Yesterday we went to a seminar on Matthew’s Gospel led by Michael Card and then attended a concert given by him at Holy Trinity Church in Hinckley. One of the things he talked about was the joy of becoming a grandfather for the first time eighteen weeks ago and how this had rekindled in him the need to write lullabies (though he said the difference was, as a parent you write lullabies to get your children to go to sleep, whereas as a grandfather, he wanted to write them to wake up the baby so he could play!) I have been listening to Michael Card’s music for thirty years now and it occurred to me that my son has listened to it for his entire life; we included one of the original lullabies (from the album ‘Sleep Sound in Jesus’) at his dedication service when he was eight weeks old!

‘In Your loving arms we lay

This wordless one so new

The incarnation of our love,

We dedicate to You.’ (‘Wordless One’, Michael Card)

More recently, Michael Card has been writing books and songs based on the gospels and yesterday’s seminar looked at Matthew’s Gospel. Each gospel throws a different light on Jesus. In Mark, He is seen as something of a disturbing presence, speaking and acting with absolute authority and the people are both drawn to Him and afraid of Him. In Luke, the marginalised and oppressed are the one who are drawn to Jesus and there is always a contrast between the religious people (who ought to have understood Jesus’s message but who so often failed to understand it or receive it) and the poor (who embraced it gladly.) In John (which includes many stories not included in the other gospels), Jesus is portrayed as the Wisdom of God. Matthew could be seen as the ‘gospel of identity’, showing the Jewish Christians who were undergoing persecution at the time who Jesus is and therefore who they are. The gospel has different themes running through it, including:

1. the enemy’s attempts to kill Jesus (starting with the Slaughter of the Innocents, only recorded in Matthew’s Gospel and going on through numerous attempts to thwart God’s plans by killing Jesus)
2. the importance of dreams in this gospel
3. the ‘fulfilment formula’ (how Matthew links what happened to the Old Testament Scriptures)
4. the importance of Galilee in the life of Jesus
5. identity (how my identity is seen through Christ’s identity, for ‘all self-disclosure is Christological’)
6. long blocks of the teaching of Jesus (largely omitted in Mark, where the emphasis is more on what Jesus did than on what He said)
7. the tension between the old and the new (especially seen in Matthew 13)
8. the importance of hesed (mercy, grace, loving kindness) in God’s workings with mankind (how we do not deserve anything from God, but He gives us everything).

Don’t forget the local Women’s World Day of Prayer meeting will be held on Friday 7th March at 6 p.m. at Furlong Road Methodist Church in Bolton-on-Dearne. All are welcome to attend (you don’t have to be a woman to pray and all are welcome!) The service has been written by Christians from Egypt on the theme ‘Streams in the Desert.’ Please bring tinned food for the local food banks if you are able to; an offering will be taken in the service for the Women’s World Day of Prayer movement which distributes these gifts to a variety of Christian charities and other organisations.

Refreshments will be served after the meeting.

Have you ever gone to a restaurant and asked the staff there what dish they recommend? Sometimes this intimate knowledge of the menu can open up opportunities to try a new dish you would otherwise have ignored or been reluctant to try.

Or have you ever had a friend recommend an author or a film or a new place to you? Based on your trust in that person’s judgment, have you followed their recommendation and been pleasantly delighted to discover a new friend you might otherwise have ignored? This has happened to me so many times and it remains a source of unexpected joy to find new allies in exploring life…

Recommendations are only really helpful if you trust the person making them and that person knows you, for the things recommended can be highly personal and tastes vary enormously. It is not that there is anything wrong with some authors or films or places, but they may not be to our taste, and disappointment will come when recommendations fail to deliver the promise they suggest. However, the joy that results from recommendations which delight and which open for us new vistas cannot really be underestimated!

