We also had a birthday to celebrate yesterday.

Mark spoke this evening about how we are praying for and expecting 2016 to be a ‘yield year.’ There is a two-fold meaning to this word, meaning to give way or surrender  and also to gather in a harvest.

Surrender

1 Chron 29:7-8 talks about yielding to God and how we should let God lead and mould us all the time. Jesus sets the example for us in this regard, praying for God’s will to be done above His own.

Harvest

Lev 26:3-5 talks of the land yielding a harvest and in Matt 13, Jesus tells His disciples the parable of the sower, talking of four seeds planted in different kinds of soil. Even in shallow, rocky soil, the seed yields a huge increase in proportion to the seed sowed, and in other soils, the increase is even greater (30-fold, 60-fold or 100-fold.) We need to be looking for that same kind of yield from our lives.

God can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine (see Eph 3:20-21), but we need to pray in faith, believing that He will save our family and friends. Our part is to pray and to tell; the Holy Spirit is the one who will give the increase, who convicts and saves. John 15:1-17 reminds us of the need to abide in Christ if we are to bear fruit and to ask in faith (see especially Jn 15:7, 16). Let’s continue to believe and expect God to do great things this year.

Garry spoke this morning from John 1:9-11, verses which show us despite being the Creator of the universe, Jesus was not recognised as God when He came to earth. God’s fingerprints are etched into the universe and Paul tells us that God’s handiwork is visible to all, but many refuse to recognise God (see Rom 1:21-28), choosing other theories and explanations for how the world came into being.

Some do not recognise God because they have an erroneous view of God, culled from a ‘mish-mash’ of religious education or spiritual ideas. Others have a view of God which is clearly contrary to that found in Scripture (for example, many blame God for natural disasters and human actions; personal experiences can also influence our view of God.) Even the Jews, however, who had the Scriptures did not recognise Jesus.

Part of the problem in recognising God is that we operate on an either/ or understanding, not comprehending how God’s righteousness and love can co-exist. Jer 31:20 tells us how God yearns for His people and delights in them; his heart is bursting with longing even for those who seem to have no desire to know Him, but we fail to understand both the heights of His holiness and the depths of His love. When we look at the law, we feel that God must be mean to set the standards so high; when we see His acceptance of even the unrighteous, we are offended by His grace and mercy!

Once our eyes have been opened to who God is, He asks us to testify to others so that they too may know Him (John 14:26, John 15:26-27, John 16:12-15, Matt 18:12-14). That testimony comes from a personal, intimate relationship with God. We are asked to go beyond the ‘headlines’ (people’s superficial knowledge of God) and reveal God to others so that He is no longer unrecognised!

In Matt 16:13-19, we see a pivotal moment of understanding for Peter and the disciples (another PPI, as Mark calls them.) Jesus asks ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’ before moving on to ask them directly ‘Who do you say I am?’ Peter’s reply is an acknowledgment of the identity of Christ: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.‘ (Matt 16:16)

It is in the context of acknowledging the identity of Jesus that He goes on to say to Peter ‘I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.‘ (Matt 16:17-19; note that some translations say of the verb tense ‘will have been bound’/ ‘will have been loosed’ indicating an authority that is already there.)

Receiving the keys to a city or kingdom indicates a spiritual freedom and authority given by a greater power. On the day of Pentecost, Peter opened the door for 3,000 people to enter the kingdom of God (Acts 2:41). He opened the door for the Gentile centurion, Cornelius, and thereby to the whole Gentile world (Acts 10). We too have been given these keys (see also Matt 18:18) and can therefore pray for salvation with confidence and authority.

Nicky Gumbel reminds us ‘You can have the amazing privilege of seeing people set free through the preaching of the good news of the kingdom. You can have the joy of seeing people set free from drug addiction, alcoholism, crime and every other bondage. You can approach challenges with confidence, fearing no evil, knowing that you share in a remarkable spiritual authority.’ (‘Bible In One Year’)

So often, we pray for salvation timidly and half-heartedly, somehow believing that atheism, scepticism, science and apathy are able to withstand the power of God. The truth is that, with the spiritual keys God entrusts to the church, we can ‘storm the gates of hell and set the prisoners free.’ (ibid.) The church in the book of Acts turned the world upside down – in the face of considerable scepticism and opposition – because they recognised the omnipotence and sovereign authority of God. Only when we are equally convinced of these two things and understand the authority He has given us (see Matt 28:18-20) will we take the Great Commission seriously and pray with boldness and authority, preach with boldness and authority and witness with boldness and authority.

When I was younger, I learned the magic of musical notation. The ability to read and write music is like learning another language. Musical notes have their own rhythmical value and, depending where they are positioned on a stave (five black lines which become the musical ‘page’), their own pitch. Creating a system for ordering this enables people across time and geographical boundaries to communicate with each other.

Many people can listen to and sing or play music without any theoretical knowledge of this (just as literacy is no necessity for communication – speaking and listening skills develop long before any understanding of reading and writing.) Literacy skills do, however, open a door to a wider world of communication, and it’s the same with music. The greater fluency we want to have in any language, the more we’ll work at developing our skills in communication in that language.

Just as a child learns to read monosyllables like ‘cat‘ and ‘dog’ before progressing to polysyllabic words like ‘antidisestablishmentarisanism’ and uses phonics (a method of teaching people to read by correlating sounds with symbols in an alphabetic writing system) as the building blocks to understanding the language, so the music student learns names for rhythmic values (minims, crotchets, quavers and so on) and names of notes positioned on staves. Maths comes into music as well, for rhythm uses maths to break down timing values (the linguist in me loves the fact that German obligingly gives mathematical names to these values, calling a demisemiquaver a ‘Zweiunddreißigstel‘, a 32nd note, which one wit says is ‘the longest name for one of the shortest notes’!)

