I have to conclude that the problem is me! There is something about us humans that prevents there ever being complete justice.

We need a champion who can fully defeat injustice
I need one who can answer my inner longing for justice and deal with the problem inside me which corrupts justice. We need one who can do what all the laws and lawyers and law enforcers and campaigners cannot do. We need a champion who can win justice.

Jesus is that champion!

How Jesus defeats injustice
1. By siding with the oppressed (Luke 4:14-21)
Jesus came to undo injustice: he came to beat poverty, captivity, sickness, and oppression. A champion from heaven came to do this!

2. By acting this out in his ministry
Jesus walked with the weak. He removed peoples shame; he cleansed the lepers, he made well the woman made unclean through bleeding. Jesus healed people. Jesus cast out demons.

3. By not using earthly methods
A hero is expected to act in heroic ways, which to us always means violence. We expect a hero – Zoro like! – to overthrow the baddies by violence. Jesus didn’t do this. He made a weakness play rather than a power play.

4. By becoming a victim of injustice
This was the least expected play of all. By suffering as a victim of injustice Jesus makes justice possible. How?

Acts 17:22-31

The Athenians were very like us. They were looking for salvation but were not sure where to find it, and they were engaged in a constant debate about how to make society better.

Paul’s answer to the Athenians debates was this: “What you’ve been doing is not without value; but here is how the problem is really going to get resolved: One day a judgement will happen that will be absolutely right. How can we know this will happen? Because Jesus has been raised from the dead.”

Paul comes back to where we started this series – death is the chief enemy. Beat it, and you beat all the enemies.

How does Jesus’ victory over death defeat injustice?
There can be no peace, no justice, without reconciliation. What we need more than anything else is reconciliation with God. Reconciliation has been made possible because of Christ’s total obedience to his Father. Jesus was the perfect man. He reconciled humanity to God by killing sin in his body on the cross. It is sin that leads to injustice and Jesus has made a way for sin to be dealt with. Jesus has made a way to conquer the split in my soul; to conquer the divide between the part of me that longs for justice and the part of me that creates injustice.

Jesus now has the right to judge all because he is the only one who has ever acted completely justly. His perfection was proved by his resurrection. As risen king he will come to judge.

How, then, should we respond to injustice
1. As ministers of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)
People cannot be reconciled to one another until there is reconciliation with God. We who have experienced this reconciliation are now to act as ministers of reconciliation. We are to help people come into peace with God, and so into peace with one another.

2. By finding the answer to suffering in Christ
All of us suffer and all of us sin. The answer to our sin and the answer to our suffering is only found in Christ’s sinless suffering.

3. By learning to forgive
We all experience injustice. We can either hold onto our sense of grievance, nurture it and look for revenge; or we can kill it in the way Jesus has killed it: through forgiveness.

4. By remembering the poor
This is the apostolic commission. We are called to be a people of compassion. We are called to do the works of the Kingdom. We are called to be Christ to the world.

A great example of this is John Newton. Newton caused a great deal of injustice through his involvement in the slave trade. He also suffered injustice, and was for a time himself enslaved. Newton then came to faith in Jesus, and came to see the appalling injustice of the slave trade. He then became a fighter for justice, and was instrumental in the campaign to ban slavery in Britain.

This is what Jesus does: Jesus defeats all enemies. Jesus defeats injustice.

Application Questions
• How have you sinned? And how have you suffered?
• What types of injustice make you the most angry? Why?
• How can you work for justice?
• How can you be a minister of reconciliation?

Warrior Jesus 4, Jesus Defeats Ugliness

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 03 May 2009 14:16:00 +0000

In a nutshell: We live in a beautiful world. There is natural beauty – the mountains, oceans, forests and streams. And there is manmade beauty – great works of art, inspiring architecture, beautifully crafted jewellery, cars, clothes. Yet so often this beauty is disfigured by mankind in our exploitation of the earth and of one another. We need more than ecological awareness or lessons in art appreciation to overcome this ugliness. We need an artist who can paint over the ugliness in our own souls and restore us and the earth to true beauty. Jesus is this artist. Jesus defeats all enemies. Jesus defeats ugliness.

Ugliness is our enemy
Ugliness:
• Deadens us – by hardening our sensitivities
• Depresses us – by offending our emotions
• Diminishes us – by denying our full humanity

We need a champion who can defeat this enemy.

A beautiful-ugly world
Evidence of beauty is all around us. Where I live I see beauty all around in the sea and the countryside and in beautiful gardens. But at the same time there is plenty of evidence of ugliness: The ugly things people do to one another; the dumped mattress in an otherwise beautiful wood; the ugly building no town planner should ever have allowed.

Beauty and ugliness are hard to define, but we know them when we see them. And while we might not all agree about what is beautiful (“I like this music, you like that music”) we can all agree that beauty and ugliness are real.

The perversity is this: the need for beauty is hardwired into us humans, yet we humans are the cause of ugliness. What is the story here?

The Bible: A story of beauty created, lost, and recovered
1. The beauty of creation
Genesis 1 tells the story of creation, of God taking what was formless, empty, and dark and filling it with shape, fullness, and light. Everything that God made was good – it was all beautiful.

2. Man’s sin was ugly
Genesis 3 tells the story of man’s rebellion against God, and how this lead to separation, pain, and toil. Man was expelled from the garden where God had placed him. We were exiled from beauty.

3. God still cares about beauty
Although God took the man out of the garden his plan was still to bring his people into a beautiful place – the promised land, “a land flowing with milk and honey.” This was a land so beautiful that the grapes were so big they needed a pole to carry them [Numbers 13:21-23].

4. The focal point of worship was to be beautiful
We can see God’s concern for beauty in the details of Israel’s worship [Exodus 25-31]. Yahweh commissioned them to build an ark and a tabernacle, with almost pedantic detail: purple, scarlet, embroidery, acacia wood, silver, gold, and jewelled garments. This was to be done “for glory and for beauty” [Ex 28:2].
God anointed and appointed artists (Bezalel & Oholiab) to carry out this work [Ex 31:1-6]. Creating something beautiful was a charismatic gift!

5. The Ark trumped by the Temple
Once the people had entered the promised land a beautiful Temple was built for the worship of Yahweh [2 Chronicles 2-4]. This was built of endless cedar and gold and festooned with golden pomegranates. Nowhere in history has there been such a carnival of the arts: elaborate architecture, decorated with expensive metalwork, woodwork and cloth, before which all manner of poems were written, songs sung and dances performed, with musical instruments in abundance and the fragrance of incense throughout.

6. All these were but shadows of the things to come
Despite all this beauty, the great enemy of death was still reigning. Death is the ultimate stink of ugliness, but death was beaten by Jesus. In his resurrection corruption and ugliness were overcome, and the new creation was started. A new creation that culminates in the new heavens and earth [Revelation 21] – a creation in which ugliness is wiped out, the curse of decay on creation is lifted, and the promise of the new world is secured: gates of pearl, streets of glass-like gold, a river of life. In the death and resurrection of Jesus the Genesis curse was reversed. The Bible begins and ends with beauty triumphing over ugliness, and it is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that makes this possible.

Our desire for beauty points us towards God
The fact that every human has a capacity for beauty is evidence that all of us were created for beauty. Our response to beauty is an echo of God. Jonathan Edwards, the great American theologian of the 18th century, said, “God is beautiful, and all beauty is divine.” Whenever we seek beauty – wherever we seek it – we are in some way seeking after God.

