The Submission of Christ

Mar 31, 2024

Garry spoke tonight about the submission of Christ. The last time he spoke on a Sunday evening, he talked about the need for our submission (to God and to other people), but submission was also vital for Jesus Christ. God exists in three persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit – see Matt 3:16-17, John 14:15-18); one God but existing in three persons. God is righteous, He is love. These two aspects of HIs character are seen at Easter, for we all went astray from God (Is 53:6) and He cannot ignore this. The price for our disobedience was death, but since God is also love, He paid that debt Himself through Jesus. Jesus came to do God’s will (Heb 10:5-7). There were times when this caused Him anguish (Matt 26:36-46). His soul was troubled by the price He had to pay (John 12:27), but His submission to God meant He was prepared to pay this price.

Adam, the first man, chose not to submit to God; he effectively chose the way of death. But because Christ chose the way of obedience and submission, this led to life, to the resurrection! This leads to eternal life for us.His death and resurrection mean we can be forgiven. We can have a new life here on earth and forever more with Him. Christ will return and take all those who follow Him to heaven to live with Him forevermore. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again! Are we ready?

 

Resurrection Power (2)

Mar 31, 2024

God’s power is seen in many places in the Bible, first of all in creation (see Gen 1 & 2). God is the ‘Maker of heaven and earth’ (Ps 115:5, Ps 121:2, Ps 124:8, Ps 134:3, Ps 146:6), and there are many poetic descriptions of the God of creation. Job chapters 38 to 41 list God’s amazing, awesome works of creation: laying the earth’s foundation, creating the sea and setting its boundaries, making clouds, creating weather, making the stars, making different animals and birds and sea creatures. The detail and scope in these chapters are stunning; no wonder, at the end of this, that Job says, ‘Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.’ (Job 42:3) The whole of creation cries out as testimony and witness to the power of God (see Ps 19:1-4, Ps 104).

God’s power is also seen in the Exodus, in the miraculous deliverance of God’s people from the slavery of Egypt. The plagues and then the parting of the Red Sea meant the people saw God’s power before their very eyes. This was not something they could do for themselves; it was something which God did for them. It defined them; it created who they were – no longer simply slaves but the people of God. (Ex 14 & 15)

The Exodus foreshadows the death and resurrection of Jesus, who is our Passover Lamb, slain to take away the sins of the world. The resurrection shows us the wisdom of God, for here we see that death does not have the last word, but we still must walk through the way of death. Easter Sunday, with its brilliant, dazzling light and its message of supreme power and authority, is reached through the pathway of Good Friday and Easter Saturday. There is no glory without suffering; there is no power without paradox.

The resurrection shows us that God’s almighty power defeats sin, death and the grave. The same might and resurrection power which was used to raise Christ from the dead now lives in us so that God’s glory and honour may be proclaimed. God’s ‘immeasurably more’ power (Eph 3:20) now lives in us.

 

Resurrection Power

Mar 31, 2024

Today is Easter Sunday, the high point of the Christian calendar, the moment when light bursts forth from the empty tomb and we see that not even death could defeat our Saviour. Easter Sunday is the day when God’s plan of salvation is revealed more fully to people, when the suffering of Good Friday and the sorrow of Easter Saturday are dispelled, and hope is born again in the hearts of mankind. Those two disciples on the road to Emmaus who spoke with a stranger about their dashed hopes and whose faces were downcast (Luke 24:17) are transformed into believers; the day is changed from one of confusion and duty (hiding away in fear of the Romans, wondering how to sort out a dead body when there was a massive stone in front of the tomb) to a day of radiant light as Jesus appears to His followers and they begin to absorb the life-changing truth that ‘He is not here; he has risen!’ (Luke 24:6) The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the event which separates Christianity from all other religions whose leaders have died and remain dead, but Jesus tasted death for us (Heb 2:9) and yet is alive forevermore. As Jesus said to John on the island of Patmos, ‘I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever!’ (Revelation 1:18) As the song says,
‘The prodigal is welcomed home;
The sinner now a saint,
For the God who died came back to life
And everything is changed.’ (‘Christ Is Risen’, Phil Wickham)
The resurrection of Jesus Christ reveals to us once and for all God’s power. That power is described by Paul as ‘mighty strength’ (Eph 1:19), but what is so amazing about this power is that this same power now lives in us. Paul prays that the Ephesians may know ‘his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.’ (Eph 1:19-21) Paul talks of us being strengthened with power through God’s Spirit (Eph 3:16) and says that God ‘is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.’ (Eph 3:20) The resurrection is not simply a historical event to be noted, but a powerful truth to be lived out daily.

The Bed

Mar 30, 2024

Today’s household object is the bed and our Bible passage is Matthew 27:62-66.

