Two Beasts

Apr 13, 2023

Revelation 13 is one of the most baffling chapters in the whole Bible, describing two beasts (one from the sea and one from the earth) which are described in fantastical detail. The beast from the sea has seven heads and ten horns and looks like a leopard with the feet of a bear and a mouth like a lion. (Rev 13:1-2) The beast from the earth has two horns like a lamb but speaks like a dragon. (Rev 13:11) Commentators throughout the years have sought to identify these two beasts, but it is impossible to be dogmatic about individuals who might fulfil these characteristics. What is important to understand is the source of authority of these beasts and their function.

This chapter makes it plain that the beasts are under Satanic authority, and this reminds us that what God is looking for in His people is whole-hearted devotion and allegiance to Him. The beast from the sea may be seen to represent the state, which is instituted by God to rule wisely (see Romans 13:1) but which can be corrupted and perverted by Satan to bring bad law and tyrannical order. The tension between submission to the authorities and resistance to that which is contrary to God’s law is one which has dominated history. Christians are not called to bow down and worship anyone but God, and this will at times lead to conflict with those over us. The beast from the earth may be seen to represent man-made religion, where supernatural means and a persuasive message seek to divert people from their allegiance to God; again, we must be vigilant in honouring God above all others. Michael Wilcock says of these two beasts, ‘The beast from the sea is Satan’s perversion of society; the beast from the earth is his perversion of Christianity.’ (The Message of Revelation, P 124)

Whilst we may debate the identity of evil empires and their leaders and ponder the significance of the mark of the beast and his number (666) (often coming up with elaborate ideas as we do so!), it is worth pausing to reflect on the pervasive nature of ideologies and political and philosophical systems which influence us almost without our realising it. The Bible tells us that we should not be unaware of Satan’s schemes. The Message version of 2 Corinthians 10:5 says, ‘We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.‘  We must be wholehearted in our devotion to God and aware of the destructive nature of every philosophy that sets itself up as worthy of worship. Only God is worthy of our worship.

Christ Crucified

Apr 9, 2023

Dave spoke tonight from 1 Cor 2:1-5, reminding us of the centrality of the cross. He looked at 3 scenes from the last 24 hours of Jesus’s life:
1. The Last Supper, when Jesus ate with His disciples and instituted the sacrament of Holy Communion in remembrance of Him and with a definite emphasis on His forthcoming death. There, He stressed the centrality of His death, the purpose of His death (to establish a new covenant with God, that prophesied by Jeremiah in Jer 31:31) and the need to appropriate His death personally. We must believe in the efficacy of His death to receive the salvation He purchased for us, just as the Israelites had to apply the lamb’s blood to the door posts in order to be saved from the plague of the firstborn.
2. The Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death and prayed three time for the cup of God’s wrath to be removed from Him if possible. He emerged from this time of testing resolutely determined to do God’s will. This scene shows us the humanity of Jesus and how to succeed spiritually by submitting to the Father’s will.
3. On the cross we see the emphasis not on the physical horrors of crucifixion, but the response of Jesus as He died – forgiving another sinner, caring for His mother, the sense of anguish and forsakenness as He bore the sins of the world, the sense of victory as He realised His work was finished.
These scenes remind us of the seriousness of sin (which applies to us personally), the magnificence of God’s love and the fact that though salvation cost Christ everything, it is free to us. The cross is a stumbling-block to many even now, but it shows us the power of God and is the only way to be saved.

He’s Alive!

Apr 9, 2023

Garry continued his series on the life of Joseph this morning, preaching from Genesis 45:25-28, when Jacob finds out that Joseph is alive again.
Jacob had understandably been shattered by the news of Joseph’s death (Gen 37:34-35); the death of a child is something which affects a parent for the rest of their life. When he had had to let Benjamin return with his brothers to Egypt, it badly affected him, but on their return, he is told the stupendous news that Joseph is alive. This complete reversal of his world for so many years was not easy to come to terms with.
In the same way, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus had their worlds turned upside down when they realised that the stranger walking alongside them was Jesus Himself. (Luke 24:19-24) The resurrection of Jesus changes everything.
We might find the news of the resurrection too good to be true; we live in a world of fake news and may well find it hard to believe that anyone could be raised from the dead. But the gospel accounts of the resurrection ring with eyewitness astonishment and truth. It’s impossible to bring life from death, and there were many ‘explanations’ for what had happened, including the idea that the disciples must have stolen Jesus’s body or that He had merely swooned on the cross and not really died. Yet those who have investigated the resurrection (including Frank Morrison who investigated to disprove this and ended up writing the book ‘Who Moved The Stone?’, an insightful, well-researched and moving book affirming reasons to believe in the veracity of this story) affirm the truth of the life-changing news of resurrection.
Just as Joseph was revived by news of his son being alive, so we can be revived and restored by the news that ‘the God who died came back to life and everything is changed’ (‘Christ Is Risen’) Transformational hope can be ours. We have a God whose love for us is never failing, a God who is with us through our darkest times, a God who is ever faithful. More amazing than the fact that Joseph was alive is the truth that Jesus is alive. Christ is risen and lives forever more, and so everything is changed.