The Church should display the beauty of God
As people who have come to faith in Jesus and been transformed by him we are pulled into his victory over ugliness. We are now able to see beauty not merely as an echo, but made solid in Jesus. As transformed people we are now in the transformation business. Jesus is making his church beautiful! [Ephesians 5:25-27] We are meant to bring beauty to the world – through everything we do – and tell people a story of how they can find true beauty too.

Beauty isn’t ‘perfection’ but transformation
One of the most powerful TV moments of recent times has been Susan Boyle’s performance on Britain’s Got Talent.

When Boyle first walked on stage everyone was against her. She didn’t look or come across in the way people on TV are meant to. We like people like Amanda Holden – beautiful and graceful and talented. We like winners, not losers like Boyle. C’mon – even her name – Boyle – is ugly! But the moment Boyle opened her mouth a transformation happened.

Why has this event got so much attention?

Because in Susan Boyle we see our own story. We see the ugliness of our own hearts in the crowds initial reaction. I guess all those people thought of themselves as kind and tolerant, but their initial reaction to Boyle gave the lie to that.

Because in Susan Boyle we wee our own need of salvation – that we need something transforming to happen to us that will make us different.

Because in Susan Boyle we see the power of transformation – someone who was so despised suddenly exalted, and the attitude of a crowd completely turned around.

This is what Jesus has done! This is the story of his defeat of ugliness.

We see this in Christ’s own body: Jesus still carries the scars of his crucifixion. We wouldn’t normally think of scars as beautiful. We would see scars as imperfection. But the scars that Christ still bears have been transformed from ugliness into beauty. Christ’s scars are the sign of his glory. This isn’t ‘perfection’ as we might imagine it, but a transformation into glory.

The good news is this: because of his scars, whatever ugliness we carry, Jesus can transform it into beauty.

Ultimate beauty is found in Jesus
Psalm 27:4

One thing have I asked of Yahweh,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of Yahweh
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of Yahweh
and to inquire in his temple.

This is where we’re headed – literally, physically, we are going to be in the presence of Jesus, gazing on his beauty. Here and now we need to live in the good of it, by allowing his beauty to fill our souls. We need an artist who can paint over the ugliness in our own souls and restore us and the earth to true beauty. Jesus is this artist. Jesus defeats all enemies. Jesus defeats ugliness.

Application Questions
• What things do you find beautiful and ugly?
• What do you consider ugly in your own life?
• How has Jesus transformed you?
• How can you bring beauty to the earth?
• In what ways will the new creation be different from this creation?
• How is Jesus beautiful?

Warrior Jesus, 3: Jesus Defeats Fear

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:28:00 +0000

In a nutshell: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” These are stirring words, but many people fear all kinds of things. And if all that we do fear is fear itself, that is still fearful! None of us want to be fearful, and putting up a front that proclaims we have no fear when in reality our souls are trembling doesn’t solve anything. Often we don’t call fear “fear” but give it a more respectable name, like “stress,” in an effort to control our fears. What we need is a champion who can deliver us from fear and bring us into a place of confidence and freedom. Jesus is that champion! Jesus defeats all enemies. Jesus defeats fear.

A Spirit of Fear
Anthropologists identify three major categories of culture with regard to human shortcomings (that is, sin!): guilt cultures, shame cultures and fear cultures.

In a guilt culture there is a sense of debt to be paid back. In shame cultures there is anxiety about social exclusion. And in a fear culture the fear is that you will be attacked by ancestral or demonic spirits. (Just watch an episode of Tribe for examples.)

In the UK most people are not concerned about ancestral spirits, but many people are spiritually sensitive. A recent survey
reveals that 39% of people believe in ghosts, 22% believe in astrology or horoscopes, 27% believe in reincarnation and 15% believe in fortune telling or Tarot. There are plenty of Brits carrying spiritual fear.

As well as this kind of spiritual fear, there is a more general spirit of fear at work in our society, as revealed by this research:

A charity is calling for a nationwide campaign to protect the UK's mental health after a survey suggested people were growing ever more anxious.
The poll of 2,000 adults for the Mental Health Foundation found 77% found the world more frightening than in 1999.
The charity described a "culture of fear" in which the media and politicians fuelled a sense of unease.
The report, In the Face of Fear, found more than a third of people say they get frightened or anxious more often than they used to, while 77% thought the world had become a scarier place.
While the economic climate was seen as part of the reason for the increased levels of fear, the charity said it believed there were other factors at play.
The report said "worst-case-scenario language" sometimes used by politicians, pressure groups, businesses and public bodies around issues such as knife-crime, MRSA, bird-flu and terrorism can have a detrimental effect on people's wellbeing.

My pastoral experience confirms that many people are trapped by their fears, and often these fears are rooted in childhood. The kind of fears that show up in research of children’s fears are these:
• making mistakes (failure)
• being unpopular
• speaking in front of people
• environment (global warning)
• death
• the future
• snakes
• heights
• injections
• the dark

This list isn’t much different from adult fears!

Where do these fears come from?

Fears Origin
We can see all kinds of reasons as to why people are fearful. Sometimes it is just personality – some people are by natural disposition more prone to anxiety than others. Sometimes it is our social history – the kind of home we grew up in and the attitudes we were taught there. Often it is down to personal experience of scary things that have happened to us. A sense of guilt also plays a major part in making us fearful.

These things give some explanation as to why people feel fearful, but to really understand the origins of fear we need to find the gospel explanation. Genesis 3:1-10 explains it: “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

Sin brings fear. Sin’s great deception is that it grants freedom – “You can be like God” – but what it actually does is to separate us from God. And that is a fearful place to be. Our sin leads to a sense of exposure – we feel naked and vulnerable because sin meant we were handed over to our fears.

Fear works by assuming power over us. It controls us. It makes us slaves.

How can we get free?

Fighting Fear
We have to find ways to try and appease fear. We can do this by sacrificing to demons; or by developing obsessive-compulsive behaviours; or by always making sure there is ‘enough’ money in the bank; or by popularity seeking.

Or we might try flat denial. President Roosevelt famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” But if all that we do fear is fear itself, that is still fearful!

Sometimes people say, “I fear nothing!” thereby simply revealing that the thing they fear is being afraid! They fear other people thinking they are afraid, which means they fear the opinions of others!

The real explanation for fear is that in the end all our fears trace back to being afraid of God. All our fears are evidence that we fear there is some power more powerful than us which can crush us.

There is! We should be afraid!

Fear of the Lord
The only way to conquer this fear is to be right with God. We need to move from Adam’s “I was afraid” to what the Bible describes as “fear of the Lord.” As Psalm 111:10 puts it, “The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom.”

This phrase fear-of-the-Lord sums up how we are to live before God – with awe, respect and reverence. This phrase is what linguists call a syntagm or “bound phrase.” It is only two words in Hebrew and it can’t be broken down into its constituent parts. It becomes one word. To live with a Fear-of-Yahweh is to recognize his ultimate authority. Living this way keeps us from being afraid and leads us into freedom.

Only Jesus can bring us into this way of living.

Jesus Defeats Fear
1. By breaking the power of the powers [Colossians 2:15]
Jesus has proved himself to be the ultimate power – he is the one to fear! He has beaten all the other powers, thrown sand in the face of every bully, and demonstrated his superiority over them. When you are standing behind the ultimate champion you don’t need to be afraid of anything.

