Category: Sermons

Sermon: Sunday, 28 January, 2024
Speaker: Alistair Donald
Scripture: Revelation 12

Have you ever asked yourself why it’s sometimes so hard to live a consistent Christian life? How come I am sometimes so lazy with Bible reading and prayer? Why do I get such a hard time from friends and neighbours – and even from family – when I take even the most tentative steps to sharing my faith in Jesus?

The answer, as Paul laid out clearly to the church in Ephesus, is that we’re engaged in spiritual battle against an enemy that is hard to pin down, because it’s an enemy that’s unseen: ‘For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’ (Ephesians 6:12) If we don’t grasp the force of this, then we’ll slide into living lives of compromise and spiritual flabbiness. We won’t grow as Christians. If we don’t wear the well-known spiritual armour listed by Paul – the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith and so on – then we simply won’t be in the fight at all. So, Christians are called on to opt out of being spiritual wimps, and get with the fight!

But what do the spiritual forces in the heavenly realms look like, and can we any make meaningful impact on them? That’s where our Bible reading comes in – Revelation chapter 12. Now, in order to orient ourselves, there are a couple of things to say about the Book of Revelation.

Firstly, it’s not an easy book to understand. But that doesn’t mean we should just downplay it. Doing that would mean depriving ourselves of an important part of God’s Word – what’s meant to be a great encouragement to believers, especially at times of opposition to the Christian faith. We read reports from time to time of someone finding a great work of art up in their loft. It’s been ignored for years, with the owner not realising that it’s a painting by one of the great masters. Well, this book is inspired by the greatest Master, and we are the ones who miss out if we put it away to the attic of our minds.

Secondly, it’s a type of writing with which we’re pretty unfamiliar. We know the difference between prose and poetry, both of which are in the Bible. But this is a different category of writing, hence its strangeness. It’s called ‘apocalyptic.’ Those who first read the book in the early church would have been familiar enough with its style: they would have known the Book of Daniel well. You may remember that the first 6 chapters of that book are fairly easy to follow – the various trials of Daniel and his friends. But chapters 7-12 are quite different as they are in this ‘apocalyptic’ style. The archangel Michael, described by Daniel as the protector of the people of God, makes a symbolic appearance there at the end of the book, as he does here in Revelation chapter 12. And that’s our clue for understanding the Book of Revelation.

This book may have become a playground of the Cults, and subject to all kinds of weird timetabling about the end of the world and so on. But its real purpose is simply one of encouragement in times of trial and persecution, using fantastical picture-language instead of straight prose or poetry. It’s there to help us understand what’s really going on ‘behind the scenes’ in the unseen world. Today’s passage is at the centre of the Book and is really quite key to its overall message.
You’ll probably be aware that the start of the book (chapters 2 and 3) consists of 7 letters from the risen Lord Jesus to 7 churches in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. They’re usually thought of as a kind of Prologue to the rest of the book. But I think the late Professor Jim Packer was right to say, it’s the other way round: Rather than being a Prologue to the rest of the book, the letters are the main thing. They describe the various problems that can arise in any church in any age – lukewarmness, pride, materialism, immorality and so on. The rest of the book can then be seen as a kind of long Appendix to the 7 letters – to explain the spiritual nature of the battle that’s going on behind the scenes when spiritual problems in churches arise.

Who’s in Revelation chapter 12?

We’re introduced to the various players in this heavenly drama. We read that a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. This woman is pregnant and she gives birth to a son, a male child, described as one who will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre – the very words used in Psalm 2, the Messianic Psalm which the New Testament writers ascribe with confidence to Jesus. So if the man-child is Jesus, doesn’t that mean the woman is Mary? No, because that’s not the way Apocalyptic writings work. The woman is not Mary!

The clue as to her identity is that she’s clothed with the sun, moon and stars. Back in Genesis, Joseph shares his dream with his unreceptive brothers. He tells them that the sun, moon and 11 stars were bowing before him in the dream, representing his mother, father and the brothers who in due course became the tribes of Israel. So the woman clothed with the sun, moon and stars stands as a symbol for Old Testament Israel, the covenant people of God. It was this people who ‘gave birth’ to the Messiah. Later on in the chapter, the woman also represents the covenant people of God today, the Church.

And then there’s another player a sinister one: An enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. We’re told exactly who the dragon represents: the ancient snake called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. And the whole world is being led astray, isn’t it? All the wars… all the destruction… all the violence… all the greed. Anyone can see that this is not the way it’s meant to be! The dragon is powerful – the 7 heads with 7 crowns symbolise his authority as ‘Prince of this world’ (as Paul calls him), and the 10 horns symbolise that he deploys this authority with very great strength – although not universal strength as only one third of the stars are swept out of the sky in this picture-language, not the whole lot.

And we might well wonder: Can we Christians really overcome such a foe? Yes we can! But in the meantime, we’re confronted with the grotesque image where the dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. This of course reminds us of how the life of the infant Jesus was nearly snuffed out by King Herod, in one of the more stark passages in the early chapters of Matthew’s Gospel. And then in this chapter the fast-forward button is pressed, so that we move straight from Bethlehem to the Ascension : ‘And the child was snatched up to God and to his throne.’ (Revelation 12:5)

Meanwhile, the woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared by God for her, where she might be taken care of for a specified time – that’s all that 1,260 days means here. (Technical note: time, times and half a time stands of 2½ years, same as 1,260 days! – not a literal time, since all the numbers in Revelation are symbolic not literal. The point is that there will be periods of safety in the history of the church, as well as periods of persecution.)

And God does protect his church! She may be persecuted from time to time, but as Jesus himself said: ‘The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ (Matthew 16:18) And so in verses 1-6, we’ve seen the background as to why we Christians often face struggles in our faith, or even outright opposition. We’re in a spiritual battle. From verse 7 onwards, we see how this plays out first in heaven and then here on earth, a battle which is always in play during the entire Christian era, and will be until Jesus comes again at the end of the age.

Spiritual warfare in heaven

It may seem strange that war breaks out in heaven, with the archangel Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. What’s the devil doing in heaven at all? Surely Satan can’t be in heaven? Well, Satan is traditionally thought of as an angel who rebelled and fell from grace, and Jesus did say, ‘I saw Satan fall from heaven.’ (Luke 10:18) But perhaps we should understand the location as ‘the heavenly realms’, meaning the unseen world of spiritual warfare between good and evil. C.S Lewis famously wrote in his book, The Screwtape Letters, that there are two mistakes the human race makes about devils: One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.

The forces of evil in this world are real enough, and the Bible tells us that behind it all is a malign being who opposes God and all that is precious to him – especially the Church. But that being is not somehow equal in strength to God. No, for in the words of our passage, the dragon was not strong enough and he lost his place in heaven, instead being hurled down to the earth. That in itself is cause to pause and worship, as often happens in the Book of Revelation where John breaks off to say this: I heard a voice in heaven say, ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah.’ (Revelation 12:10)

We may be more familiar with the similar wording in the previous Chapter immortalised the words of Handel’s Messiah: The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever. Now that clearly refers to the second coming of Christ at the end of time, but this reference in Chapter 12 refers to his first coming because it centres on the death of Jesus on the cross. ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night has been hurled down.’ (Revelation 12:10)

You know that little voice inside that tells you that you’re no good as a Christian? The one that niggles away at you, saying what a waste of space you are in the church? That’s the Accuser, the devil or Satan, who also accused Job before you. But the Accuser has been hurled down! Don’t listen to him! Resist the Devil and he will flee, as James wisely said in his letter. How do Christians triumph over the Accuser? It’s written right here in v11: They overcame him by the blood of the lamb… and by the word of their testimony. ‘The blood of the lamb’ simply being the symbolic picture of the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross, for our sins.

How often do we have to keep coming back to the cross? Every day. As some old Christian writers used to say,’Keep short accounts with God.’ In other words, don’t run up a whole pile of unconfessed sin. Keep going back to the cross. That’s the way we get our sins forgiven and that’s the way we resist the voice of the Accuser. They triumphed over him, by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony. Ah yes. Our testimony. Being witnesses to the Lord Jesus to those who don’t know him. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think this ever gets easier. They triumphed over him, by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony. They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, you heavens, and you who dwell in them! But then some less welcome news for us: But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.

Spiritual warfare on earth

That explains a lot about what’s happening to our fellow Christians in many parts of the world. In Nigeria, just in the past few weeks, terrible things have happened that you won’t hear about on the TV news: Since Christmas, hundreds of Christians have been murdered in Nigeria; A Christian pastor murdered, his wife abducted and a ransom demanded; 5 Christian girls prevented by Sharia police from going to church. What’s going on? The dragon is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short. The suffering of believers, though real and painful, and inflicted by powerful opponents, are just symptoms of the Dragon’s desperation.

Now here in Scotland, we don’t face persecution on that scale. But is it impossible for us to imagine that we might every face something similar? The message of Revelation 12 is that we should be ready if it ever comes to that. But the Christian faith certainly faces other aspects of hostility from many quarters in this country at the present time. How come any religion or ideology seems to get a free pass in modern Scotland, with the sole exception of Christianity? Surely this too should not surprise us, if we pay attention to the message of this Chapter of God’s word?

The final few verses just replay in a bit more detail what we’ve already seen. The dragon pursues the woman, which we can think of here as the Church. But she gets taken care of, escaping on a giant eagle. This figure of speech goes right back to Mt Sinai, where God reminds the people, ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles wings and brought you to myself.’ (Exodus 19:4) The woman is flown to a place of safety in the wilderness, out of the reach of her pursuer, for a specified time (2½ years) but again – a remember not a literal time. Just a specified, limited time). You’ll see that the dragon is now referred to the snake.

And he’s not finished with the woman yet. From his mouth the snake spewed water like a river. What comes out of the mouth? Words. In this case, the devil’s lies, trying to sweep the woman away with his torrent of lies. The lie that a Christian lives a stunted and restrictive life – when the truth is that only the Christian knows true freedom from sin and selfishness; the lie that the church will just die out, as its detractors fondly hope – when the truth is that Jesus has promised that the very gates of hell shall not prevail against it. But the torrent of lies doesn’t sweep the woman away, as the earth opens up to contain the flood. And neither should we let the Devil’s lies get to us! The final image is that the serpent-dragon is enraged at the woman – who remember, is the covenant community of faith – and goes off to wage war against the rest of her offspring. Who now might that be? Those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus. And that would be you and me.

So what do we learn from the extravagant imagery of this chapter? That spiritual warfare is real. If we deny that, we’re deluding ourselves. There is an unseen realm behind our daily living, which Paul correctly describes as involving spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Sometimes the opposition to the Gospel is violent and murderous. This helps us understand what’s going on in some parts of the world today, where the church appears to be on the back foot, in retreat. The devil is filled with fury, but he knows that his time is short.

Spiritual warfare comes to every Christian. All of us at times are weighed down by thoughts that we’re not much good at Christian living. We need to remember that the Accuser is on our case – but resist the devil and he will flee!

Finally, all spiritual warfare comes down to remembering the central place of the Cross. This is how we overcome the evil one: They triumphed over him by the blood of the lamb, and by the word of their testimony. And may that be true of all of us.

