‘Idols’ are man made constructs that replace the one true God in our lives. In ancient times and in parts of the world today, these were statues made to be worshipped. The religion and superstition linked to them became a tyranny. The ideology claimed, that unless you appeased these gods in some way, you would be cursed. People became enslaved to gods that were not gods at all.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

One of C.S. Lewis’s most famous books is the children’s book, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It was the first in a series of stories about Narnia and has been made into films and TV series. Apparently, Netflix have also recently commissioned a TV adaptation of the story.

In the book, the land of Narnia is under the control of The White Witch, who calls herself the Queen of Narnia. Her rule, however, brings winter to the land and fear and oppression. Perhaps the book set during World War II and written soon after is deliberately echoing the Nazi occupation of Europe in this description.

Yet, in the story, like in Nazi occupied Europe, there is resistance to the oppressive rule. In particular when the children enter the land through the cupboard, they are helped by a faun and beavers to escape the clutches of the White Witch despite the danger they bring to themselves. Just as some in Nazi occupied Europe sought to help Jewish people despite the threat from the Nazis. In both cases, evil rulers were resisted by those seeking to do good.

Holy Resistance

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe echoes a lot of Christian themes. But perhaps this theme of resistance to an evil oppressor is one that is often missed.

The Bible understands the world to have been created good, but since people have rejected God, it has come under a kind of occupation of evil. So much so that Jesus, can even talk about the devil as being the ‘prince of this world.’

But Jesus came to rescue us from the oppressive rule of the evil one. Talking about his imminent death on the cross, he says:

“Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” (John 12:31)

On the cross, the power of the devil has been defeated, the occupation is coming to an end. But while we wait for his final downfall, we still live in a world, where his evil influence is at work. As followers of Jesus, we are called to a Holy Resistance.

Peter puts it this way:

“As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do;” (1 Peter 1:14-15)

Last week, we saw that the Ten Commandments were rooted in the story of God’s saving work. The introduction to the Ten Commandments says,

“”I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” (Deuteronomy 5:6)

Having rescued Israel from the oppressive rule of Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, God is now calling them to live as his people, in a way that resists the evil oppressive forces that shaped those who had enslaved them. The Ten Commandments are a call to Holy Resistance. A recipe to avoid being enslaved again to the forces of evil that so corrupt God’s good world.

The first commandment was to keep the God who rescued them as the main focus of their worship, whilst the second commandment was not to make any idols. Not to make any physical representations either of the true God who rescued them or the false gods of the peoples around them.

This was an utterly radical idea in the Ancient Near East. At the time, the world was full of idols, both in Egypt, where they had come from and in Canaan where they were heading. To not create a physical object to worship, not even of their own God was a radical act of Holy Resistance to the ways of their world.

This meant that when other nations visited, the Israelites, they were astounded that they could not find an image of any god in their homes or temple. In their eyes, the god of the Israelites was missing.

The result was, as Psalm 115 makes clear in verse 2, that Israel were mocked, for having an ‘invisible God.’

The Problem with Idolatry

So, what was wrong with idolatry? Why did the God who rescued them from Egypt command that they make no images to worship, not even those that represented him.

Well God had rescued them from slavery in Egypt. He did not want them to return to any form of slavery and the problem with idolatry is that it takes away your freedom, it dehumanises you. As the Psalm puts it in verse 8, in some way it makes you like the idol that you worship:

“Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.” (Psalm 115:8)

The word, ‘like’ here is an echo of Genesis 1, where God says, that he is going to make humans in his image, in his likeness. To be truly human is to be like the God, who created the universe, but when the focus of your worship, becomes something created by humans, you end up becoming something far less than you were made to be.

The Psalm puts this brilliantly, mocking the idols made by man as being, completely useless. They may have bodily parts, but none of them work. They cannot hear, see, feel, smell or move. They are as good as dead.

Many writers point out, that the people of the Ancient Near East did not really worship the statues, they only saw the statues as representing the gods. But how can something made by human hands ever represent anything other than something made up by humans. The idea of the gods, their stories, images and powers, were as much a human creation as the statues themselves. They had no more power than the imaginative force of other humans.

Indeed, they were often invented by humans as a way of controlling other humans. They were a form of slave making, controlled by priesthoods made rich, by the offering of the people who worshipped their gods.

But worshipping something invented by other humans is to become blind to the God in whose image we are made. To become less than human.

Loss of Heaven

First of all there is a loss of heaven. The Psalm talks of the LORD as being the God in heaven, the one who does whatever pleases him.

He is not controlled by people on earth, he cannot be represented by any image on earth. He is in heaven, above and beyond this world, transcendent above the immediate issues and concerns of humanity.