2. By enabling us to become sons [Romans 8:15]
Jesus calls us into a relationship of freedom with him, a freedom from fear. We become children of God, fellow heirs with Christ. As Psalm 54 puts it, “In God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me?”

What are the consequences of Jesus defeating fear?
1. Gratitude of mind for the favorable outcome of things
Fearful people don’t readily give thanks. Fear traps us in ingratitude and makes us hostile, prickly people. In contrast, fear-free people enjoy life! [Philippians 4:4-7]

2. Patience in adversity
Father Jerzy Popieluszko, a Catholic priest who was a leading figure in the struggle for Poland to be free of communism, said this after martial law was imposed:

A man who bears witness to the truth can be free even though he might be in prison… The essential thing in liberating man and the nation is to overcome fear… We fear suffering, we fear losing material good, we fear losing freedom or our work. And then we act contrary to our consciences, thus muzzling the truth. We can overcome fear only if we accept suffering in the name of a greater value. If the truth becomes for us a value worthy of suffering and risk, then we shall overcome fear – the direct reason for our enslavement.

If what we value most is Jesus we will be empowered to cope with difficulty, and not give in to fear, and not try to solve every problem ourselves. We will be patient and full of trust in Him.

3. Incredible freedom from worry about the future
In Christ we can be freed from a fear of failure. This means that we will be prepared to take risks and live a life of adventurous faith. It means that we are freed to live in the present rather than always worrying about what is coming next. It means that we can be confident about our destiny, because we know that Jesus will safely bring us to eternal life with him.

Application Questions
• What things tend to cause you to fear (or feel stressed/anxious/worried)?
• How is Jesus the answer to these fears?
• How does fear of the Lord lead to freedom rather than being afraid?
• How does Jesus help you be grateful rather than fearful?
• How does Jesus help you be patient in adversity?
• How does Jesus help you have confidence about the future?

Warrior Jesus 2: Jesus Defeats Guilt & Shame

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:57:00 +0000

In a nutshell: We all know we’ve got problems. The real problem is how to solve our problems. The world teaches that our problem is outside of us and the solution is inside us – if we can only get our personal psychology ok we will be ok. But the gospel teaches that the problem is inside us and the solution is outside us – that our problem is guilt and shame, and that we can’t fix this ourselves. Only Jesus can fix it. Jesus defeats all enemies. Jesus defeats guilt and shame.

1. In the beginning…
Genesis 2:5-9; 15-25
The story of creation presents a perfect, harmonious world. The man and woman were surrounded by beauty (there was no enemy of ugliness); they were given purposeful work to do (no enemy of meaninglessness); they were in harmony with the plants and animals (no ecological enemy); they were in perfect relationship with one another (no relational enemy); and in perfect relationship with God (no spiritual enemy).

This perfection, harmony and innocence was symbolised by their unashamed nakedness. They were completely confident and satisfied: in themselves, their environment, their relationships, and in God.

2. The fall…
Genesis 3:1-13
By disobeying Yahweh, Adam and Eve made a journey from innocence and confidence to guilt and shame. They became objectively guilty and subjectively ashamed.

Their story tells the story of how we all ended up as we are…

3. Everyone now experiences guilt and shame
Romans 3:23 makes things very clear: You are guilty!

This is why so many people carry a sense of debt – the overdraft you can never clear; the guilt about things you have done in the past. Guilt can become very powerful and controlling, with no easy way out, especially if the person sinned against is dead, or long gone. Guilt fractures relationships. It leads to self-loathing; addictions; substance abuse.

We need forgiveness but don’t know how to get it.

As well as feeling guilty we feel ashamed. Many cultures are ‘shame cultures’ where there is not so much a sense of sin needing to be forgiven but to be cleansed of shame. This is very typical in many Mediterranean and Muslim cultures, where the most severe punishment that can befall anyone is to be disowned by one’s family, and where family honor must be defended at any cost.

Carrying shame is like carrying leprosy – it alienates you from other people. Shame can be the result of things we do, or because of things other people do to us (this is particularly the case with those who have been sexually abused).

We need cleansing but don’t know how to get it.

4. How can we get free?
To try and rid ourselves of guilt and shame we invent coping mechanisms: Religion, moralism, markers of social status, or a complete hardening of conscience.

None of these is effective.

A more common approach in our society is to claim that guilt is a social construct and shame is simply low self-esteem: The problem is outside you; the solution is inside you. Other people have messed you up! Its not your fault, so get your personal psychology right and you will banish feelings of guilt and shame.

This little video illustrates the problem well...

It looks like the problem is external - it looks like its someone else's fault the escalator has broken down. And the solution looks like it is internal - all they need to do is walk. But actually the problem is an internal one - they are stuck on the escalator and have no sense of how to get off. They need someone - a savior - who can take them by the hand and lead them off it.

We are guilty and do feel ashamed! We are stuck on the escalator blaming other people and blind to our own sin. Our problem is internal, and we are lost unless there is an external solution. We can’t just blame other people for our problems and try to make ourselves feel better – we need a savior! We are right about feeling guilty – we don’t even live up to our own standards, let alone God’s! We should be ashamed!

5. How Jesus defeats guilt and shame
How does Jesus defeat our Guilt?
Answer: a Gospel of forgiveness [Hebrews 2:17]

Jesus lived the life I should have lived and he died the death I should have died. His sacrificial death on my behalf was accepted by God and by faith in Jesus, I can receive his rightness as a gift.

Every other religion will have you working your way out of guilt, but Jesus gives us forgiveness for free. Jesus and his resurrection is the Gospel you need to deal with your guilt.

How does Jesus defeat our Shame?
Answer: a Gospel of relationship [Hebrews 12:2]

Jesus did not just bear our guilt, he bore our shame. On the day of Atonement [see Leviticus 16] two goats were selected to carry the sin of Israel. One of these goats was killed – this demonstrated the seriousness of sin and how it can only be dealt with by death. But the second goat was chased outside of the camp into the wilderness. This demonstrated how sin breaks relationship between man and God and that this separation has to be removed by separating our sin from us.

Jesus is not just your death goat. He is your scapegoat. Jesus has carried away our relational separation. He is the one on whom all your shame was laid. He was executed in the most shameful way possible, hanging naked on the cross. But he did this because of the joy of relationship with us it made possible.

Jesus’ resurrection showed the power of shame was temporary: Now there is nothing but glory and honor to come for those who put their faith in him. Jesus and his resurrection is the Gospel you need to take away your shame.

6. Apply the gospel to every situation
We mustn’t apply worldly solutions to gospel problems. Only Jesus can defeat the enemies of guilt and shame. Only by turning to him can they be taken away from you.

This turning to Jesus doesn’t only happen at the moment of our salvation. Throughout our lives we need to keep turning to him. We need to keep turning to the cross and to the tomb.
Guilt and shame are only answered by the cross and the resurrection. We can manage their symptoms through therapy and behaviour management, but only Jesus can root them out.

For example, when I talk to Christians who are having marriage problems there is always either a sin issue (which creates guilt) or a shame issue. Sin issues happen when he doesn’t lead and she doesn’t submit. They happen when he doesn’t love his wife sacrificially and when she doesn’t respect her husband. Learning one another’s love languages, how to improve communication, etc. can help manage the symptoms, but the only real solution is repentance and forgiveness.

On the other hand, shame issues are usually a consequence of abuse. E.g., the wife was sexually abused and now finds it difficult to be physically open with her husband, or the husband was emotionally abused and now finds it hard to support his wife emotionally. The only real solution to this is to know that Jesus bears the shame away.

