Mark asked the question on Sunday ‘Why did God choose Joseph?’ All of us have probably asked a similar question at some stage in our lives, usually substituting our own name for Joseph’s. Why did God choose us? Sometimes we ask in astonishment, feeling incredibly privileged to know that we are hand-picked by God. At other times, we ask almost with bewildered resentment, rather like Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring: “‘I am not made for perilous quests,’ cried Frodo. ‘I wish I had never seen the Ring!Why did it come to this? Why was I chosen?'” (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Tolkien goes on to suggest that the question ‘Why was I chosen?’ can never be adequately answered. Gandalf, to whom the question is asked, says ‘You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess, not for power or wisdom at any rate.’ Being chosen can cause differing reactions, but often, it can elicit pride in us. We are chosen… special… hand-picked. Our arrogance can then rise up and assume that being chosen makes us superior and better. Moses warns against this tendency in Deut 6:10-12, reminding the Israelites that the gifts of the Promised Land were just that: gifts. They were given cities they had not built, wells they had not dug, vineyards and olive groves they had not planted simply because of God’s abundant grace. They were reminded that ‘the Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were numerous than other people… But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery.’ (Deut 7:7-8) He went on to remind the people ‘it is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land.’ (Deut 9:5) There is no place for smug superiority or arrogance when dealing with mercy and grace. We don’t get grace because we are good enough. We get grace because God is good enough.

The second reaction to being chosen is more like Frodo’s. We feel inadequate to the task. Jeremiah experienced this reaction when called by God to be a prophet. “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” (Jer 1:6) We gulp at the task God lays out before us, at the dreams He drops into our hearts. Such things are too much for us to take in. Far from filling us with delight, being chosen fills us with trepidation. The responsibilities are too great. We know the weaknesses of our hearts, the frailties of our wills and the inconstancy of our lives too well.

Pleading inadequacy is not a good enough excuse to ignore God’s calling, however. Gandalf goes on to say ‘But you have been chosen and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.’ Eph 1:4 says ‘he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.‘ That calling seems way too much for us, and in our own strength, it is. But inadequacy will not be an adequate excuse before God, because we are not required to live in our own strength or adequacy; we are chosen and called to live by faith and not by sight. We cannot answer the question ‘Why did God choose me?’; we cannot respond either with self-sufficient satisfaction or self-abnegating humiliation. We can only respond with faith: ‘Let it be to me as You have said.’ (Luke 1:38)

Dave spoke  from Isaiah 6:1-8 tonight, looking at the holiness of God. Divine holiness is one of the attributes of God. He is separate, different, transcendent, worthy of reverence and awe. Often, we associate holiness with the God of the Old Testament and can emphasise love more, but the two different aspects of God’s nature cannot be separated. Hebrews 12:28-29 reminds us that we need to worship God with reverence and awe for He is a consuming fire. Just as  Moses was commanded to take off his shoes when he met with God at the burning bush for that was holy ground, so we need to understand the moral purity of our God and approach with reverence and awe.

Isaiah witnessed God’s dazzling holiness and saw the angels singing of this holiness. Angels are not the ‘cute’ beings portrayed in shops; they are massively terrifying beings, sent out as God’s messengers. When the angels sang, the temple shook! Isaiah’s vision saw God seated on His throne. He is never at His wits’ end but is always reigning in majesty. A vision of God puts our lives into perspective, and Isaiah became aware of his own sinfulness and how he could not stand within the holiness of God’s presence. Isaiah’s anguished cries were met at once with the seraph bringing a live coal to touch his lips. God Himself provides for our sinfulness. Is 57:15 reminds us that though God is high and lofty, He dwells with those who are contrite and lowly in spirit. He has made a way for us to enter into His presence (something only the High Priest could do once a year in the Old Testament), for His holiness and love meet in Christ, with the cross being both the emblem of holiness (since God’s absolute purity cannot abide in the presence of sin) and the emblem of love (since this was the means God chose to reconcile us to Himself.) The cross is payment for our sin, but is also the beginning of a new way of life for us, in which we too are called to be holy because God is holy. (1 Pet 1:15-16) We cover ourselves in faith and humility as Moses hid in the cleft of the rock as the presence of the Lord passed by.

God is not safe, but He is good. His holiness demands a response of holiness in return, but His love makes it possible for us to be clothed in His righteousness. Love so amazing, so divine demands our soul, our life, our all. Let’s strive to understand both the holiness and love of God and worship Him as the angels do, in never-ceasing praise.

As part of the ongoing refurbishment of the building, we are looking at replacing the stage curtains (which were installed when the church was opened in 1960!) with a concertina partition which can separate this part of the building from the community hall. In preparation for this work, a timber framework had to be added to the stage area this week:

The holiday period will soon be over and midweek meetings will be resuming in September.

