Word Online: shortform review

We were made to live in a garden temple a paradise with God himself. That is what we were made for But of course this was forfeited what that could have been was forfeited because we messed it up We sinned we rebelled rather than seeking communion with God We sought rather to do our own thing and we are still doing that. We have still forfeited that But the grand story of scriptures how God is now calling us back to what he made us for there is a sense in which Being Christian is not becoming something other than human, but just becoming human again

If you think you can get to the end of God, or any of his attributes, then you've misunderstood who he is. He is infinite. There is no end. You can explore his love and infinite forever and ever and ever and ever. You will never get the bath. When you are called to know Jesus, you are called to know him, you are drawn into communion with him, and you will be marveling at him forever and ever and ever and ever.

Jesus is getting us to follow Him, because He's leading us somewhere else. We're not there yet. We're not there yet. This is not our hope. This is not our destination. We're passing through. Too many Christians are trying to treat this world as their home. We're trying to fix politics. Like that is what Jesus has called us to do. Like we're trying to make this world heaven. When Jesus has said, you're going to heaven, this isn't it.

I'll fight our whole fight, says Paul, is not against people, not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of darkness that are at play behind these things. I promise you, I promise you there are as many demons in Russia as there are in Ukraine. I promise you there are as many demons in Palestine as there are in Israel. I promise you there are as many demons in America as in the UK. I promise you there are demons on the right and there are demons on the left. There are demons amongst Hindus, there are demons amongst Christians.

I am building my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against all my life I've thought that what that means is the gates of hell describe the kind of armies of hell attacking the church and the church are defending themselves against that but then you realize that a gate doesn't attack a gate defends Jesus says he is building his church his army his hosts and he is sending them to attack the gates of hell and the gates of hell will not withstand the attack of the church on its gates it will give way we are going to plunder hell

I hold a mirror up to you now. And what do you see? Well, you'll see yourselves in fairly ordinary array. But if I hold a mirror up to you that shows what your reflection looks like in heaven, what you see is something very, very different. You see you, but you also see angels. You see you not as you are now, but you as you are raised and seated with Christ above. You see not only the presence of people, but the presence of God.

But you see, the whole thing about scripture is that it's not trying to get you into a psychological trick. It's not trying to tell you you're nearly there when there's still miles to go. It's not just trying to boost you a little bit to keep you going. What it's doing is saying, here is your problem, you cannot see as God sees. And so it is a wonder, a wonder into a world you cannot see.

So, let me just state for the record: the zodiac. We sometimes think of the zodiac as a bad thing. Zodiac paganism, zodiac astrology, that's all bad, right? No. The zodiac was made by God. The zodiac is good. What is bad is trying to tell the future through some kind of divination technique when you're looking at the stars. So don't. Your horoscopes? Not okay. Zodiac, looking at the zodiac? Perfectly fine.

Because what do stars represent? What are stars, biblically speaking? You might say, well, a star is a flaming ball of gas. That's what a star is. And I would say back to you what C.S. Lewis said in the Chronicles of Narnia, that even in our day, that is not what a star is, that is what a star is made of. What a star is, is a sign. A sign of spiritual life.

Where the church is, the cherubim are. And where the cherubim are, God is. And in fact, more than that, the church is like the visible earthly half or version of the cherubim in heaven. They are the heavenly entourage of God in heaven. We are the earthly entourage of God on earth. But as we gather together, heaven and earth meet, God and man meet, it is the touching point, the nexus, the axis on which everything connects.

My dad always warned me growing up when he was teaching me to drive he said the thing you have to be careful of son is that familiarity breeds contempt when you start to get too comfortable too familiar with a thing you stop paying attention you stop taking it seriously and that's when accidents happen familiarity breeds contempt it's true of driving it's also true of being God's holy people because God is holy, dangerously holy, dangerously holy to you and to me, dangerously holy to our world.

