New Starting Time

Just letting everyone know that our service time is NOW 10.00 am for the morning service. and 5.00pm for the evening service on the first Sunday of each month!  Looking forward to seeing you earlier and finishing earlier!

DOES GOD REALLY CARE?

 Psalm 139:13-16

1 God Protects Us: While I was living in PNG, some friends and I arranged to visit an Australian couple living four hours’ drive along the coast. I promised that we would arrive for dinner before dark on Friday night. School finished at 2.30pm and a quick getaway would get us there between 6.30 and 7pm. But my friends dithered around and we didn’t leave until 3.30pm. This meant that I had to put my foot down! Most of the road was a gravel surface and we slithered and slid around corners for mile after mile. We passed an open truck carrying a load of PNG passengers, and they watched with interest as we sped past. Finally, I took a bend too fast, and my huge land cruiser went off the side of the road, and would have tumbled down the embankment if not for a shoulder of soft dirt where we landed safely – bogged but undamaged! God had already protected us from death or injury! Soon the truck we had passed came to our aid and towed us out. It so happened that the truck carried a bunch of Christians on their way to a Christian camp – and they had been praying for us from the moment they saw how recklessly I was driving! God brought these people to our assistance on His behalf! He had planned this protection long before we had set out on our journey!

Psalm 119:5 says, “You hem me in – behind and before! You have laid your hand upon me! Despite our own foolishness, God really does care! He goes before us and literally “hems us in” from danger!

There are nearly seven billion people in the world, but God cares about each one of us as individuals, as our reading this morning clearly demonstrates! His protection is greater than we could ever imagine or expect! Verse 16 says that “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be!” Isn’t it amazing that God has planned out every day of the lives of seven billion people long before they were even born!

2 God Selects Us:  One of our church members comes from a non-Christian home but about five years ago he met a Christian who is also linked with our church, who had a profound influence on him. Although he still struggles with constant temptation, since we started this group he has led quite a few people to be part of our own church. Let me read you one of his experiences in his own words:

“Last night I went to the Greengate (Hotel) to meet up with Michael again. I met some Christians there, who do a Bible study in that pub on Monday nights. I noticed this group while I was approaching the bar to buy our last drinks. I had noticed before that these particular people would just walk past the bar, and I wondered why they were doing Bible study at the Greengate!  At the bar I felt a sudden urge to go over and chat with them. I related to them how I had become a born-again Christian. I knew that this experience was the Lord bringing Himself more into my life - even in a pub where I had previously been socializing, with the devil trying to control me! I also recognize that the Lord is teaching me that He is with us everywhere - even places where you least expect Him to be!”

From this account, we can see, as Jesus tells us in John 15:16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last!” Please notice that God calls us to bear fruit – not like the fruit we buy that will quickly spoil, but “fruit that will last!”  God’s call is irrevocable – in other words, He cares about us enough that not only does He choose us, but He won’t let us go, even if we fail Him along the way!

Why are you here this morning?  Not just because you agreed to come, but because God loves you enough to make sure that you are here! There is something He wants you to hear today that could change your life forever!

3. God Corrects Us: When things go wrong for us, we often don’t see this as a sign of God’s care, but Proverbs 13:24 tells us that “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him!” God is our Father  (our Dad) who disciplines us to bring out the best in us!

Once as a school principal, I had a neighbor of the school complain that someone from the school had burned part of his fence down! When I found the culprit, I took him to the aggrieved neighbor to make amends! The neighbor turned out to be the pastor of a local church, and he arranged special church help for this boy, who was eventually baptized and a witness for Jesus, to his friends!

Job, who experienced more suffering than any of us are ever likely to have, wrote this in 5:17, “Blessed is the man whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty!” No-one knows us and our needs better than God does, as verse 1 of our reading today shows.

4. God Resurrects Us:  He brings us back from the dead – spiritually in this life and bodily in the next! Romans 5:8 tells us that “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us!” He doesn’t wait until we reach a certain level of righteousness, He accepted us as we are! On Friday I attended a Serbian Orthodox funeral for the father of one of my friends. As most of it was in Serbian, I didn’t follow it very closely, but I was given a written translation. Most of the service involved the priest begging for mercy for the man who had died. There were also seven prayers directed to Mary, asking her to get involved in his forgiveness.