Because rhythm can be extremely varied, this language can at times be as simple as monosyllabic words (counting to 4 is not exactly difficult) or as complex as polysyllabic words (different note lengths, tied notes, dotted notes and so on.) The score (written account) of a simple song is like a child’s ‘ABC’ book; the score of a Beethoven sonata more like a Shakespeare play!

Timing is crucial in music, adding variety and interest to songs and compositions. Yet just as it requires fluency to read more complex stories, it requires understanding to read more complex scores of music. Many of us find timing in our Christian lives hard to read as well. Why does God make us wait so long? (Ps 13:1) ‘Reading’ God requires a lifetime of practice, and even then, as Tim Hughes puts it, God is ‘in every way above and beyond understanding.’ (‘Almighty God,’ Tim Hughes)

Many of our difficulties in life arise because we are not skilled in understanding God’s thoughts and ways, especially relating to timing. We’re still at the 1-2-3-4 stage of counting when He’s dealing with minims, crotchets, quavers, semiquavers, demisemiquavers and beyond, not forgetting the importance of rests (all of which have their own musical notation!) We believe that life is lived at one pace only, not understanding that variety and silence (rests) contribute to the overall texture of life, as well as music. There is tremendous freedom in understanding that God’s timing is different to ours, as Aaron Shust says:

‘When the time is finally right,

Will You open up my eyes, show me all the things You want me to see?’ (‘To God Alone’, Aaron Shust)

God works when the time is fully right (Gal 4:4, Ex 2:24). Our job is to try and ‘understand the times.’ Music is a great way to learn to fathom variety and mystery; whether we learn to ‘read’ it or not ultimately doesn’t stop us enjoying or appreciating it, though. But understanding God’s timing matters a lot; learning to wait for God is an essential part of spiritual growth. Our willingness to be led by the Spirit of God – not running ahead impatiently or lagging behind truculently – matters enormously in practical realms, not just theoretical ones. Reading God’s timing stops us fretting or anxiously manipulating circumstances; we are free to embrace the time as it is and enjoy today (see Eccl 3:1-11).

Tucked away in Genesis, in the midst of the exciting story of Joseph’s life, is a short narrative about Judah (Gen 38:1-30), a story that seems rather unpleasant and unsavoury, and always leaves me thinking ‘Why is this here at all?’ By this time in Genesis, we are used to family narratives, lists of marriages and children, and have learned that people are far from perfect and the Bible is nothing if not honest. Nonetheless, this story of marriage, death and prostitution seems oddly out of place.

Judah, Jacob’s fourth son, has left the family home by this time, and gone to live elsewhere. He’s met and married a Canaanite woman (Shua), which, given the attention to detail Abraham paid to getting a ‘native’ wife for his son Isaac (Gen 24), sets alarm bells ringing. (Intermarriage rarely results in happiness… nor does marrying unbelievers…) He has three sons by this woman: Er, Onan and Shelah.

Er marries Tamar, an arranged marriage by Judah (some speculate that because her name is Hebraic, she was a Hebrew, rather than a Canaanite), but Er’s unspecified wickedness is so serious that ‘the Lord put him to death.’ (Gen 38:7) Sometimes I wish the Bible was far more explicit than it is!

As was the levirate custom (see Deut 25:5-6), Onan was then obliged to marry Tamar, in order to continue the eldest brother’s lineage. Clearly, Onan did not want to do this and he refused to consummate the relationship properly, a refusal which also displeased God (see Gen 38:9-10). By this time, Tamar has had two husbands and still has no children. Judah promises his third son to her, but does nothing about this, and whilst she is prepared to wait for him to do this, his procrastination reaches the point of insult and the rest of the chapter relates her actions in dealing with the humiliation and rejection she must have felt.

The fact that this involves her deceit and Judah’s casual attitude to his own sexual behaviour whilst condemning her pregnancy raises many questions. Clearly, his hypocrisy and double standards are highlighted in the chapter; when confronted with this, he admits, ‘She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.‘ (Gen 38:26)

Whatever we may think of the customs of the time and the behaviour of the two main protagonists in this story, one thing remains clear. The union between Judah and Tamar produces twin sons: Perez and Zerah. And in Matt 1:3, we see how this story connects with the lineage of Jesus, for there we read ‘Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron’, leading right through to King David and thence to Jesus.

We may well wonder why God allowed His Son to come from such a human lineage! We tend to think of the sinless Son of God as coming from the ‘best’ of humankind (which is why I love the genealogies so much, since they debunk this theory!) But God’s purposes would never have been fulfilled if He had waited for a ‘perfect’ human, for no one is capable of living righteously in their own strength (Eccl 7:20, Is 59:16, Rom 3:1-23). This story shows us, rather, that God’s plans will be worked out despite our brokenness. Our mistakes, sins and failings will somehow be redeemed through God’s grace and love. That’s not to encourage us to sin (see Rom 6:1-14), but to reassure us that nothing is able to thwart God’s purposes and plans.

Jacob later prophesied that the Messiah would come through Judah’s line (see Gen 49:8-12). There is little to praise Judah for in this story, but ultimately, he is remembered  perhaps more for being an ancestor of Jesus than he is for his own behaviour. One of the names of Jesus is ‘the Lion of the tribe of Judah.’ (Rev 5:5)  Perhaps that’s the whole point, really. We are covered by Jesus. God looks on us and sees the righteousness of Christ. There’s hope for all of us.