Sermon: Sunday, 31st December, 2023
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Hebrews 12:1-3

We are about to start new year. It is a natural time for us to reflect on how we’ve been doing spiritually during the year we are leaving behind, and also to plan the way ahead for the months to come. In other words, we need to take stock. We need to put ourselves through a spiritual MOT. The government forces us to do this with our cars annually; I’m asking you to do this voluntarily. As with our cars, this takes a bit of effort and there will be a price to pay. However, it is positive and beneficial activity. When our mechanic identifies that actually our tyres will soon need to be changed, as does the timing belt and the air filters and spark plugs, and that a section of our exhaust needs replacing, when the work is completed, we will have a safer car which runs much more smoothly. It is clearly worth it.

What’s the best description of the Christian life? What really captures what living as a Christian is like? The Bible uses different images. It is like a battle. It is like servants working in a vineyard. Here, in Hebrews 12, the Christian life is described as a race. ‘… let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…’ (Hebrews 12:1) All images show it’s a life of hard work!

The writer of Hebrews is concerned for his readers. They were thinking about giving up the Christian race. They were flagging. He wants to encourage them to keep going. The whole letter is designed to encourage Christians to keep going in the faith – to keep on trusting in Jesus and the good times and the bad. By giving up Judaism, these Hebrew Christians faced pressure from their families and communities. Some also had to bear financial loss and some were even persecuted. Giving up was a real temptation back then. Today it is exactly the same. Some of you might be considering giving up.

Let’s be honest. We all know many people who used to be running the Christian race with us out on the tracks, but they are no longer doing so. We can think of people in our families and in this church, or other churches we have been part of, and they are disillusioned, confused or sucked into a sinful pattern of life and have given up. Perhaps you are one of them. Perhaps you will be some time soon. People are constantly tempted to stop running because the race is hard. How does this happen? Could it happen to us? These verses go a long way to explain much of what is going on.

I want us to consider today how we can run the race well. If our running has been poor, I want us to think how we can make changes so that we might make progress once again. God doesn’t want part-time Christians, or people who follow him half-heartedly. ‘I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart.’ (Psalm 138:1) God wants our best. He wants all our heart. He wants us to take the race seriously and run well.

Realise we are in a long and hard race. The word for ‘race’ here is agona, where we get the word agony from. It’s not a short race like the 100 metres, but it is far more like a marathon. It takes great perseverance to run this race, because it lasts the whole of our lives. That’s tough. We need encouragement. We need incentives. There are hills to climb sometimes. There are obstacles in our ways and many temptations. This requires sustained effort.

God wants a lifetime of service from us! The Christian life is long-term thing, heading to a final goal. And in one sense, everything we do is part of that race. Each and every day we take new strides in the race. As you go through the rest of this day, the choices you make, what you do with your time, how you treat others, time spent with God, all of this is part of the race. Our lives are made up of small moments, and we want to journey along the track trusting in Jesus as we go.

Let’s consider 5 things which will help us to keep going in the race of the Christian life.

1. Trust in the providence of God

Notice the race is ‘marked out for us.’ (verse 1) Who marks out the race for us? God has marked it out. We don’t get to choose our own lane. God has planned out the conditions, and this includes seasons where the running is easier and seasons when it seems impossible to carry on. In the hard times, we must submit to God, who has marked out our way, and has done so for a reason, though he doesn’t explain the ‘whys’ to us most of the time.

God is the master of your race. He has marked out your race and determined your track. And he wants you to get on with it and run. Sometimes we might look over our shoulder and see others getting on more easily. They have an easier track. Sometimes we might think, ‘God, it’s not fair that you expect me to keep going with all of this going on. I’m so tired of the obstacles. I’m so tired of the race’. And then we see many friends and neighbours around and life looks easier for them, because they’re not running at all. They are just focused on enjoying life. We might even wish we weren’t in the race.

But let’s pause and consider just how wonderful it is that we are not just running any old race. We are running the King’s race. And each of the stages of the race are there for a reason. God has been honest with us, telling us that the race will be tough. But even the hard things in your life just now have great value and significance, because God is using them all to forge us more into the image of Jesus. None of the hard stuff is pointless! God is working it all for our good. He has designed the track so that even the obstacles and hills will make us fitter and more reliant on him.

I don’t know what temptations, hurdles and pits lie before me in 2024. But I believe that God wants me to keep on running, trusting that they are there for a reason. And I know that one day we will reach the finishing line, and run through the tape, and receive an everlasting prize.

2. Be inspired by those who have already finished the race

‘… we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses.’ (Verse 1) Think of a marathon runner who is ending a lung-busting race, and made her way into the stadium. The supporters in the stadium rise to their feet and cheer her on, and she has extra energy to keep going to the end. That’s exactly what’s going on here.

Who are the great cloud of witnesses? They are the 16 men and women of faith we read about in Hebrews 11. People like Abraham and Moses and Rahab. And what are they witnesses to? To the faithfulness of God. John White says: ‘The writer is bringing witnesses before us who will testify that faith is worth it.’ They have finished the race. They are saying: ‘It can be done. We felt like giving up too but keep on running. You will never regret it.’ In sport, teams are often greatly helped by the cheering of their fans. In our Christian lives, we will be helped by the cheering of believers who have gone before, but we will only hear them cheering if we open our Bibles and read what happened to them! And if we don’t read our Bibles, we’ll miss out on all this encouragement.

For example, maybe you find yourself in seriously sinful and unwise patterns of life. You’re ‘in it’ so deep that your conscience rarely bothers you. But then you open the Bible and you read Psalm 51, and how David was also in that place. He repented and God forgave him and his spiritual joy and vigour returned. David cheers you on. He encourages you that God is gracious and forgiving and it’s worth it getting back on your feet and running again. Or perhaps you are bitter towards God about all the disappointments you have had in your life. It seems like you have been dealt a terrible hand by God. And then you read about Joseph in the Old Testament and hear his words: 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives (Genesis 50 v 20). Joseph, as it were, shouts at you: ‘It’s all there for a reason. God knows what he is doing’. These witnesses are not dead men to be remembered, but living witnesses to be heard.

As well as the witnesses in Hebrews 11, we have the lives of 1000s of Christians since then who have experienced great suffering and yet persevered to the end. They also cheer us on, if we are willing to listen. This underlines the importance of Christian biography. Why not grab a Christian biography from the church library and hear the cheers of those who have finished the race before us?

3. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus

Yes, the believers of the past are an encourage and inspiration to us. But the ultimate inspiration and example is Jesus himself. He finished the toughest of all races. He faced pain that we will never have to. As well as the searing physical pain of the cross, Jesus was punished for all the sins of all his people, and was forsaken by the Father he had always been with.

But now he is in the place of glory, at the right hand of God the Father. He too can testify that the race is worth it. ‘Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.’ (Verse 3)

‘Fixing our eyes on Jesus…’ (Verse 3) Looking means we know there are many distractions around us – idols- but that we are not going to look to money to drive us, or to pleasure, or to a life lived selfishly, but looking away from idols and to Jesus- deliberately. Where do you get inspiration from? Who is your role model? Who are you looking to?

‘But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.’ (1 Peter 2:20-21)

Keep looking to Jesus. When we think that we cannot go on we remember him- the course that he had- the race he had to run for us. The horror of Gethsemane and Golgotha. And he did it for us. And he triumphed. And in his strength so can we. What was Jesus’ tactic? ‘For the joy set before him he endured the cross…’ Jesus contemplated the fact that his work of saving sinners would bring such joy to his Father. And he contemplated the joy it would bring to the countless people he was going to save. Present joy anticipating these great future blessings helped him to keep going. Likewise, we need to anticipate the joy of Heaven and the approval of our Father, and that will keep us going too.

4. Throw off things in your life which slow you down.

Before I walk in the mountains, I try and make my rucksack as light as possible. It’s hard enough climbing mountains without carrying unnecessary weights.

The same goes for running the Christian race. It is hard enough without wasting energy on things which we don’t need and which ultimately have no or little value. But this is subtle. Because there are many things which are good in and of themselves, but when they begin to occupy too much of our time, they can hinder us and slow us down. Good and legitimate things can end up draining us.

Our smart phones, TV programmes, Facebook, gardening, football, our clothes and appearance, and our hobbies. Are any of these things wrong? Not in themselves. But, they can hinder us if they take up too much of our time. Work, children, and sport: these things are good but they can hinder you if they distract you too much from pursuing Christ. So, as we go through our spiritual MOT we need to ask ourselves, what is slowing me down in my race? What is taking up too much of my time? What do I need to cut back on, so that I can get on with running more seriously?

5. Have a no-nonsense approach to sin

‘…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles…’ What is sin doing here? It surrounds us like an octopus. Sin prevents us from following Christ. The writer of Hebrews does not mention any specific sins here. We all have different ones which entangle. What sins are entangling you at the moment? Only you can answer that.

But, if you want to run the race God calls you to then get rid of them. Challenge: What are you entangled by today? Is it pride, or lust, or greed, or over-work, or making an idol of your child or children? Do you feel like you can hardly run? Will you take your sins to Jesus? Will you confess them and turn away from them?

Imagine how much your life could change for the better in 2024 if: you waged war on the subtle tentacles of sin in your life, got rid of the things which are slowing you down, keep trusting on the God when the obstacles appear on the track, listen to the voices of those who have gone before us, and keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. Don’t just imagine it – do it. Fix your eyes on Jesus. That’s how we are transformed.

‘And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.’ (2 Corinthians 3:18)

We arrive at Christmas Eve and truly there is nothing quite like this time of year, the carols we sing, the sense of hope and anticipation, the joy we know.

This morning we will look at Mary’s song which encapsulates all three and her song is not focused on hope and anticipation for the presents on Christmas day or the joy of tucking into a turkey dinner, but is based on the hope of the humble, on God’s rejection of the proud, and is on the mercy of God. This song comes off the back of the announcement from the angel to Mary that she will give birth to a son who is going to be the Davidic king that was long awaited, the Messiah who will reign forever. And as a result, Mary breaks out into song.

However, what is going on with this news that the Messiah will be born to her goes beyond an ordinary news of pregnancy and has much bigger knock on effects than an ordinary pregnancy. God’s chosen king is going to come and right the wrongs in this world and he will come to save the humble and the broken.

1. The Hope of the Humble and Rejection of the Proud

‘God has been merciful to the humble.’ (Luke 1:48)

There are none more humble than Mary. A teenage girl without means, without a husband, nothing really. It is to this young girl that God has chosen to birth and mother the Messiah. As we will sing after the sermon ‘Maker of Mary, now Mary’s son.’ Really? Mary will be the mother of Jesus? It isn’t a princess in a castle? It isn’t royalty? It isn’t the rich? It isn’t the celebrities of the day? It isn’t the social media influencers, it is a young girl from nowheresville in total obscurity. Not just her material and outward circumstances that made her an unlikely candidate for God to use to carry, give birth to and mother Jesus. It was also the fact she was just like any of her contemporaries.

‘My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour…’ (Luke 1:46-47)

Not ‘God the saviour’ or ‘God who saves’ but ‘God my saviour.’ She knows, she recognises her fallenness and that God is not just saviour in a generic sense but is her saviour. She was not just ordinary and humble in circumstance but she was ordinary in the fact she needed a saviour like anyone else. Would God not use someone who at least thought they had it all together? Who was also special in that way? No, he uses an ordinary young girl called Mary who recognises her need for a saviour.

