Based upon Isaiah 45.22-25, Romans 15.1-6 and Luke 4.16-24.
‘By myself I have sworn, (says the Lord) from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.’ Our readings this morning all carry a theme, the enduring truth of scripture, this morning I want to work through what we can learn about that truth from each of our readings today. Our reading from the prophecy of Isaiah ‘From my mouth I have sworn...a word that shall not return’. Once God has spoken that is it, He doesn’t go back on His word. He doesn’t change His mind, He has mercy as in the story of Jonah where He doesn’t destroy the Nineveh because they repent and turn from the evil that would have caused their destruction, but He doesn’t change. And that’s good news because if He does not change, His word does not change. I wonder if you’ve ever properly thought about the fact that in our Bibles we hold the eternal and unchanging words of God, just think about that for a moment. God’s living and breathing word waiting to speak to us if only we would open it. God’s words of love, mercy and grace, His words of instruction and indeed His words of judgement, right there in our hands. Are we too used to that? Do the words ever lose their power for us because we simply take them for granted, we’ve forgotten the One who speaks those words; the unchanging God. And because He is unchanging He is utterly trustworthy, if He says something will happen it will happen. Relationship with God isn’t like our earthly relationships, He never lets us down, it’s worth noting though that He never says life will be easy, He never says all will be perfect in our lives, in fact quite the opposite, He says how hard it will be to follow Him. But in the heart of life’s storms, when the wind and the rain and the waves of this life seem overwhelming we can stand sure on the rock which is His word and cling to Him, knowing He is there with us, solid and resolute. We can stand firm on His promise to never leave nor forsake us, that He loves us and cares for us and that whilst this world may be a mess, at the end of days He will make all things new. Paul writing to the church in Rome writes ‘For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope’. Paul at this point is of course referring to the words of the Old Testament, they didn’t have the New Testament at this point. ‘Written for our instruction’, Paul writing to Timothy say that ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness’. All of scripture, there isn’t a passage in our Bibles that doesn’t tell us something that we can learn from, it’s crammed with God’s instructions to His people, whether that be spelt out and plain like the book of Proverbs or within the narrative as in Genesis. All scripture waits with God’s instruction and indeed His love, since you wouldn’t rebuke someone you didn’t love. Going back to the second reading again for a moment ‘For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have HOPE’. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at the Old Testament for hope, the New Testament yes with the stories of Jesus and the letters of the early church are so obviously filled with hope. But the Old Testament? Filled with war and bloodshed and exile and books like Lamentations, it doesn’t sound particularly hopeful. And for this reason we can so easily neglect the Old Testament thinking that Jesus has overwritten it so there is no need to look at it. But if we do we miss out on so much of God. His righteousness in not standing by whilst evil happens, His enduring love for His people and His longing that they love Him back. His faithfulness when Israel, and indeed we, are faithless. The messages of the restoration and peace and beauty to come that accompany every exile. One such message of hope was quoted by Jesus in the Gospel today ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ Jesus reads these words and proclaims that He fulfils them, comforting and exciting words. It is the year of Jubilee when all debts are cancelled and all slaves are free; the Gospel in action. And the people listening are very excited and pleased about this but, shortly after our reading today ends He speaks of those who God blessed who weren’t members of His chosen people and the people in the synagogue are very unpleased. All He does is tell them what is already written in their scriptures and they run Him out of the town and try to throw Him off a cliff. What Jesus is saying however is what I opened with, God’s word is unchanging, we as Gentiles have been blessed by the God who promised to bless Israel, His word has not changed, He has not changed, He has simply revealed more of who He is, He has simply unfolded His purposes, revealing what He planned from the beginning. In fact so much of what Jesus said seems to contradict what the Old Testament says and yet it doesn’t. If we go back and look at what so many of the Prophets said then we can see God speaking these same things, He doesn’t contradict Himself. In this respect when we think we hear God speaking then our first step should be to open our Bibles and see what He says in there. If He is saying something different there, then is it really God’s voice we are hearing now. Which brings us to my final question; if God’s word is unchanging and eternal, if He never speaks against those words He has already spoken, what do we do with those bits which we don’t like, those bits that are hard. It seems we have three options. Do we ignore them and pretend they’re not there? If we believe that God reveals Himself in the Bible then to do that is to ignore part of who God is. If we pick and mix scripture we get a pick and mix God, God in our own image. And I know I wouldn’t want to serve a God made in my image. Do we make up excuses to try and make it more acceptable, more palatable? Well He only said this because of this. If we are doing that it almost seems that we are embarrassed by who God is. Like making excuses to your friends about that relative who always seems to manage to say the most unfortunate things without even seeming to realise. Or do we sit down and honestly wrestle with passages, knowing that at the end it may not be the easiest answer. That the answer may be simply what we are reading on the page. For me, wrestling with the difficult bits of the Bible is one of my favourite parts of reading it, I love wrestling with the difficult bits to the point that in my previous parish I ran a sermon series at Cafe Church looking at precisely those bits; God commanding Israel to wipe out other nations for example. Because when honestly wrestle with those bits we meet God, we find Him in those places, like a Lion, powerful and awe inspiring and good and righteous. We need to be bold and accept God for who He has revealed Himself to be, difficult bits and all. So as we leave after this service I challenge you to grab your Bibles and meet with the eternal and unchanging God, to be challenged by His commands, to learn of His love for us, to wrestle with who He is, to find the hope where the story seems the darkest and to stand firm on His word in good times and bad. So that, challenged and changed we may take His message of healing to a broken world. Amen
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AuthorAn Anglican Curate in my 20's I was raised in an Anglican Church, went to a Youth Club run by an Evangelical Church, attended a Baptist Church while at Uni and was a member of a New Monastic Community after graduating. As such my faith has been influenced by these experiences and traditions into what I hope is a more rounded viewpoint. Archives
September 2022
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