I have been meditating on John 1:35-51 for most of this year and I see this as one of the classic descriptions of evangelism that is accessible to us all. People who met Jesus essentially recommended Him to others: to their family, friends and acquaintances. Andrew, one of the first people to follow Jesus, told Peter: ‘the first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah.”‘ (John 1:41) Later, Philip found Nathanael and told him, ‘We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law and about whom the prophets also wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ (John 1:45) Nathanael’s response was sceptical, but Philip’s reply was ‘Come and see.’ (John 1:46)

Essentially, evangelism involves recommending Jesus to people around us. We cannot force them to accept Him: salvation is a spiritual work of the Holy Spirit and will involve their response to God’s personal invitation. But our role is to recommend Jesus, for we know that in Him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Col 2:3) Just as many of our friends’ recommendations to us enrich our lives beyond words, this ultimate recommendation will lead to other people’s joy and salvation. Let’s not be shy in recommending Jesus!

We also had a birthday to celebrate!

This month’s prayer topic is looking at the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Pray that God will pour out His Holy Spirit on the churches in Goldthorpe and the surrounding area, giving us the power to be effective witnesses (Acts 1:8) and to live lives that are pleasing to the Lord.

Pray that we will be continually filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:18) and will be led by the Spirit in our everyday lives. (Rom 8:1-17)

Pray that we will see the gifts of the Spirit used in our meetings (1 Cor 12:1-11) and will seek to receive all that God has for us, stepping out in faith as God leads us.

Pray that we will seek God for all that He has for us and will hunger and thirst for His righteousness and kingdom above all other things. (Matthew 6:33)

Pray that God’s Spirit will lead us to those who do not know Him and that we will have boldness, wisdom and compassion as we minister to people. (Acts 8:26-40)

You might wonder why we spent time looking at bricks, brick bonds and the topic of walls at our family service! Well, the evening was inspired by the verse found in 2 Samuel 22:30 and Psalm 18:29: ‘With Your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall.’ We all know the expression ‘it’s like talking to a brick wall’ and anyone who is involved in long-distance running knows the expressing ‘hitting the wall’ for that feeling that we cannot go any further. Life can seem like a whole series of obstacles which are insurmountable, and most of us identify more with Danny’s approach to fences and barriers than Sergeant Angel’s in this clip from ‘Hot Fuzz.’

David was no strangers to enemies, opposition and hurdles. We see him killing the giant Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 and he even knew about enemies who had once been friends (many of the psalms being written as he was being hunted by Saul.) Later on in his life, he was to experience the betrayal of his own family, for his son Absalom conspired against him, wanting to oust him as king. (2 Samuel 15) These passages in 2 Samuel 22 and Psalm 18 show us his secret for overcoming high walls, however, for they are full of praise to the God who delivers.

Eph 2:1-22 shows us our desperate plight without God, but also reminds us that Jesus himself ‘is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.’ Sinful man could not approach a holy God and the curtain which separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple was a visual reminder of this fact. Matt 27:51 reminds us that this veil was torn in two from top to bottom when Christ died on the cross for our sins, thus reconciling us to God. The biggest wall of all has been broken down and with God’s help now we can scale any wall, confident that we can approach the throne of grace and find mercy and help in our times of need. (Heb 4:16) God is our deliverer and our help and with God, all things are possible. (Mark 10:27)

Tonight’s family service looked at the topic of walls. It was quite an education in types of bricks and brick bonds!

Did you know, for example, about stretchers, headers and soldiers in brick terms?! These relate to the position of the bricks:

A soldier is a brick laid vertically with the long narrow side of the brick exposed; a stretcher is a a brick laid with its long narrow side exposed and a header is a brick laid flat with its width at the face of the wall.

Then there are all different kinds of bonds (how the bricks are joined together), such as Flemish bonds, English bonds, Sussex bonds and so on. The game we played involved looking at these different kinds of bonds and then trying to reproduce them using Lego bricks!

Some people got carried away to be first to finish!

The first prize was a Lego kit:

… which was completed by the end of the evening!