Stefani Ruper, was an atheist that realised that people need to engage in spirituality to be truly whole. But she was an atheist. She did not believe God existed. So, she tried to write books on spirituality for atheists. However, having done so she came to a conclusion that such attempts of spirituality without acknowledging the transcendent God just did not work and she became a Christian.

When we worship manmade gods or simply manmade ideologies that reject the idea of god, we lose our sense of heaven.

Loss of Eternity

We also lose our connection with eternity. God is eternal, but our lives on this earth are finite. One day we will die. The Psalm talks about the dead going down to the place of silence.

For worshippers of idols, which merely reflect the temporary work of human hands, or ideologies, which are human ideas that come and go, their worship is of something finite. Idols do not last, ideologies do not last. Neither offer any hope in the face of death.

But the God of the Bible is eternal. He is always there and when we see our role as praising and glorifying him, as the Psalm suggests, then we discover our eternal role and so find eternal life through our trust in the one who can save us even from death.

Loss of Life

The gods and idols of the ancient world were just inanimate objects, no more alive than the materials they were made from. The human made ideologies behind them were equally dead, just as human ideologies are today, mere fantasies, that lose all power, when no-one believes them anymore. They too are dead. If you trust in them, then you are just as dead.

But the God of the Bible is before us and beyond us. He is the alpha and omega. He is not a figment of our imagination, but we are created by his word and sustained by his will. Our life is utterly dependent on him and only when we turn to him do we become truly alive, truly human.

As Paul said of the Thessalonians:

“They tell how you turned to God from idols

to serve the living and true God,” (1 Thessalonians 1:9)

Idols of our Age

In the Twenty-First Century West we do not create images as representatives of gods, but we do replace worship of the living and true God, with the worship of human created things and ideas.

This is particularly true in our secularised world, where God is completely pushed out as irrelevant to life. The focus is completely on material man made things, ideologies and concerns. Just as the idolaters of the past, we lose our connection with heaven or the transcendent and eternity. We end up imprisoned in a world limited to immediate material concerns and become dehumanised as a result.

So what are some of the idols of our age?

• Wealth –

The New Testament, explicitly names greed as a form of idolatry:

“Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).” (Colossians 3:5)

Jesus, pretty much names Money as a replacement for God,

“”No-one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” ( Matthew 6:24)

Greed or money has become one of the dominant idols of our age. The stories we are told in the constant advertising of our world, is that if we have better stuff or buy more experiences, then we will be happy in life. It seems appealing, but we often end up enslaved to this power, working harder and harder to have more and more, but never really finding the promised happiness. Doesn’t the promise of having more often prove faithless? Doesn’t the simple accumulation of stuff become soul destroying? It offers no hope in the face of death and no connection with ultimate meaning or reality.

• Fame – Then there is fame. Many people today, long to be well known and well liked. Social media feeds this, we count the number of our followers, long for ‘likes’ for our posts. Apparently 1 in 5 youngsters in the UK dream of becoming social media influencers. A few such influencers have gone from obscurity to find fame and fortune through social media. Their stories inspire others to hope for the same. But, yet again this alternative power is oppressive and slaving, pulling us to be constantly attached to our phones and basing our hope and value on how people respond to our posts. We long to be loved by others, but even if we manage to make people like our social media image, deep down we know that they are not loving the true me. No wonder, we have a mental health epidemic.

• Heart Desire – The third power or god of today is the inner self. Many people when wondering what to do are asked, ‘What does your heart say?’ Stories about ‘learning to follow my heart’ rather than being ‘enslaved’ by the views of others around suggest a kind of freedom. But is the ‘heart’s desire’ a better authority than the God who saves? Aren’t we then just enslaved to our inner desires, which are often twisted and corrupted by the attitudes of the people around us. Is our heart really as trustworthy a leader as the living and true God, who has a steadfast love and faithfulness.

• Success – A fourth idol is running after success. We think that what counts in life is achieving something, meeting some measure. It can be becoming a successful sport person, business leader, parent or even church. Everything is geared towards making what we do successful, becoming our ultimate goal in life. But

Even our church life can become caught up in running after the idol of success, whether it be achieving the restoration of a building or growing the church into vast numbers. When celebrating our success replaces worshipping our God, then the success has becomes all important and we become too focus on the present world and lose touch with eternity and heaven. We are often driven to work hours that are too long, wearing ourselves out and again it can be soul destroying.

Not that success, the desires of our heart, fame or money are bad things in themselves. The Psalmist seeks God’s blessing and such a blessing may well give us these things and more. The problem is when these things become what drive our lives, when they replace our relationship with the living and true God and imprison us in an outlook constrained by the immediate present world and cut off from the eternal.