This song resounds with the hope of the humble, but not humble in the sense of those with little money or possessions or influence. But humble in the sense that Mary was especially humble in her recognition of her need of a saviour.

As well as hope for the humble, this song also picks up the theme of God’s rejection of the proud. Jesus wasn’t born to influential people, rich people, princesses, nor to a sinless perfect woman. And this is a reality which is conveyed throughout the Gospel of Luke that God lifts up the humble but rejects the proud. Those you think that God would care for, those you think that God would pursue are not the nobodies, the scoundrels, the sinners, surely God would pursue the wealthy, the important, the outwardly good people? But we see in verses 51 and following how God has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts, he has brought down rulers from their thrones, he has sent the rich away empty.

As a congregation we’ve just gone through Luke and finished it this past Easter so I hope you’re twigging in your mind how this plays out throughout the Gospel of Luke in particular.

In Luke 18, we read about the Parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. This is the great offense of the gospel of Jesus Christ, so long as you think you have no need of God or his mercy and you’ll never know God, you’ll never be right before him, you’ll never get into heaven. What we have in Mary’s song is the reminder for all of us God’s mercy is for the humble, not the proud.

2. The Mercy of God and the Promise of God

‘He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants for ever, just as he promised our ancestors.’ (Luke 1:54-55

Here we have praise that mercy has been remembered, that the promise made to Abraham therefore has been remembered. At this point, God has been silent for hundreds of years. Not just that, it’s that the silence falls not at the end of the story like we have in the New Testament, but the Old Testament ends open ended.

Abraham – Isaac – Jacob – Judges – kings – David – long awaited Messiah?

You read through the Old Testament but this is never realised. Blessing to all the world through Abraham’s descendant, a king who rules with justice, but the promise is never realised. Reading the Old Testament alone it’s easy to wonder, ‘Where’s the rest of it?’

Here it is in Luke’s gospel; ‘He will be called Son of the Most High, the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, he will reign over Jacob’s descendants, his kingdom will never end.’ (Luke 1:32)

But here with the angel’s appearing to Mary we see it is on the cusp of being realised. We see it is coming true. Like a child on Christmas Eve, there is so much anticipation and excitement because they know that it is nearly Christmas, Christmas is coming! As sure as night turns into day, when they wake up tomorrow it will be Christmas.

Mary receives this word from the angel that this promised King in David’s line, this son is coming and you will give birth to him. Why is this a big deal? There was a waiting for God’s chosen king, the Messiah, Jesus because the people of God and their leaders were doing a pretty lousy job of living for God. They got caught up in worshipping idols instead of worshipping God or worshipping idols as well as worshipping God. They kept longing for things other than what God had promised. They needed saving but there was no saviour to be found, they needed a king to rule and lead them to God but no such king was found.

‘The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds’, meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed’, meaning one person, who is Christ.’ (Galatians 3:16)

The promise made to Abraham was ultimately found in Jesus Christ and it is referenced here; ‘He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants just as he promised our ancestors.’

So this song tells us of God’s rejection of the proud, of his mercy for the humble but also here of the means through which this mercy is made available to the humble: Jesus Christ, the very promise made to Abraham thousands of years previous now realised in the very womb of Mary.

3. The Song We Are to Sing

Can we have a song to sing this Christmas? Even if we are not Christians, we know something is not right. We keep finding that those around us disappoint us, politicians fail us, leaders fall short. The world is in disarray, wars, famine, poverty, disease, climate change. In the midst of it all, we are all looking for a saviour. Whether that saviour is the government who will bring it all about through policy intervention, whether that saviour is money where you buy your way out of situations, whether that saviour is humankind and you think “we just need to pull together.”

We may not be looking for a saviour, just living for good times, head in the sand, fingers in our ears, ignoring as the world is in meltdown around us. We know, if we’re honest, that something isn’t right in here either. The reason ‘be the change you want to see in the world.’ doesn’t work is that even the most committed of us fail to live up to our standards, we certainly fail to live up to God’s standards which are the real reason we need a saviour.

Perhaps you have pride, you’re never wrong, everyone else is wrong. In the words of a late family member, ‘I’m never aye right but I’m never far wrong.’ You cannot stand being criticised or entering into the mindset you might be wrong.

Or you are angry. You live your life in anger. It might be the explosive type which blows up at people easily, but it could just as easily be irritability, shortness, the cold shoulder.

Or lust. Our desires are disordered and we end up lusting after those who are not our spouses, thinking things we shouldn’t, feeling things we shouldn’t, lingering on things in our imagination more than we should.

That is the story of people in the time of the Old Testament, and it’s the story of humanity today. And if we stop and are honest with ourselves this morning, we recognise that at least one of those describes how we are. Does at least one of those describe you? Yeah it does.

The wait goes on for salvation, but the announcement of Jesus’ birth is the news you and I have been waiting for. The King is coming in the line of David who unlike previous kings will rule with justice and righteousness and He will save his people. Jesus Christ, the promised King, the Messiah through whom the blessing of salvation will come by means of his own death, is here to put right the wrong in the world and in our own hearts, to give us peace with God.

In short, Jesus is the one you long for, he is the one the world longs for. How often we look for him in places he is not, how often we look for messiahs in ourselves or in job satisfaction or in 5 minutes of peace and quiet. But the Messiah isn’t there, the Messiah is Jesus, the saviour king has come.

The message of Christmas is this: Jesus is the one we all long for and he has come. How do you respond to that? In pride? I don’t need him, I’ve got A, B, or C? or I’m good enough to get into heaven? It isn’t through any of those means. It is simply through God’s mercy. Do you have that humility to call God your saviour as Mary does?

To pivot a bit and go for the song theme, why are you singing this morning?
Is it ultimately because life seems to be going just as it should?
Is it because you are quite content in yourself that you’ve got it sussed?
Or is it because of God’s mercy in sending his son Jesus for you?

What a reason to sing! God has sent his promised saviour king, Jesus to bring salvation to you. There truly is no better news! It is news not worthy of mere acceptance as if you’ve just been told the sky is blue, but it’s worthy of our joyful, glad delighting in leading us to singing.

Maybe you aren’t singing this morning because of heartbreak, of loss, of grief, of pain. The Bible says this song is for you to sing too. Through tears of grief and pain this is your song of consolation that the Messiah has come to save you, the king has come for you. And what we enjoy in part because of the Messiah’s coming, we know with certainty will be enjoyed in full when He comes again to make all things new once and for all.

Every relational strife
Every bitter sting of grief
Every dark dungeon of depression
He will come to make all things new.

So whether you are singing for lesser reasons this Christmas, or whether you are not singing at all, Mary’s song is for each and every one of us to sing instead. You’ve maybe never sung it before, you maybe used to sing it but haven’t in a while, you maybe sing other songs of secular festive cheer or earthly security but this song is far better because this song provides exactly what the human heart longs for and needs. A King who doesn’t let us down, a saviour who brings us peace with God, the world and therefore ourselves.

Will you sing Mary’s song this Christmas? It is for everyone whose trust is in the Messiah Jesus. It is for you this morning. We have a great song to sing, let’s sing it in praise of our great God and saviour. May your song this Christmas not be based on what you have done, but your song on what he has done. Not simply on the festive spirit but on the joy of knowing sins forgiven and friendship with God.

Sermon: Sunday, 18th December, 2023
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Luke 2:8-20

Has this story of angels and shepherds got any relevance for you today? As you might expect from a minister, I’m going to say ‘Yes!’ Why do I say that? Firstly, because this really happened. This is a historical event. The birth and life and death of Jesus are recorded by Dr Luke in this gospel, and by Matthew, Mark and John in the other gospels. But it is also recorded by secular, non-Christian historians such as Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Josephus. Together, these secular sources speak about Jesus as: a good-natured and virtuous man; a teacher who amassed a large following; a man who performed supernatural feats; and one whose disciples claimed he had risen from the grave and was believed him to be the Christ and the Son of God. Dr Luke begins his gospel saying that he spoke to many eyewitnesses of these events. He says: ‘… I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.’ (Luke 1:3-4)

The Christmas story is not just a nice story for children. It is, rather, a true story, relevant to each one of us. The Bible is a completely reliable book, and is God’s message to each one of us. In fact, if the Christmas story isn’t the best news that you have ever heard, then you haven’t properly understood it.

Of course, at Christmas Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ birth is not his beginning, as it is for us. Because Jesus is God and so is eternal. There was never a time when Jesus did not exist. His birth in the stable is his beginning as a human being. Right at the heart of the Christmas message is that in Jesus, God became something he wasn’t before, a real human being. He is 100 % God and became 100% human at his birth, whilst remaining 100% God. This begs the question – why did God humble himself to leave a perfect Heaven and come into earth as a real human being. To answer this massively important question, we need to listen to what the angels says, because God sends his angels to explain the meaning and relevance of this wonderful event- God becoming a real human being.

In verse 8 we find the shepherds doing what they do best – watching their sheep, even during the night. It’s no wonder we read that they were terrified (verse 9). Not only do they see a normally-hidden supernatural being, an angel, but we also read that the ‘glory of the Lord shone around them’. What was this glory? This is the shekinah glory of the presence of God himself. This was the amazing manifestation of God’s presence that used to settle on the temple at certain times, and which went ahead of the Israelites in the desert. During the last watch of the night the LORD looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He made the wheels of their chariots come off so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, ‘Let’s get away from the Israelites! The LORD is fighting for them against Egypt’. (Exodus 14:24-25) In other words, God is making it clear that he is with the shepherds. I love the fact that Jesus announces his birth not to king Herod or to the emperor Caesar Augustus, or to the rich or religious elite, but to ordinary shepherds. This surely must inform us that the birth of this baby is for ordinary people like us.

Let’s get to the angel’s explanation of this wonderful event. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Christ, the Lord.’ (Luke 2:10-11)

Jesus left Heaven and came to earth in order to save ordinary people. God’s Christmas gift to us is a Saviour. It is a gift offered to all the people of the world. And if received in faith, it is a gift which will give us lasting joy.If Geoff gave me some deodorant and mouthwash for Christmas I might be somewhat offended as he’d be telling me this is something I need. I need to improve my hygiene. In the same way, God’s gift to us, in one way, is offensive; because if God sends us a Rescuer, then that means there is something we all need to be rescued from. The Bible tells us plainly that we need to be rescued by God, because of the many wrong things we have all thought and done in our lives. The short Biblical word for this is ‘sin’, and it means breaking God’s rules. He says we are to love Him and one another, but the truth is that so often we don’t. So often we are selfish and proud and even ignore God in the world he created. Often, we don’t even get on with those we love the most.

Human beings are capable of great acts of love, and much good. Sadly, we are also capable of lust and anger and rudeness and unkindness. God hates these things and this spoils the relationship between human beings and God. So, God takes the initiative and comes to rescue us from ourselves. If our greatest need was information, God would have sent us an educator. If our greatest need was money he’d have sent us an economist. If our greatest need was technology he’d have sent us a scientist. But our greatest need is forgiveness so he sends us a Saviour.