Our enemies have to be destroyed or they will destroy us. Jesus does this. Jesus defeats all enemies. Jesus defeats guilt and shame.

Application Questions
• Do you know that guilt and shame have been defeated in your life?
• Are there things you need to repent of?
• Are there things you need to allow Jesus to carry away from you?
• How do you see the reality of guilt and shame being worked out in your neighbours lives? What can you do to help them find freedom in Christ?

Warrior Jesus: Jesus Defeats Death

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:30:00 +0000

In a nutshell: On Easter Sunday, death, the biggest of all the villains was totally and completely undone. The tomb was empty, and it still is. And that means that at least one person has conquered the grave, smashed the last enemy, and overturned the curse of death that has afflicted every human since time began. A champion only has to be killed once. Death had a pretty strong track record, until it faced Jesus, to whom it had no answer whatsoever. His resurrection life was simply too powerful. Jesus defeats all enemies. Jesus defeats death.

The video of Johnny Cash performing “Hurt” has been viewed over 19 million times on YouTube. It is unusually powerful for a music video because of the way it shows the legendary Cash at the end of his life, thinking about those who have already left him and those he will soon leave. It reveals regret for mistakes made and for youth faded. And it recognizes the human incomprehension at death, which comes, as Eccesiastes 3:11 puts it, because “He has put eternity in man’s heart.”

Yet at the same time Cash’s video offers a glimpse of a hope for redemption – the images of Christ’s crucifixion point to something more going on here.

This is not Cash’s song. It was written by Trent Reznor, of the Nine Inch Nails, and when Reznor sings it, it offers nothing but total nihilism. Cash takes a song of despair and turns it upside down. He doesn’t flinch from the bitterness of death, but somehow turns it to worship – “You could have it all, my empire of dirt…” – a recognition that all he has achieved is nothing in comparison with the achievement of Christ at the cross.

[As an aside, Cash also does something similar with the song “Personal Jesus” which as sung by Depeche Mode sounds only mocking, but on Cash’s lips becomes a declaration of faith. Truly a great man.]

And that is the message of Easter – everything gets turned upside down.

The inevitability of death
Death was the penalty for disobedience. God warned Adam & Eve what would be the consequence for disobedience: “You shall die” (Genesis 2:17). They disobeyed, and they died. Ever since, as Philip Larkin put it, “Life is slow dying.”

Every life heads towards sorrow. The people we love die; or we die and leave those who love us bereaved. As Cash sings, “Everyone I know goes away in the end”

This is the first in a five-part series during which we will be looking at some of our enemies: Guilt & Shame; Fear; Ugliness; Injustice. But death really is the greatest enemy of all.

Because death is the enemy we spend all of life fighting it, and adopt different strategies to do so…

Pursuing health: We spend billions on health care, beauty products and keeping fit. But we still die! Arthur Lydiard was an acclaimed athletics coach and the “father of jogging”, who produced two Olympic champions and was credited with inspiring the worldwide jogging craze. At one point he was running 200 miles a week. He was a healthy guy! And he lived until he was 87. But he still died, collapsing from a suspected heart attack in a Texas hotel.

Denial – recklessness: Some people delay death by defying it through living on the edge. Goran Kropp was an adventurer who reached the pinnacle of his career as an adventurer by cycling 7,000 miles from Sweden to Nepal, climbing Everest without porters or bottled oxygen, then cycling back to Sweden.

Kropp set out from Stockholm on October 16 1995, riding a custom-built, 18lb bicycle and towing 240lb of climbing and camping gear in a trailer. His route took him through eastern Europe, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India and finally Nepal. By the time he arrived in Kathmandu, he had been pelted with rocks, assaulted with a baseball bat, and run off the road, He repaired 132 flat tyres.

When he left the staging ground in Kathmandu in April 1996, he became the first climber to carry all his equipment (weighing 143lbs) to Everest Base Camp, at 17,100ft. From there he made his way up the South Pillar, doing his best to steer clear of other climbers, doing his own route-finding, eschewing the fixed ropes and carrying all his own food.

His first attempt ended in frustration when he was forced to turn back, having run out of steam 350ft below the summit. Despite this blow to his morale, and in the face of rapidly deteriorating weather that would result in the deadliest season in Everest's history, he steeled himself for another try. That failed too, due to dangerous snow conditions.

Then, on May 9-10, the great storm arrived, the worst in living memory, catching 40 climbers from eight expeditions high on the mountain; eight died in the disaster. A few days after the storm subsided, Kropp set off for his third and final attempt, still without Sherpas and without bottled oxygen. On reaching the summit he lingered for just four minutes, deeming it prudent to get his blue, oxygen-deprived fingers to a lower altitude as soon as possible.

He spent a few weeks in Katmandhu recuperating before beginning the 7,000-mile ride back home.

Amazing! Inspirational! But Kropp still died, aged 35 from a fall while rock climbing on a popular route.

Denial – passivity/indifference: This is probably a more common strategy – “Just don’t think about the big issues. Pretend they’re not there and they won’t get you!” Trouble is, they are, and they will!

Ambition: Some people fight death by ambition – be the best, have the most, get to the top. Perhaps the most ambitious man of all time was Alexander the Great. He was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and is presumed undefeated in battle.

Alexander assumed the kingship of Macedon following the death of his father Philip II, who had unified most of the city-states of mainland Greece under Macedonian hegemony in a federation called the League of Corinth. After reconfirming Macedonian rule by quashing a rebellion of southern Greek city-states and staging a short but bloody excursion against Macedon's northern neighbours, Alexander set out east against the Persian Empire, which he defeated and overthrew. His conquests included Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, Bactria and Mesopotamia, and he extended the boundaries of his own empire as far as Punjab, India.

Alexander had already made plans prior to his death for military and mercantile expansions into the Arabian peninsula, after which he was to turn his armies to the west (Carthage, Rome and the Iberian Peninsula).

Alexander changed cultures by integrating many foreigners into his army. He also encouraged marriages between his soldiers and foreigners, and he himself went on to marry two foreign princesses.

His legacy and conquests lived on long after him and ushered in centuries of Greek settlement and cultural influence over distant areas. This period is known as the Hellenistic period, which featured a combination of Greek, Middle Eastern and Indian culture. Alexander himself featured prominently in the history and myth of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. His exploits inspired a literary tradition in which he appeared as a legendary hero in the tradition of Achilles.

But Alexander couldn’t beat death! He died after twelve years of constant military campaigning, aged 32, possibly as a result of malaria, poisoning, typhoid fever, viral encephalitis or the consequences of alcoholism.

The point is, Whatever strategy you adopt to fight death, we are all working to the ultimate deadline. Death is the No. 1 enemy that defeats everyone in the end. If we are to beat it, we need a hero who is stronger than death.

Death is the big one. In movies, the last enemy to be destroyed is always the head villain (it wouldn’t be quite the same if Alan Rickman died half way through Die Hard, or if Jack Bauer killed the chief terrorist by 11am). The last enemy is always the most dangerous villain of all, and the reason why the other villains are there. It’s the same in Scripture. Death is the biggest of the enemies and the explanation for the others. If there was no death, there wouldn’t be any war or injustice or fear or sickness. So if you can abolish death, you can totally strip all the other enemies of their power.

Where is a hero like this going to come from? How is he going to do it?