But if you're talking about the awkwardness of being someone who is not holy, coming into the presence of a holy God and feeling convicted and feeling uncomfortable, and hearing of things like God's judgment and feeling afraid, if we eliminate any sense of that because that's not good for the seeker because they might not come back, then what you're doing is playing fast and loose with the very dangerous presence of a holy God.

Safe? said Mr. Beaver. Who said anything about safe? Of course, he isn't safe, but he's good. He's the king, I tell you. Now, that is C.S. Lewis's attempt to help you and I understand what it means to know the God of the Bible. Who said anything about safe? Good, great, the king, but safe, comfortable. These are not words that we use to talk about our God. Our God is holy. He's a consuming fire.

But what about coming into the presence of a holy God who will be your destruction unless you learn how to approach him? A God so holy that the light and sinful you will be disintegrate in his presence unless you know how to approach him. A God who burns with loves and wrath in equal measure. Where is that God and the come and be nice people who do nice things for people?

How is it that you and I will not disintegrace it? And the answer to that is the Gospel. The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is that sinners can come into the presence of a holy God, not by trying harder or being nicer, but by the free grace of God given through the Lord Jesus Christ, that is through faith in Him, who is our great High Priest, who makes atonement for us, who cleanses us and washes us clean, and fits us with the robes of righteousness that we need to dare to enter His presence. It all comes through Christ.

Jesus said no one comes to the Father but through me. There is no other way. The only reason you and I are not destroyed is because we come to the Father through the Son. Because we come through our High Priest. Because we come through the One who is the axis point where heaven meets earth where God and man join together in Jesus Christ. Because He died for us. Because He shed His blood for us. Because we are forgiven of our sins. Because we are washed clean and clothed in His righteousness. That is the only way we have access to the Father.

It's too much to take on board, isn't it? I feel like that old song. I get the news I need on the weather report, then if any of you remember that one. That's... That's how I feel. I don't want to read the news. But God says Nebuchadnezzar is my serpent. God is suffering. God is the one who is in control. God is the one who is orchestrating all of those events to his own good end. He will bring about his purposes. He does have a plan.

It stops being just a specific word at a specific time and it starts to be a word for everywhere and for all time and that includes us. It is a word to us. There will be a judgment. That judgment is sure and that judgment is inescapable.

We shouldn't think that this is just Old Testament stuff and that that's all gone away. In Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 31, the writer there reminds us, reminds the Christians he is writing to. It's a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. God's judgment is still to come. But although God's judgment is sure and although God's judgment is inescapable, Jesus has taken God's judgment for us.

It wasn't circumstances that Jesus was asking to be delivered from. It wasn't just a difficult time. He was asking to be delivered from the cup that his Father had given him. That same cup that was given metaphorically to Jeremiah, that same cup of God's wrath, God's judgment is sure. God's judgment is inescapable. But Jesus has taken God's judgment for us.

God is not angry with us any longer when we are in Christ, and only when we are in Christ. And that is the good news. That although that judgment is there, there is a way out, because Jesus has taken God's judgment for us.

I had the misfortune to take my car in to be serviced, and now I drive a lonely Skoda, but it's very nice, I like my Skoda. But they're currently located in the Aldi Showroom. Now, go and step into the Aldi Showroom. If it's not a cathedral to consumerism, then it's nothing. It is designed to make you think, this is the way forward, this is the life, this is fulfilment, and it only costs anywhere between 60 and 90.

We still need to have discernment about what we should listen to because if we're not listening to God, we are listening to someone else. We are surrounded by those voices of advertising, I mean social media, literature and films. They all tell us, and in a sense they tell us, what we want to hear. That's what makes them so attractive.

However, if you pass by the gold and the platinum and go straight to the diamond, 500 dollars a month, everything in platinum plus, you get a 45-minute bi-monthly business discipleship. God's going to bless your business. You pay us 500 dollars a month. You get full access to master classes. You get VIP access to GML events. And you get prayer covering by the GML team. Pay us more and you'll get more blessing. Sounds a bit fishy, isn't it?

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. The contrast is just amazing. It's not the heavy burden of exile, but it's rest. It's not domination by an arrogant, powerful, ruthless leader. But it's gentleness and humility come to me, come to me.