‘Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you…’ (Luke 2:11)
‘She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’ (Matthew 1:21) Today, God is offering you a Saviour. The question is, will you receive this gift?

We’ve been enjoying Christmas carols today. But the first Christmas carol was heard, when thousands upon thousands of angels appeared in the sky: Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.’ (Luke 2:13-14) Let’s think together about this first ever carol. Why are the angels singing ‘glory to God’? Why are they rejoicing in God’s actions? These myriads of angels are rejoicing at the prospect of millions of people being saved from their sins and receiving eternal life. The angels are full of wonder at the grace of God, sending his one and only Son to die for rebellious humans, who simply do not deserve such a gift. They wonder at the love of Jesus, knowing he was going to die on the cross in the place of others- instead of them.

They are also singing about peace: ‘… and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.’ I think a lot of people sing carols and misunderstand what kind of peace this is, and I don’t want you to misunderstand today. This is not a horizontal peace, between humans. This is not about peace in Ukraine or Israel or in other places where there is war. This is a vertical peace between humans and God. Again, that’s a sobering truth, as it means without a relationship with Jesus, we cannot possibly have peace with God, which is the only lasting kind of peace there is.

How do you get this peace? The answer is simple. You get it by turning from your wrongdoing, and believing that when Jesus died on the cross, he died to pay the price of your sin. You ask him in prayer to take charge of your life, and worship him as your God and Saviour. ‘Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…’ (Romans 5:1) Do you have this peace today? This also means that the peace is not for everyone. Yes, it if offered to everyone. But many reject God’s incredible gift, too proud to admit the wrongness in their hearts.

How have you responded to the gift God offers you today? He offers you himself. He died on the cross and says that if you come and admit your need of forgiveness and ask him to forgive you, then he will do just that. I hope each one of us will respond like the shepherds: The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. (Luke 2:20) Notice that the shepherds respond to Jesus’ birth in exactly the same way as the angels did, praising and glorifying God. If you really understood Christmas, you too would praise and glorify God for sending Jesus into the world to be our Saviour.

We often talk about the spirit of Christmas, and by that we mean a sense of togetherness and kindness and generosity and selflessness that sometimes marks the Christmas period. All these things are good, of course. But the spirit of Christmas in its truest and purest form is to marvel, as the angels and shepherds do, that God would leave Heaven and come to earth in order to die for us. When we ‘get this’ and grasp it, we are able to have a joy and peace which no one can take from us, and which lasts, even when everything else in our lives goes crazy.

If you have been ignoring Jesus, things are not fine between yourself and God. You can’t ignore God and be his friend. But, the good news is this: God offers you a present. Will you take it and unwrap it? No matter what you have done in your past, you can be forgiven by God, through receiving the gift of Jesus’ death on your behalf. I urge you to receive this gift for yourself and enjoy peace and eternal life.

Sermon: Sunday, 10th December, 2023
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: 1 John 1

When was the last time you said sorry to someone for something you did. Have you wronged anyone recently? When was the last time you said sorry to God? Have you wronged God this last week? In today’s passage, we have one of the clearest, most beautiful promises in the Bible: ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.’ (1 John 1:9)

At first, this might sound too good to be true. Free forgiveness from God himself. Is there a catch? It sounds straightforward, so why aren’t more people interested in this promise? There’s no catch; however, this is a conditional promise. Forgiveness is not given to all, but only for those who confess their sin to God. Sadly, confessing sin is something many are unwilling to do.

John mentions people who have a totally different attitude to their sin – they deny it (verse 8). Each one of us in this room has a choice to make about our wrongdoing, we can deny it and gloss over it as if it’s no big deal, or we can take it seriously and confess it to God.

We have three headings on this topic, and to help us remember, each on is connected to the colours of a traffic light: red – stop; amber – get ready; and green – go.

1. Red – stop! Stop denying you have wrong thoughts and actions.

Humans are experts in denying our mistakes. ‘If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.’ (1 John 1:8)

It’s a scary part of the human condition – all of us are capable of deceiving ourselves. We can end up believing something that’s just not true. For example, someone might have a few pints, and think: ‘I’ll be fine to drive home tonight. The roads are quiet’. We fool ourselves and end up endangering ourselves and others on the roads. We have made a wrong assessment. The worst thing human beings can deceive themselves about is the state of their own hearts, morally speaking. We can fool ourselves into thinking that we are basically good people. We can end up convincing ourselves that ‘sin’ is a word which might apply to terrorists, or drug dealers, but not to us.

“He who cannot find water in the sea is no more foolish than the man who cannot perceive sin in his members.” Charles Spurgeon

It might be foolishness, but that doesn’t stop us denying our sin. In John’s day, there were those who claimed to be ‘without sin’. This is sometimes called ‘perfectionism’. It was part of the false teaching connected with Gnosticism. Gnostics denied the relevance of bodily acts, so they could, for example, have affairs but claim this had no bearing on their relationship with God, because he was not interested in the deeds of the body, but only in the spiritual side of life. They were totally wrong. We don’t often hear that kind of false argumentation today. But one thing is the same: people continue to claim that they don’t have a sin problem.

How do we manage to fool ourselves into thinking of ourselves as far better than we actually are? We play the blame game: blaming someone else – we might call this ‘Adam and Eve syndrome’- The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’ Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’ (Genesis 3:12-13) Can you relate to blaming others for the mess in your life?

‘It’s not my fault I’m living like this- it’s the way I was brought up.’ (blame our parents).
‘Yes, I lost my temper. But he was provoking me. What else could I do?’ So, we rationalise our sin. When it comes to wrongdoing, we can see the faults of others with 20:20 vision, but when it comes to our own sins and faults we have a blind spot. Blind spots in driving are dangerous, but when we are blind to our own flaws and sins, they are deadly.

We blame our genes or our circumstances. Nowadays, sin is no longer the wrong things people do but just actions caused by internal weakness we can’t help (something genetic), or external forces out with our control, our environment. In the past, we spoke of people as moral individuals responsible for their actions. But now, people are more likely to say: ‘It’s not my fault. I couldn’t help it’.

“Modern fallacies claim that sin is a disease or a weakness, something due to heredity or environment, necessity or the like; people come to regard sin as their fate, not their fault. Such people deceive themselves.” Leon Morris

In other words, we say, in effect, there’s no such thing as sin!

We think we are much better than we actually are: we over-estimate ourselves. The rich young man listens to Jesus recounting the Ten Commandments – ‘All these I have kept since I was a boy.’ He was deceiving himself. The truth was, he had not even kept the first commandment, ‘Have no other gods before me’; his god was money.

One of my friends said to me recently: ‘I don’t need any God to forgive me’. In others words, he’s telling me that he is a good person. He is blind to the lust, pride, greed, and bitterness in his heart. He is deceiving himself. And this is the way most people think.

There’s the lady who does her bit in the community, helping to raise funds for the local primary school and volunteering at the food bank. ‘How dare you call me a sinner’, she thinks sitting in church. It’s good that she is helping the community. But that does not make up for the fact that she has not given God his true place in her life, and the true place for God is first place.

We also deceive ourselves by relabelling sin, and calling it something else. When we relabel sin, we use other words – euphemisms – for those sins, and then they don’t sound like such a big deal: termination, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia

It happens all the time in our culture and in the church. Adultery is called ‘having an affair’. Theft is ‘helping myself to perks.’ David Jackman

Selfishness is ‘standing up for my rights’. The last thing we human beings will admit is that we ‘sin’.

We try to sanitise the sinfulness of sin. We can be like the proverbial ostrich, and bury our heads in the sand, and act like we don’t have a problem with sin, but that won’t make our sins go away. It’s not a good strategy. Verse 10 reminds us that by denying our sin we are calling God a liar! Because again and again, God tells us sin is a universal problem. ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…’ (Romans 3:23) and if undealt with, we will have to pay for our own sin in Hell. What about you this morning? Are you making excuses? Do you think you have a problem with: greed, jealousy, envy, bitterness, or an unforgiving spirit? Red- stop making excuses and instead acknowledge your sin and guilt before God.

If you say ‘I’m fine on my own – I don’t need God’s forgiveness.’ then you are deceiving yourself and have lost touch with reality. The reality is given by Jesus. ‘For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come – sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.’ (Mark 2:21-23)

2. Amber – Get ready! Instead of making excuses – get ready to confess your sins.

‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins…’ (1 John 1:9)

Confession recognises that we are personally guilty of many wrongs. Remember the Lost Son and his ‘amber moment’? “I have sinned against heaven and against you”, he said. When we wrong others we also wrong God, as it is his commandments we break.

What is confession? In Greek- homologeo = to say the same thing that God says about our evil.

Who decides what is right and wrong? Sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4) and so sin is defined by the law of God. He decides what sin is and what it deserves. Confessing our sins involves agreeing with God that the wrong actions we do are serious and have consequences.

What is God’s attitude to sin? He promises to judge it. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden because of their sin. In Genesis 6:3 life expectancy is cut to 120 years because of human sin. In Genesis 6, God floods the world because of sin. In Genesis 11, God confuses human language because of sin. We should never be flippant about sin. Clearly, he hates it. He hates it far more than we do. Why? ‘God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.’ (1 John 1:5)

What is God’s attitude to your sin? He must not leave it unpunished. This is serious. All who continue in sin and refuse to confess it, will be separated from God eternally. There is nothing casual about sinning. Confession means saying ‘I was wrong’. I am responsible. I am sorry LORD.

‘If we confess… = present tense = signalling that it is what we habitually do. We need this mindset of confession to be daily. Daily we confess our pride and jealousy. Daily, we confess sin and flee from it. Notice too that we are to confess our sins: plural!

The LORD wants us to be specific every day when we pray to him. Not ‘LORD sorry for my sins’ (in general). Be specific. LORD I was embarrassed to share my faith at work today – I’m sorry. LORD I was rude to my wife, and short with my children. I am too concerned with my money. LORD I am lukewarm and half-hearted in my love for God.

Amber: are you ready to say the same thing as God about your sin? Are you ready to acknowledge that you are morally responsible to your Creator and Law-giver and that you fall short?

The promise of verse 9 is an amazing promise. But it is a conditional promise. Not everyone is forgiven. Have you gone to God and confessed your sin? If not, then you are still in your sins. Are you ready to swallow your pride today, and confess your sins to God. If you confess…

3. Green – Go! Go to God!
And what happens: Forgiveness and cleansing. ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.’ (1 John 1:9)

The promise is for those who confess – they can go, go before God and have their guilt dealt with. Why? Why will God forgive us? ‘… the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.’ (1 John 1:7) Nothing else can remove our stains. It is the blood of Jesus that cleanses.

Sin Sin is like a huge debt which we can never repay – God forgives us – he cancels the debt.

Unrighteousness – forgiveness is like clothing covered in horrible stains – God purifies us – he removes the stains forever. So, when Father looks at us he sees no stains – clean clothing.

All God purifies us from all unrighteousness. All of it. There is no sin Christ’s blood cannot deal with! The hymn puts it this way: ‘My sin — oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! — My sin, not in part but the whole, Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!’

Go to God – he gives us every encouragement: The green light is shining brightly: ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins.’ (1 John 1:9)

‘God is faithful’: John did not have to say this! Why does he say it? Friends it’s not too good to be true. When God makes a promise, we can be certain about it. We can have confidence in it. The angel Gabriel reminds us: ‘For no word from God will ever fail’. (Luke 1:37)

‘As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.’ (Psalm 103:12) When we come to God and confess our sins – specifically – asking for cleansing, he will do it!