Lots of good things can become idols in the same way, family, relationships, volunteer work and so on. The anti-dote is holy resistance. A constant guarding of our hearts, to turn them away from these idols and to focus once more on who God is and to wonder about his transcendent nature.

Holy Resistance

This is Holy Resistance, because it is not the way of the people around us, whose lives are driven by these things and for whom God is absent in their lives. But the more we resist the culture of the world around us, the more we may shine light into their worlds, of a better way. A way of life and freedom as we become the people of God.

In the Narnia stories, when the White Witch is defeated, winter is over, the land is released from its grasp.

The Nazi hold on occupied Europe was released and the people were free from its power.

When we live lives of holy resistance today, not allowing the idols of our world to drive our lives, we are those looking forward to the end of the winter of idolatry, to the end of evils occupation to the time, when Christ’s rule will be fully realised and we will have life to the full.

Commandments – The Theft of our Precious Free Will?

Paul Kingsnorth grew up in a non-Christian family in the 1980s, said that despite being taught Christianity at school for most people in our culture,

“Religion was irrelevant. It was authoritarian, it was superstitious, it was feeble proto-science. It was the theft of our precious free will by authorities who wanted to control us by telling us fairy tales. It repressed women, gay people, atheists, anyone who disobeyed its irrational edicts. It hated science, denied reason, burned witches and heretics by the million. Post-Enlightenment liberal societies had thrown off its shackles…”

From https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/06/the-cross-and-the-machine

Today we are starting a series on the Ten Commandments, God’s rules for life. Most Church of England churches have them on their walls, you are meant to have learnt them before you are confirmed.

But how do you feel about the 10 Commandments? Do you know them all? Do you care whether you know them? Do you teach them to your children as our reading suggests? Talking about them in the home on a regular basis?

Most people would sign up to some of them at least. ‘Do not murder.’ ‘Do not steal.’ ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But there are others that are at best forgotten and at worst ridiculed or seen as oppressive, as ‘the theft of our precious free will.’

Teaching the commandments to people who do not want to be told what to do or are worried about being made to feel guilty or condemned by them is just seen as a power grab and oppression. It is not very appealing.

Law Rooted in Story – 5:6; 6:19-25
In the U.K. we are seeing generational decline in the Christian faith. Each generation has less people going to church than the generation before and with that less people believing in God. Is that because we have failed to answer the next generations questions properly? Have we focussed so much on the importance of following laws like the Ten Commandments, without telling them the story that undergirds why we should follow them.

In the last section of our reading, Moses tells us how to respond to the questions of the next generation. We are not to dismiss or ridicule the questions, but to retell the story of God’s action.

In 6:20, we are given a question that a child asks,
“What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God commanded you?”

Perhaps the question is due to a natural inquisitiveness. Maybe it is more rebellious – ‘why should I allow my precious free will to be stolen by all these rules and regulations from God?’

The temptation in answering this question is to say something like,
‘Because God says so…’ – which he did.

or,

‘Because it is beneficial…’ – which it is.
But that is not the way Moses tells us to answer the question. What Moses tells us to do is to tell the story of God’s salvation.

Perhaps the reason we are losing more and more from each generation is that we have failed to answer the question correctly.

We have divorced the commands from the story,
the rules from the rule giver,
the instructions from the saviour?

Without the roots or the foundation in the story of God’s salvation, the Laws fall apart. They are heard simply as words of condemnation, irrelevant utterances from an unknown God. With the story as a foundation, however, we see them for what they really are, words of promise, freedom and blessing.

The Bible never separates the commands from the story. If you look at chapter 5, where the laws are listed, the commands begin with a prologue, which is a summary of the story of God’s salvation:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”

Only with the story in place, do the commands make sense.

Israel’s Story:
So what is the story of God’s salvation for Israel?
A Story of Promise => God is faithful
It is a story of promise. It begins with God calling Abraham and making some amazing promises to him. He takes Abraham out into the night and shows him the ancient Palestinian sky, packed with stars and says to him. See all that – your descendants will be as numerous as the stars. For Abraham who was childless it seemed like a ridiculous promise. But, God acted and even in old age, Abraham and his elderly wife Sarah had a son Isaac, who had a son Jacob, who had twelve sons, who in Egypt grew to become a massive group of people. God’s impossible promise, was fulfilled over many generations.

He also took Abraham outside and showed him all the land of Palestine as far as he could see. And said your descendants will own this land. It was a promise that also came true soon after the time of Moses giving the Ten Commandments, Israel settled into a new and wonderful land.

The story of the Bible shows again and again that the God of Israel is a God who makes great promises and fulfils them. He is a faithful God, who can be trusted.