The Lord Jesus will return again, and if we have not willingly taken the yoke of the Lord Jesus, then we will still bow the knee as He comes in all His power, in all His might. So the words that Jeremiah spoke to those people back in 594 BC, they resonate across those thousands of years and they still speak to us. Take the yoke of my servant Jesus and live.

We've got a tendency, when we read scripture, to think that it's about us. We, in our individualistic culture and in our pride, and our, our sort of self- importance, and I speak of myself here, we love to put ourselves at the centre of the story. So when we see it, I know the plans I have for you, we see a finger pointing straight at us and thinking that's for me.

They will be my people and I will be their God They will be my people and I will be their God That's the blessing that's the prosperity that's the welfare Being God's people and God being our God being in rights relationship with God God is our God

There is a future and a hope to cling to. You the exiles are not forgotten, you're not abandoned by God, he is still sovereign and he will act. Despite the covenant having been broken, a new covenant will be put in place.

Is it enough for us just to have a bit of a wash to become God's people? Is a light valet sufficient? No, it isn't. There needs to be a full service and an MOT. We need to be looked at and dealt with.

There is a future there is a home that future and that hope are in Jesus That future and that hope are far more Than prosperity in this world far more Than anything this world offers It is Jesus Jesus given to us Jesus who we can know Jesus who will be our righteousness Here is shalom here is prosperity here and only here is peace and true welfare

There are other people we were chatting to this week who had very strong opinions about religion and Christianity and about Jesus. Not all of them positive. But as I was talking to them, it became clear that the Jesus they were talking about was not the same as the Jesus that I talk about and think about.

The problem with our world is bad leaders, and that can only be solved by a righteous leader. But not just a righteous leader who's righteous in the sense that they are good at telling the population what they want to hear. Saying the right words so that people will think that they are righteous. Doing the right things, kissing the right babies, turning up at the right charity events. That's not the kind of righteousness that is spoken about here. This is somebody who is good, who does good because they are good. And sometimes that good doesn't please people because those people are not good. But that is the leader that our world needs.

There are two ways that you can have a King come at you, and the one is to conquer you by force, and the other is to do what Jesus did, to come and bring peace through humbly laying his life down for us.

Now, if you're expecting Jesus to save you from Roman oppression, you don't want a donkey. You want a war horse. If you're expecting him to conquer evil armies, you don't want a donkey. You want a war horse. If you want him to come and defeat all the baddies and drive them out of your town and set up strong walls and drive away the armies. If you want a military victory, you don't want your king charging out on a on a donkey.

Is that the answer to the world's problems? Is the world okay then? Because what we're asking for is not just a reset, not just a temporary truce, not just a, not just a ceasefire. We're asking for peace. And peace is not just, even though I still hate you, I'm not going to kill you. Peace is peace. It means the restoration of the whole thing. It means that we're at one with God, with neighbor, with nature, with everything. And so there is no world peace fully, completely, finally, forever, without the peace that Jesus brings with God. The end of the war, the end of strife with God Himself.

You know that if God is in your midst, something has to change in your life. If the Lord Jesus knocked on your door and asked to come into your house, what would be the parts of your house that you wish were not the way that they were? What would you like to have been changed right then? If the Lord Jesus comes into your heart, what are the parts of your heart that you wish were not like that?

What it means to be pure, knowing that God's presence is in your midst, is sometimes to do hard things, to make hard choices. What happens when you have to choose between what you want, or what is easy, or what everybody else is saying, and between what God is saying?

All of the cleansing rituals of the Old Testament are replaced by one New Covenant ritual, which is baptism. In your baptism, you are united to Christ and therefore you are cleansed. You are washed clean. That's it. You don't have to do that every week. You don't have to do that every day. You don't have to do that every month. You don't have to do that every year. You do it once because once you are in Christ, you are clean.

Your relationship to God cannot be separated from your relationship to the people sitting around you. You cannot have a relationship to God that excludes the people around you. Your relationship to the people around you is your relationship to God.

