Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to work out who I am, but ultimately I’ve learned that my identity can never be fully understood without also grasping the identity of God. Eph 1:11-12 in the Message version says, ‘It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.‘ The song ‘Good, Good Father’ (written by Tony Brown and Pat Barrett) captures this combination perfectly: God is a good, good Father (His identity, ‘it’s who You are’) and because of this we are loved by Him (our identity, ‘it’s who I am.’) It’s nowhere near as complicated as I like to make it…!

‘Oh, I’ve heard a thousand stories of what they think You’re like
But I’ve heard the tender whispers of love in the dead of night
And You tell me that You’re pleased
And that I’m never alone.

You’re a good, good Father.
It’s who You are, it’s who You are, it’s who You are
And I’m loved by You
It’s who I am, it’s who I am, it’s who I am.

Oh, and I’ve seen many searching for answers far and wide
But I know we’re all searching
For answers only You provide
‘Cause You know just what we need
Before we say a word
You’re a good, good Father.
It’s who You are, it’s who You are, it’s who You are
And I’m loved by You
It’s who I am, it’s who I am, it’s who I am.

’cause You are perfect in all of Your ways,
You are perfect in all of Your ways,
You are perfect in all of Your ways to us.

Oh, it’s love so undeniable
I, I can hardly speak
Peace so unexplainable
I, I can hardly think

As you call me deeper still [3x]
Into love, love, love.’ (‘Good, Good Father’, Chris Tomlin)

It’s perfectly possible to believe that Jesus is who He claimed to be – Son of God, Son of Man – and still not realise that this matters to each one of us personally or that our response to who Jesus is has eternal consequences.

Jesus puts love right in our faces! He confronts us with who He is. He’s not pushy, but He is persistent. He invites us to accept Him as our Lord and Saviour: ‘I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.’ (Rev 3:20) Francis Thompson referred to Him as the ‘hound of heaven’ who pursues us with ‘unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace’; in the song ‘Pursue Me,’ we sing of ‘unrelenting grace, never-failing mercy’ and ‘I hear You singing, You are calling me home.’ (‘Pursue Me’, Worship Central) God longs for us to draw near to Him and shows us how much He longs for that in the person of Jesus. ‘No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.’ (Jn 1:18) The Voice paraphrase of the Bible translates that verse as ‘God, unseen until now, is revealed in the Voice, God’s only Son, straight from the Father’s heart’ and explains the decision to translate Logos (usually translated ‘Word’) as Voice in this way: ‘Since logos essentially refers to the act of speaking or bringing thoughts to expression, we have decided to use the word “voice” to capture that reality. John declares that truth has culminated in the person of Jesus. No single word captures the complete meaning of logos, but “voice” has a number of advantages…

1. “Voice” manifests the act of speaking…John intends that in Jesus God is speaking and revealing Himself to the world.

2. A voice is distinct and personal. We can distinguish people from one another simply by their voices. In John 10 Jesus describes the fact that the sheep hear the voice of the shepherd when he calls and they follow, but they refuse to follow a stranger because they do not know his voice (John 10:1-5). John desires that we know Jesus as the Son of God and believe in Him personally as the Good Shepherd.

3. “Voice” is dynamic in that it reflects the robust and powerful activity of a living God. It is historical in that any act of speaking comes to expression and takes place in the real world as a “voice” calling, demanding a response. It challenges any notion that the Christian faith can be reduced to rules, propositions, or doctrines that can be merely believed or dismissed and not lived out in our lives. Since in Jesus God is speaking and revealing Himself to the world, and since in Jesus we hear the Voice of God, then this new reality changes everything so we, too, must change.’

‘In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.’ (Heb 1:1-2) What is Jesus saying to you?

Jesus is the human name by which God the Son is known. Nowadays, numbers seem to be the chief way of identifying people (passport numbers, driving licences, NHS numbers, Unique Learner Numbers for pupils and so on), but in the Bible, we see the significance of names in so many places.

Abram (whose name meant ‘exalted father’) is told by God that he will be called Abraham (meaning ‘father of many’, Gen 17:5), a sign that God’s promise to him that he, a childless man, would have a son and become the father of many nations would be fulfilled. When Isaac (whose name meant ‘laughter’, a reminder of how Sarah received the news that she would have a son) had twin sons, they were named Esau (because he was hairy and red) and Jacob (because he came out of the womb grasping his brother’s heel). (Gen 25:24-26) Jacob, apart from literally meaning ‘to grasp the heel’ also came to mean figuratively ‘one who deceives’, and this was certainly the description he lived by for so many years; yet after his wrestling match with God (Gen 32:22-32), he is given a new name, Israel: ‘because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.’ (Gen 32:28) All throughout the Old Testament, we see the significance of names. Hosea gives his children prophetic names to illustrate the country’s struggling relationship with God: Lo-Ruhamah (which means “not loved”) and Lo-Ammi (which means “not my people”) (Hos 1:6,9), for example. Names definitely mean something when we are thinking about spiritual matters!

