Thank you!
Thanks to all who helped on Thursday and Saturday with sash sewing in preparation for the Good Friday Church Crawl. We appreciate your help more than we can say. Thanks to Janet from Our Shed Dearne who organised everything so efficiently and a special thanks to 10 year old Jake (who attends the woodwork and sewing classes there) who made 12 sashes and helped with the setting up and clearing away (those thankless tasks no wants to do!)
The Good Friday Church Crawl will take place on Friday 30th March and will be an opportunity to find out more about how different churches celebrate Good Friday in our community. We’ll start at Furlong Road Methodist Church at 10.30 a.m. for a service there, and after that will walk (wearing our yellow sashes!) to the Salvation Army in Goldthorpe where we’ll have lunch and the opportunity to join in craft activities.
We’ll then move to Goldthorpe Pentecostal Community Church on Market Street to watch an excerpt from a film based on John’s gospel (arriving about 12.45 p.m.) and from there, will visit the Stations of the Cross at the Parish Church on Lockwood Road (1.20 p.m.) and join in quiet worship at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church (also on Lockwood Church) (1.40 p.m.)
During the walks, we will be giving out daffodils and Easter eggs and literature about Easter, and from Sacred Heart, we’ll walk across Phoenix Park to Thurnscoe where we’ll take part in ‘Messy Church’ activities at Thurnscoe Pentecostal Church (Houghton Road Centre, Thurnscoe, 2.30 p.m.) before walking to St Helen’s Church Hall on High Street where 4Front Theatre will be giving a live performance ‘So On and So 4th’ about the Easter story (4-5 p.m.)
We’re so excited that so many local churches are involved with this event and hope you will help by providing us with small wrapped Easter eggs to give out as well as joining with us for some or all of the above events. If you’re not able to walk these distances, please feel free to drive between events, or just come to the ones you can make!
The Exalted Anointed One
Ps 22, the focus of our last Bible study, looked at the sufferings of Christ on the cross and how these were predicted with shocking clarity hundreds of years before crucifixion was even a form of public execution. This psalm has two halves: the first describing the humiliation and suffering of the Messiah and the second describing the glory and exaltation which this suffering would achieve.
Many other psalms look ahead to the resurrection and exaltation of the Messiah. Ps 16, written by David, talks of the satisfaction that is found in God alone: ‘Lord, You alone are my portion and my cup’ (Ps 16:5) and looks to a ‘delightful inheritance’ (Ps 16:6) found in God. Chief amongst the pleasures found in God is the fact, however, that ‘my body will rest secure because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.’ (Ps 16:9-10)
It is entirely possible that David was not thinking of the after-life as he wrote this, focussing on God’s immediate deliverance from ever-present enemies. However, both Peter and Paul understand the ‘layers’ of meaning found in prophetic writings, and both assert that these verses apply directly to Jesus Christ. Acts 2:25-33 expounds this fully, with Peter saying ‘I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it.’ Paul makes the same point in Acts 13:32-37. What the psalmist had only prophesied about, the apostles had actually witnessed: a man whose very dead body had been placed in a tomb with a seal in front of it and Roman guards placed outside appearing in glory and light to more than 500 witnesses, a man for whom the grave did not have the last word. No wonder Paul talks of Christ disarming powers and authorities and making a public spectacle of them, triumphing over the cross! (Col 2:13-15) No wonder he talks of Christ being exalted to the highest place and given the name above every name! (Phil 2: 9-11)
We have the benefit of hindsight and the benefit of a fuller revelation than David or any of the psalmists possessed. May these things propel us to worship and adoration, for we serve a risen Saviour!
Progressive Revelation
For Christians of a certain age, the word ‘progressive’ has very negative and worldly connotations. The adjective simply means favouring or advocating change, but when I was younger, in a Christian context, that was perceived as meaning a rejection of Biblical truth and an embracing of liberal philosophies which denied the existence of God and implied an abandonment of orthodoxy. The term ‘progressive revelation’ may well cause shivers of nervousness in people who grew up with a fear of change formed by these notions.
Progressive revelation simply means that the truths found in the Bible were not necessarily all given at once. Progressive revelation means that God did not unfold His entire plan to humanity in the book of Genesis or, for that matter, in the entire Old Testament, but that this plan is gradually revealed to us with increasing clarity, rather like those pictures which are unveiled gradually in quiz shows so that we can see fully only as more of the picture is revealed. In some ways, nothing actually changes at all; what changes is our perception and understanding of truth as further revelation is given. In this way, the New Testament completes and ‘fulfils’ all we understand in the Old Testament; both revelations are necessary and add to the whole picture, but we cannot understand the Old Testament fully without the additional revelation of the New. There are still many parts of the revelation, incidentally, that we do not yet fully understand, as 1 Cor 13:11-12 makes plain, and we do well to remember this before we allow dogmatism to become our leading tone.
