Beyond Neutral

The coming month has the potential to bring great change to our city. Whilst we are doing our bit at the suburban level to connect with our local community with a view to introducing people to Jesus, other things are happening at wider levels. I tell you about these so that you can seek God’s blessing on them in prayer, and so that you consider how you will make best use of opportunities that will present themselves in the coming weeks to commend Jesus Christ to others.
Jesus. All About Life
Starting next week, a 6-week $1.5m advertising campaign begins. It is estimated that 90% of Sydneysiders will come into contact with this campaign at least 10 times. Here’s what the JAAL organisers say about this:

JAAL is not a public interest campaign. It is not a public profile campaign or even a public relations campaign. The key issue to understand is that the ads are not meant to deliver the Gospel. The local church will present the person of Jesus in a culturally sensitive way to the enquirer. Jesus. All about life encourages people to seek for themselves the truth of the Bible and more particularly who Jesus is and what he actually said. He is an historical figure of significant relevance to both Christians and non-Christians.

For our part, we’re registering all our church events with JAAL, so if someone from Neutral Bay sees an ad for Jesus and logs on to the JAAL website, they will be directed to us. What a great opportunity to introduce people to the One who said “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

For your part, will you have a stack of Essential Jesus (Luke’s gospel) on your hall table, office drawer, glove box, ready to take with you and give to someone who you speak to about the JAAL ads? You don’t need to have lots of answers to lots of questions, you don’t need lots of big words. You just need to care enough about your friends to offer them an introduction to Jesus through Luke’s biography of him.
Inspiring People
This initiative of the Anglican Church in Sydney has drawn together over 40 prominent Australians from the spheres of politics, business, sport, the arts & academia who all love and trust Jesus Christ. Across Sydney, from 15 September, lunches & dinners have been organised at which 3 prominent Australians, hosted by a moderator, will share their faith in Jesus Christ over a one-hour panel discussion. Log on to www.inspiringpeople.com.au to register for one of the lunches in North Sydney, or one of the CBD events and invite a friend who wants to be inspired.
Grocery Collection Days
Closer to Christmas, we will be seeking to collect groceries at Neutral Bay Woolworths and Cremorne IGA and to offer shoppers a copy of The Essential Jesus together with details of our church. Of course, all our efforts will come to naught without the blessing of our sovereign and loving heavenly Father. Will you pray that through these efforts, across Neutral Bay and Sydney, people will be connected with Jesus and choose to entrust their lives to him, have life to the full and so be saved?

Dear Friends,
As we preach through the book of Galatians, written around 49AD to Christians who were in danger of being lured into thinking that they could earn forgiveness, friendship and peace with God by their own works, we rightly focus on what Jesus has done for us. I’d hate you to get the impression that in the light of the fact that we cannot earn these things with God, we are therefore free to do whatever we want to whomever we want.

Not so. JC Ryle put it much better than I can, back in 1878:

Charity is that love which St Paul places first among those fruits which the Spirit causes to be
brought forth in the heart of a believer. ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love.’ (Galatians 5:2) Love to God, such as Adam had before the fall , is its first feature. He that has charity, desires to love God with heart, and soul and mind, and strength. Love to man is its second feature. He that has charity, desires to love his neighbour as himself. This is indeed that view in which the word “charity” in Scripture is more especially regarded. When I speak of a believer having “love” in his heart, I mean that he has love to both God and man. When I speak of a believer having “charity”, I mean more particularly that he has love to man.

The charity of the Bible will show itself in a believer’s doings. It will make him ready to do kind acts to every one within his reach, – both to their bodies and souls. It will not let him be  content with soft words and kind wishes. It will make him diligent in doing all that lies in his power to lessen the sorrow and increase the happiness of others. Like his Master, he will care more for ministering than for being ministered to, and will look for nothing in return. Like his Master’s great apostle, he will very willingly “spend and be spent” for others, even through they repay him with hatred, and not with love. True charity does not want wages. Its work is its reward.

The charity of the Bible will show itself in a believer’s readiness to bear evil as well as to do good. It will make him patient under provocation, forgiving when injured, meek when unjustly attacked, quiet when slandered. It will make him bear much and forbear much, put up with much and look over much, submit often and deny himself often, all for the sake of peace. It will make him put a strong bit on his temper, and a strong bridle on his tongue. True charity is not always asking, – “What are my rights? Am I treated as I deserve?” but, “How can I best promote peace? How can I do that which is most edifying to others?”

The charity of the Bible will show itself in the general spirit and demeanour of a believer. It will
make him kind, unselfish, good-natured, good-tempered, and considerate for others. It will make him gentle, affable, and courteous, in all the daily relations of private life, thoughtful for others’ comfort, tender for others’ feelings, and more anxious to give pleasure than to receive. True charity never envies others when they prosper, nor rejoices in the calamities of others when they are in trouble. At all times it will believe, and hope, and try to put a good construction on others’ doings. And even at the worst, it will be full of pity, mercy, and compassion.

