Missions Paul

Advent – forgiveness is here.

Acts 13: 38

“Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.”

Paul was leading to this point. He is saying, ‘everything points to this one thing: Jesus has authority to forgive sins, this is why he came.’

“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew 1:21

Jesus did not stay a baby in the manger. We celebrate His birth this advent because of who he is and what He came to do, that is the Son of God came to save people from their sins. In saving them He forgave them.

If sin is to be forgiven, it must be covered by an adequate sacrifice. The carols we sing at Christmas remind us that Jesus Christ was born to be that perfect sacrifice. In other words, He came to die.

God wants you home again, to the place where you belong.

A Father had 5 sons. The eldest was obedient, 4 rebellious.

They were told never to go near the river, but each day the 4 brothers would get closer and closer. Till one day one of them stepped in and said ‘hold my hand so I won’t fall in’ – but the currents swirled and pulled them all in.

They were swept away to a strange land, a place they were never born for, a place they could not escape from.

Each evening they built a fire and told stories of their father and the elder brother, the Firstborn.

One night one brother failed to come to the fire. “I’ve grown tired of our talks. I will build a great house and settle here.”

The next night a 2nd brother failed to appear at the fire. He sat on the hill staring at the house his brother was building, “I’ll stay here and keep a record of wrongs our brother is making.”

The next night a 3rd brother failed to appear. He was found stacking rocks in the river. ‘I’ve failed – I will build a way back.’

The last brother returned to the fire.

Then one morning came the voice of the Firstborn “The Father has sent me to bring you home.”

The first brother said, “I’ve made a home here. Go away stranger. I have no Father.”

The 2nd brother said, “It’s great that you are here to see the sins of our brother”.

The 3rd brother said, ‘I cannot stop to talk I must work. I have sinned. I need to work.”

The 4th brother by the fire said “will he forgive me?”

The firstborn replied, “Would he have sent me if he wouldn’t?” and the younger brother climbed on the back of the firstborn and began the journey home.

What best describes you: pleasure seeker; bitter talker; work-driven or are you being carried back to the Father’s house.

On November 26, 2008, a gang of terrorists stormed the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, India. After the carnage had left 200 people dead, a reporter interviewed a guest who had been at the hotel for dinner that night. The guest described how he and his friends were eating dinner when they heard gunshots. Someone grabbed him and pulled him under the table. The assassins came striding through the restaurant, shooting at will, until everyone (or so they thought) had been killed. Miraculously, this man survived. When the interviewer asked the guest how he lived when everyone else at his table had been killed, he replied, “I suppose because I was covered in someone else’s blood, and they took me for dead.”

The Christ-child came to cover His blood over your life. That is why he came.

Acts 13:37

“But the one whom God raised from the dead did not see decay”.

David lived, died and decayed. But there is One who didn’t!

Abraham was born in Ur of the Chaldeans, modern day Iraq. He died at the age of 175 in Hebron, which is now a Palestinian city in Israel, approximately 30km south of Jerusalem. Here there is a huge tomb called ‘Cave of the Patriarchs’.

King David is one of the most important figures in Jewish history. Born in Bethlehem in 907 BCE, he reigns as king of Israel for 40 years, dying at age 70 in 837 BCE. On Mount Zion in Jerusalem a 1000 year old building houses the tomb of King David.

Muhammad ibn Abdullah was born in Mecca on June 8, 570 ( a fairly precise date I agree!) He died in 632 BC in Medina, Saudi Arabia. His tomb is called ‘Al-Masjid al-Nabawī or “Mosque of the Prophet”.

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was born around 563 BC in Lumbini, an area within Nepal but near the Indian border. He died in 483 BC at 80 years of age in the city of Kushinagar. He was cremated and yet a tomb was created for him near the Hiranyavati River.

The exact dates of Jesus birth in Bethlehem is not known, some say 6-4BC. However, Jesus said that before Abraham was born, ‘I AM’. He died outside the city wall of Jerusalem on a cross around 29-30 AD. There is a garden tomb, but there isn’t anything in it. In fact Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” and also, “For it is my Father’s will that all who see his Son and believe in him should have eternal life. I will raise them up at the last day.”

Everybody that ever lived, died, decayed and the famous have elaborate tombs of worship.

There is One who lived before he lived and was not dead after he died!

Gathering at the manger scene of this baby demands our worship. It is all we can do. So come today and worship Christ the new born King!

Christianity is different to all the rest because Christ is different, the One and Only Son of God is here today to the “end of the age”.

Advent – the purpose

Acts 13:36

Now when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his ancestors and his body decayed

 Paul continued to show how David could not have been speaking about himself because he died, was buried and his body decayed. This is the evidence that David was prophesying about another and that person is Jesus, that’s what Paul was saying.

God had a purpose for that generation and David served it. Then he died.

Today I am giving a tribute at a funeral of a family friend. I have been reflecting on his life, preparing for something to say, realising that it is only in death that life is known. His great-grandchild is ready to be born. The baby will come at any time. Hope is found in birth but the purpose for that hope is only truly realised in death.

“To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven”. Ecclesiastes 3:1

 Advent shouts out the imminent coming of the Messiah. This is a new season, a time for the purpose from Heaven:

“He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” Luke 1:32-33

“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew 1:21

During his time on earth Jesus would often speak of the purpose of God for him being here.

”For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” Luke 19:10

How would Jesus save the lost? The answer was not through his birth, but by his death.