Why? Again, we ask Why? Because God is faithful and God is just. ‘God is just’: the forgiveness of sins is a matter of justice; however, this is not the justice we deserve. Of course, God cannot just ignore our sin. But Christ has already received God’s justice for our sins. Therefore, when we come and confess our sins, God says ‘I would be unjust were I not to forgive you.’

God is light. God doesn’t just ignore our sin. He has to deal with it. We expect criminals to be punished for their crimes. We need to be punished for our sins. How can God let us off and be just? Because he is not letting us off – Jesus has taken our punishment. Our sin has been paid for, and that why God is able to forgive us, and maintain his justice at the same time. ‘For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.’ (Romans 3:22-26)

Red : Stop making excuses. Stop denying sin.
Amber : Get ready to confess your sins. Admit them. Admit them to God.
Green : Go to Jesus and he promises you forgiveness and purity. He never lies. It’s a gift paid by him.
Have you come to God confessing your sin?

Sermon: Sunday, 3rd December, 2023
Speaker: Geoff Murray
Scripture: Colossians 2:11-15

Do you find yourself wondering today what baptism is all about? Have you stopped to think what is happening? Isn’t it strange the minister is randomly going to drop some water on Billy’s head, why? Why is Billy about to be sprinkled with water? Well, it’s not just sentiment though Billy is very cute. It’s not just tradition though churches have practiced it through the ages.

We do it because baptism has been instituted by Jesus for the good of his church as a sign of the realities of new life in Jesus. After his resurrection, in Matthew 28 Jesus said that his church was to be about two things: Making disciples and baptising.

1. The Sacrament of Baptism

Baptism is what is called a sacrament whereby someone is either immersed in water, sprinkled with water or have water poured on them and that is an outward sign given to those to signify their belonging to the visible church, to the people of God. The signs point to many things which we’ll get onto in the next point but it very much is a sign.

Baptism merely points to the greater realities of the Christian life but are not the realities themselves. In short, Billy is going to be baptised shortly, this baptism will not make him a Christian, it will not guarantee he will be a Christian. Nevertheless, his baptism points to the realities of being united to Jesus Christ.

Baptism is also a seal. When we are converted, the Bible says we are ‘sealed by the Holy Spirit’ (see Ephesians 1:13) as a guarantee of our salvation; that is an inward work yet baptism is an outward sign of that inward work. When the Holy Spirit fills us, that is God’s stamp inwardly saying after faith is expressed, ‘I will be true to my word and I will save you.’ Similarly and outwardly, baptism is the outward sign and the pledge of God that when the conditions of the covenant are met, that is faith, that God will be true to his word and he will save.

You may be wondering why Billy is being baptised if he is not converted. We’ll get there.

For now though, we’ll consider the most important part of the sermon ‘The story of baptism’ and if you hear nothing else of this sermon, this is the bit we all need to hear.

2. The Story of Baptism

The story tells of union with Jesus Christ. That when we express faith in Jesus Christ, God isn’t like ‘cool’ and leaves it at that, there’s actually something greater going on there. We are united to Jesus which means that God is committed to us and what is true of him becomes true of us. God pledges himself to us when our faith is in Jesus that he will save us and won’t go back on his word. Particularly it is mirrored in his death, burial and resurrection with our death to self and new life in Jesus Christ.

That, just as Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins our old self will be put to death, just as Jesus was buried in the tomb, our old self will be buried in baptism and just as Jesus rose from the grave we also will rise in newness of life. (see Romans 6:3-6 and Colossians 2:11-15)

In short, the story baptism tells us is that there’s something wrong but it also tells us how it can be fixed. It causes us to reckon with what Paul calls our sinful nature. We see in verse 11, the putting off of our sinful nature displays that there’s a sinful nature there in the first place to be put off.

‘When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ.’ (Colossians 2:13)

We’d all readily look out at the world and see without trouble that something isn’t quite right. War, poverty, greed, depression, death. Something is not quite right. But the Bible doesn’t get us to stop there, the Bible asks us to stop, to reflect, to take stock of our own lives too and realise something isn’t right with us.

Now that might be an unpopular thing to say today, it might offend you, but even those of us who think we’re alright would be forced to admit that we’re not perfect. The times we hold onto bitter grudges. The occasions where we say a cutting word to someone even though we know its going to hurt them. The times we withhold generosity from the needy all the while we live very comfortable lives.

These are just a few examples, but I’m sure you could think of some in your own life where you’ve not lived up to a good standard. For all the good we might do, we also have done wrong. And all the wrong we do can’t be cancelled out no matter how much good we do and your wrongdoing still stands. And all of that is symptomatic of the fact we are ‘dead in sin’ as Paul says here in Colossians.

That basically means that every one of us naturally are shut off to God. Whether that shows itself in hostility and an anti-God mentality or whether it shows itself in the fact we couldn’t care less about God. This is where we all are without Christ, we are dead in sin. And unless we put our trust in Christ that is where we will remain.

But when we put our trust in Christ, that old self is buried and we are raised with Jesus. Just as Jesus died on the cross to pay the charge of sin that stood against us and was buried then rose, so when we put our trust in him for our acceptance with God, we are united to him in his death, the old self dies we are united to him in his burial and we are buried in baptism then just as he was raised from death to life, so are we raised to newness of life.

That’s what baptism is about is the fact that you and I are dead in sin, shut off to God and unless God raises us to new life that’s where we stay. But when God intervenes that we are taken from death to burial to life.

Are you shut off to God? Are you indifferent or apathetic towards him? Are you against him? You remain dead in sin, for all the good you might have done, your record of wrongs still stand and you are under God’s condemnation. No amount of good works can change the fact that you have done wrong, no amount of religiosity can change it, only faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus can change that. Only when we put our faith in Jesus’ death can he cancel your record of wrongs, only Jesus by his resurrection can give you new life.

Where is your faith this morning? Is your faith in yourself? Your wrong still stands against you. Is your faith in your religious practice? No amount of attendance at church, not all the water in the world used in baptism can save you, only through faith in the working of God who sent his son to pay for your sins. Put your faith in Jesus Christ, be united to him and know newness of life.

3. The Subjects of Baptism

Who is to be baptised? It’s clear that those who are believers are to be baptised, nobody disputes that, it makes sense. Those who have faith in Jesus receive that sign which signifies the reality of their new life in Jesus. We see it commanded, ‘Believe and be baptised.’ throughout the New Testament, we see it happening. We see even in the Old Testament, Abraham first of all has faith then is given the sign of circumcision.

It seems like a bigger stretch to say children of believers. I mean they don’t even believe this stuff for themselves so why would we give them the sign. Well there are a number of reasons we do practise this in the Free Church of Scotland and why we are bringing Billy forward to be baptised this morning.

(a) The storyline of the Bible
As I said baptism is a sign pointing to the realities of the good news of Jesus, of our being united to Jesus and our new life in Him. Baptism is in the new testament, but in the old testament, there was another sign, circumcision. That’s what we read Genesis 17. Abraham believes God, he is counted righteous, he is then circumcised. But, it is not him alone as the believer who is to be circumcised, but also his children. And that continued to be the practice throughout the time of the Old Testament that believers and children of believers would receive the sign of the covenant, that is circumcision.

Now, the question is what happens when we cross over into the New Testament. The promise doesn’t change. Paul’s letter to the Galatians says, in short, that the promise made to Abraham is what is found and revealed in Jesus. It is the same promise that was made to Abraham which he trusted God for is what is found in Jesus Christ and what we trust God for. (See Galatians 3:14-29)

Furthermore, the passage we read in Colossians 2:11-12, it makes the connection from circumcision to baptism. That our circumcision, the circumcision of Christ is baptism. So it seems that the New Testament isn’t about scrapping the Old and starting again. No. If anything, we should assume continuity unless told otherwise and we are told otherwise. Our faith in the New covenant is in the same person as in the old covenant. There is great continuity and where there is discontinuity, the new testament makes a big deal of it.

• The inclusion of the Gentiles
If you go throughout the gospels and the new testament letters, we see that much is made of the inclusion of the Gentiles. In the old testament, it was the nation of Israel who were God’s chosen people and not those outside of Israel. Flip over into the New Testament and Gentiles are included, are welcomed, are brought into the people of God, its everywhere.

• The setting aside of the old sacrificial system
Hebrews 10 talks about how Jesus has made the one for all sacrifice of his body on the cross setting aside the need for the old sacrificial system

• The presence of God
God used to dwell in the temple behind the curtain in the holy of holies where nobody could go, but now, the temple curtain is torn in two, the Spirit comes and lives in his people.

These are three huge changes between the Old Testament and New Testament. In every case where there is a change, the New Testament picks up on it, but it doesn’t seem to change when it comes to the role of children in God’s covenant relationship with his people. In fact, to sound pretentious for a moment, the silence is deafening! The fact that given the 2,000 years of history where children of believers were part of God’s blessings and promises and all of a sudden it stops. Wouldn’t there be something to tell us it had stopped?

In the context of the New Testament where it is loud and noisy about everything else that’s different from the Old Testament, if the position of children of believers has changed, why is there absolutely nothing about it? Then you have the fact that if there was a change of position from old covenant to new in regards to children it would go against the grain of every change from old to new.

Every single change or discontinuity from Old to New Covenant means that life for the people is greatly enhanced, not greatly reduced. It would therefore cut against the grain hugely if, in the transition between the old and new covenant, everything was to improve and be enhanced, but that wouldn’t apply to the children of believing parents.

(b) What the New Testament says
And then there is the fact that although the New Testament may be silent on baptising infants, it is not silent on the children of believers.

(See 1 Corinthians 7:14, Ephesians 6:1 and Acts 2:39)

If children of believers are to be viewed as unholy, unconverted, unregenerate people outside of the covenant of grace then they are not holy as in 1 Corinthians 7:14, when they are called to obey their parents the phrase ‘in the Lord’ doesn’t make sense as they aren’t in Christ, and Peter had no reason to mention children in Acts 2. He could have just said ‘for you and for all who are a far off.’ but he specifically mentions children.

Now, in a moment John is going to come and baptise Billy. This won’t make Billy go from spiritual death to spiritual life as if by magic. This won’t guarantee that Billy will be converted one day. In Genesis, Esau wasn’t converted after being given the sign of circumcision. There’s nothing to say Billy will one day be converted.

But we do it because we recognise that throughout biblical history that children of believers are to be recognised as part of the people of God and therefore the sign of the covenant is to be given not just to believers but also to children of believers. And the sign extends to Billy today of what is already a reality, that he is a child of the covenant of grace because of the faith of his parents, with the promise from God that if and when he expresses faith, God will be true to his word and extend the realities of the sign, new life in Jesus Christ to him.

So perhaps you’re sceptical this morning as a believer with children as to whether or not you should have them baptised even though they haven’t yet expressed faith, even though they perhaps can’t express faith yet, but what is clear is that children have been included in the Old Covenant. I think what we’ve looked at is clear that they should be included in the new covenant. Would you prayerfully consider having your children baptised? It is their right being a child of a believer that they too receive the sign of the covenant. Would you extend that to them today?