Would we like to know where the true Pattern of charity like this can be found? We have only to
look at the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, as described in the Gospels, and we shall see it perfectly exemplified.

As we move through our sermon series in the New Testament letter to the Galatians you will notice one theme come up time and time again – justification. This is a key word in our understanding of what Jesus has done for us so I thought it helpful to spend a little time setting out what the Bible has to say about the subject.

We often speak of “justifying ourselves” by which we mean “to show that we have done nothing wrong”. Similarly, in the thought world of the Bible, to “justify” someone means to declare them as “righteous” or “innocent”. So, for example, God speaks of honest judges who  “justify the innocent” (Deut. 25:1). The word, therefore, takes its primary meaning from the language of the law courts. Today our Bible translators express this concept using words in the right/righteous and just/justified word groups. To be “just” is to be “in the right”, to be “righteous” is to be “justified” and so on.

God tells us in the Bible that we are not just/righteous. As the Apostle Paul reminds us (Rom. 3:10, citing Ps. 14:1),

There is no one righteous, not even one

Which leaves us in a terrible position because God is a zealously just judge:

… for those … who reject the truth and follow unrighteousness, there will be wrath and   anger. (Romans 2:8)

God is looking for righteousness, but where will he find it? Certainly not in us. For every good deed that we do there is another bad deed or thought swiftly following it. We can never be righteous enough to please the righteous judge of all the earth. The Jews of  Jesus’ and Paul’s day thought they could try, though, especially the Pharisees! They  worked hard at keeping God’s holy law in an attempt to be righteous by their own works and actions. Ultimately this pursuit is always in vain for our problem is not just what we do but who we are. We are unrighteous people who do unrighteous things. What hope is there for us?

The great joyful discovery of Paul, that he writes about in Galatians and elsewhere , is that there is every hope! But not in our own efforts. Rather, God the righteous God gives us His own righteousness in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ! It’s an incredible thing!

However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the unjust, his   faith is credited as righteousness. (Romans 4:5)

God is the God who justifies the unjust! We do not need to be good enough because Christ has already been good enough for us! We simply need to trust God that He has done it for us in Jesus! We simply need to  have faith! Nothing more! Have you grasped this incredible truth? It’s the powerhouse of the Christian life! We get everything from God, despite giving Him nothing. Justification by faith alone.

Two events this week are seemingly unrelated; the disclosure under duress by a 14 year old girl on 2Day-FM radio station that she had been raped 2 years earlier, and Peter Costello writing an editorial piece in the Herald warning that proposed changes to the anti-discrimination laws will serve lawyers and hurt churches.  They may seem disparate, but are in fact held together by a deep, underlying theme that is coursing through our society – freedom.

Kyle Sandilands, the radio host in question, defended his show and what occurred by saying they deal with real issues and real people.  He should, the argument goes, be free to raise these issues in the public forum, because young people are talking about and having sex and we should be free to raise these issues because they are real issues for real people living in a real world.

Costello wrote in response to the Victorian Government:

Federation of Community Legal Services told the parliamentary review the current law should change, saying: “To allow religious organisations a broad exemption for conscience [ie, freedom to employ whom they want] encourages prejudice.”…At present, discrimination statutes don’t apply to religious bodies and their schools on the grounds of freedom of religion. So a parliamentary committee has recommended options to extend the power of the state over the province of religion. One proposed change is to restrict the freedom of religious schools to choose their employees on the basis of their religious faith.

So we have two events this week – the first exemplifying what happens when freedom (to do almost anything before live media) is used to shift the power balance between people. The girl began her interview by saying “I’m scared … it’s not fair.”  The second is a warning that there are some who will vigorously wave the banner for freedom in one hand and whilst restricting freedom in the other.  We see this also in Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.  He claims that science and rational enquiry welcome free speech, then spends almost a whole chapter arguing that parents should not be free to expose their children to religious beliefs.

Our sermon series in the New Testament book of Galatians is a timely reminder of what true freedom is and how it should be used.  The apostle Paul confidently declares that Jesus Christ has freed those who place their trust in him from the impossible demand of living up to God’s perfect standards, and from the claim of sin over their lives in order to reconcile them to God.  Paul then explains what we are to do with this freedom.  We are to use our freedom not to exploit or repress, but to ‘serve one another in love’ (Galatians 5:13).  Jesus, by his death on our behalf (Gal 3:13-14), has set us free.  Free to serve.  Free to serve one another in love.  What does this love look like?  Serving one another in love means loving our neighbour the way we love ourselves.    When Jesus sets you free, you are free indeed, free to live for God and for those around you.  Don’t be fooled by what passes for freedom in our culture today.  Thirst for the authentic, eternal, liberating freedom that only the Son of God provides.

The Sun-Herald’s Sunday life claims to offer “Everything smart women care about: Food + fashion + relationships + love + health + wellbeing”. Beauty slipped in through their feature article on Kristy Hinze. Their headings certainly capture what many women care about. Take my friend Mia. She’s your typical Sunday Life Woman. As she fills me in on her latest man (and there’s been a few!), she waves under my nose a health drink that looks and smells like blended grass. She hates the taste of it, but she downs it in the pursuit of health and wellbeing. This drink is regenerating her body – even a wart she’d had for many years spontaneously disappeared. Mia wants to live better for longer and be happier in the process.