On alternate Thursdays, prayer meetings will be held on 4th and 18th September, starting at 7:30 p.m. The format for these will be slightly different, in that we will be involved in prayer walks throughout Goldthorpe, but we will also still have a prayer meeting in the church building for those who are unable to walk far. Whether we pray inside or outside the building is not as important as the fact that we are praying, so please do make an effort to come along to these important meetings. Prayer is so essential for everything we do as a church and this month, we will be praying in particular for Goldthorpe. We will be praying for God to stir people’s hearts, awakening a spiritual hunger and thirst in them and helping them to realise their need of salvation, showing them that God can change lives and give hope to even the hopeless. We will be praying for the churches in Goldthorpe to be transformed by God’s Spirit and to equip Christians to live godly lives. We will be praying for local businesses and residents to know God’s blessing in every area of their lives and for God’s people to be like lighthouses, shining God’s light into the darkness. Come along and pray!

On the other Thursdays, we will be continuing our Bible studies (we’ll be studying from 1 John 4) on 11th and 25th September, again starting at 7:30 p.m. Come along to dig deeper into God’s Word and find out more of what God has done for us and how He has given us all we need to live godly lives. In this chapter, we read the amazing words ‘You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.’ (1 John 4:4) Use these opportunities to share in deepening your understanding of the Bible.

The youth club will re-start on Monday 8th September and the Parent & Toddler group will re-start on Friday 5th September. Please pray for these outreach ministries and support them if you can. Coffee mornings on Saturday mornings and badminton on Friday evenings will continue as usual. Don’t forget the Macmillan Coffee Morning on Saturday 27th September.

Finally, a couple of special notices. In preparation for ministries re-starting and because the children’s room development is continuing, anyone who is free to help with cleaning and tidying on Wednesday 3rd September from 7 p.m. will be most welcome!

Lastly, the ‘Churches Together’ meeting will be on Saturday 20th September at 7 p.m. at our church, so put that date in your diaries now!

Mark’s sermon this morning touched on the idea that we do not have to be adequate or worthy to be chosen and used by God. 1 Cor 1:26-31 reminds us that God chooses the most unlikely people ‘so that no one may boast before him’ and so that we understand our adequacy and worth are bound up in God Himself. Christ has, he reminds the Corinthians, ‘become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.‘ All we need is in Christ.

This goes against the grain of everything we are taught and everything we strive for, humanly speaking. We feel we have to be worthy in our own righteousness, to ‘deserve’ God’s favour. When we realise how flawed and broken we are, we tend to hide from God, recognising our unworthiness, rather like Peter when confronted with Jesus’s miraculous powers: ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!‘ (Luke 5:8) Yet our brokenness is no barrier to acceptance by God. The truth is that we are all broken, all stained by sin, all unworthy of His favour… and yet He loves us unconditionally and chooses us, not because we are worthy in ourselves, but because of His great mercy. As we sang this morning, ‘Though I’m broken, I am running into Your arms of love.’ (‘Joy’, Rend Collective)

Far from being a barrier, brokenness is required for us to come to the end of ourselves and reach the mercy of God. ‘A broken and contrite heart You, O God, will not despise.’ (Ps 51:17) God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Ps 147:3) Jesus talked about being the rejected cornerstone and said ‘Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces.‘ (Luke 20:18) At the Last Supper, He broke the bread in symbolism of what would be done to His body and told us that this was done for our sakes; each week when we take Communion, we remember that Christ’s brokenness opened the door to our salvation, so it should really come as no surprise that our brokenness is the pathway to God.

Humanly speaking, we shy away from being broken. We admire wholeness. Yet all who serve a wounded Saviour must learn that brokenness is not to be feared or despised and that just as He was broken for us, so we too must be broken to be fit for His service. God’s will must be done in His way (‘Broken Bread’, Rend Collective) if we are to see His kingdom come in our area and our times. We serve a Saviour who is known by the scars, but we can be confident that as we offer Him our brokenness, He will make us whole.

Judy Garland sang ‘Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.’ Mark took this theme as he continued his study on Joseph this morning, speaking from Genesis 42:1-24.

Genesis 42 begins with the time of famine, which was so widespread it had even spread way beyond Egypt. Jacob sent his ten sons in search of grain and by another of those God-instances which show us His sovereignty, these brothers came before Joseph himself. The dream which had sustained Joseph for so long was about to come true.

God uses dreamers. But if we ask why God chosen Joseph all those years earlier, we may feel puzzled. Out of all the people available, why did God choose Joseph? Gen 37:1-2 shows us Joseph feeding the flock, ‘grassing on’ his brothers for their misdemeanours, a raw 17-year-old boy with nothing to show what he would become. God sees the potential in people way before it is visible to anyone else. 1 Cor 1:26-29 reminds us that God does not choose the wise and learned but chooses the weak and foolish so that He gets the glory. When we are weak, foolish and fearful, we know that we have to rely on God, for we have nothing in ourselves to rely on.

God gives us dreams, a glimpse of what He wants to do. Often, even that glimpse astounds us and shocks us, and like Moses, we go through the ‘pantomime process’:‘Oh, no, I can’t!’/ ‘Oh, yes, you can!’ Joseph the 17-year-old boy could not have comprehended all that God would equip him to do, but as he stands before his brothers, he sees the dreams about to be fulfilled. We understand, however dimly, that God’s grace is sufficient for us and His power is made perfect in our weakness. (2 Cor 12:9). When we feel insufficient and weak and in need of Christ’s power, then we can know His sufficiency and grace to meet every need and fulfil every dream.