‘I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf… the Word did everything.’- Martin Luther

Doing some of this tonight… haven’t yet found a pub serving Wittenberg, usually just go for some Kronenberg, or a Staropramen…

So here’s where I’m going on Sunday morning…

Setting the scene
Jesus has been teaching parables about the Kingdom of God around Galilee… last week, we saw the parable of the net and the sobering picture of the separation of righteous and wicked at the end of the world… now Jesus travels 20 miles south to his home town of Nazareth… this section seems a little out of place (it’s not a parable) but it’s here for a reason…

What’s going on here? - People don’t recognise who Jesus is!
v54 - he’s just a man… the people can’t see the source of his power
v55-56 - the people are blinded by his humanity… they think they know who he is, they know his family
v.57 - they took offence… no surprise, in Luke 4 they tried to throw him off a cliff!… ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’ - he’s the boy from next door, why should they listen to him?

Same situation today… Jesus is a prophet, great example, good teacher… and if he says anything offensive (like last week… weeping and gnashing of teeth) then we just ignore that…

C.S Lewis “Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Have you fallen at his feet and called Him Lord and God?

Why is this section here? - to show that the word of God divides
We know that’s true because it says so… Hebrews 4:12
Matthew 13 = division… seeds that grow and seeds that don’t… wheat and weeds… good fish, bad fish

Matthew 13:11-17… Jesus quotes Isaiah 6… v.15 “Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”
v.58 “And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.”
This section shows us what Jesus was talking about… the people don’t see, don’t hear, don’t understand, don’t have faith… hence v58, no miracles

The word of God divides… some believe, some don’t
Origien (early church father) put it like this… “The same sun that melts wax hardens clay”… God’s word provokes a response!
Psalm 95 “Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts”
BHMC SofFaith… Bible is supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour

So… when we hear God speak in his word… let us not harden our hearts… but let us trust and obey
As the hymn says… “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way. To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

What about us? - Do we have a right view of Jesus?
Have you fallen at his feet and called Him Lord and God? Maybe you have, and have continued to do so for many years…
But let us not forget Jesus’ humanity… Hebrews 4:15 – “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin”

Let’s have a right view of Jesus…. Lord and King and Eternal God… yet personal, one who has known the pains and struggles of this world, one who left the joys of heaven, who humbled himself, becoming obedient to death on a cross, so that we might live!

…was good. Yes the actions are cheesy, and we didn’t actually open a Bible which seems bad… but the actions mean that it was easy to remember all these things…

Creation, Fall, Flood, Nations, 4000 years ago.

Ur, Persian Gulf, SALT, Sarah, Abraham, Lot, Terah

Tigris, Euprates

Haran, Terah dies

Sea of Galilee, Jordan River, Dead Sea, Mediterranean

Israel, Ishmael, Isaac, Esau, Jacob

Joseph, Egypt

Jews, Egypt

400 years of bondage, Moses Let my people go, No

1o plagues, Passover, Red Sea, Mount Sinai, Law, Tabernacle

The flyer below for the Sussex Revolution week excluding the ‘Che Jesus’ picture which someone else made was knocked up in about 10 minutes on Photoshop, little did I know that it would be scrutinised in detail by a group of Sussex media students… see their review. The CU events week, coincides with finishing serving on committee, sad times, but after two years it’s time to hand over to some fresh blood and to actually try and get a degree.

Speaking of degrees, I’m currently doing my final year project. It’s a website system written in PHP, MySQL, Javascript etc. and is going to be used by churches to manage their sermons online… you can see a little bit of what it does at the front and at the back (check out the AJAX bible verse lookup!).

I’m preaching at church this Sunday at the 8am service, Matthew 13:53-58, the prophet without honour. Will post something about that later, I think it’s ok… my main concern is 1. getting to church by 7.45am! and 2. being awake enough to form a sentence, grunts usually suffice at that time of day…

Lots of good stuff at church, new series on Revelation in the mornings and 1 Timothy in the evenings - have a listen. Starting tomorrow is the BH Lent course, we’re doing ‘Walk thru the Old Testament’… an overview of the OT, good times… apparently it involves doing actions and general audience participation, bad times.

Latest website project, gave Holy Trinity Eastbourne a facelift, and coming soon is a website for a new conference in Eastbourne, look out for ‘Bible by the Beach‘ in 2009!

We’re at week 6 of Religion Saves? the sermon series from Mars Hill, still to come; Dating, Emerging church and Regulative Principle. I’m booked in to the New Frontiers leadership conference which I’m excited about, two reason, 1st is obviously that MD is coming to speak, 2nd is that it’s in Brighton, which means it’s about a 2o minute walk to the conference. MD still hasn’t got back to me on my offer of coffee together…

Gutted to find out that I can’t go to the London Men’s convention this year, I double booked myself with a stag do that I’m organising in Snowdonia - I’m excited. The one relief is that it’s not too much longer after that till New Word Alive!!

In the blog world I’ve been a bit busy of late, but Mr Weston has rejoined us at least… Bish points us to a little review of evangelicalism in Britain from an outside perspective by Doug Wilson …and of course the big news on the WWW recently is the launch of UCCF’s theology network site, there’s loads of great stuff there already, so far I’ve listened to Mike Reeves introducing Augustine, Luther and Calvin… it’s good stuff!