But when we’re dead it’s too late! Jesus has already died and paid the price for our sins! We can receive forgiveness and eternal life now! We don’t have to wait for some priest to beg us into heaven! And it wouldn’t work if we did! Let’s accept His death for us as our entitlement to live with Him forever, and recognise that He cared enough for us to let this happen! 

1 Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He care for you!”

IS THERE REALLY A HELL?

                                                                                                             Matthew 7:13-23

Most people when offered both good and bad news try to get the bad news out of the way first. An Emperor of Hindustan, who died in 1707, said this just before he went: “Whats the use? Every torture that I have inflicted, every sin that I have committed, every wrong that I have done, I carry the consequences with me. Strange that I came with nothing into the world and now go away with this stupendous caravan of sin; wherever I look I see only God. I have greatly sinned and I know not what torment awaits me!”

What a difference this is from the Good News of Jesus – that He came into the world to save sinners! As we celebrate communion this morning, we can rejoice that the burden of sin has been lifted from us and placed on Jesus as He died on the Cross! Our vision of the future need only be one of victory and celebration because through Jesus’sacrifice for us, we can face God entirely clean! This is the story of Christian in the Pilgrim’s Progress. The burden fell off his back and he was admitted to the Heavenly City!

But is there really a Hell – waiting to receive people like Emperor Aurungzebe? Or is hell just an invention of the church to scare us into submission?  An Anglican bishop said in the eighties, “The doctrine of hellfire was never really rejected by the churches! It was quietly buried and there were few to weep at its funeral!”

But the New Testament mentions hell directly or indirectly 162 times, and 70 of these are the words of Jesus Himself! If Jesus believes in Hell, He is worth listening to – because only He so far has risen from the dead and come back to report on what lies ahead! But people don’t want to listen and don’t want to believe until it’s too late!

In Noah’s time people didn’t believe in the flood - until it happened to them! In Lot’s time, people didn’t believe in the destruction of Sodom - until it also happened to them! And in Jeremiah’s time, they didn’t believe Jerusalem would be destroyed and the people taken into captivity – until this happened too! This shows that disbelief is not enough to keep people out of hell! Just because someone says, “I don’t believe in Hell!” it won’t stop him from going there!’Psalm 9:17 says that hell is for the unforgiven and those who have forgotten God!

Why is Hell Necessary? (Couldn’t everyone just go to Heaven?) It seems to me that if God has created Heaven, doesn’t He have the right to have only His friends there? (Especially as He invites everyone to become His friends – even those who initially turn their back on Him!) Last week I told the story of the ‘innocent’ man who turned away from God and followed a path of destruction. Jesus outlined this type of choice in the parable of the two paths which we read about earlier.  Hell is necessary because God is not prepared to force people into His presence! We must choose to be with Him!

What is Hell Like? The Bible tells us: a) that hell is for the vast majority of people.  1 Corinthians 1:8 says, “For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the Power of God!”  b) Hell is a place of eternal punishment for those who reject His invitation to receive salvation through Jesus. c) Hell is a place of outer darkness and separation. (This flies in the face of those who say, “I don’t mind going to hell as all my friends will be there!)        d) It is a place of eternal sorrow and pain. Judith 16:17 (though not Scripture as such) says, “The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the Day of Judgment, to put fire and worm in their flesh, and they shall weep and feel their pain forever!”

How Should We Avoid Hell? Anyone who has not received Jesus as their true passport to Heaven should do so today! But all of us should see the urgency of bringing people to Jesus while there is still time

A former pastor of mine told me about a TV show called Early Edition, which I have now seen many times. It tells of a man who receives tomorrow’s newspaper today, and spends each day dashing from one potential disaster to the next before it happens! God’s Word to us is tomorrow’s newspaper! It tells us quite graphically the fate of those who live and die without Jesus. We too need to set about reaching those on the brink of danger, because there is no second chance after this life! Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed once for man to die and then the judgment!”

I was once escorting a school group through Central station and I spotted an old friend heading towards me. “Carl!” I said, how are you? His reply stunned me! “I don’t know you!” he replied, and I could see by the look on his face that he was telling the truth. I reminded him of our days in church youth group together, but it was no use! I had not made enough of a difference in his world to create a lasting memory. Likewise, Jesus will say to some people on Judgment Day, “I never knew you!” and it will be too late for them to make a difference! We need to become part of Jesus’  Kingdom today, and to bring other in before it is too late!