A Story of Freedom => God is mighty and loving
Then at the start of the book of Exodus, we find that Israel are slaves in Egypt. Forced to build cities for the Egyptians, beaten and oppressed. What is more because the Egyptians were worried that there were too many of them, they had the babies of the Israelites thrown into the river Nile. Slavery to Pharaoh the king of Egypt was a terrible thing.

But God had rescued them from all that. He had sent terrible plagues on the Egyptians until Pharaoh agreed to let them go. Pharaoh, who was seen to be a god himself and the representative on earth of all the Egyptian gods was no match for the God of Israel. When Pharaoh tried to corner the people against the Red Sea, God led Israel through the Red Sea, but drowned the army of Pharaoh that followed them.

God was committed to his people, he loved his people and he was mighty and powerful enough to save them from the oppression of Pharaoh.

A Story of Rags to Riches => God is generous
Finally, this is a story of rags to riches for the Israelites. But not because of their hard work, but because of God’s generosity. He gave them the land to live in, going ahead of them and driving out the people before them, so that they found themselves with cities already built, wells already dug and vineyards and olive groves already planted. They did nothing, but became rich, because of God’s generosity to them. He is a generous God

The Christian Story:
You might say, well that is all very well, but it is Israel’s story not our story. But it is the same God and the story connects with the main story for us as Christians. Jesus himself, connected it when he set up the communion meal, at a Passover Meal, the meal where the story of Israel’s rescue was remembered and recounted.

His life, death and resurrection was shown again and again to be a fulfilment of the promises to Israel of the past. Jesus was the greater prophet, the true servant and the better king, who brought God’s word with powerful signs, died a sacrificial death for our sins and rose from the dead.

He showed his utter love for us by dying for us.

He proved his incredible power by rising from the dead.

He proclaimed God’s incredible generosity by promising the free gift of forgiveness for sins and eternal life to all who came to him.

The Call to Loyalty to God
Only when we understand these stories, only when they become our stories, can we get to know the God of the Bible and so come to value his commandments as trustworthy and for our good and blessing.

The first commandment is a call to loyalty to God, to make him the supreme power and authority in our lives. Nothing should have more say over how we live than him. No god should be before him.

Positively, the command is flipped and repeated in Deuteronomy 6:5:

‘Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’

When we have understood who this God is, through the stories of how he has saved his people, that he is faithful, loving, mighty and generous, then it makes sense to make him number one in our lives, to give him absolute loyalty. He wants the best for us, he has shown his love for us and he has the power to bless us more than we can imagine.

Only he has the answer to the wickedness in our hearts. Only he has the answer to death.

Holy Resistance to the Slavery of Other Gods
The only problem is that this means rejecting other potential authorities in our lives. For the Israelites it meant rejecting the ways of Egypt and the gods of the Egyptians, for us it means rejecting a world of sin, the world that had Jesus crucified. In being called to be loyal to God, we are called to reject the powerful loyalties of the world around us.

We need to see our world, which lives in rebellion against God as a good world, under the occupation of evil. Jesus actually talks of Satan being the Prince of the World. It is a good world, but because of Satan’s rule it has become corrupted, it is cold and harsh.

In the book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Witch is meant to represent Satan. Her rule, attractive at first, freezes people and takes away their freedom. The Lion, who represents Jesus, however, leads a resistance her occupation of Narnia, one that eventually wins out.

As Christians, as followers of Jesus, we need to see ourselves as living in a world occupied by evil, full of attractive other ‘powers’ wanting to call us away from the faithful, loving, mighty and generous God. We are called to a holy resistance to this occupation, by committing ourselves wholeheartedly to the God who has saved us in Jesus Christ.

True Freedom
The world thinks that following the Ten Commandments is allowing your free will to be stolen. But, when we are caught up in the story of the God who gives the commandments, we find that actually they show us a way of holy resistance that frees us from the oppressive powers of the world.

After a long journey into faith, Paul Kingsnorth has finally discovered that to be true:

“I grew up believing what all modern people are taught: that freedom meant lack of constraint.” Orthodoxy taught me that this freedom was no freedom at all, but enslavement to the passions: a neat description of the first thirty years of my life. True freedom, it turns out, is to give up your will and follow God’s. To deny yourself. To let it come. I am terrible at this, but at least now I understand the path.

As followers of Jesus lets do all we can to be followers that make followers, teaching them to obey all Jesus commanded as we seek to obey him in our lives too.

The saying goes a picture paints 1000 words. It means that sometimes a picture can communicate something in a snapshot thousands of words take to describe

I’ve got some pictures on our screen this morning, hopefully when you see those pictures it conjures up what they mean what the thing is about. The road sign of a girl and a boy holding hands walking along, When we see that sign, what does that communicate?