Valentines day on Thursday… I’m hopeful…

On Tuesday a representative of the Barnabas Fund came to speak at BH - had been expecting the main guy, Patrick Sookhdeo, but his roads got flooded. Did you know that 1 in 10 Christians are persecuted…

We saw videos of the church in Iraq, Indonesia, North Korea and Egypt… Christians are offered great incentives to convert to Islam, and are ostracised or worse if they don’t. The humbling thing about these brothers and sisters is they’re so much more passionate about Jesus, so much more bold in evangelism, and so joyful in the face of trials.

CJ Mahaney, speaking on True Greatness from Mark 10, praises God for unanswered prayers. I’m like “What?”, that’s the time I don’t want to praise God, because he hasn’t answered my prayers, he hasn’t done what I asked, was he listening, does he care? These are the questions of course which expose my heart, they expose a wrong view of God…

“God is sovereign, not sentimental” - should add to that that God is both sovereign AND good, he works all things for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28), so we know that we can trust God when our prayers are not answered, because he is working out his good and perfect will. He is not sentimental, not a therapist in the sky, not a kindof Father Christmas, he gives us what we need, and answers prayers in his perfect timing.

Unanswered prayers also expose false motives, when we resent God for not bowing to our whims, we see our selfish motives, we see that we desire earthly treasure, earthly happiness and pleasure. We see that our prayers did not come from a desire for personal holiness and for the glory of God, but too often from selfish ambition and a desire to order our lives by our own plans and purposes, not God’s.

But, when we praise God for unanswered prayers, we purify ourselves, we turn away from our false view of God, we expose and repent of our false motives. God gets the glory and we learn to trust him more. I didn’t really used to think I was a proud person, (occasionally I was quite proud of that) but I see more and more that my pride is in the form of self-reliance, not trusting God’s plans and his timing, not trusting that he will work for good in all situations. Maybe, praising God for not answering my stupid selfish prayers is the best prayer I can pray…

In my search for some new podcasts I checked out a bit of Alistair Begg at his radio ministry site, Truth for Life. And was really impressed with the message I listened to - One Thing. There were three points; one thing I know (John 9:25), one thing I do (Philippians 3), one thing I ask (Psalm 27:4)… it was the first point that struck me

One thing I know…

John 9:25 - One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!

Of all the things I know in life (not that much to be fair), surely this is the greatest - there was a time when I was blind, spiritually dead, but now I can see, now I’m alive!
Lloyd-Jones puts it like this…

“I am a Christian solely and entirely because of the grace of God and not because of anything that I have thought or said or done. He brought me to know that I was dead, “dead in trespasses and sins”, a slave to the world, and the flesh, and the devil, that in me “dwelleth no good thing”, and that I was under the wrath of God and heading for eternal punishment.

One more film. I still had more vouchers. Also this is one of the few things I actually specifically asked for for Christmas - and didn’t get. Anyway, believe it or not I hadn’t seen this until just now. When me and my dad went to the cinema back in August, the showing was sold out… so we went home, and I never got round to seeing it. Sad times.

But I have seen it now, and it was pretty good, a worthy finale to the trilogy. The question has been asked who would win in a fight between Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer (notice, both JBs), and I am torn, clearly Kiether Sutherland could take Matt Damon, but Bourne is seriously hard, Bauer wouldn’t last long.

Anyway, I liked the film, the scenes in London were particularly good, can’t go wrong taking out a Guardian reporter! The best bit is the very end… now I quite like Julia Stiles (Nicky Parsons), she’s easy on at least one of the senses, but for the whole Trilogy she never smiles once - except at the very end, it’s beautiful! Nothing special, or particularly surprising or unique, but it’s just so much better than James Bond (another JB) or your average action film, although to be fair Daniel Craig will give it a good go.

Listened to a talk by CJ Mahaney today on Humility (Isaiah 66), my first CJ talk and I enjoyed. Also last month I read the book ‘The Enemy Within‘. Both Mahaney and Lundgaard quote Martin Lloyd-Jones’ book ‘Spiritual Depression’ and this idea of talking to yourself. In defeating sin, and specifically defeating pride (the opposite of Humility), and the fear and worries that come from the pride of being self-reliant, Lloyd-Jones offers the remedy of talking to yourself. What does that mean? I think it’s probably two things: reminding yourself of who you are in Christ, your status before God - now justified, being sanctified, awaiting glory. And second, reminding youself of your status before God - a creature dependant on the Creator, sons in need of a Father, sheep in need of a Shepherd. Hymn writer Joseph Scriven summed it up when he wrote:

O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

I say that we must talk to ourselves instead of allowing ‘ourselves’ to talk to us! Do you realize what that means? I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self. Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? Far from it. This is the very essence of wisdom in this matter. Have you realised that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him he starts talking to himself. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you’. Do you know what I mean? If you do not, you have had but little experience.

The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou cast down’–what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God’–instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: ‘I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God’.

Martin Lloyd-Jones - Spiritual Depression