WHY DOES GOD HIDE FROM US

When Leonardo da Vinci began his famous painting The Last Supper, he chose an innocent and serene young man named Pietri Bandanelli.  who was in the choir of Milan Cathedral, to pose for the face of Jesus. Years later, when Leonardo was ready to paint the face of Judas the betrayer of Jesus, he sought out the most evil-looking character he could find on the streets of Rome.  In the studio, the model looked around and said, “Maestro, I was in this studio twenty-five years ago, when I posed for the image of Christ!” During the interval, the young man had completely turned away from God and had followed his own lusts and desires! Sin separates us from God, but also sin hides us from God until we are ready to accept the forgiveness of Jesus by giving our lives to Him.

An atheist named Edward Tabash once challenged God in these terms: “If you are listening and are really there, show yourself right now – do a colossal miracle- show me something more than ancient hearsay to prove your existence!” When nothing happened, Tabash claimed to have proved his case! But Tabash missed the point that a God who would allow Himself to be ordered around in this way would not be the Ruler of the Universe! By giving God orders, we are trying to replace Him with our own authority and thereby making ourselves rulers of the universe! Tabash’s mistake highlights the three main reasons God hides from us:

 He is too intense for us (to meet Him face to face): Too overwhelming to meet on a personal physical level!  I once heard an evangelist named John Chapman say something very strange:  He said, “Most people believe in a God who doesn’t exist!” He then explained that the God who does exist is not a little old man sitting on a cloud, but the Lord of the universe – the God whose presence on Mount Sinai was so overwhelming to the Israelites in Exodus 20, that they had to ask Moses to stand between them and God – and that was just His voice! One writer has said, “Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend!” My story of the ants illustrates that God is too overwhelming to reveal Himself to us just as we are too big to communicate with minute ants! For that reason, He became one of us in the Person of Jesus! We cannot cope with the mystery and majesty of God’s presence! IN the Book of Revelation, John’s impression of God’s presence is so overwhelming, that he can only describe it in words and images – an exact description is impossible! Even though God appeared to us as a man through Jesus, He is still too daunting for some of us! We can cope with ‘visions’ of the Virgin Mary, and even with the ‘Force’ in Star Wars, but not with the Man who died on the Cross to give us personal forgiveness and a personal relationship – perhaps because we can’t cope with a defeated God, or perhaps because we don’t want our lifestyle challenged!

 He does not want to force Himself on us! He gave us the freedom to accept or reject Him! He does not twist our arms to make us believe in Him! He wants us to have the freedom to “live by faith – not by sight” so that we can come to Him whenever we’re ready! God’s gentle manner in inviting us to receive Him is in stark contrast with Satan’s way of imposing himself in our lives. Take for example the case of the young man who was possessed by an evil spirit in Mark 9: “Whenever it seizes him, it throws him on the ground...to kill him!”God  on the other hand, invites us to meet Him in different ways:  On 10^th September 2001, the day before the Twin Towers collapsed, a Christian passenger noticed the way a young stewardess was breaking ice with a bottle and he expressed his concern for her. She was so impressed by his concern that she accepted a Christian tract entitled, “What does God want from me?” When she asked, the man replied, “Your life!” Less than 24 hours later, her plane was the first to crash into the first Tower, but God had arranged for her to meet his servant in time for her to meet Him before she died! We don’t know whether she accepted Jesus; we know that He gave her the opportunity to do so.  Whatever choice we make about Him, he honours for eternity, either by granting us His free salvation or allowing us to face the judgment of eternal separation as our sins deserve! On a TV movie, a girl asked her father if he was going to heaven and he replied, “I hope so!” Anyone who gives this answer probably isn’t going there, because if they’ve accepted Jesus, they know for sure where they’re going!

CS Lewis said the way to promote God’s absence is “to avoid silence, avoid solitude, and concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) your own grievances!” This is so important that we need to read it out twice and to explain to others what you think it means!

 God is in charge! We’re not! (The whole message of the Book of Job). Job’s story tells us that it’s less important to know the answers than to know the One who does! We should adopt the slogan of Freedom Furniture and “Think outside the square you live in!” Sometimes we look at the circumstances and disasters of our lives and wonder why God seems so far away! Philip Yancey quotes a nun who says, “When your spiritual well runs dry, dig deeper!””