The green cross often lit up, but not always, no matter what country we’re in. We know what we can get when we see that green cross. A pharmacy.

My third picture is the baptismal font similar to the one at the back of Church, and for us, as Christian, the baptismal font is a place of welcome, a place where we welcome people into the church family of God, and it’s a representative of what all that means

In the baptism that we’ve had this morning. There were two signs within the service, the sign of water and the sign of the cross. The water is a symbol. A picture of being washed clean, have been cleansed. The Christian faith talks about forgiveness, being made clean in the eyes of God. An image of the cross shows that it was Jesus, dying on the cross, coming back to live, defeating sin and death, and being raised to heaven to reign with God, who made it possible for us to have a right relationship with God once more.

The baptism has the signs and pictures that start us out on a journey of faith & signs us up to be followers of Jesus, following in Jesus’ steps. As Christians, we believe that Jesus is our king. He’s the king of Gods kingdom, and those that believe in God, and follow him are living under Jesus’ rule and reign.

When Jesus was on Earth, he taught his disciples, and the crowds gathered around him, about the reason he had come to earth, and about what he was gonna do about the kingdom that he was going to bring in. He often taught using parables, stories, and these parables often used pictures/imagery, to communicate truths about Gods kingdom. In Matthews gospel, Jesus often begins His parables with “the kingdom of heaven is like”, and over the summer we’ve been looking at several of them. We’ve had the kingdom of heaven is like the merchant, he goes looking for a Pearl and finds one of great value. We’ve looked at how the kingdom in heaven is like a net that caught many fish which were separated out once the net was on shore. There was the parable of the yeast that was hidden in the dough and worked its way throughout the whole batch, and we’ve had the parable of the soil where seed was sown and when it was on good soil produced lots and lots of grain. It multiplied.

Today’s parable is slightly different to all of those previous parables that we have looked at in Matthew chapter 13. Whereas the previous parables have said, “the kingdom of heaven is like”, today’s parable has the phrase “a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like”.

Jesus is moving from teaching about what the kingdom he’s bringing in will be like, a kingdom that will multiply and grow and spread, that is precious, and is above every ideology that exists, being planted by God, who looks over all that he has created and made. He’s moving from that to what a follower of the kingdom is to be like. There is no doubt in this parable that action is required. There is a sense that belief in Jesus, and who he is and what he’s come to do isn’t passive but needs a response.

The parable starts: the teacher of the law, who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven.

It’s likely Jesus is talking to his disciples at this point, and it makes me ask the question when he says teacher of law who does that include? There wasn’t to my knowledge, a teacher of law amongst his disciples. There were a fair few fisherman, we know there was a tax collector. if there was a teacher of the law, it was never mentioned. Jesus’ followers were ordinary men who had humble jobs and left them to follow Jesus. So if we read this parable and think, well it’s just talking about preachers like Paul, like Clare, Colin Bruce I think we’re wrong because this was first spoken to the disciples who were ordinary men. they hadn’t gone to theological College. They hadn’t learnt how to preach and put together a sermon. They were just walking alongside Jesus. We’ve seen that those walking alongside Jesus, seemingly ordinary, are used by God for his purposes.

Just before Jesus went up to heaven after he’d been raised from the dead He spoke with his disciples, and he said this to them all authority in heaven on Earth has been given to me, therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you and Surely I’m with you always to the very end of the age.

They might not have gone to theological College, but they’ve been given this command by Jesus to make disciples of others to baptise and teach them everything Jesus had commanded.

In this parable it starts, the teacher of the law has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven. Being a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is someone who is following Jesus, who is learning his teaching, obeying his commands and baptism is a sign of this. Jesus’ disciples were in this category. They were followers of Jesus, who were to make followers of Jesus, who were to make followers of Jesus all the way down to us here today.

So this parable talks of a teacher of the law who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven, and it says that this person is like the owner of the house who takes from the store houses, both new and old treasures. So what does that mean first for the disciples, and then for us as disciples of the disciples of the disciples?

I think it saying that those who become a follower of Jesus, are like the owner of a house, owning a house is a great responsibility and Jesus is saying that Jesus disciples were to be given responsibility for Gods kingdom as he commands later on in Matthew 28. As we read through the rest of the new Testament, we see the account of the disciples going out and sharing the good news of who Jesus is for the whole world. if you haven’t read the book of acts, it’s a great account and we have letters written by Church leaders to churches to give encouragement and instruction to remind them of who Jesus is to interpret for them what is come before and help them move through what they’re currently going through into a future they will see Gods kingdom come into completion when he comes again to bring about a new heaven and a new earth.