I'm spiritual, but not religious meaning that they do their own stuff by themselves at home, but they won't do it with anybody else This is saying it doesn't work like that Because when you become a Christian you are brought into a community of Christians a church and when you're brought into a community of Christians you all relate to God together Which means you can't separate your relationship with God from your relationship to your brothers and sisters It's impossible So if you are out of sync with your brothers and sisters, you are out of sync with God

the number one objection you'll hear to some Christian ethics is, well, if it doesn't harm anyone and if everyone agrees to it, then what's wrong with it, right? So if you have two consensual adults and it's nobody else's business, what's the problem with it? Well, the problem with it is because you can't separate the way that you relate to other people from the way that you relate to God. And if God says no, then what you are doing to the other person is harmful to them and is a sin against God and against them.

We continue to live lives of repentance and restoration, acknowledging our guilt before God and before others. We need to be a people who are very, very good at saying two things. I'm sorry and I forgive you. Those two things make up the Christian life.

There is no worship without an altar. Unless there is a sacrifice, unless there is shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Unless there is forgiveness of sins, there is no purification from uncleanness. If there is no purification from uncleanness, then there is no possibility of drawing near into the very presence of God. The mere fact that you and I can come here into the very presence of God is not because we don't have an altar, it is because we have a perfect altar. Not an altar where sins have to be atoned for every day, where uncleanness has to be washed away every day, but an altar that once for all has purified all of us.

The cross remains the center of the Christian life, this day, every day, always. We are always coming to the Father only through the cross, there is no other way. The cross determines the shape of our whole lives. The cross is our only hope because there is no other sacrifice given by which men can be saved.

Fire is good. It brings light. It brings warmth. It brings heat. You can cook food on, etc., etc. Fire is a good thing, but if you become complacent with fire, it will kill you. This is precisely what it means to walk in total devotion to God, to walk in relationship to God. God is good. God provide warm and provides warmth, and light, and heat. He's comfort to us. He is truth to us. He's life to us. But if you become complacent with God, it will be the death of you.

Think about the Lord Jesus for a moment. Just think about what you know of him from the ends of the Gospels Think about how often Jesus ate with people Those pictures of Jesus you have the famous pictures of Jesus at the Last Supper He's sitting there with his people gathered around him communing with them at a meal After his resurrection, what does he do? He cooks and he eats fish with his disciples It's the same picture of God communing with his people over a meal

We are a kingdom of priests. We all need each other. We have different gifts. The eye cannot say to the mouth, I don't need you. The elder cannot say to the, to the plumber, I don't need you. I really do need those of you who are plumbers to be very good plumbers, so that you continue to earn an income, so that through your giving, you are then able to continue the church's ministry and its outreach. I'm not joking. That is very, very important.

A colleague of mine, Keith, was very fond of saying that grace means God's riches at Christ's expense Get it? G-R-A-C-E. God's riches at Christ's expense But that word grace is perhaps in some ways too familiar to us. It was washes over us Let's just think about it for a moment God's riches at Christ's expense You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ He was rich, but he came poor so that you through his property might become rich

We need to think about Gethsemane, don't we? When we're afraid of things, when we're afraid of the future, we, we turn into ourselves, don't we? Whether it's health, whether it's money, our job, relationship, whatever it might be. We're afraid of the future, we'll run away from it if we can. Jesus faced up to it in all its cost.

How do you feel when you are ashamed of something? What do you do? What's your reaction? We do everything to defend ourselves, don't we? We don't want people to think badly of it. Our reputation matters. Jesus takes on the shame of the cross. Nothing more shameful than that. And he does it for our sake.

Now, we can't be generous towards God, because everything we have belongs to God, doesn't it? He's given us all that we have. But we can be generous towards others, as Christ has been to us, with whatever God has given us. And we can and we should do that, even if it costs us.