Sermon: Sunday, 10th September, 2023
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Matthew 18:21-35

Every true Christian church is a family where we should expect to be loved. Remember what Jesus said: ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ (John 13:35)

But let me make another statement which is also true: every true Christian church is a place where we can expect to be hurt and offended and let down. That doesn’t sound so good. But it is both true and realistic, and it’s important that we think about that, so that when others do let us down, we’re not surprised.

1. Be realistic

Peter understands this. He comes to Jesus with a question (verse 21): ‘Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?’

Peter’s question is ‘when’ my brother sins against me and not ‘if’. It is inevitable. When they do sin against me what am I going to do? Will I go in a huff? Will I leave the church? Will I stop speaking to them? Will I give them the cold shoulder?

I suspect he might have been asking out of his own personal experience. Perhaps some of the disciples had offended him and treated him badly. ‘But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.’ (Mark 9:34)

So, how realistic are you in this area? Do you recognise that people in this church will sin against you? And that you will sin against them from time to time. People will hurt our feelings. In the church? Other Christians? Yes.

We live in an age where people are hyper-sensitive as to how they are treated. When wronged by others, many react like hedgehogs and curl up into a ball in a defensive position, refusing to deal properly with the person we feel has wronged us. Others might react like a rhinoceros, charging around, fighting fire with fire, and retaliating against those who have hurt us. Neither reaction is godly. We must understand this basic truth: when we become Christians, yes, God forgives us, but that doesn’t mean that we stop sinning. That only happens when we reach Heaven! We live in a fallen world, and all Christians still struggle with sin. To put it bluntly, if you stay in this church, you will sin against me and I will sin against you. Peter is realistic and we need to be too.

2. The limit of forgiveness

Peter knows he should forgive others. What does he want to know? How many times should he forgive? In other words, is there a limit?

Jewish rabbis said you should not ask for forgiveness more than three times. That was enough. Asking a fourth time is asking for too much. You can’t just keep on doing the same thing can you? Peter is more forgiving than the rabbis. Perhaps Peter expects Jesus to praise him for his generous heart. Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.’ In other words, an unlimited number of times. Just keep on forgiving your brother or sister, without counting, and without stopping. It’s not a matter of arithmetic (counting up) but attitude (being a forgiving person). We don’t think, ‘That’s the eighth rude thing he’s said to me this week.’

If we’re honest, we find it hard to forgive sometimes. So, what should we think about in order to become more forgiving people? Why should we forgive others?

That brings us to the parable. A man owes billions of pounds to the king but claims he can pay it back. He couldn’t even pay back the interest on his debt! Who is the king, and who is the first servant? God is the king, and the servant with the huge debt stands for all Christians.

3. Our forgiveness

Let’s just pause here. What is God telling us through this picture of a servant with a debt so big that he can never possibly pay it back? We are the servant. We are in a similarly desperate situation, in that we owe God a moral debt that we can never hope to pay back. Did you know that? No one likes to be in financial debt – it’s a horrible thing. But there is something far worse and far more serious, and that’s to be in moral debt to God.

Every single day I fail God and let him down. I do not love my neighbour as myself, and I certainly don’t love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. We all offend God with our pride, greed, lust, selfishness and anger. Imagine I sinned just thee times a day. In one year, this would be more than 1000 sins against God. Multiply that by your age and it is an enormous debt.

What does the Bible say about how big our debt to God is?

‘My sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head’ (Psalm 40:12)

‘I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens.’ (Ezra 9:6)

The only hope the first servant has is for the king to show him mercy. God reminds us this morning that we can never pay him for the debt of our sins. Our only hope is his mercy, revealed to us in the cross of Jesus Christ. Our only hope is for Jesus to pay that debt for us.

4. Forgiving others

Let’s move to the heart of Jesus’ parable. ‘But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.’ (Matthew 18:24)

This seems crazy. We get angry as we listen to this part of the story. A servant who’s been forgiven billions, and is owed a few thousand but refuses to cancel the small debt. It seems unbelievable! Surely someone wouldn’t behave like that. Yet, when we refuse to forgive other people that’s exactly what we are behaving like. For we have a huge debt before God, which we can’t pay. If you are a Christian it is because you have been forgiven. So, to refuse to forgive is to contradict the gospel. We are needy sinners and have received forgiveness and that’s why we must forgive. We must forgive a very little as we have been forgiven a great deal.

“When I see myself standing before God and realise what my Lord has done for me, I am ready to forgive anyone anything.” Martin Lloyd Jones

‘Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.’ (Colossians 3:13)

The following questions might be uncomfortable, but it is necessary to reflect on them. Is there someone in your life whom you need to forgive? What is keeping you from forgiving that person? Is there someone in your life that you need to ask for forgiveness? What is keeping you from seeking that person out and confessing to them?

“Unforgiveness is too expensive: The toxins of bitterness, resentment, and unforgiveness are too deadly to store in our heart-pantry. May the wonder of our forgiveness be 10,000 times more real than the pain of our heart-wounds.” (Scotty Smith)

“As we respond to God’s way in a daily lifestyle of confession and forgiveness, we begin to experience things we never thought we would see in our relationships. We begin to see bad patterns break, we begin to see one another change, and we begin to see love that had grown cold becomes new and vibrant again. When we experience hard moments and God gives us the grace not to give way to powerful emotions and desires that would take us in the wrong direction, we experience the practical help and rescue his wisdom gives us again and again. All this means that we no longer panic when a wrong happens between us and those with whom or to whom we minister. We no longer take matters into our own hands in the panic of hurt and retribution.” (Paul Tripp)

Let’s go back to where we began. We will fail one another in this church. We will all need to practice forgiveness.

What are we saying if we refuse to forgive others? It’s a serious and solemn mistake to make: ‘Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.’ (Matthew 18 32-35)

In other words, if we refuse to forgive others, we need to ask ourselves the question: have I really been saved myself? Have I truly been forgiven by God?

More positively, one of the evidences that we are a child of God is that we do forgive others. And if we struggle to forgive others, we need to come back to this parable again and again, and remind ourselves of the enormous debt God has forgiven us. Will you do that?

Sermon: Sunday, 27th August, 2023
Speaker: Geoff Murray
Scripture: Psalm 121

Who do you ask for help? Your parents? Your friends? Someone in church? Google? This psalm tells us in verse 2, ‘My help comes from the Lord.’ He is the source of help, the Lord. As the psalmist makes his way to Jerusalem, he looks up to the hills where Jerusalem is and where the temple in the Old Testament was and he reminds himself that his help is in the Lord.

What can we say about the Lord’s help? Well, it says six times in this psalm that the Lord will keep us or he is our keeper. We need to know what to do with that though. If we read that literally to mean physical protection, we will be hardened against God and we will treat him like a liar. Hard things happen in life and God doesn’t stop the gunman from pulling the trigger, or the deadly illnesses from coming and taking us, or the relationship from breaking down. ‘What’s the script, God? I thought you would protect me!’

Jesus prayed this psalm, Jesus sang this psalm. How was he able to say these verses in Psalm 121 when he knew about his own sufferings, when he saw the sufferings of those around him, when he told his followers they would suffer?

• ‘Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul.’ (Matthew 10:28) How can he promise this unless God keeps a soul?
• ‘Pray that your faith may not fail.’ (Luke 22:31-32)
• ‘… unspoiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you.’ (1 Peter 1:3-4)

You may feel weak, needy, helpless because of your sin, you may fear your faith will fail but God will keep you close. How will he keep us close?

1. The Lord’s keeping is constant

‘He will not let your foot slip – he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.’ (Psalm 121:3-4)

We’ll come back to the first line in verse three but we see that ‘he who keeps you will not slumber, he who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.’

He’s like a coach keeping an eye on the training session ensuring that everything is going as it should be.
He’s like a gardener keeping close watch over their garden to ensure that their plants/fruit/veg has the perfect growing conditions and is growing as it should.
He’s like a parent watching over their newborn baby with care and caution and delight.

The only difference, of course, is that God doesn’t take his eyes off the ball. The coach’s mind might drift and wander to other things. The gardener has to step away and do other things in their life. The parent has to sleep.

But not God. God doesn’t have to sleep, his mind never wanders. God has got his eye on you and on this world and he never, for a second, takes his eyes off you. This psalm says, ‘God’s got you!’

You may feel weary and broken, you may feel depressed and depleted, you may feel like you’re at the end of the rope and think, ‘Where is God?”. God is in control and he has his eye on you. He keeps you when the unwanted health diagnosis comes in, when you live through the darkness of depression, when your relationship breaks down.

What else is constant about his care? ‘The sun shall not strike you by day or the moon by night.’ (Psalm 121:6) There is this recognition that the sun could be shining, the moon might be glowing, at any and all times of the day God will keep you. You could be going to sleep, you could be in the midst of sleep, God doesn’t stop watching over you then. Isn’t it amazing that when we sleep God is still keeping his watchful eye on you? Isn’t it amazing that when we rest, God is at work? Even when you’re asleep he takes care of you.

Lastly on this point, when will God stop being watchful? Being caring? Keeping you? Never. ‘The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.’ (Psalm 121:8) Not from this time on as long as I can be bothered. Not from this time on until I lose my patience with you. Not from this time until I find someone better, more important, more intelligent, more likeable, more holy. No, if you are a Christian this morning, God is never going to stop keeping his eye on you. You might doubt his patience to bear with you, he will bear with you. You might doubt whether he really cares enough to stick around, he cares enough to stick around! And that promise does not have an expiration date on it.

As you parent, as you work, as you serve your neighbours, as you go about the smallst and most mundane tasks in life God has his watchful, caring, keeping eye on you.

Where does your help come from? At all times, in every season, in every circumstance, the Lord! Look to him for your help. The Lord keeps you. He doesn’t have limits. He doesn’t take his eye off the ball, he doesn’t slumber or sleep. It may be night time, it may be day time. It may be today, it may be 20 years from now, he will keep you. How can you carry on as a Christian today? Because the Lord keeps you.

2. The Lord’s keeping is comforting

Whenever we do something for the first time, we maybe unsure of ourselves and so we try to get reassurances from a book or a video on YouTube or a friend we know to make sure we’re doing the right thing and we’re on the right path. We need similar assurances as Christians. Not necessarily that we are doing the right thing, though God’s word reminds us how we ought to live, but rather that God isn’t going to drop us, that God isn’t going to give up on us.

We’ve all at times wondered if the promises of God are for us. Is there really no condemnation for me? Is God really patient towards me? Do I really have peace with God? And the underlying thought is. ‘Have I undone it all?’

There are promises in this psalm which tell us that if we are his people he will keep us. Verse three tell us He he will not let your foot be moved. On a dangerous road like the psalmist was likely to have been walking towards Jerusalem, the city of God, a wrong step could be fatal, God promises not to let the foot of his people to be moved.

Maybe you’ve been hill walking and the path is really narrow and you need to be careful otherwise you could fall. It was like this for the psalmist as he walked this road, it’s like that in a spiritual sense for us today. One wrong footing and we can begin walking away from God. We have the outside danger of the Devil who Peter tells us ‘… prowls around like a lion seeking someone to devour.’ (1 Peter 5:8) We have the world trying to tempt us with so many things that would lead us away from God, we have ourselves as we often are aware of our sin which can easily develop into patterns of behaviour and habits if unchecked.