The name JESUS means ‘Yahweh (God) is Salvation’. Joseph was told to give Jesus this name even before He was born by the angel who appeared to him in a dream, who said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’ (Matt 1:20-21) Mary and Joseph had no choice in naming their son Jesus, because even His name was to signify His role and function in life. Jesus came into the world to save us from our sins. That’s what Christmas is all about; that’s what Easter is all about – God coming into the world in human form – and therefore taking a human name – so that the gulf between God and man can be bridged and we can be reconciled to God. Paul says ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’ (Rom 10:13) and reminds the Philippians ‘at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’ (Phil 2:10-11)

Billy Sunday once said, ‘There are 256 names given in the Bible for the Lord Jesus Christ, and I suppose this was because He was infinitely beyond all that any one name could express.’ Each of the names given to Jesus are significant, revealing more of His nature and purpose. Just looking at the ‘I am’ names used by Jesus in John’s Gospel is a Bible study in itself!

• ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’ (Jn 14:6),
• ‘I am the Bread of Life’ (Jn 6:35, 48)
• ‘I am the light of the world’ (Jn 8:12)
• ‘I am the door/ gate’ (Jn 10:9)
• ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ (Jn 10:11)
• ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life’ (Jn 11:25)
• ‘I am the true vine’ (Jn 15:1)

Meditating on the names given to Jesus make us even more aware than usual of His essential role in our faith. Spend time this week thinking about the names of Jesus. There’s a lot in a name!

In our alphabet series, ‘The A-Z of Christian Faith’, tonight we looked at ‘J is for Jesus.’ Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, the pioneer and perfecter of faith’ (Heb 12:2), the ‘Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End’ (Rev 22:13), is the common thread running throughout the whole of the Bible.

Recently I’ve been making a lot of chutney, and I have no hesitation at all in saying that the essential ingredients in making chutney are vinegar and sugar. I’ve made a lot of tomato-based chutneys (tomato & apple, tomato & courgette, tomato & chilli and green tomato), but tomatoes are not an essential ingredient of chutney. The acidity of vinegar prevents growth of bacteria, moulds and yeasts, and sugar acts as a setting agent and a preservative, and it’s these two ingredients which give chutney such a long shelf life and make it very useful if we want to use fruit or vegetables which would otherwise go off quickly. In the same way, there are many peripheral things connected with Christianity, but without Jesus, we would have no faith. He is the essential ingredient to our faith!

Jesus is God’s Messiah, His ‘anointed one’, His ‘Christ’, His rescue package, sent from the throne of heaven by God the Father to walk among the darkness of earth. John 1 claims that Jesus is the eternal Word, God himself, who created everything that exists, and says that in time He became flesh and dwelt among us. Philippians 2:6 makes it clear that he is God (‘being in very nature God’), and that he set aside the use of some of his attributes to take on the form of the human, and die for the sins of the world. Titus 2:13 equates Jesus with God. Romans 9:5 describes him as God, who is blessed forever. In other ways, Jesus is also God.  Heb 1:3 describes Him in this way: ‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.’

At the same time, the Bible affirms that Jesus is also fully human. Only God is strong enough, holy enough, pure enough to save us. But God cannot die. Therefore, Jesus had to take on human flesh and become like us so that He could save us and live up to the meaning of His name (Jesus means ‘Yahweh is salvation.’) Jesus took on our humanity so that He could offer Himself as a pure, spotless sacrifice for sin and once and for all bring us back into the relationship with God for which we were created. Jesus ‘as to his earthly life was a descendant of David’ (Rom 1:3). Heb 2:14 tells us Jesus shared in our humanity, and in the rest of that chapter, we see that He Himself suffered as a son and can help us when we are tempted (see also Heb 4:15).

Jesus, by living life perfectly, by fulfilling the law perfectly, by offering himself willingly (‘I have come to do Your will, O God’ Heb 10:7), could not be touched by the demands of the law or by the enemy himself. Hebrews 10:14 sums it up in this way: ‘by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.’ Jesus, come to save us from our sins, accomplished that through His death on the cross and because that sacrifice was acceptable to a holy God, He rose again from the dead on the third day, never more to die again, living always and interceding for us! (Heb 7:25) As the hymn says, ‘Hallelujah, what a Saviour!’ (‘Man of Sorrows, What A Name’)

The prayer said in Anglican churches today (Stir Up Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent) talks about asking God to stir us: “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

God is the greatest stirrer of all! If we think about stirring as the means for change, we have to admit that God is often more eager for change than we are. God wants to stir us up so that we don’t settle down into familiarity and complacency and indifference. Sometimes, His stirring doesn’t always seem pleasant: the Old Testament tells us He stirs up leaders to bring about His purposes and sometimes that involved judgment, which is never easy to take (see Jer 50:41, Jer 51:1, Amos 6:14). When God starts to stir us up, it can be unsettling; we can feel uncomfortable, not really sure what to do. God often asks us to move beyond our comfort zones: to give something up, perhaps, which we like doing or to go and talk to someone we don’t know and we think ‘oh, I can’t do that!’ But if we say ‘yes’ to God – ‘I desire to do Your will, my God’ (Ps 40:8) – we’ll be surprised at what God can do in and through us.

