Sermons

Stephen’s speech is a watershed moment in the history of the church of God! The word “Watershed” has taken on the meaning of a big change in how people do or think about something. I am only going to look at one aspect of this today. I will concentrate on the Temple rather than he laws of Moses.

The problem with being side-tracked as a Christian is that you can feel pretty good about what you are doing! If you are helping those in the community who are down and out, you can feel that you are doing God’s Work and to some extent you are but if you have no thought to the eternal destiny of people then you have taken the worst path.

A unified church, built on the foundations of apostolic preaching and teaching is a powerful witness in the world. To Satan, The church is a theatre of war. Satan seeks to destroy the harmony of the church. A church, which is full of hypocrites is a church that Satan knows to be ineffective. A church where fellowship, generosity, sharing, are not treasured, is a church that has failed in its calling. Lying is like a cancer that grows in the church.

It is one thing to confess Christ in a Bible Study group, it is another altogether to confess Christ in front of hostile uni-students or in a difficult work environment or even at school. In all these cases your character is tested. Character only comes to the fore under stress.

When someone dies, we can think about a lot of things and those who speak can easily talk about someone’s achievements. It might do with their character, the business they have built up, their contribution to the family or even their work in the community. Yet, if you are a Christian, you want to hear about the more important things, like what spiritual legacy did that person left behind. How did that person contribute to the proclamation of the Gospel? It might be to do with how they shared their faith with their children or how they serve the Lord, building up the church and kingdom. In today’s sermon we look at Ahab’s legacy.

I can’t say this any stronger. A Spirit filled Christian speaks! In fact they have to speak! We are not quite sure who said these words, “Preach the gospel if necessary use words.” (Francis of Assisi). I use to sympathise with that statement until I realised it was ridiculous. “A Spirit filled Christian speaks and they can’t help but to speak.” The only excuse for not speaking is that you have been intimidated not to speak and the Devil is laughing.

Ahab demonstrates what a poor king he is when he stands by and lets Jezebel murder Naboth for a piece of land that he is desperate to have.

What Peter was saying was that Jesus is the Holy One of God. Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus was the suffering Servant. All of these words evoke images in the minds of any true Israelites. All their hopes had been in the one who would be their king and now Peter was saying that they had crucified him. It is incredible really. They had longed all their lives for a Messiah and when he finally appeared they were responsible for his death! Peter declares, • “You handed him over to be killed.” • “You disowned him before Pilate.” – They yelled, “Crucify him, crucify him.” • “You asked for a murderer to be released to you.” Instead of pleading for the release of the only perfect and righteous human being. • “You killed the author of life.”

There can also be those, who like Ahab, think that you can lay in bed with the devil. That you can compromise on God’s truth. These people don’t look through the lens of Scripture to be their guide, but rather they think with their own human ability they can negotiate with the forces of evil. As Christians there can be no compromise with truth! We say that Jesus is not only our Saviour but our Lord.

This is very significant for Elijah to hear. Elijah up to this point had what we might call a “Messiah complex”. He thought everything depended on him! He had said, “I am the only one left and now they are trying to kill me too!” The truth was that he thought he was the only one but there were thousands of others who hadn’t bowed to the Baals and there were others who would be willing to be called into service. I think we need to hear these words well! If we want to have joy in our ministries, we should never think that everything depends on us. We should always remember that God can and will use others to do his will in the world.

Amazingly, Moses stood in the presence of God, on Mount Sinai, perhaps in the same spot as Elijah and instead of condemning the Israelites for their sins, like Elijah did, he pleaded with God for them. He was their intercessor. Hundreds of years later, Jesus, on another mountain pleaded with God for his own people. His first pray was for the Roman soldiers that nailed him to the cross. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” Elijah at this point was light years away from where he should have been. He no longer loved his own people! Love for God’s people is what sustains us in our ministries! Yet God restored Elijah!

We need to ask the question at this point, as to whether we are free as Christians to walk out of the battle. Is a soldier allowed to leave his place in the ranks or on the field of battle? Shouldn’t he wait for his commanding officer to tell him where he is to serve next? Jezebel had badly frightened Elijah or burst his dreams of a nation under God! He felt that his burden was too heavy and his yoke too much for him to carry.

Some people look at Jesus’ words this way. “Believe without evidence.” Some people simply say, “You need to have faith.” Just believe it! I have heard a lot of people, even in this church say that! I think we need to be very careful of saying those words! I certainly don’t want to be calling people to put their faith in something just because I say they should. I want them to examine the facts of the matter. I want them to investigate. Faith, is not described in the bible as just something personal, a subjective, religious choice based on no evidence. The word faith and belief, in the Bible, are not ever used that way! We shouldn’t be saying to people, “You just have to believe.” Faith in the bible is based on evidence. In history, objective verifiable facts; that being the actual resurrection of Jesus from the dead!