It would be much easier to have rules about how we should give, wouldn't it? You join the church, this is what you have to do, at least you know where you are. And then we could get round the rules and what you could try to, like the Pharisees used to do. We could look for ways to do the minimum. I've got to be cheerful, have I? Okay, well I'll give a pound, cheerfully. Not very generous, is it? God wants to change our heart.

We need to give these things not just to people we like, not just to our friends and family, not just to those who we think deserve it. Because God's grace has been for the undeserving. Which of you deserved to be saved? Did I deserve to be saved? Absolutely not! And we are to be like our Father in Heaven.

Make sure that every time you take the Lord's Supper, you are recommitting yourself to being in covenant with God through the mediation of Jesus Christ. He is our Passover Lamb. We, through Him, through faith in Him, are His covenant people. This is the meal of covenant renewal. Every time we eat and drink by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are saying again to ourselves and to Him that we are in this covenant. And we are calling on God to remember His covenant promises, not just to recall them to mind, but to enact them.

We don't eat a lamb, we eat the lamb through bread and through wine. We don't remember being delivered from slavery to the Egyptians, but we participate in and renew the covenant which ensures our deliverance from slavery to sin and death and Satan and liberation into a new covenant life of God until we enter the new heavens and the new earth. Remember the covenant! Remember the covenant!

Everywhere we go, it is at the direction of the Lord. Everything that we do is at the direction of the Lord. Everything that we don't do is at the direction of the Lord. When He goes, we go. When He stays, we stay. Everything that is commanded ought to be fulfilled in us, or at least attempted it. We will fail. And so we will all run back to our Passover lab for the forgiveness of sins and for the reassurance that His presence will not leave us because of us.

There is no sense in which we say to the Lord, Lord, last time we stayed for like three months and then before we headed off, but now we've only been here for one night. Don't you think it would be better, Lord, if we stayed for three months and kept it consistent so that people could build up a bit of a rhythm and know what to expect? There is no sense of that. It's not a democracy. It's a theocracy with God commanding and us listening. We're here, guys, we go. This is the picture of the Christian life. And this is the picture of the church.

The services of worship used to be called the Mass in Latin. Now, when we hear the word Mass, we think Roman Catholic, we think transubstantiation, we think things we don't believe in. But the word Mass is the same root in Latin as the word mission. In other words, the whole point of the Mass was that it sent you out into the world. It gathered you together and sent you out.

There is a trumpet call that is coming that will gather the entire world around the feet of God Himself in Christ where we will be raised from the dead and we'll face judgment in His name. And so to watch of the trumpet is to be ready for that day. Be ready for that day.

Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Our main purpose as human beings, the reason God has made us, is to praise Him. It's a pleasure. It's something for us to enjoy now and always. If that's true, my question is... How did you feel on your way to church this morning?

If you're a football fan, you'll know that the question asked of the great players is: Can they do it on a cold and rainy night in Stoke? It's all very well playing in the great big football grounds with the floodlights and the attention and lots of star players with you. But when you're in a horrible, miserable, cold, wet place and people are kicking you, playing the sort of football you don't like, can you actually show your skill then? And in a way, Christians are asked the same sort of question. Can you praise and worship God whenever?

You're not always engaged, are you? We know the tunes. The words are familiar, but we can read them while we're thinking about something else. And maybe that's our challenge this morning, to really be truly engaged in worship and when we sing all the time. Because praising the Lord with our, with our voice and our heart, with our body and our soul, that is the best thing in the world that we can do. Whatever you enjoy most in life, this is better. So, do you praise God like this?

God's nation on earth is not Israel, it's not despite what many people think, the United States of America, it's not Britain. God's nation on earth is the church. He's church. We are a holy nation. That's the one nation that counts as far as God is concerned. So our first thought about other people from wherever should be God's first thought, and it's a heartful mission to bring people in. They are like us, people in need of God's salvation, people in need of Jesus.

David Attenborough's got a lot of attention. 100 years old, great achievements and so on. But what he never says in all that he films is praise the Lord. He thinks that all those wonderful things he shows have just happened. He really doesn't believe in God as far as I know. Oh, no. David Attenborough, you've still got time. The psalmist knew who made all those wonderful things. And the response to that is to praise him.