If only her love life could be sorted out with a drink. Her first marriage ended in divorce. Her second partner took off when she was 39 weeks pregnant with their child. A more recent boyfriend, who  suffered from paraplegia, turned out to be two-timing her. Faithful, unconditional love is proving hard to come by.

Many of the things people like Mia are searching for are good gifts of God’s creation. Indeed they’re the things men search for as well. However God wants us to enjoy more than Sunday Life, he wants us to enjoy Eternal Life.

My friend Mia reminds me of the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at Jacob’s well (Jn 4). She too appreciated a good, healthy drink. Yet Jesus offered her a better drink, one more regenerating than water, more regenerating even than wart-kicking blended grass.

Jesus said to her “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water…Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Get that? Jesus’ water becomes a spring that vigorously bursts forth to eternal life. That’s some drink! Jesus’ drink offers us life to the full (Jn 10:10).

But he’s not just offering Eternal Life, he’s offering something even better (hard to believe I know!). Jesus is offering Eternal Life with Him.
Eternal life with someone who’ll love us faithfully and unconditionally, no matter how we look or what we’ve done. Someone who’ll give us spiritual food + fashion + relationships + love + health + wellbeing ++++ not just for now but for eternity.

Better, longer, happier.

And you know what I love the most? For those who trust in Jesus, eternal life has already begun

Ruth

Last Friday the news of Michael Jackson’s death swept the globe. As one commentator put it, we were “shocked, but not surprised”. Jackson’s life, he told us, was so bizarre that we expected a bizarre death. But then, “shocked, but not surprised” is something we could say about every death. Every death is shocking in its harshness, yet no death is ever really a surprise. We must all die. It is the one thing we can all be confident of.

The Bible reminds us quite how terrible death is. It shows us why we die by declaring to us, “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). We are all sinners and we will all die. More than this we see the outworking of death all around us; people get sick, things break down—there is a general corruption throughout the cosmos which the Scriptures tell us is the deathly outworking of sin.

Sober thought about all of this would quickly lead to despair. But the Christian life is anything but despairing! Instead we are joyfully confident since the death and Resurrection of Jesus has overturned even the great enemies of sin and death. Jesus’ Resurrection, we have seen over the past few weeks in 1Corinthians 15, is the proof that He defeated sin and death and the guarantee of our own future resurrection.

Cries of despair now turn into songs of confidence! Here’s how Paul puts it:

“But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

(1Cor. 15:57)

If we trust Jesus we no longer fear death! We can, as Paul puts it, “stand firm”! More than this, we know that our work for Jesus is not in vain! On the contrary, when we are going about our labour of telling people about the wonderful news of Jesus’ death and Resurrection we are doing the most loving and valuable possible; we are showing those around us how they, too, can be confident in the face of death itself. What greater work could we do? What greater confidence could we have?

Dear Friends,

The past 12 months have seen significant changes in the ‘profile’ of our congregations.  Some 17 babies born within 12 months, couples relocating away from Sydney (Forster, Brisbane, UK, America) and an increasing number of locals dipping their toe in the waters of our church.

For example, I spoke to one father who visited our morning church with his family recently and asked what brought him to church that day.  He replied, ‘My kids come home each Wednesday raving about their Scripture classes [@ Neutral Bay Public] so I just had to come here and check you guys out.’  Others have moved into Neutral Bay and sought out a church where the Bible is taught, Jesus is honoured and they can feel a part of a larger family.  Still others have been prompted by crisis to turn to God and his local church.

We thank God for each one and pray you will know the love of God that sent his Son to the cross (John 3:16), His forgiveness that comes through that atoning death (Romans 3:22-26), the power of the resurrected Jesus (Philippians 3:10) and the sure hope of heaven (1 Corinthians 15).

But these changes in the profile of our church have brought challenges.  Our Evening Church has shrunk in size significantly (babies & relocations), whilst Family Church is groaning at the seams.  What are we doing?

Evening Church (6:30pm)

One of the great strengths of Evening Church is the relationships of that congregation, so we’re playing to that strength with supper being served from 6pm.  We’re also exploring ways to better connect with 25-40 year olds in our suburb.

Family Church (9:30am)

In the coming weeks, an online survey (also available in hard copy) will create an opportunity for members of that congregation to tell the Ministry Team & Parish Council what they love & what they would like to change about church.  So please think about what you value about (y)our church and pray that we will be wise in caring for those who are already here, and planning to provide for those who are not yet here.

In the meantime, please arrive a few minutes early to morning church and take a seat near the front (there’s no extra charge for these good seats!); don’t be afraid to sit next to someone you don’t know; and if you can, park your car in Burroway St and use the laneway to access church, allowing Shellcove Rd parking to be used by less-mobile families & individuals (Galatians 6:10).

Craig