In this sermon, we concentrate on Jesus’ sixth word from the cross, “It is finished.” In it we learn that Jesus’s suffering, work and atonement are all completed and that prophecy is fulfilled.

Jezebel wants to take Elijah’s life and yet she is limited by God in her ability to do so. Elijah serves the one true God. Jezebel is a servant of Satan opposed to the Kingdom of God.

Jesus, as the light of the world, heals a man born blind as a sign to us us that he can give us light to live by.

I use to think this was a power encounter between God and Baal but that is wrong. Baal has no power. Rather God demonstrates his power here so that his covenant people would believe in him and worship him only.

Even though it was a terrible question that the disciples asked Jesus when they asked the question, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” we can be grateful for Jesus’ answer. This answer helps us to understand the relationship between suffering and sin.

In this sermon we are trying to identify who the real believers in Jesus are. You in your mind might object to that and say, “Who are we to judge?” but we are just using the teachings of Jesus here and this can be helpful for us personally. Many people identify themselves as believers, but the truth is that not all those who identify as Christians are in fact Christians. I like the word “disciple” because a “disciple” is one who follows Jesus.

You can then appreciate the place that Obadiah found himself in. He worked for Ahab, in fact he appeared to be one of his most trusted advisers, but he was also a believer in God. He stood between the most powerful man in the physical Kingdom of Israel, someone who could take his own life and almighty God. We wouldn’t find that a particularly enviable position to be in!

Now, this claim by Jesus is very dramatic! If any other human being said these words we would all say, “Doesn’t that man have an ego.” We would be like Joseph’s brothers who couldn’t believe Joseph’s dreams and how they would all bow down to him. These words are dramatic but if they are true then they are extremely important words and well worth our study!

We like to investigate many things, but the most important thing we can do is to investigate the claims of Jesus and come to a conclusion about who he is.

Sin, which is ultimately selfish, can blind us to discovering truth. It is so important that we examine ourselves and ask God to give us the ability to discern truth from error and to have a realistic look at ourselves. If we want to go on sinning, then we have actually lost our ability to see Jesus for who he is! If you are blind to your own sin, you will never see Jesus for who he is!

When Jesus attended the festival of Booths, a kind of harvest festival, people were curious about him. Some said that he led people astray and others thought he was a good man. They were both wrong. Jesus was far more than just a good man and he certainly didn’t lead people astray.

There are always things in Scripture to make you think and even to question. In out text today we seem to come across a contradiction which is that Jesus said that he wasn’t going to the feast and then he decided to go anyway. Some people have been very critical about Jesus at this point and even suggested that he lied but we will see that is not the case as we go through this passage. We explore God’s timing in this particular passage.

So many people live a life of ease avoiding the hard questions – the ponderings. They don’t want to waste the mental energy on these questions, or they think it is all beyond them and so they do something else. The biblical writer of Ecclesiastes records that some people believe that we ought to eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Amazingly, the most important questions that we need to face are not faced at all. We might spend more time deciding on what takeaway to eat than to contemplate the big questions of life?

So, we need to know the importance of this genealogy but on the other hand also realise that our own genealogies are not so important. Sometimes we might be tempted to put far too much emphasis on our backgrounds as if they somehow grant us immunity from God’s judgement or an automatic pass into heaven. We should have no false assurance of salvation based on our background.

Despite the fact, that the book of Jeremiah has a lot of “woe” in it, there is also a lot of “hope” in it. What we simply read here is that the Lord himself, will bring about healing. He himself will act, the one who is the Great Shepherd of the Sheep. Instead of relying on the frailties, weakness and self-interest of human beings, God will act and he will send the perfect Shepherd for the Sheep.

During the worst of the COVID crisis this year (2020), in Australia you saw people stay at home, isolate as best as they could, kept their movements minimal, wore masks, washed their hands, kept a distance from other people. They knew that they were at war and they needed to take precautions. It was a kind of minimize the risk kind of warfare. I suppose that when a vaccine is freely available, we can actually take the war to the virus. That would be more of an offensive kind of warfare. When it comes to COVID some people don’t believe the virus exists and others believe that it is not deadly. I am not willing to argue that with you tonight except to say that it would be a big mistake for you to think that we are not at war spiritually speaking and that our enemy is not a deadly one.

Jeremiah had really looked. He had observed the poor, the rich, the princes, the rulers, the religious elite and he had come up empty. Jeremiah would have been cut up about this. Everything depended on him finding just one “righteous man.” The fate of the whole city of Jerusalem relied on him finding this one person. The problem for Jeremiah was that he wasn’t looking for a needle in a haystack because there simply was no needle.