And the parable says that a follower of Jesus is like this homeowner who takes from the store house both new and old treasures.

Storehouses weren’t necessary just for treasures in terms of monetary value pearls, gems etc. There were storehouses for food, maybe store houses for furniture, treasured possessions, even store houses for important paperwork.

I think this idea of a teacher of the law who is a disciple of the kingdom of heaven being like a homeowner who takes from the store houses both old and new treasure is given to emphasise to Jesus’ disciples the importance of the Jewish roots that Jesus and they themselves had. The kingdom of heaven for Jew and Gentile is a continuation of the story of God and his people, his chosen people who are the Jews. And the New Testament shows that Jesus is the fulfilment of the promises and it’s continuation.

The gospel of Matthew that we’re looking at today, the letters, the majority which Paul did write one being to the church in Rome, for example, were written with the backdrop of the old Testament of the story of Gods people

And as we read the new Testament, which was written after Jesus, we see so much use of the old Testament and interpretation of the old testament prophecies, pointing to Jesus, being the fulfilment of God’s promises. Because of Jesus, Gods story was continuing for both Jew and Gentile, and the disciples were to take what had been told, and handed down through Jewish history, and in light of who Jesus is, and what he done, and teach all the truth of that.

The teacher of the law who becomes a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a store house who takes out both new and old treasures. This was the instruction. The picture given to Jesus’ disciples, they were to teach about Gods kingdom that Jesus has brought in to happening. Looking back at the old Testament and interpreting it in light of who Jesus is and what he came to achieve.

What does that mean for us? This morning as we’ve baptised Halle and welcomed her into the family of God, we’ve welcomed her to be a lifelong learner about Jesus. The same is true for all of us who see ourselves as followers of Jesus.

Yes, we may not have gone to theological College, but this parable gives a sense that today all of us are house owners to some extent in Gods kingdom, where we do hold responsibility, as a house owner in the families that we are part of, our friendship groups, work, school, volunteer roles.

We said at the beginning that a picture paints 1000 words. The picture of the parable today was the Storehouse in the idea that disciple of the kingdom of heaven, someone he takes both new and the old out of the store houses. That precious thing is being used.

As for us, as followers of Jesus what do we keep in our storehouses – can we access the treasure within. What do we really know about our faith, our God? Is it from what we read on social media, what others tell us, or have we studied it for ourselves. I’ve said it before – but don’t just trust what we’re being told up here. Investigate for yourselves.

A lot of people have said to me that they do struggle with the old Testament and it can seem to read very differently to the new Testament, but it’s actually part of God speak story and there is so much of the old Testament quoted in the new so much interpreted in the new Testament in light of who Jesus is and what he’s done for the world.

Matthews Gospel alone , quotes over 60 times from passages of the old Testament, showing how Jesus fulfils the old Testament writings. In Paul’s letter to the Roman church, he quotes the old Testament, 69 times – showing Gods kingdom is for Jew and Gentile.

I think a lot of us can be put off reading the old Testament. It can seem outdated, lots of bloodshed, lists of names and family trees that we get confused by and lost in, but it’s exciting part of God’s word and it gives this big picture of the state of humanity, if left to his own devices and how God wants to restore that brokenness to bring bloodshed to an end to rule the kingdom of love and peace. We are lucky that we are in a day and age where lots of scholars have wrestled with these passages over centuries and there are things for commentaries which are peoples thoughts on Bible passages. If you’ve never picked up a commentary do try sometime, it might help particularly in assessment passages to just give another insight. Some bibles actually show us when the autism has been created and say if you are reading the new Testament have a look at when these crates are being made and maybe look back at what is being created read around and see what the context is in.

As followers of Jesus lets do all we can to be followers that make followers, teaching them to obey all Jesus commanded as we seek to obey him in our lives too.

Jesus often talked about judgment, and in Matthew 13:47-50 He talked about the terrifying place prepared for bad people at the end of the age.  But how will He decide who is good and who is bad?  Will the dividing line He uses be reasonable or arbitrary?  This sermon reflects on that question.

We’re probably less familiar with fishing methods these days.  We go to the supermarket and buy fish nicely filleted, but everyone knew how a dragnet worked in Jesus’ day.  These long nets could stretch up to half-a-mile.  The ends were attached to boats, while the top of the net would have floats and the bottom would have weights attached. As the two boats moved through the water towards the shore, the net would catch everything in its path.

But the concern of the parable is less with the net and more with the fish.  They then need to be sorted.  The good ones are kept while the bad ones are thrown back.  And, says Jesus, that’s how it will be on that final Day of Judgment.  Good people will be saved, but bad people will be thrown into a blazing furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Strong words!