Jesus, Our Hero!
That’s the Gospel of Jesus and resurrection! On Easter Sunday, the biggest of all the villains was totally and completely undone. The tomb was empty, and it still is. And that means that at least one person has conquered the grave, smashed the last enemy, and overturned the curse of death that has afflicted every human since time began. A champion only has to be killed once. Death had a pretty strong track record, until it faced Jesus, to whom it had no answer whatsoever. His resurrection life was simply too powerful. So, as Paul taunted: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O grave, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

Resurrection Power
Jesus did not rise “spiritually,” or “metaphorically.” His was a real, physical resurrection. In order to beat death we too, have to share in this resurrection power. This is the only death-defeating strategy! The Apostle Paul describes this strategy in 1 Corinthians 15…

1 Corinthians 15:50
This body is going to die; there’s nothing you can do about it; you’re not going to get to ‘heaven’ with it. In your body there is no re-incarnation; no hope of a better future. If we are going to beat death we need something to happen to us that changes this inevitability.

1 Corinthians 15:51-52
How these things will happen is mysterious, but the mystery has now been made known to us through what Christ has done. The Corinthians were looking for answers to life’s big questions, but the only real answer is Jesus. He now has an imperishable body, and in him we can be changed so that the inevitability of our current condition is reversed.

In describing this transformation Paul is talking about what happens to believers in Christ (see 15:1-2). The apostle Peter says something similar in 1 Peter 1:3-5. This is what happens to Christians! This is where we’re headed! Our bodies will be Imperishable, Undefiled, Unfading – this is what we will become!

1 Corinthians 15:53-55
This must happen because it has already happened in Christ. He is the firstfruits (15:20), and we will be like him! Those who are in Christ, must share in his resurrection. Resurrection becomes an inevitability! It is because of this that Paul can taunt death! Death still seems to win; but it is a broken power. Paul can look it in the eye, shake it by the collar and laugh at it.

1 Corinthians 15:56-57
Sin is the reason death can sting us. Disobedience led to death. Sin is given its power because it makes us want to do what we are not meant to do. Naturally our desires are the opposite of God’s will.

But Jesus has nailed sin to the cross (Colossians 2:13-15). He has made it possible for us to fulfil God’s will – not by our own actions but by sharing in what he has done. Our sins are exchanged for his righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21), and he makes it possible for us to share in his resurrection power.

Death defeated
The hope of Easter is not metaphorical. It is not even merely ‘heaven’. It is the hope of resurrection! Because resurrection is our inevitable destiny Christians can face death boldly. Death is no longer our end, but our beginning. As Spurgeon put it:

Death is the end of dying. The day a believer dies, dying is done with forever. The saints who are with God will never die again. Life is wrestling and struggling, but death is the end of the conflict. Death is rest and victory. Life is full of sinning, but blessed be God, death is the end of that. No transgression or iniquity will follow us to heaven.

Life is longing, sighing, crying, wasting away, and desiring. Heaven is enjoying, possessing, and delighting one's self in God. Life is failure, disappointment, and regret. These emotions are over when death comes, for glory dawns with satisfaction and intense contentment.

The day of our death will be the day of our cure. There are some diseases that will probably never be healed until the last Physician comes. Then with one gentle touch of His hand, we will be healed forever. All infirmity and all sickness will vanish in our last hour. Blind sister, you will have your eyes. You who lost your hearing will hear the song of angels. You who limp will dance. You will have no infirmity. Death cures the ills of old age.

Our death day will be the loss of all losses. Life is made up of losses, but death loses losses. Life is full of crosses, but death is the cross that brings crosses to an end. Death is the beginning of our best days.

Death is no longer the enemy! The hurt has been healed. Jesus defeats all enemies. Jesus defeats death!

Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!

Application Questions
• How does “Hurt” make you feel?
• How is it that we can know the bitterness of death yet say with Paul, “O death, where is your sting?”
• Do you know that your sins have been forgiven?
• Why is it important to understand that we are headed not only for ‘heaven’ but for life after life after death?

TEN REASONS WHY I TITHE

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 18:03:00 +0000

Tithing (giving away ten percent of income) has often been a controversial area for Christians. It has certainly at times been enforced in a way that does not reflect our understanding of the grace of God, and at other times been followed in a legalistic manner which again does not reflect our understanding of grace. At the same time, if every Christian tithed no church would be short of money! Even more important than ‘raising funds’ though, is what tithing achieves for us spiritually.

Here I want to set out ten reasons why I tithe, which might help you in the area of giving. (Some of these reasons are borrowed from PJ Smyth’s booklet Money Matters which is available on the downloads section of the church website.) We also discuss these things more thoroughly in the Generosity session of the Finding Your Place Course.

1. I follow the principle of the tithe because it teaches me to carefully manage my finances rather than estimate them.
If we are to give a tenth of our income we need to calculate what a tenth is! This is not legalism but accuracy, and helps with the overall management of our finances. We do not consider it legalism when our employer accurately calculates our salary and would be unhappy if he simply guessed what to pay us each month! In the same way we should be accurate in our giving.

Proverbs 27:23-27 gives us an example of how to be good stewards of all we have. For me tithing forms part of this stewardship.

2. I follow the principle of the tithe because it demonstrates gratitude and proves grace more powerful than law.
Tithing is not bringing in the Law. Any spiritual discipline (prayer, bible reading, fasting, witnessing, silence and solitude, etc.) can be performed in a legalistic way, but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do them – instead we should do them in response to grace.

Abraham was justified when there was no law of Moses to guide him and he tithed when there was no law to enforce it! In Genesis 14:20 we read that Abraham tithed to Melchizedek the priest as an act of worship to God. Abraham’s tithing was a response of gratitude for God rescuing him, and resulted in further blessing coming to him. The Israelites were commanded to tithe by Moses but Jesus never overturned this command, rather he endorsed it (Matthew 23:23). When we tithe we are being obedient to the example of scripture, exercising faith and demonstrating our gratitude to the God who has saved us. Like Abraham, we are free from the law – we live in the age of the inner motivation of grace, but wouldn’t it be a slap in the face for grace to come in lower than 10% and thus prove law to be more effective than grace? A true understanding of grace will move us to radical generosity (2 Corinthians 8:7-9).

3. I follow the principle of the tithe because it helps keep me consistent and disciplined.
John Piper says that ‘another name for serious intention is planning… failure to plan …results not in spontaneity, but the same old rut’. Again, we must not mistake discipline for legalism. The Bible instructs us to give cheerfully (2 Corinthians 9:7) and sometimes people twist this to mean we should only give when we feel like it. This is not the case! The Bible also instructs husbands to love their wives – whether or not they feel like it – and commands us to pray – whether or not we feel like it. We need to make up our minds about how we are going to live and let these decisions shape our emotions rather than have our emotions drive our actions. When we do things we should do even though we don’t feel like doing them we demonstrate our love for God and his priority in our lives.

4. I follow the principle of the tithe because it is proportional.
No matter how much I earn, tithing keeps pace because it is a matter of proportion not amount. However, there is also a challenge here for us to increase the proportion (percentage) that we give away as the amount we earn increases (1 Corinthians 16:2).

5. I follow the principle of the tithe because it means giving the first 10%...and that is a demonstration of faith!
One of the key things about the law of the tithe in the Old Testament was that it was not giving any old 10%, but rather the first 10% of your income (Exodus 23:19). This is the radical thing about the principle of the tithe. Giving the first tenth is a clear and powerful statement that you are putting God first – he is the first ‘bill’ you pay each month. Money talks. Think about it: you have no idea that you will come out okay that month. Unexpected bills might arrive that you could have used that 10% to pay. It is a statement of faith and trust in God to provide for you.

