A sermon preached on Matthew 4:12-23. Unfortunately the recording didn't come out well for this one so there is just the text below. Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand! These are the opening words of Jesus’ public ministry, spoken shortly before He calls His first disciples, and they can almost be treated as a summary of the rest of His teaching, it’s either about repentance or the Kingdom of God. So I want to look at those two aspects this morning. Repent! I wonder how that word makes you feel? What image it conjours up? For me it’s shouty preachers bashing the pulpit, (I must admit I had to restrain myself from doing so when preaching this), or men walking round the streets with placards ‘the end is nigh’. Repent is an archaic word which we may wish to relegate to history, but as the first half of Jesus’ first words, we don’t really have that option. To repent means to turn around, if you think of life as a journey, it’s acknowledging you’ve taken a wrong turn and heading back to the right path. Or if we think more holistically, at your baptism you gave everything that you are to God, but we often take bits back, take control of the parts we think we have better ideas about. Repentance is handing those things back to God. And it should be a daily part of our discipleship. If we want to grow in holiness, if we want to grow in the likeness of Jesus, we need to be looking at our lives, spotting where we have wrestled back control from God. Some things will be easy to shed, other things will cling more tightly, it’s a process that lasts a lifetime. Often as we shed some things, we start to notice other things that we hadn’t noticed before, other areas we don’t trust God with yet. And if we’re honest this can be really disheartening, as we daily discover more fully the hidden depths of our sin. But this is really a cause to rejoice, although we may only just be realising it, God was under no such illusion about our holiness credentials, and yet He called us to follow Him anyway. That’s the depth of His grace and mercy, that’s how much He loves us. The daily discovery of our sin isn’t a descent into misery, it’s an ascent into praise for how good and gracious God has been in calling us. Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand. In other words, turn around come back, for something better is on the horizon. I wonder if your parents ever told you off for eating sweets or snacking before dinner as it would spoil your appetite? Mine did. And we can see what they were on about now, why were we snacking on stuff that wouldn’t really satisfy, when the roast was coming. That’s Jesus’ call, stop snacking on sweets, the feast is coming. The Kingdom of God is both here, it’s arrived, and it’s not yet here. In the resurrection of Jesus, God’s rule broke into this world, the Kingdom of God is wherever God is acknowledged as King. But we can see very easily that it’s not fully here yet, that we are still awaiting its fulfilment. But we’re not just to sit around waiting for it to arrive, we are invited to be part of bringing His rule to earth. Now it can be easy to look at ourselves and think how great we are, how lucky God is to have someone of our talents working for Him. Or perhaps you look at yourself and wonder how on earth God could use you, what you could possibly give. Whichever group you find yourself in today I have good news. God doesn’t need you. This is good news for two reasons: One, it means God will never exploit you, He doesn’t need to, two God invites us to take part anyway. I saw a video online a few weeks ago captioned ‘us working alongside God’. It showed a father and his toddler clearing snow off the driveway. The father has a large snow shovel and the child a small one. The father clears a great swathe of snow and the toddler pushes their little shovel into the snow copying, it goes about half a meter, get’s stuck and the child topples over the top of the handle and gently lands face down in the snow. The father gently picks the child back up, puts them on their feet and they carry on. I can’t think of a better illustration for us as disciples working alongside God for the growth of His Kingdom. So repent, turn from your overconfidence or self-doubt, God has a better path for you. In a few moments we will come to the altar, a foretaste of the banquet to come. And as you do so I invite you to there offer once more all that you are, to hand it all back to God. And then later when you inevitably take some of it back, to offer it again. And then with empty hands, ask God what He wants you to do for His. 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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