We need God to stir up our wills, because it’s there that our actions are shaped. We do what we want to do, what we determine in our hearts to do, what we are determined to do. If we’re not determined, we’ll soon give up when the going gets tough. But if we are determined to do what God says, if we hide God’s word in our hearts so that it directs our paths and actions at all times, then we can do far more than we imagine and the result will be the bringing forth of the fruit of good works, for after all, ‘we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.’ (Eph 2:10)

Whether we stir up our own Christmas puddings or not, God is able to stir up our wills and breathe new life into us so that we are constantly being transformed into His likeness. (2 Cor 3:18)

Those of you who have been to Church of England services at this time of year or who are fans of the Radio 4 programme ‘The Archers’ may know that today is Stir Up Sunday. Stir Up Sunday is the name given to the last Sunday before Advent, and it’s traditionally the time when Christmas puddings were stirred and made. Nowadays, when so many Christmas puddings are bought ready-made from shops, we’ve perhaps lost this tradition of making our own puddings, but it always used to be the case that families would make their own Christmas puddings on this date and the whole family would be involved in stirring the pudding mix before it went into the oven. Parents would teach their children how to mix the ingredients for the pudding and then, as everyone took a turn in stirring the pudding mix, they made a wish for the year ahead. (Don’t forget in the days before food processors and other equipment to help with mixing ingredients, stirring was hard work and so it was a good idea to get as many people involved as possible!) Often, silver coins and other things were added to the pudding mix – the coin represented wealth and prosperity for the year ahead; buttons represented the fact that a single person would stay single for the year ahead and a ring represented the fact that a person would get married. Of course, these things were a potential choking hazard (or could break a tooth and mean a trip to the dentist’s), so they’re not encouraged these days, but the whole idea of Christmas puddings is a British tradition that goes back hundreds of years.

The reason this Sunday is called ‘Stir Up Sunday’ is because in the Anglican church, one of the prayers that is said on this day starts with the words ‘stir up’; the prayer is from the Book of Common Prayer, first written in 1549, and says “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” It’s thought that when the women in church heard those words, it reminded them they were just five weeks left to Christmas and they needed to get on with the pudding making!

Of course, there are good stirrers and bad stirrers…! Often, when we talk about someone being a stirrer, we mean it negatively, saying that that person likes to cause trouble (often through what they say about others.) The Bible has plenty of warnings about gossip (see Prov 16:28, Prov 20:19) and James reminds us we need to keep a tight watch on our tongues (James 3:1-10). Paul tells the Ephesians, ‘Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.’ (Eph 4:29)

A stirrer can also be someone who ‘makes waves’ or ‘rocks the boat’, and this can be both a good thing and a bad thing. But we’re all called to be one kind of stirrer, for Paul told Timothy to ‘fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands’ (2 Tim 1:6) and in some versions of the Bible, that command ‘fan into flame’ is rendered ‘stir up the gift of God which is in you.’  God has given each one of us gifts; when we become Christians, He puts His Holy Spirit within each one of us and the amazing truth is that each Christian is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19), but there are times when it feels like the fire God puts inside us is in danger of dying out or we are not using the gifts and talents God has given us, and so we feel tired and listless, lacking energy and enthusiasm. In those times, God urges us to ‘stir up the gift of God which is in you.’ Fan into flame His gifts; ask Him to breathe again His life and Spirit onto us and into us.

When we are full of His Spirit and on fire for Him, we can stir others into action as well. Paul told the Corinthians, when he was talking about them raising money to help the poor in Jerusalem, ‘For I know your eagerness to help, and I have been boasting about it to the Macedonians, telling them that since last year you in Achaia were ready to give; and your enthusiasm has stirred most of them to action.’ (2 Cor 9:2) When we see people who are on fire for God, who are radiant with God’s glory, who are enthusiastic about what God is doing and excited about the privilege of being used by Him, it stirs us up as well! Enthusiasm, zeal for God, passion and faith are infectious! We all know about the negative side of infection: how easy it is to spread germs around and catch illnesses, but there is a positive way of infection, that other people will be stirred up to action themselves by seeing our faith and love for God. This is the kind of stirrer God is looking for!