6. I follow the principle of the tithe to stay free from the love of money.
Money demands to be worshipped and the only sure way to kill its power over us is to give it away. I have found that consistently surrendering a decent portion of my income (10% plus) to God on a monthly basis is an act of faith, obedience and worship that stops me worshipping money. Grace and I have always made our tithe and offerings the first item on our monthly budget, and we pay it before any other bill. This is because we are giving in faith, acknowledging that God comes first in our lives. We know that if we seek God first, he will always provide for us. We love God more than we love money.

7. I follow the principle of the tithe because I soon get used to it and don’t ‘miss’ the money.
Once you are into the habit of tithing, then you get so used to living off 90% that you hardly even feel the hit. So, to keep on the faith stretch, Grace and I always give more than just 10% each month. Remember, 10% is not a law, although it might be a good target for you early on, but before long you will want to outstrip it. We are not trying to find the minimum that we can get away with, rather how much we can get away with!

8. I follow the principle of the tithe because it sets the example for all members of our church.
While the tithe is no longer a law for any of us, we recommend it as an appropriate amount for all members to give to the church each month. We want to be a church that is overflowing with the grace of God, and that must include excelling in the grace of giving (2 Corinthians 8:7).

9. I follow the principle of the tithe in order to invest in the future.
When we die we cannot take any of our possessions with us, but we can send them on ahead. There is a heavenly bank vault in which we can make deposits that will last eternally on the basis of how we handle our money and possessions in this life. It makes sense to put as much as we can into this account! (Matthew 6:19-20; 1 Timothy 6:17-19).

10. I follow the principle of the tithe from a place of contentment.
Discontent is good when it pushes us to get creative and make the world a better place, but it is bad when it makes us greedy and dissatisfied with what we have. Our economic system works by making us discontent with what we have so that we are always seeking more. In contrast to this, God urges us to get content with what we have and not be continually running after more and more. (Hebrews 13:5-6; 1 Timothy 6:6).

Common questions about tithing
Q. Should I tithe if I am in debt?
A. Fight your debt but also start to tithe right away as an act of faith. Honour God and he will honour you. He will make your 90% go further than you could make go your 100%.

Q. I am a student – should I tithe my student loan?
A. No – tithe on earnings, not on loans. If you have a part-time job tithe on what you earn there, rather than on your student loan.

Q. Should I tithe on gross or net?
A. Up to you, but “excelling in the grace of giving” would suggest we tithe on our headline income!

Q. Should I tithe when my tithe is so small?
A. Yes. “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” - Edmund Burke. God honours the attitude more than the amount. Someone earning £700pcm and giving £70 is being more sacrificial than the person earning £10,000pcm and giving £1,000.

Q. Should we be teaching our children to tithe?
A. Yes! We need to teach our children about the grace of God and to respond to that grace by generous giving.

Application Questions
• Do you tithe? Why or why not?
• Which of these ten principles is most challenging to you?

Vision For Giving

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:14:00 +0000

I have just got back from Seattle, where I was at a church planting conference. This has sharpened my thinking about how we at Gateway need to be a people together on a mission for Jesus. At the same time we have some particular financial challenges facing us as a church – but before asking you to increase your giving I want you to get a sharper understanding of our mission.

Recently our friends from River of Life Church, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe were praying for us. Among the things they felt God speak to them for us were these:

Jesus is asking you who you say he is. If he is the CHRIST and son of God, then He will build His church and the gates of hell will not prevail. He has given you the keys to the city of Poole and freed you to bind and loose all that is in the City. According to your faith it will be done for you.

I felt God speaking Psalm 115 to you!..... Read it just as it was written with you in mind.

So we are going to connect Mission and Giving through Psalm 115…

Ps 115:1a
Its all for Jesus! The first mistake we make is thinking its all about us.

We all live in a movie where we are the central character. This is as true of introverts as of ego-maniacs – we are all more aware of ourselves than of anyone else. But as Christians we need to make The Name the star. Jesus needs to be the central character in our lives.

Ps 115:1b
There is tangible reason to make Jesus the star: He has drawn us into his story and called us onto the field of play with him. Because he has done this for us the Church’s Mission is to make his story known.

Ps 115:2
Our prayer should be that Jesus would, “Show your glory through the church.” We are all called to be missionaries. Missionaries are not people far away about who we know little and to whom we occasionally send some money. We are called to mission in the place and to the people where we live.

As God’s missionaries we should ask God’s blessing in order that we might better glorify God! There should not be a poverty mentality in the church. Jesus was poor but he didn’t have a poverty mentality! A poverty mentality says that things are only spiritual if they are shabby. A poverty mentality is what Judas had when he objected to expensive perfume being poured out on Jesus. A poverty mentality does not bring glory to God.

Ps 115:3-7
Yahweh is powerful; the gods of this world are impotent.

Idols give the appearance of potency (they have mouths, eyes, ears, noses, hands, feet); idols really seem to offer something. Idols offer salvation – which is why it is so crushing when they fail. In the current economic crisis many people have been crushed because their gods have fallen.

Ps 115:8
We always become like the thing we love. We take on the characteristics of what we worship, and everyone worships. Everyone has a god, whether they consciously realize it or not. A good indication of what our god is, is to ask, Where do my thoughts drift? The thing your mind drifts to in idle moments is likely to be your idol. And if you are not prepared to think that this thing might be an idol, it almost certainly is!

Ps 115:9-11
We are to Trust Yahweh. Trust is what we exercise when we will fall flat on our faces if the thing we are trusting is not trustworthy. God is trustworthy. We can trust in him.

We are to look to Yahweh for Help. This is an active decision. Following Jesus leads to living a different way.

God is our Shield. Sometimes we need someone to stand behind for protection, but even in this position we are meant to advance rather than cower.

Those in debt need to know the God they can trust, who will help and who is a shield. If you are in debt you need to go to war against it. You need to:
• Get help [Secrecy is a killer. Talk to someone!]
• Go to a cash economy
• Only use a credit card where there is no payment alternative and clear it each month
• Don’t use credit cards as a form of overdraft
• Plan a budget and keep records
• Where radical action is needed, take radical action
• Honor God in your giving.

Ps 115:12-15
Yahweh’s default position is to bless his people, so we can ask for and give blessing! We are meant to increase, not decrease. We are meant to advance, not retreat.

Ps 115:16-18
This Psalm is not denying hope of life after death (it is very clear in its assumption of a literal heaven) but its focus is on the witness of God’s people on the earth here and now. We have been given the earth and we are to glorify God on the earth. The church is to be a glorious and victorious people. We are not simply hanging on for heaven but – on a mission for Jesus – are bringing heaven to earth.

Application Questions
• Why must we understand the mission of the church before we can understand giving to the church?
• What does it mean for you to be a missionary?
• How is the current economic crisis affecting your own financial position?
• What idols are you drawn towards and need to deny?
• In what ways do you need to know God as your Trust, your Help and your Shield?

Tough Love, 13: Staying True

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 17:38:00 +0000

1 John 5:14-21

In a nutshell: “It might be true for you, but it doesn’t work for me.” That’s not true! There is truth in the world, and that truth is the truth of God. We must stay true to truth and not be led astray. Our love must be tough so that we do not wander into what is false.