Do you doubt God's great love? Do you doubt his faithfulness? Have your experiences of life made you wonder whether God is good? God does love you. But in John's first letter, he tells us what love is. This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. God dealt with our sins.

When we complain about what God is allowing us to go through what our lot in life is now so often we complain and think Oh, what is the point of worshiping a God who allows me to go through suffering? We make the same mistake Because we are acting like this life now is the promised land That actually the promises were for a blessed life now that your promises were for health and wealth and and Problem-free existence now you are promised those things in Christ, but you're not promised them now you're promised them then

Is he not faithful? Does he not love me? I thought it would be easier than this. I thought it would be easygoing and free flowing and there'd be no hassles and God would just sort out all my problems for me and there wouldn't be any sin in the church and there wouldn't be any hardships to deal with. I wouldn't have to deal with sickness again. Because that's, you know, what I associate with being God's people. And God's saying, yes, but you are sojourning now. You're a traveler now. You're a wayfarer. You're an exile. But I'm taking you there. Just be patient. Just be patient. Hold on. Walk by faith. Be patient. You will get there.

All complaining, all complaining at some level is a rejection of God's will over your lives. All complaining at some level is a kicking against the goads of God's leading. It's the lot he's given us that we would rather not have because we don't trust that he's in it for our good, just like Adam and Eve did not trust that God's forbidding them to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil was for their good. And there's a part of us that does not accept that, that would rather have it another way, that thinks that we could do a better job of being Lord of our lives than God.

Lord's people, on your journey to the Promised Land, beware the graves of lust. Beware the graves of craving and desiring the world over heaven, of craving and desiring flesh over spirit, of craving and desiring worldly goods over God Himself. That leads to death. Beware the graves of craving.

Where do we go when we face the same pattern of evil cravings of complaining of rejecting the Lord of walking away? Where do we go? What do we do? Well, we go to Christ our mediator But unlike Moses Christ has no deficiencies. There are no limitations to his mediating office he can die for his people he does die for his people and His death on behalf of his people or with his people Means that his people don't face death. They don't face judgments They live even though they die

But the responsibility of being God's people is then that we live and speak and act as those who have God in their midst, which means God sees and God hears everything. There was, I used to be involved in running youth camps, and on one of the sites that we used to use, above the dinner tables where everyone is having dinner, there was a signpost up that I can't remember the exact wording of it, but it said something like, Speak as though God hears what you say.

Listen, Moses was a faithful servant in God's house. But Jesus is not a servant, he is the son of God's house. He doesn't serve in God's house like Moses did. He is the owner of the house, the heir of all things. It belongs to him. Moses is serving in Jesus' house. So the direct equivalent of speaking against Moses is much more like speaking against Jesus, except to speak against Jesus is an even greater offense than to speak against Moses. Because Moses saw the form of God when he was in God's presence, Jesus is the form of God.

To be humble is not to think less of yourself, but to think more of others Now that's true. And so far as it goes, that's a good helpful way to understand humility isn't putting yourself down It is to kind of elevate others, but even that doesn't quite go far enough To what humility is because humility Fundamentally at his core for it to be true. Humility is not about thinking about yourself in relationship to other people It's about thinking about yourself in relationship to God. It's to put you in your place before God Your place before God and seeing that truly and accurately and clearly and thinking of yourself that way is true humility

There is no sin quite so dangerous and distracted as pride. That's a bold claim, there's lots of very distractive sins we can commit and there's lots of very great virtues we can aspire to. Humility and pride, for me, represent the two polar ends of what it means to be righteous, what it means to be evil. To know who you are in God's eyes is the ultimate virtue.

Humility isn't just about pretending that you're nothing. It's not about that at all. It's about understanding who you are in relationship to God. The most humble people understand that they are only vessels through which God is at work. They do not envy others when God is at work through them in greater ways. They are not jealous of the successes of others. They accept that they are who they are before the Lord, and he uses them as he wishes.