Resurrection Stories

Apr 9, 2023

We all have favourite resurrection stories. For some, it is the fact that Jesus appeared to the women first, especially Mary Magdalene, calling her by name. (John 20:11-18) For others, it is the personal touch, that He told the women to go to the disciples ‘and Peter’ (Mark 16:7), remembering that the one who had denied Him would need extra reassurance and restoration. Others love the story of Jesus walking alongside the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) or how Jesus comes to Thomas in his doubts and shows him His wounds. (John 20:24-29) There are so many stories that confirm the resurrection by their small details and true-to-human-nature responses. No one was really expecting this miracle, despite all that Jesus had said beforehand, and the journey from despondency to joy is told in many different ways.
One of my favourite resurrection verses is found in Matthew’s Gospel, immediately before the Great Commission, when Jesus gives His disciples their future role to go and make disciples of all nations. (Matt 28:18-20) It’s set a little time after Easter Sunday: ‘Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.’ (Matt 28:16-17)
Resurrection is a life-changing event, and we often focus on the elation, joy and hope which it brings – and rightly so. But I am reassured by Matt 28:17, even as I identify so often with the doubting nature of Thomas. Some believe that a life of faith dispels doubt and that there is no room for questions when you know God. I am not one of those people. I believe that worship and doubt can often co-exist and that it takes faith to bring our doubts to Jesus and let Him dissolve them through His resurrection presence. The disciples had been through a lot. They had had their hopes dashed. They had seen their Lord and Master killed in a horrendous way and had been bewildered and dazed by grief, as so many people still are. We know the end of the story; as they lived through that first Easter weekend, they didn’t. And when Jesus appeared to them, risen but still bearing the wounds of crucifixion, they must have been bewildered still. Good news can still take time to process.
I am encouraged by the fact that Jesus gave His Great Commission to fallible, doubting people who still chose to worship. I am encouraged by the fact that the Holy Spirit came to empower those same fallible, doubting people and help them to proclaim gospel truths with boldness and courage. It gives me hope for our generation, that as we spend time worshipping the risen Saviour, even with our doubts and uncertainties, He will do the same for us.

Easter Coffee Morning

Apr 8, 2023

This morning we held an Easter coffee morning to raise funds for our Parent & Toddler trip to Flamingo Land this summer. Thanks to the efforts of so many people from church and from the Parent & Toddler group, we raised £430. Our thanks to all who came and supported and spent money on the raffle, tombola, bottle bag stall, table top sale and Easter egg hunts.

Bev, Zara and Julie baked buns and cakes for us to enjoy, and our thanks to Wath-on-Dearne Tesco who donated some of the Easter egg prizes for the Easter egg hunt.

There was lots of conversation as people browsed and chatted:

Guess the combined ages of these faithful members of our church!

It was lovely to hear the buzz of conversation in the room:

… even though I spent the morning in the kitchen!

We had some raffle winners too:

Our grateful thanks to all who helped to set up and tidy away, who donated items to the raffle, tombola and table top sale, who prepared Easter Egg hunts, who spent hours in the kitchen baking for us and to all who came along to spend money! Thank you so much.

 

The Great Reversal

Apr 8, 2023

At our Good Friday service last night we looked at how the cross spells the ‘Great Reversal’ for humanity. Palindromic words are those which are spelled the same backwards as forwards (‘minim’, or ‘level’, for example.) Some words, however, are different if they are read backwards: ‘stressed’ spelled backwards is ‘desserts‘:

There are many words like this in English (‘made’ and ‘Edam’, ‘tin’ and ‘nit’, ‘gums’ and ‘smug’, for example, but the word we looked at last night is ‘evil’, which, when spelled backwards is ‘live.’ Good Friday is the day when we remember the death of Jesus. It’s a day of profound sadness, for Jesus was an innocent man, killed (as far as the world is concerned) because of religious intolerance and not because He had actually committed crimes worthy of death. It’s a day when evil apparently triumphed, when a good man was crucified not for His own sins, but for the sins of the world. Eugene Peterson comments that ‘evil captured the headlines in Jerusalem two thousand years ago’ (‘On Living Well’, P 109), and it’s sad to say that that is still true today; reading any newspaper or watching the news reminds us that evil still dominates today.

But despite this, we call Good Friday good, not because an innocent man died, but because this was part of God’s great plan of salvation, a reminder that despite man’s evil, ‘this man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge.’ (Acts 2:23) At the cross, ‘God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.’ (2 Cor 5:19) Something positive, good, wholesome and redemptive was also going on at the cross, even as people felt hope had gone and evil was winning.

We cannot ever understand the death of Jesus Christ by staying at Good Friday. We have to go through this Easter weekend, through the confusion and agony of Easter Saturday, through the silence of the tomb and the apparent hopelessness of death, to see evil reversed and resurrection happening. Peter told the crowds on the day of Pentecost that the crucifixion was not the end of the story. ‘But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.’ (Acts 2:24) The word evil is now spelled right: we can live, because Jesus lives. He is raised from the dead; death could not hold Him. Life triumphs. ‘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) Evil will not have the last word; eternal life has that privilege.

What is happening in our world right now might not be good. It might even be evil. Joseph certainly faced much in his life that was not good: his brothers selling him into slavery, ending up in prison because of injustice, being forgotten in prison when he had done his utmost to help others. But ultimately, he saw a resurrection of kinds when he was taken from prison and made second in command only to Pharaoh, when his actions were responsible for the saving of many, including his own family from Israel. Job faced pain, sorrow, bereavement and loss, greater than most of us can even imagine, but again, he saw a resurrection of kinds when God blessed the second part of his life even more than the first! (Job 42:12) Easter reminds us that no matter how bad things are (not just how they seem, how bad they actually are), we are on the winning side. Jesus lives, therefore we live. Evil doesn’t win. ‘Jesus’s resurrection spells the words right now so that we can speak rightly, sing in tune and live saved. Live, not evil, is the way to spell it. Resurrection recovers the original word, the Word become flesh.’ (Eugene Peterson, ‘On Living Well’, P 110)

Christ took the punishment that should have been ours. He bore our sins. He wiped the slate clean, and now we can not only know the joys of sins forgiven but can have eternal life, free from condemnation and accusation. Now we can be children of God, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. (Rom 8:17) Easter sees the greatest reversal of all, evil turned to live.