Where we have been
In this series on 1 John we have unpacked a number of themes. We have seen that:

The church is affected by the culture of its city. John was writing to the church in Ephesus. This was a church with a great history. It had been founded by Paul, led by Timothy, and now instructed by John, but it wasn’t immune to the pressures of the wider culture. Living as a Christian in Ephesus was not always easy. We need to understand the culture of the place where we live, and learn to handle the pressures that brings us.

The apostolic emphasis is on certainty in uncertain times. The wider cultural and religious currents in Ephesus were causing the church to wobble. John wants them rock-like not jelly-like! John preaches certainty because of his certainty in Jesus. Jesus is fully God and fully man and in him we can have confidence. There are many currents (religious, economic, political, environmental, scientific) swirling around us that could cause uncertainty, but we must find our certainty in Jesus.

Sin is our fundamental problem. It is sin that keeps us from God. It is sin that keeps us from one another. Sin is our problem, but Jesus solves the sin problem. By his death in our place Jesus has turned aside the wrath of God and enabled us to know restored relationship with God and with one another.

Jesus Confronts, Comforts, and Commands. Jesus is our Prophet who gets in our faces and confronts the sin in our lives. Jesus is our Priest who tenderly draws alongside us and comforts us in our sorrows. Jesus is our King who expects our obedience and commands us how to live.

The way of Jesus is the way of love. It is because God is love that Jesus came to save us. As people who have been rescued by the love of God we need in turn to respond to this love by loving Jesus and loving one another. There is no real obedience without love, and no real love without obedience.

Our identity needs to be in Christ. Our sense of who we are needs to be primarily grounded in our relationship with Jesus. In him we are transformed people and none of the other markers of our identity (gender, career, age, race, marital status) carry as much significance as Christ’s mark upon us. What you do is not so important as what you are, and what you are is “in Christ.”

Stand firm in the truth. As people in Christ we have overcome the world. We need to stand firm in this truth, and not allow it to be taken away from us.

Live in the experienced reality of the Spirit. The way that we are able to stay in the truth is by an experience of the Holy Spirit’s power in us. The Spirit is God’s empowering presence who gives us assurance of our salvation and enables us to live in a way that is pleasing to Jesus.

Understand the benefits of salvation. As soon as we put our trust in Jesus we enter eternal life. In this life we experience relationship with God and with his church and for all eternity we will be with Jesus in a relationship of love. We have crossed a line from death into life.

Where we are up to
John wraps his letter up with some concluding remarks that summarize all that has gone before:

Praying in his will, vv14-15
As people who are sure of eternal life we can pray with great confidence. However, there is a condition on our prayers – God only answers those prayers which are in line with his will.

There are times when we pray and God does not appear to answer. Sometimes we pray for good things, which we think must surely be in the will of God, but God doesn’t appear to answer. John doesn’t give a full explanation as to why this is the case, but he makes it clear that he wants us to be confident in our prayers. He wants us to pray! And he immediately gives an example of something we are to pray for.

Praying against sin, vv16-17
John wants us to pray for people caught in sin.

But there is an issue with these verses! The issue is this: What does John mean by saying there are some sins that lead to death and others that don’t?

In 1 John ‘life’ and ‘death’ refer to spiritual life and spiritual death, so when John says there is a sin that leads to death he must be talking about a spiritual dying, rather than God striking someone dead. In the context of the letter it makes sense that who John has in mind here are the antichrists – that group of people who have a hardened rejection of Jesus and are deliberately teaching falsehoods about him.

There is a parallel here with Jesus’ teaching in Mark 3:22-30, when Jesus says that there is such a thing as an unforgivable sin. This is something that Christians sometimes worry about; but it shouldn’t be!

What Jesus (and John) is talking about is those people who in some way recognize the truth about him but deliberately reject him. The reason that this sin is unforgivable is because it reflects a hardness of heart that is so complete there is no possibility of that person being turned in forgiveness towards God.

By definition Christians cannot commit this sin!

John has given quite a lot of attention in his letter to the heretics who were seeking to undermine the faith of the church. Basically what he appears to be saying here is, Don’t waste your breath praying for them. There’s too much else important to pray for! So don’t get stressed by these false teachers – just ignore them.

Who, then, should we pray for? For those whose sin is not the same hardened stance against Christ as the antichrists. John says here that we are to pray for our “Brother” – the implication being that he is talking about other believers. When we see others falling into sin we are meant to pray for them to be restored to full relationship with the church and with Jesus.

I think there is also an application here to pray for those who are not “brothers” in the sense that they are believers, but are “brothers” in the broader sense that they are our fellow men. We are meant to pray for those who don’t know Jesus. We are meant to pray with confidence for those in sin because there is power in our prayers.

Knowing confidence, v18
Those who put their faith in Jesus have victory over sin. In this letter John has repeatedly emphasised the importance of purity. We are to respond to God’s forgiveness of us by living in a way that reflects him.

Christians are people who have been “born of God” and Jesus is “he who was born of God.” John writes this to remind us of our status in Christ. Because of what Jesus has done, we now share in all that Jesus has and is. This should give us great confidence and security. Jesus is watching over us, and we are overcomers.

We know that the power of sin over us has been broken.

Crossing the line, v19
John is very clear that there is a dividing line between God’s side and Satan’s side. When we come to faith in Jesus we cross the line. We change camps. This is one of the reasons why church membership is so important. When we come into membership of a local church we are in effect making a public stand about which side of the line we are on.

We know that we are God’s.

Living in Christ, v20
How is it that we get to get faith? By Jesus! He enables us to understand what he has accomplished for us. What is the result of this faith? Confidence in who we are in God. How does this happen? By being “in Christ”. What does this do? It shapes our identity so that we know that we are in him and in him have found the truth.

We know that Jesus is God, and has rescued us.

Staying true, v21
In following Christ we are kept from idols. Whether people realize it or not, everyone has a god – an idol – in their life. Only by following Jesus can we be rescued from this idolatry. God gave the people of Israel a command “You shall have no other gods before me.” [Exodus 20:3] It is by staying true to the teaching of Jesus that we are able to fulfil this command.

Summing it all up
The Ephesian church had a lot to be uncertain about, but John wanted them to be confident. This confidence is found in relationship with God – but how can we know that we have this relationship? We can sum it up like this:

Adventure: By crossing the line from unbelief into belief about Jesus; by experiencing the power of the Spirit; and by working out our faith in action we know we are in fellowship with God.
Purity: The working out of our faith leads to victory over sin and a righteousness that doesn’t justify us but is evidence of our justification. This life of purity is not introspective but bold and gives us confidence that we are in fellowship with God.
Compassion: Our love for Jesus, for other believers, and for his church is evidence that we are in fellowship with God.

Application Questions
• How are your confidence levels?
• Who are you praying for at the moment?
• In what ways do you need to more fully find your identity in Christ?
• How are you living a life of adventure?
• How are you living a life of purity?
• How are you displaying compassion?

Tough Love, 12: This is Real Life

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:12:00 +0000

1 John 5:5-13

In a nutshell: Jesus Christ really did live real human life. In him we have the promise of real human life too, and not just for this life but for all eternity. Real life for us is not life in the world as it now is, but life forever with Jesus.

What is Christianity?
Is Christianity boring, untrue, irrelevant? Is it just a cultural artefact? buildings? a particular moral emphasis? a set of imagined beliefs?