But before we get into that, let’s think about the fish.  What did Jesus mean by ‘bad’ fish?  I don’t think He was commenting on their behaviour, and I don’t think He meant they were diseased.  He was probably referring to clean and unclean fish.  You’ll probably know that Jews have dietary laws  –  some creatures are ‘clean’ (i.e. kosher or okay to eat), while others are ‘unclean’ and definitely not for human consumption.  The critical distinction when it comes to fish can be found in Leviticus 11:9-10:  “Of all the creatures living in the water of the seas and the streams you may eat any that have fins and scales.  But all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales you are to regard as unclean”.

Now some Christians still hold to these laws, while others say that they were given in an era when food hygiene was harder to manage, and eating some foods was more likely to make you ill.  Exodus 15:26 talks about diseases that the Israelites would be protected from if they followed God’s laws.  So, for example, you could eat saltwater cod, salmon, sea bass, haddock and mackerel, but you were not allowed to eat freshwater cod, dogfish, skate or sturgeon (so no caviar!).

But all this is just a prelude to what Jesus wants to say about the final judgment.  When we stand before God there will be good and bad people, or in the language I’ve just used, clean and unclean.  “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord and stand in His holy place”, asks the 24th Psalm?  “The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in idols or swear by a false gods”.

So I’m thinking:  but aren’t we all flawed?  Who would dare to say they have clean hands?  Sure, there are both amazing and awful people, but in between a whole spectrum of possibilities.  Sometimes we get it right, but quite often we get it wrong.  Life is a battle  –  our motives can be mixed, our attitudes can be skewed, our words can be unkind, and each of us has character flaws to which we may well be oblivious.  The internationally celebrated evangelist Billy Graham frequently quoted Jeremiah 17:9 in his sermons  –  “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”  When we song that song ‘Only by grace can we enter’ we rightly come to those disturbing words: ‘Lord, if You count our transgressions, who can stand?’  And then there are the sins of omission to which we confess each Sunday  –  good things we could have done but failed to do!

But if none of us is clean, is there any basis at all for hope?  If there is to be a judgment day, how will God decide who passes the ‘clean enough’ test, and who’s simply too grubby?  We know that God is gracious and forgiving, but on what basis will the judgment be made?  Will the line be an arbitrary one?  Will some scrape over the line while others just miss out?  This is a question that has exercised the greatest Christian minds across the centuries, so let me give you a little bit of history to reflect on, and reflecting is all I’m asking you to do today.  I want you to think about three big things  …  the after-life, the meaning of Christ’s death, and faith.

THE AFTER-LIFE

Christians have long believed in heaven and hell.  Evangelists preach on it, Christians use phrases like ‘lost eternity’, and at funerals we tend to go soft because we want to see our loved ones again.  Some hope that there might be a second chance beyond the grave.  In fact, in 1274AD the Western Church led by the Pope articulated a new doctrine  –  purgatory.  It offered hope for those not good enough for heaven to be purged of evil, and that period in purgatory could be aided by their relatives and friends praying for them (hence ‘prayers for the dead’).  The Church offered the prospect of eventual promotion to heaven.

Protestant churches like ours don’t buy into that doctrine, but the prospect of unending torment in hell has seemed too harsh for some, and so slightly softer doctrines like annihilation and conditional immortality have proved quite popular.  On top of that, the human societies like genetics, psychology and sociology have added a further dimension of complexity.  People are far more complicated that we first thought.  We inherit character traits and we’re shaped by people and events about us.  You’ll often hear that people who abuse others were abused themselves as children.  We are victims as well as perpetrators, sinned against as well as sinners.  No wonder we should leave the issue of judgment to God!

So you get the sense that a lot of thinking and agonising has gone on.  Christians have wanted to be faithful to the teaching of the Bible, but they have had to grapple with the legitimate insights of modern science as well as acknowledging their own inner reservations.

THE DEATH OF CHRIST

The Christian Church has taught for centuries that Jesus’ death was a redemptive act.  Just as the blood of the lambs in Egypt saved the lives of the firstborn Israelites, so the death of Jesus, the Lamb of God, has far-reaching effects.  In fact, say the NT writers, His death achieves forgiveness for people both across space and time.  But how does that work, and why should we believe it?  That’s the question that has exercised the greatest Christian minds for centuries. 

Well, let me explain a doctrine that is widely believed in our Protestant churches.  We owe a great deal to an Archbishop of Canterbury  –  Anselm.  Around the year 1100AD he wrote an important book entitled ‘Cur Deus Homo’ (Latin for ‘Why God became a man’).  It was a brilliant piece of scholarship in which he tried to make sense of what the NT writers were saying about how the death of one man, Jesus Christ, could forgive the sins of the whole world.  He finished up describing God’s need to satisfy two competing demands  –  the demands of justice and the demands of love.  As a loving father He longs to forgive, as a just judge He is obliged to punish.