Gregory of Nicea called the faith of St Basil ‘ambidextrous’ because he welcomed pleasures with the right hand and afflictions with the left – convinced that both would serve God’s purpose for him! (Hence Romans 8:28) I once spent three years in an unfortunate little town called Kandos (not just unfortunate because I was there, but depressing in its own right!) I told a colleague who complained about life in this town that there must be life after Kandos, because I remembered life before it! Likewise, we need to say to ourselves, “I know what God has done for me in the past and therefore I know I can trust Him with my future!”

When my daughters were very small and got into deep water at the beach, I would tell them, “You’re always safe with your Daddy!” They may not believe this now, but when we consider who God is, we can apply these words to Him – “You’re always safe with your Heavenly Father!” We may not understand where He is taking us, but we know we can trust Him!

If God seems hidden or silent when you are most in need of Him it is useful to follow Paul’s advice in Romans 12:12, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer!” Here are some verses to remind us just how much God cares about us and how He has permitted us to become part of His Kingdom:

John 13:18 “I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen.”

John 15:16 “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.)”

Ephesians 1:4 “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” 

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DEATH?

Luke 16:19-31

The famous Beatle, John Lennon wrote the words, “Imagine there’s no heaven it’s easy if you try:
No hell below us – above us only sky!”

But the moment he died, his wife Yoko Ono said, “John’s now in heaven!” It’s interesting how people believe when it suits them!

There are 3 possibilities after death: 1) Extinction; 2) Oblivion (soul sleep); 3) Consciousness

(a fourth could be reincarnation – but I’ll refer to it later)

1)      Extinction: This is unlikely, since all human cultures have recognised the reality of life after death – and have made preparation for it – even to the extent of the Egyptians! In any case, we can observe man’s spiritual component in the way he loves and hates, has joy and sorrow etc. And human beings have a desperate search for the Infinite!

2)      Oblivion is the idea that we die both physically and spiritually until the Day of Judgment. Jesus said Lazarus was ‘sleeping’ but He referred to the state of his body rather than his spirit.

3)      Consciousness:  The Bible teaches that we remain conscious for eternity! In James 2:26, he defines death as the body without breath or spirit! Death then, is the separation of body and spirit! Paul in 2 Corinthians describes our body as a tent – a temporary dwelling (an appropriate example for a tentmaker!) A modern equivalent is a car – you can climb in and out of it, but you are still you – and you can leave the car behind – it is not part of you!

Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 12:7, “The dust returns to the ground it came from and the spirit returns to God!” Eternal life however, begins the moment we receive Jesus as Saviour and Lord! Jesus said, “He who believes in me shall live, even though he dies!”Death becomes a momentary change of state – but the essential person lives on!

What evidence do we have for this?  Seances?  These are demonic impersonations of the dead.

Revival? There are many documented cases of people with ‘near death experiences or NDE’s.

(See DVD clip of girl who after dying saw a red shoe on the roof of the hospital)

Dr Maurice Rawlings was a doctor who became a Christian as a result of patients describing their NDE’s. (Description from one man who went to hell and was allowed to return).

But the Bible is a more reliable source – The parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus gives many insights – especially the fact that Jesus rose from the dead to give us Life!

True Teaching – Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed unto man once to die – and then the Judgment! This automatically excludes reincarnation! (which is also a form of demon possession).Therefore, we know there is no second chance! And there is no purgatory – even the Catholic church now denies it!

The Bible declares in Romans 8 that even death cannot separate us from the love of God! Death itself is not painful. In fact, it is a release from pain! (Peter Marshall’s story of the boy taken from one room to another) But the reading shows us that death is also a separation of those who belong to Jesus and those who don’t! Jesus told the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in Paradise!” And this is the destiny of all born-again Christians! King David in Psalm 17:5 looked forward to being in God’s presence after death! And Paul in Phil 1:23 said, “To live is Christ but to die is gain!” Also, Jesus met with the dead Moses and also Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguaration!

Those who die without Jesus end up in Sheol or Hades. And a great chasm separates those who are His and those who are not! Heaven and Hell are the destinies of those awaiting the Great Judgment which follows the resurrection of all the dead – including ourselves!

Our eternal destiny is decided by the time we die. Everyone who lives to himself dies to himself – and has already chosen Hades and Hell as the reward for his choice! Like King Belshazzar, we have all been “Weighed in the balance and found wanting!”Laurie Gray says, the only right which all humans have is to go to hell! But for the Christian, we will not be judged for our sins! Jesus has already paid the price and declared us NOT GUILTY! Why not accept this free gift today?