Nowhere is this more evident than in understanding the progressive revelation concerning the resurrection and life after death. Some have claimed that the Jews had no understanding of this, citing verses such as Ps 6:5 and Ps 88:11 as evidence that the grave was perceived as the end of life. Others maintain that there is a difference between the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul, claiming that Jews believed in the latter but not the former. It is evident, however, that an understanding of these issues gradually developed through the prophetic voice. There are actually three examples of bodily resurrection in the Old Testament (see 1 Kings 17:17-24, 2 Kings 4:18-37 and 2 Kings 13:20-21), but some assert that this is not the same as dealing with life after death (for those affected, it must have seemed like life after death, nonetheless!) In Isaiah, however, there is an increasing understanding of life after death: Isaiah 25:8 talks of death being swallowed up and God wiping every tear away (ideas taken up in the New Testament by Paul in 1 Cor 15:54 and by John in Rev 21:4) and Isaiah 26:19 asserts belief in a bodily resurrection, with Job not only proclaiming belief in an eternal Redeemer but that ‘in my flesh I will see Him.’ (Job 19:25-26)
This belief in life beyond the grave can also be seen in the Messianic Psalms, which deal not only with the suffering but also with the glory! Ps 16:9-10 is probably the clearest indication that the Messiah would live beyond the grave, but other psalms also confirm a belief in resurrection and immortality (see Ps 30:3, Ps 118:17).
Whilst the Old Testament revelation on these matters is expanded further by the New Testament writers’ understanding of what Christ’s death and resurrection mean in practical terms for all mankind, the psalms add to our understanding of the glory and exaltation of the Messiah, thus giving us a more rounded view of the nature and role our delivering Messiah, Jesus Christ, would have.
Visual reminders
Mark encouraged us all to make visual reminders of God’s loyal love, decorating hearts with Bible verses to remind us of truths about God’s love.
The children enjoyed decorating their hearts:
God’s Loyal Love
Tonight’s family service looked at the theme of ‘God’s Loyal Love.’ Lamentations 3:22-24 reminds us that ‘God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out, his merciful love couldn’t have dried up. They’re created new every morning. How great your faithfulness!I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over). He’s all I’ve got left.‘ As J-P reminded us, the book of Lamentations in other languages is known as ‘complaining songs’, and much of the tone of them is negative, for they were written at a time of great sorrow and distress after Israel were taken into captivity and it seemed that God had abandoned His people. Jeremiah, traditionally held to be the author of the book, reminds us that despite the distress and sorrow experienced, God was actually still present with them, just as the ‘Footprints’ poem reminds us that at the difficult times of life, when we can only see one set of footprints, it was there that God carried us. His loyal love never leaves us.
Another example of God’s fervent, passionate, constant love for His people is found in the book of Hosea, a book which amply demonstrates the truth of the words that love is ‘more than a feeling’ (as the song goes!) So often, people give the reason for the breakdown of a relationship as being because ‘I don’t love X anymore; the feelings just aren’t there anymore.’ In this book, God asks His servant Hosea to marry an unfaithful woman, to marry someone who will hurt him and deceive him, as a parable for the way Israel has treated God. Hosea was to act out the constancy and faithfulness of God’s love in real life. God’s love is not fickle. He wants us to love people with the same love He has (see Hos 3:1), a love that is reliable, dependable, unchainging, consistent, steadfast and determined. People are notoriously fickle, but God wants us to be dogged and determined, sticking to love with a tenacity which reflects His character. 1 Cor 13:4-8 gives us the perfect picture of God’s love which never fails, but our challenge is to love in the same way God loves. God’s loyal love provides us with the model and the motivation for love; He also supplies the power and persistence we need. Ps 89:2 in the Message version says, ‘Your love has always been our lives’ foundation, your fidelity has been the roof over our world.‘ God’s love shows us what loyal love looks like; now we have to ‘go and do likewise.’
How Majestic Is Your Name!
Just before Christmas, we looked at some of our favourite psalms in the Bible study, and Dave chose to expand on one of his favourites today (Psalm 8). David is the author of this psalm, and whilst we do not know if he wrote this whilst a shepherd boy gazing on the stars at night or later in life as a king sitting out on a balcony, the sense of awe and wonder in the psalm is unmistakeable. David writes of the transcendence of God and the insignificance of mankind in relation to God, but in all of this, he acknowledges the real and personal relationship with can have with God (‘LORD, our Lord’).
Rom 1:20 reminds us that a knowledge of God is available to all through the wonder of creation. David’s knowledge is more personal (thanks to the revelation of who God is given to Moses in Ex 3:14 and an awareness of God as master, ruler and owner of all). He glimpses something of the wide-ranging reach of God’s majesty and power when he talks of ‘in all the earth‘, a commission to be fulfilled by the church as Mark 16:15-16 makes plain. God’s majesty, power and glory are more wonderful than the greatest of created beings. He’s in a class of His own!
God uses the weakest of His creatures to sing His praise (see also 1 Cor 1:18-25) and there should always be room for all of God’s creatures in His kingdom. David meditates on how God has created order and stability in the universe, with even the moon and stars serving mankind (in navigation, for example.) Teh fact that God even bothers with us is amazing, but to give us dominion over the earth is almost more than we can imagine. Gen 1:28 gives us this mandate (repeated after the flood in Genesis 9), but with authority also comes responsibility to care for God’s creation and steward it wisely). Heb 2:6-10 makes it plain that this psalm has a Messianic reference, demonstrating that Jesus has total power and dominion, being greater than the angelic beings through all He suffered.
Ps 8 ends as it began, with praise and awe. We know that the earth has been honoured by the prsence of the Redeemer, living and walking on earth. There can be no greater demonstration of God’s care for us than giving His only Son as a sacrifice for our sins.