Suppose one night I set fire to your house.  Suppose your smoke alarm wakes you up and you make your escape with only a few minor burns, but the fire spreads rapidly and the fire-fighters are unable to save your possessions.  The subsequent disruption to your life is considerable.  The police get involved, and in due course some CCTV footage points to me as the culprit.  I’m charged and I stand trial.  The evidence is pretty irrefutable.  Now, the law doesn’t quite work like this, but indulge me.

The judge asks me:  ‘How do you plead?’

I say:  ‘Guilty, your honour, but I’d like to add that I’m really very sorry and would like to apologise’.

The judge says:  ‘That’s good to hear.  Apology accepted.  Case dismissed’.

You jump up and say: ‘But what about my house, my possessions, compensation for all the inconvenience we’ve suffered?  And if you just let him off, he’ll do it again’.

God, said Anselm, is a father longing to forgive, but He’s also a just judge.  And both those demands/urges need to be satisfied.  Just saying sorry is not enough.  And so God comes in person because He loves us, and on the cross He suffers the punishment that should have been ours.  Jesus’ death on our behalf satisfies both God’s judicial obligation to punish sin and His parental longing to forgive sinners.  As Isaiah foretold: “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.  We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all”.

We often sing that hymn ‘In Christ alone’ and then that line ‘And on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied’.  It focusses on God the judge and omits God the parent, so a friend of ours wrote to Keith Getty and Stuart Townend and suggested a slight rewording which might better capture the tension in the heart of God: ‘And on that cross as Jesus died, God’s holy love was satisfied’.  That phrase ‘holy love’ was used by earlier generations to express exactly that tension, but sadly my friend’s suggestion was politely rejected.

Now Anselm’s view is not the only understanding of how we are made clean in God’s sight.  For one thing, it takes our focus away from the life of Jesus, and almost suggests that He only needed to come for a long weekend.  But that view has been by far the most influential one among Protestants.  400 years later Martin Luther would talk about ‘imputed righteousness’  –  none of us can stand before God and boast about our own goodness, but we stand clothed in Christ’s goodness.  In the words of Charles Wesley’s famous hymn:

No condemnation now I dread, Jesus and all in Him is mine

Alive in Him my living Head and clothed in righteousness divine

Bold I approach the eternal throne

And claim the crown through Christ my own

FAITH

Which brings me to our final doctrine  …  faith.  Anselm and Luther have given us food for thought, but are we all automatically saved through what Jesus has done?  Will people of other Faiths and cultures, will kind-hearted humanists, will people with severe learning disabilities, will tyrannical imperialist like Hitler and Stalin, will Lucy Letby?  Will everyone reap the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice regardless of what they’ve done in this world?  Some Christians say ‘yes’, and you probably need to listen to their arguments before you dismiss them.  But during this series on the parables of Matthew 13, I’ve been dealt the two which very clearly talk of judgment.  And from reading Jesus, it’s hard to conclude that everyone will be saved.

So how can a person benefit from a sacrifice made 2000 years ago?  Once again I’m simplifying centuries of debate.  Jesus used different words  –  have faith, believe, follow.  But 2000 years on those words convey different ideas in English.  For us the word ‘believe’ has a pretty passive feel to it  –  God does everything, I do nothing.  I believe I can cook a meal, but I leave it to my wife.  Linford Christie once said he believed he could run the 100m in 9.6 seconds, but that he wasn’t practising it yet.  The Devil could happily say the creed, but he clearly doesn’t follow Jesus!

By contrast, the word ‘follow’ suggests something more.  Firstly, you believe the good news Jesus offers the world, but in the light of that, you decide to change direction and walk in His ways.  Salvation is still an act of grace, but it requires a life-changing response.  That’s why, with Jesus, salvation is ultimately associated with what you do.

J.C. Ryle, the first Bishop of Liverpool, would regularly ordain new priests.  Each time, on the evening before, he would talk through the service with the ordinands, but then he said this:  Tomorrow you will need to respons to a series of questions.  I will ask you again and again ‘Will you?’, but there will come a day when you will stand before God and He will ask you ‘Did you?’

As Claire told us two weeks ago, there are 2.2 billion Christians in the world.  I don’t know how many of them are genuine or what exactly they believe.  But one day God will sort out the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff, the clean from the unclean.  Before that day comes, we need to reflect on the extraordinary sacrifice Jesus made, and on his challenging call to follow.