John doesn’t even ask the question! The question he is more interested in is, What is real life? To which he gives a resounding one word answer: JESUS!

This, says John, is real life: knowing Jesus; believing Jesus; experiencing Jesus; confessing Jesus. The whole focus of John’s letter is Jesus. There is no real life outside Jesus. He is the absolute dividing line.

One side of the line is the world. This side of the line says that life is found in survival, ambition, recreation, work, family, money. The other side of the line is the Jesus side, which says, This is life – JESUS!

Crossing the line
John says that those who have faith in Jesus “Overcome the world.” But why do we need to overcome it? We want to overcome things like cancer, poverty, injustice – yes – but why “the world”?

“The world” represents all that is opposed to God – every other god. The world’s claim to life is very powerful – and false. A line is drawn – with the world on one side and Jesus on the other. The only way we are going to overcome the world is by Jesus. We’re not going to overcome it by religion. We’re not going to overcome it by seeking to live according to some arbitrary moral standard.

Christianity has got to be more than a cultural artefact. It has got to be transforming.

You can go to church, say your prayers, and not be transformed. You’ve got to cross the line, so you can know transformation – real life, life in Jesus, life eternal.

Cross the line!

Jesus: a line-crossing saviour
How can we know that Jesus crossed the line?

John lists three witnesses to the reality of Jesus: Water, Blood, Spirit.

Water and blood refer to the baptism and crucifixion of Jesus. Some in John’s day were claiming that the Christ descended on Jesus at his baptism, and departed from him at his crucifixion. John wants to make it very clear that Jesus was always the Christ!

At Jesus’ baptism [Mt 3:16-17], the Spirit descended, and the Father spoke affirming his Son. It really was God in the water. At the cross Jesus really did die. But the testimony of baptism and death are only stories unless the Spirit also testifies.

The testimony of men is important – John and the other Apostles had seen Jesus – but God’s testimony is greater. This testimony of God is not something that can be analyzed factually. It has to be known; it has to be experienced.

This is a transforming experience – it is Justification. Justification isn’t just “my sins are forgiven” but an assurance that all that is Christ’s is also mine. Just as he is alive we have life!

We are like Lazarus – summoned to life and knowing its true, even while not knowing how it has happened.

John Calvin expressed it like this:

Therefore illumined by [the Spirit's] power, we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else's judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men.

Have you experienced this?! This knowing, this certainty, this life, this line crossing?

Eternal Life
This transforming experience of Jesus, by the Spirit, gives us eternal life. Jesus claims to be the life (John 11:25; 14:6; 17:1-2) and in 1 John ‘eternal life’ refers to a present experience – an experience of Jesus.

We are mistaken when we say eternal life is what happens when we die. Our hope is that when we die we go to be with Jesus, but eternal life is so much more than this. You have only been told half the truth if you have been told that eternal life is ‘heaven’.

John is very clear: eternal life begins now. It is with this claim that he begins his letter (1:1-2); and with this claim that he ends it (5:20). If you have Christ you have eternal life – NOW!

Eternity has been opened to you, a line has been crossed, and life changes. When we come to Jesus we experience a sense of coming home. The longings of the human heart find their answer in Jesus. This begins now and continues for all time. Life after death is true; but it is not all! We enter into eternal life in Jesus now, we have confidence of being with him when we die, but beyond that we look for the day when he makes all things new, and heaven touches earth. We look towards not only ‘being in heaven’ but the resurrection from the dead when we will be clothed in imperishable bodies, like Jesus’, and forever will stand before him, in a perfected world.

Application Questions
• Have you crossed the line?
• John writes that he wants the believers to know they have eternal life – how do you know it?
• Why is it important to understand that eternal life begins now, and not only once we die?
• How does this understanding affect how we live now?

Tough Love 11: Confidence to Confess; Confidence to Obey

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Hosier) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:41:00 +0000

1 John 4:13-5:4

In a nutshell: The love of God makes us bold. Love-filled, Spirit-soaked people are confident in their God and quick to obey him. God’s love creates adventurous disciples, ready to take his message to a fearful world.

Whether or not we have confidence makes a huge difference to how we approach life and the levels of success we enjoy. Confidence, like truth and love (which we looked at last week) is intangible but important. You can’t buy it in bottles, but we all know it exists. The prime example of this at the moment is in the economy. A couple of years back confidence was sky high; now it has plummeted.

In this passage John says that confidence is available to us all – but this is a confidence not in ourselves, but from the Spirit; God’s empowering presence.

1. The experience of God’s empowering presence is an experience
John says that “We know” that God abides in us because of the Spirit at work in us. This is something we experience.

In Acts 19:2-6 Paul asks the Ephesians, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answer, “No.” Paul prays for them and they begin to speak in tongues and prophesy.

Jesus promised the Samaritan woman, “The water I give… is a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14). A spring bubbles up – it always finds a way out. It makes the ground wet.

The Holy Spirit is meant to be experienced!

2. The experience of God’s empowering presence is rooted in historical facts
John’s repeated assertion is that “We have seen and testify…” The story of Jesus isn’t just imagination – it really happened.

Jesus came in order that the Spirit might be poured out. This was the fulfilment of what had been promised to Abraham and the Prophets (E.g., Galatians 3:14). It has now happened because of Jesus!

3. The experience of God’s empowering presence flows from confessed faith
John says that our confidence in God is directly linked to our confession of Christ (1 John 4:15). The Holy Spirit comes in response to faith. Jesus promised the Spirit to those who believe (John 7:37-39a). Peter said that the Holy Spirit is given in response to believers being baptised (Acts 2:38) and to those who believe Jesus (Acts 5:32).

But the only way that we can confess this faith is in response to faith the Holy Spirit works in us. It is the Spirit who enables us to believe. As John Stott puts it: “Believing is the consequence, not the cause, of the new birth.”

So the Holy Spirit works faith in us and our faith brings the Holy Spirit. This is a divine circle of faith-filled experience. As Paul puts it (Eph 1:13-14), the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our salvation, and we need to confess this!

4. The experience of God’s empowering presence brings great confidence
The Spirit fills us with a sense of God’s love, a love that removes fear.
It is the fear of punishment that makes us unloving. When we fear being disliked, or rejected, or criticized we are fearing punishment and we tend to put up defensive barriers which actually make it harder to love others.

Love throws out fear. Loved people are confident. We can be confident because of the love of God – he will not dislike, reject or criticize us. This means that churches should be confident places, where we are able to give and receive love.

5. The experience of God’s empowering presence makes us adventurous
Times of pressure always test faith and love. When we are in difficulty we always have to answer the question, “Do I keep faith in God or try to fix this myself?” The temptation is always to try and fix things ourselves, but this is the wrong approach!

When we are under pressure do we continue to display love or do we become angry?

Faith and love lead to spiritual adventure because our faith is the victory that overcomes the world. Trusting God, loving him and his people, and feeling the confidence this brings, we are able to pursue adventures of faith.

6. The experience of God’s empowering presence makes us pure
The Holy Spirit enables us to keep the commands of God. A lived experience of the Spirit keeps us clean. When we are aware of the presence of God with us we are less likely to act in ways that offend his presence.

7. The experience of God’s empowering presence makes us compassionate
‘Love for our brothers’ has to be worked out on action – it cannot be mere words. This is a repeated emphasis of the epistle – love must be made tangible. It is the Holy Spirit who empowers us to act with love and compassion towards others.

Application Questions
• What is your experience of God’s empowering presence?
• Are you confident?