There are so many dangers in the Christian life. We are, as the hymn says we are ‘prone to wander, prone to leave the God we love’. It isn’t plain sailing, a piece of cake, it isn’t easy. But, friends, there is one with his watchful eye on us, who is making sure our foot will not be moved, that it will not slip. You might feel your weakness and vulnerability spiritually speaking, yet the God of all the universe keeps his eye on you.

There is another image used. Instead of feet slipping, it’s sun melting! ‘The sun shall not strike you by day. Nor the moon by night.’ (Psalm 121:6)

It’s not immediately clear what the reference is to the moon, but what is clear is the reference to the sun. We need umbrellas in this country for the rain but in hotter climates, its not uncommon for an umbrella to be used in the sun. Why? To protect them from the sun.

As they pass uncertain paths they knew he would be with them. As they travelled down the Jordan Valley southwards and then turned west to ascend the steep roadway to Jerusalem, the sun would be on their left side. The Lord then was likened to the shade on their right hand where comfort and protection was felt. The psalmist making this pilgrimage to Jerusalem would have been exposed to extreme heat from the sun without much cover. God says in verse 5 that he will provide shade! ‘As the sun is melting away, I will be your shade, I will be your protection.’

Again, this idea that the walk, the pilgrimage was dangerous. Not just in terms of feet slipping, but in terms of the sun being so strong. As the devil fires his attacks at you, the Lord is the one protecting you, being a shield about you, being a shelter, being a refuge, being kept safe in him. It’s not that we won’t be attacked spiritually by Satan, we will, but we will be protected from the full extent of it. If he didn’t, we would fall away.

Be reassured, if you love Jesus, though you are weak, though you battle against sin, the Lord is your keeper. He keeps your feet from falling, he is your shade protecting you, he is your keeper.

3. The Lord’s keeping is a journey

The psalmist is making that journey towards the city of Jerusalem, where the temple of God was, on his way to worship. Why does he lift his eyes to the hills looking to Jerusalem – to God’s city where the temple was. That is his direction of travel, thats where he is journeying to, that’s where he is aiming for. Jerusalem was the hub of spiritual life for the people of God. It’s where the temple was, it’s where God lived by his Spirit in the temple.

As Christians, we ultimately travel, not towards modern-day Jerusalem but towards the New Jerusalem. And the best part about the New Jerusalem is that God is there! (See Revelation 21:9-27)

But for now we travel. For Christians, that is our direction of travel. We’re on a journey aiming for that heavenly city, that New Jerusalem. In short, towards God. Where is your direction of travel? Are you travelling towards God or away from him?

If you’re travelling away from him, you ultimately travel alone, God is not there. You have no keeper. You have no helper. You are like a sailor without a navigation system, a mountaineer with no map and your end destination is not the New Jerusalem where peace will reign, but a place where there will be a marked absence of peace. There will be an absence of light, there will be an absence of hope.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In this world you will have trouble, but you don’t need to walk it alone, the Lord is here right now saying to you, ‘Journey towards me, journey towards the New Jerusalem. The way is hard, narrow, dangerous, but I will be with you. I will be your keeper.’

Why don’t you begin your journey towards God today? Ask him to forgive your sins because of what Jesus has done and live your life for him. Know the care and keeping of God today and forever! Put your trust in him. Say with the Psalmist, “My help comes from the Lord!’

What about if you are a Christian today and you are journeying towards God, what does it have to say to you? It says that we can trust God with our lives. As we face the hard things in life let’s remember, God is the creator of the world, nothing is too hard for him, he can keep you even when you face the hardships of life. He never takes his eye off the ball for a second but has his eye on you the whole time, and his heart towards you is good – overflowing with grace and mercy to keep you. Your life may be hard, it may be very hard, but God promises to those whose faith is in him, he will keep you. There won’t be a single circumstance, season, time, or day where God will not be keeping his eye on you. Do not give in to self-reliance, you are awake only so many hours of the day, you’re capable of making mistakes, getting it wrong, but not God.

As you fight your sin, he is your keeper, as you feel discouraged, he is your keeper, as you go to work, he is your keeper, as you parent, he is your keeper. As you go through ordinary life you will experience hard times spiritually, but when our trust is not in ourself but is in God he promises you, reassures you, he is your keeper, he is your help and he always will be. You may be weak, but he is strong, you may take your eye off the ball but God never does.

Sermon: Sunday, 25th June, 2023
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Ephesians 3:14-21

One of the privileges we have as a church family is that we can pray for one another. A useful tool for encouraging us to do this has been the church directory. We can work our way through the list of names and make sure we pray for everyone on a regular basis. Three times we have used our church facebook group to help us to do this in a disciplined way. Perhaps it is time to do it again. But when we pray for each other, what should we pray for? There might be specific needs or problems that we know about and it’s good to pray about those. I think it’s fair to say that most of our prayers for ourselves and for others are focused on external circumstances – for good health, success at work, that our children would excel at school, for safety in travel and for personal happiness. Should we pray for such things? Yes, we should. Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer and says that we should pray for our ‘daily bread’- our everyday needs. However, this ought not to be the focus of our prayers. It’s not the focus of the Lord’s Prayer. And so, it is good for us to return again and again to Paul’s prayer with the simple question – what does Paul pray for, and what can I learn from his prayers? That’s what we are going to do this morning. We will remind ourselves what kind of things we ought to pray for.

1. Paul prays for power

When he prays for others, he asks (verse 16) that the Father would strengthen the Ephesian Christians with ‘power through his Spirit in your inner being’. Do you pray that others in the church family might know God’s power? We should. Again and again, we find Paul making this request in his letters.

What kind of power is Paul praying for? Is it power to perform miracles? Is it power to become healthy and wealthy? No. He prays for God’s mighty power to be at work so that Christ might dwell in our hearts through faith. But that leads us to another question – is it not true that all Christians already have Christ dwelling in us? Yes, that is perfectly true. ‘And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.’ (Romans 8:9) So, what does this mean? It means that we are not praying for something new, but to experience more and more of Jesus in our lives. To experience more of his influence. We’re praying for a closer walk with Jesus.

The key word here is ‘dwell’ and this is a strong word. This word ‘dwell’ is not something temporary, like staying in a hotel or an air B&B for a few nights. This word means to take up permanent residence.

I think the best picture to help us understand this is to think of a young married couple buying run down, badly decorated home, which is barely fit to live in. The roof leaks and the garden is wild and there’s so much needing to be done it is overwhelming. However, bit by bit, over time, one room at a time, the house begins to take shape and the house slowly becomes a home. That’s a bit like what happens to us when we become a Christian. Jesus moves into our dilapidated hearts, and begins a renovation project which will last the whole of our lives. So, we pray, ‘Lord, I know these attitudes in my heart are wrong – please help me to get rid of them. Please replace the hatred with love. Please replace the selfishness with kindness. Please replace the outbursts of anger with self-control.’ And Jesus, the great builder and interior designer, works in our hearts, making us more like him.

Why do I need you to pray that I would have power? Because I am weak. Why do I need to pray for the Spirit to empower you? Because you are weak too. The truth is, we desperately need the power of Christ in order to cope with the everyday things of life. We need Jesus’ power to resist all the temptations which will come our way. If you depend on your own strength, it will be a disaster. We need Jesus’ power to help us raise our families. We need Jesus’ power to help us go to our work and to do our work for his glory, and so that we can share with those in need.

The Christian life is not an easy life. In fact, it’s a constant battle between living selfishly and living for God. ‘For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.’ (Romans 7:22-3) As we pray for one another, ask God to strengthen others with his power.

Here’s a challenge for us: is there a particular room in your house that you don’t want Jesus to touch? It might be at work – you are being a bit ruthless in your behaviour and pride yourself in that and don’t really want to change. Or perhaps there’s a room with a sinful habit you have, and you don’t want to give it up. Or perhaps it is your viewing habits. We need to ask Jesus to come into all of the rooms, and change all of them.

2. Paul prays for the perception of God’s love

Paul wants us to grasp the dimensions of God’s love for us. Often, I will pray that God will help me to love him more, and that is a good prayer. But here, Paul is asking that we would grasp the enormity of God’s love for us. It’s a love which doesn’t just have three dimensions but four: ‘And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.’ (Ephesians 3:17-18)

Notice that in verse 17 Paul says that Christians already know something of God’s great love for us. He says we are ‘rooted and grounded’ in that love. It is when we remember Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross in our place that we become most aware of that love. However, here’s the truth of the matter, I still don’t have an adequate appreciation of how much God loves me, and neither do you. And that’s exactly why we need to pray for the supernatural power of God to help us to grasp and lay hold of and rely on God’s love more.

My wife loves to swim in the sea and in lochs. I’m not so confident and so tend to just paddle around the edges. And I miss out. When it comes to God’s love, do you want to just paddle around the edges of it, only thinking about it a wee bit? Or do you want to swim in that love, making it your key thought every single day?

Human love can be a fragile thing. Sometimes people can even say the words to us, ‘I just don’t love you any more’. But God will never say that to his children. When did God’s love for us begin?

‘For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.’ (Ephesians 1:4)

‘For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8:38-39)

‘I have loved you with an everlasting love.’ (Jeremiah 31:3)

‘The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ (Galatians 2:20)

Paul also wants us to know that experiencing the love of God is not something which we just do in private. Verses 17 -18; ‘And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ…’

“It takes the whole people of God to understand the whole love of God.” (John Stott)

What does this mean? Well, we gather each Sunday to worship Jesus together, and there’s something powerful in that togetherness. We have fellowship together, sharing how God has been helping us and strengthening us, and as we hear about that, we too are strengthened. We need each other in order to grasp God’s love!

Verse 19: To be ‘filled to the measure of all the fullness of God’ means to become a mature Christian. Don’t we all want to become mature Christians? What’s the secret? The secret is to understand just how much God really loves us! It’s God’s love which energises us as Christians.

‘For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.’ (2 Corinthians 5:14) If you are compelled to live for God out of guilt, that will never bring fruitful results. If you are compelled by self-righteousness, convincing yourself that you are a good person, that won’t work either. Lasting fruit will only come from our lives if we are compelled by the love of Christ.

Let’s think of God’s love as rich, fertile soil, in which we will grow. That’s actually what Paul is saying to us here. He says (verse 17) that we are ‘rooted’ in this love. In other words, the love God has for us contains all the nutrients and goodness we need in order to flourish spiritually. Again, all the more reason why we need to grasp this love more than we do.

Let’s also think of God’s love as the foundation of our lives. Paul uses this image too in this passage. He says (verse 17) that we are ‘established’ or ‘grounded’ in God’s love for us. We all know what happens to buildings with weak foundations. When the storms come, they are liable to collapse. The same is true of us. When the storms of life come our way, the disappointments in relationships, the difficulties at work and with health, the persecution, the financial troubles, if we don’t have Jesus as our foundation we will collapse under the weight of these things. But if Christ’s love for us is our foundation, we will be able to withstand the storms, in his strength.

Friends, let’s keep on praying for one another as much as we can. And when we do so, add these specific requests to our prayers, that we would know God’s power at work within us, and that we might have the life-changing ability to better appreciate God’s love for us. This is the kind of soil that we need in our lives, so let’s ask for it.