 

Most of us nowadays have a bed on which we can sleep. This has not historically always been the case, and even now, on camping holidays, we do not have a comfortable bed but a mat and sleeping bag on which to sleep. Sleep is utterly necessary to us however, wherever we sleep. If we are deprived of sleep, we become confused, grumpy, forgetful and even can hallucinate; sleep deprivation is a form of torture.

Sleep, in the Bible, is often likened to death. At night when we sleep, we lay down our consciousness and activity and rest, to rise again in the morning, refreshed and revitalised. In the same way, the death of Jesus gave way to resurrection, and our physical death is seen as sleep which will be ended when we are raised to life again as Jesus was. Holy Saturday seems a day of inactivity and death, but the truth is that Jesus has now emptied the bed of death and walked free in the light of redemption, freedom and hope. ‘As we lie down to sleep tonight, may we wake to the renewing light of the Easter dawn.’ (‘At Home In Lent’, P 183)

The Way Of The Cross

Mar 30, 2024

Servanthood, suffering, sacrifice – these are the things we see magnified in this last week of Jesus’s life. They were things prophesied by Isaiah many years beforehand: Isaiah said of the Suffering Servant, ‘He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.’ (Is 53:3) In that very famous prophecy, we read,

‘Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.’ (Isaiah 53:4-6)

 

Jesus experienced suffering and became that perfect sacrifice precisely because of our sin. It was our pain He took upon Himself; He bore our suffering. Because of His suffering and sacrifice, we can know peace; we can be healed. Because Jesus chose the way of servanthood, we can be set free; we can be saved. There’s nothing more we can do but believe and rely on the cross: as Paul said, ‘may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ (Gal 6:14)

And yet, Good Friday is not the end of the story. There is resurrection ahead. Friday’s here, but Sunday’s coming. Blessing and reward lie ahead; the way of the cross is not our final destination. Make no mistake, though: blessing and reward can only be reached as we choose the Jesus way of servanthood, suffering and sacrifice. Paul wanted to know the power of Christ’s resurrection, but that is only available through ‘participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.’ (Phil 3:10-11) Jesus our Saviour has blazed the way, but He did this by hanging on a cross. ‘For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.’ (1 Pet 3:18) May we embrace the way of the cross and be made alive in the Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Servanthood, Suffering and Sacrifice

Mar 30, 2024

Yesterday we celebrated Good Friday with a fellowship meal (and it was lovely to be able to chat together as we ate, eating together being one of the great ways to get to know people) and a service of reflection and remembrance. Sadly I was so busy that I didn’t get time to take any photos!
In our meeting, we looked at the three principles which in many respects defined Jesus’s life and were certainly evident in that last week on earth: servanthood, suffering and sacrifice.
Jesus did not come to be served but to serve. When His disciples were arguing about who was the greatest and who would sit at His right hand when He came to power, Jesus said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42-45) The Son of Man, the Son of God, the All-Powerful One, did not come to be served, but to serve. He left His home in glory to take on human flesh (Phil 2:6-7) and in that last week of His life took up the basin and towel to wash His disciples’ feet, an act of service He said we are to imitate. (John 13:1-15)
Suffering is also an inevitable part of life in a sin-stained world. He suffered the pain of rejection, of betrayal by a friend, of denial, of abandonment as well as the physical agonies of being beaten, spat upon, forced to carry the weight of the cross, bleeding from the crown of thorns rammed into His head. Even greater than the suffering of the physical agonies, however, was the suffering of being forsaken by His Father and bearing the weight of the sins of the world. We cannot ever suffer in the way that Jesus suffered, but it is through this suffering that we gain a High Priest who is able to enter into our suffering and therefore can find help in our own times of suffering and need. Hebrews 13:12 says, ‘Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.’ The suffering that Jesus endured in the last week of His life, and the suffering especially which defined Good Friday, paves the way for our own salvation, redemption and sanctification.
Good Friday shows us Jesus dying on the cross, ‘the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’ (John 1:29) Sacrifice always involved death; . Peter tells us that we are redeemed ‘with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.’ (1 Pet 1:19) Christ Himself became the sacrifice; John tells us ‘He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.’ (1 John 2:2) The reason Jesus had to die, the reason we needed a sacrifice that was without blemish or defect, was because of the sin which separates us from God. Peter says that Jesus bore our sins in His body on the cross, and the result of this is that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. (1 Pet 2:24) Now we can have a new life; we were like sheep going astray, but can now, through the death of this spotless Lamb, come back to the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls. (1 Pet 2:25) Jesus is both the sacrifice we needed and the Good Shepherd who will guide us through life.
Servanthood, suffering and sacrifice defined Good Friday. Because of these things, we are now reconciled to God and free to live as our Saviour did.