Let’s end our time in this passage marvelling at the dimensions of God’s love. It is so broad that it encompasses men and women, rich and poor, and all the nationalities of the world. It is so long that it is a love which predates the existence of the earth, and will go on, unbroken, into eternity. It is so high, that it will take us up to Heaven one day. And it is so deep that Jesus was willing to stoop down and come into this earth to save the worst of sinners like us.

Sermon: Sunday, 18th June, 2023
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Exodus 14

This is one of the most dramatic and famous historical accounts in the Bible. Imagine being an Israelite family on that day. You’ve been slaves for the whole of your lives. It has been a living nightmare – you’ve been worked to the bone by a ruthless superpower who have been committing genocide against your people, drowning Israelite baby boys in the river Nile. Making bricks without straw in a country which despised you and who worshipped false gods. It’s been that way for hundreds of years. But in recent days, God has raised up a leader called Moses and performed supernatural acts of judgment against your Egyptian oppressors, bringing them to their knees through ten plagues. The last of the plagues resulted in the eldest male in every Egyptian household being killed. However, your house was safe, as the doorway was covered in the sacrificial blood of a lamb, just as the LORD has instructed. The only safe place was to be inside a home marked by this sacrificial blood. To your astonishment, the Egyptian rulers finally agree to let you go. Moses assures you that God will direct us to a country of our own. It’s been such an overwhelming time. Could it really be true? You’ve never felt this way before – brimming with excitement and best of all – free. God has brought you to Pi Hahiroth, with the sea in front and the desert behind. You head to sleep to dream of what our own country will be like.

However, the next day, after such an emotional high, your hopes come crashing down. Ominous sounds are heard and they’re getting closer and closer. That nauseous feeling returns to your stomach as you realise the Egyptian army is approaching. A country of our own? It was too good to be true. You’re trapped! The sea is ahead of you and our old enemies are behind you. It seems like you are going to be slaughtered. Your best hope is to be taken back to Egypt. There is no way of escape. That’s what’s happening here in Exodus 14. Pharaoh has changed his mind. In stubborn foolishness, he regrets letting his slave labour force go and pursues them with hundreds of chariots. Each one probably carried both an archer and a swordsman. These chariots were the weapons of mass destruction of the day – terrifying.

But what has this ancient battle got to do with us here in Kirkcaldy this morning? Before looking at some of the details, let’s just take a step back and try to see the big picture. This event teaching us of what it means to become a true Christian. The Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt is a crucial visual aid for us, teaching us what we must experience in our own hearts, if we ever want to make it to the promised land of Heaven.

In what ways are we like these Israelites? What is this visual aid teaching us? Where are we in the story? We’re like the Israelites because we too were slaves and under the power of an evil and merciless ruler. The Bible tells us that before we become Christians, we are slaves to sin. Jesus said, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.’ (John 8:34) If you’re not a Christian yet, you might well find that offensive. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Just as the Israelites were in Pharaoh’s iron grip, so we were in the grip of Satan. We lived to just please ourselves and with barely any thought of pleasing God. Doing what you want might seem like freedom, but it’s actually spiritual slavery, because God has made us and designed us as human beings to live in a relationship with him, following his ways and not our own. That’s how true freedom is found, through a living relationship with God.

Just as drug addicts are addicted to their drugs, or alcoholics to the bottle, so all human beings without Jesus, are addicted to living selfish lives, breaking God’s rules on a daily basis and failing to love God. Before we become Jesus’ followers we are slaves to sin. When we put our trust in Jesus and his death on the cross, we are set free. The Bible says, ‘But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.’ (Romans 6:17-18)

There’s another way we’re like the Israelites here. They were completely trapped with no way of escape. They could not save themselves. They were helpless. The sea was in front of them and the enemy soldiers behind them. Left to themselves, they were doomed. They needed God to rescue them, to save them. In the Bible, that’s exactly how God describes the situation of all human beings. We are slaves to sin, but we have no way of setting ourselves free. We have no way of escape. Left to ourselves, we will eventually die, and then have to appear before God and give an account for our lives. ‘And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment…’ (Hebrews 9:27) If you’re not yet a Christian here this morning, this is a visual aid just for you. You cannot rescue yourself spiritually any more than the Israelites could set themselves free. Your only hope is for God to open up a way of escape.

That brings us to the most beautiful part of the visual aid. When there was no way of escape, God made a way. He supernaturally sent a wind to gather up the waters of the Red Sea. He opens up a way for us to leave slavery behind once and for all, and to head towards the Promised Land. He deals with our enemies in a decisive blow, destroying them with his power. When there was no way, God makes a way, and leads his people to safety. This is the God who saves – the God of salvation. In the wonderful song of Moses in the next chapter we read: ‘The Lord is my strength and my defence; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he has hurled into the sea.’ Exodus 15:1-4) This is what lies at the heart of the Exodus. The LORD has become our salvation.

In this way, the Exodus story points us straight to Jesus dying on the cross. Because that’s when God sent his son Jesus to die on the cross that he opened up a way of escape for us. Before, there was no way for us to be forgiven by God and to enter Heaven when we die. We had no way of getting to Heaven, because we are just too dirty and sinful, and our huge debt of sin disqualifies us. But when we trust in Jesus, he pays off our spiritual debts completely, setting us free, and leading us to the Promised Land of Heaven. When there was no way of escaping God’s just judgment on our sins, God himself opened up a way, by coming to die for us. The cross is the real Exodus. Jesus death and resurrection is the definitive way God opened up a pathway back to himself.

How do we know this is true? How do we know this opening of the Red Sea is a picture pointing forward to a greater salvation to come when Jesus would die and rise again? In Luke’s Gospel, there’s the wonderful account of Jesus’ transfiguration. This is when Jesus was soon to die on the cross. But for a short time, his inner glory comes bursting out, and his face shines like the sun. Moses and Elijah appear from Heaven to talk with Jesus. And what are they talking about? ‘They spoke about his exodus, which he was about to bring to fulfilment at Jerusalem.’ (Luke 9:31) Jesus’ death was the real Exodus. The opening up of the Red Sea was just a ‘trailer’ about God saving his people, to whet our appetites. The main saving event in all of history was Jesus’ death.

What, then, does God want from us this morning? He wants us to stop relying on ourselves, and trust completely in him for forgiveness and salvation. In a word, he wants our faith. He wants us to believe that only he can open up a way to Heaven. Let’s think back to the Israelites on that day. In order to be saved, they would have had to step onto the seabed, in faith, believing that the Lord would keep holding back the waters on either side of them. Imagine taking that first step. Maybe your faith is weak, but you trust that God has done this, and you begin to walk across the sea. It’s God who has saved you. It is 100% God. He has opened up the path, and he just wants you to walk through.

What does God want from you this morning? He wants your faith. He wants you to trust that Jesus is the only hope you have for your sins to be taken away and blotted out. ‘By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.’ (Hebrews 11:9) God doesn’t have a sea he wants you to pass through. But he still wants your faith, your belief in his way to be saved. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ (John 3:16)

The Israelites had to put their trust in God that day. The question is, will you do the same? Will you say in your heart right now, ‘Yes I know I don’t deserve to go to Heaven, but Jesus died on the cross in my place, and that’s the path I’m stepping out onto.’ If you do that, you will be set free. Believe today that only God can rescue you, and trust the way of escape he has made for us.

What else can we learn form this passage? There are three short lessons.

1. We see how hard the human heart is even in the face of evidence.

Here, we are thinking of Pharaoh in particular. He’s not just seen one outstanding miracle from God but ten. Time and time again, God revealed his power and authority to Pharaoh. God is the true King. And how does Pharaoh respond? He keeps on rebelling. He has all the evidence, but persists in rebelling against God. It seemed like the Israelites were the slaves and Pharaoh was free, but actually it was the other way round; Pharaoh’s heart is a slave to rebellion and sin against the true God. Many people are like that today. They have evidence of Jesus’ life, miracles, death and the greatest sign of all – his resurrection from death. Yet, it makes no difference. ‘The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.’ (1 Corinthians 2:14) Were it not for God’s Spirit, we’d be just like Pharaoh. We’d see the evidence of his power, and continue rebelling. How hard the human heart is. We cannot save ourselves.

2. We see how Christians, at times, can wish they weren’t Christians any more.

Perhaps that sounds a shocking thing to say. God had shown his faithfulness to Israel by bringing them of Egypt with signs and wonders and by protecting them from the angel of death. God redeemed them, with lambs dying instead of them, so the angel of death would pass over their homes. But now there’s a new challenge, and it’s like they have spiritual amnesia. It’s as if they think, ‘God can’t handle this situation’. We’re trapped. How do they respond to this new threat? ‘They said to Moses, ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!’ (Exodus 14:11-12) They respond with biting sarcasm, fear, and unbelief. They turn on Moses and do not trust in the Lord. They wish they were slaves once again in Egypt.

Yet, we all can be like that. God has brought situations into my life and I’ve doubted whether God can handle this new situation, even though he’s been faithful to me for my entire life. I might even think, it’d be easier if I wasn’t a Christian and then I could have an easy life, blend in, and not have to tell people about all this serious stuff of sin and salvation. Then I wouldn’t have to come to church and be committed with my time and money and resources. I could just chill out and enjoy life. I could indulge my pet sins. For a time, our old lives seem preferable. Israel’s desire to go back to Egypt is something we might face too. We need to pray that God would keep us in a place of faith, rather than a place of fear. God’s grace here is also astounding. Even when his people wobble so much, he remains faithful to us.

3. We see how God brings us to a place of weakness so that we fully rely on him.

‘Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. They are to encamp by the sea, directly opposite Baal Zephon.’ (Exodus 14:1-2) Notice that it is God who deliberately leads the Israelites to a place where they are hemmed in by the sea and the desert, knowing full well that the Egyptians will trap them on the other side. Why does God do this? Because it’s when we understand our own helplessness that we begin to trust in God and his salvation, and he alone gets the credit and the glory he deserves.

Impossible situations in our lives are occasions for God to show his grace and love and power in our lives. We think we can’t go on, but he provides for us. This is exactly what Paul speaks about in his second letter to the Corinthians. ‘We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.’ (2 Corinthians 1:8-9) Are there situations in your life just now which seem to be hopeless? Are you beyond your own resources? Don’t be surprised if God breaks in and reveals his glory in that situation, perhaps not right now, but in the future. God specialises in bringing us to a place where we have to rely on him. When things seem impossible and beyond us, keep on trusting. Remember what Jesus said to Jairus when his daughter had already died. Could Jesus handle this impossible situation? He says to Jairus: ‘Keep on believing.’

As a church, we must not rely on ourselves. That’s why the prayer meeting is so important. And if we lack Sunday School teachers, crèche helpers, finance, conversions, and face all kinds of pressures from the apathetic world we live in, we must fully rely on God’s power. We want to see a church planted in Leven, but we want God to get all the glory, and that will only happen if we rely on him at each step. And in our lives at home and in work, take your impossible situations and bring them to God in prayer, knowing that he loves to display his glory in our lives. ‘The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen.’ (Exodus 14:18)

We don’t face troubles on our own. ‘The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.’ (Exodus 14:14)