“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour” John 12:27

Mary was soon to learn that this unusual birth would be bittersweet. A sword would pierce her own soul too (Lk 2:35).

Advents call waits for Easters call. They are calling at each other.

‘Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you’ hangs in the air and echoes throughout a shortened life to a victorious shout that shakes heaven and earth, ‘It is finished!’

Unlike David and unlike my family friend and all of us, the purpose of Jesus life, the reason for him being born was not realised at his death. The purpose of him being born was his death.

So doesn’t that mean if we have been to the cross then we kneel with a greater sense of worship at the manger scene this year? It must do.

And what can we say as we kneel there, but “O come let us adore him” and in that place of worship “what can I give him?”, it has to be “Give my heart”.

Advent – He is in the elsewhere!

Acts 13:35: “So it is stated elsewhere:” ‘You will not let your Holy One see decay.”

Paul is able to support all that he is saying through the use of the Old Testament scriptures.

He is using Psalm 16:10 here in this verse. They knew the sentence, he didn’t need to quote the Psalm and verse. He could say it is stated elsewhere. They knew.

What we need to remind ourselves this Advent is that Jesus is stated elsewhere not just in the nativity passages.

Genesis: Jesus who will bless the nations.

Exodus: Jesus the ‘I AM’ (bread, light, gate, good shepherd, resurrection and the life, way and the truth and the life, true vine).

Leviticus: Jesus is the Atonement

Numbers: Jesus is the High Priest.

Deuteronomy: Jesus the curse for the world

Joshua: Jesus the Captain of the army of the Lord

Judges: Jesus the just One

Ruth: Jesus our Kinsman-Redeemer

1 Samuel: Jesus the Prophet/Priest/King

2 Samuel: Jesus full of grace

1 Kings: Jesus the ruler

2 Kings: Jesus the Prophet

1 Chronicles: Jesus the Son of David

2 Chronicles: Jesus the Eternal King

Ezra: Jesus the Priest

Nehemiah: Jesus the repairer of the broken.

Esther: Jesus the Protector.

Job: Jesus the Mediator.

Psalms: Jesus the focus of praise and worship

Proverbs: Jesus is wisdom

Ecclesiastes: Jesus is the reason for life.

Song of Solomon: Jesus is love

Isaiah: Jesus the servant

Jeremiah: Jesus moved to tears

Lamentations: Jesus carrying the anger of God

Ezekiel: Jesus the Son of Man

Daniel: Jesus the 4th man in the fire.

Hosea: Jesus the faithful

Joel: Jesus the sender of the Spirit

Amos: Jesus the defender of the oppressed.

Obadiah: Jesus the Judge

Jonah: Jesus loves the lost

Micah: Jesus who forgets sin.

Nahum: Jesus our future peace

Habakkuk: Jesus who holds on to us.

Zephaniah: Jesus our sacrifice

Haggai: Jesus the desire of all nations

Zechariah: Jesus in the middle of His people

Malachi: Jesus the sun of righteousness.

Jesus is all over the Bible. He is the Word in the Word. He is elsewhere and everywhere. Paul could have spent the whole day quoting every book showing how the Messiah was portrayed and how that Messiah is Jesus.

Jesus is not restricted to a manger nor to the prophecies of Isaiah or Micah that are read at the usual Christmas services. He is elsewhere and everywhere.

Friends, we have a big Jesus!

He rules the world with truth and grace,

And gives to nations proof

The glories of His righteousness,

And wonders of His love;

And wonders of His love;

And wonders, wonders of His love.

Advent – good news of great joy!

Acts 13: 32

“We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors”

I have been waiting for this verse to come. You can guess why?!! GOOD NEWS!

The angel said to the Shepherds, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”

• Sometimes joy is given

They were impacted by an unexplainable event. It was an out of this world experience, a God-thing. This year you will probably not have had the angelic host sing to you, but maybe one day you were going about your normal business and by the end of that day your life had turned around, why? God had come to you. He had revealed Himself to you. From that moment on you knew your life would never be the same again.

This might seem strange to you, but God does want you to be happy! In Ecclesiastes 2:6 God gives happiness!

• Sometimes joy has to be found

He wants you to be willing to have what He wants to give you. He wants your partnership.

Mary had a visit by the angel, but she had to be willing, “May it be to me as you have said.” The shepherds weren’t presented with Jesus nor were they picked up and placed into the manger scene. God won’t force you to have good things for your life. He won’t deliver them without your full participation and He won’t drag you into them either. Do not think they ran into Bethlehem with an A-Z map and all they had to do was find Manger Street. Maybe they tried every cowshed in Bethlehem before they found the one with a baby in it, for that is the meaning of the word ‘search’.

• Sometimes we have to fight for our joy

I am reflecting this morning on what was told me last night about a Church of Pentecost Pastor who is in prison today on false charges of speaking against the government. He has been in prison for 4 months and has had visitors refused. He is in a country that if I told you then you would know how horribly difficult this must be for him. His wife is going to have a very stressful Christmas this year as she prays for the release of her husband.

Sometimes we have to fight for that joy. The enemy wants to steal it. Maybe this year there have been so many battles for that joy.

Mother Theresa commanded her workers to smile every day.

Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote: “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?”

Maybe the greatest battle of faith is the struggle within.

Advent – I was there!

Acts 13:31

“and for many days he was seen by those who had travelled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people.”

The fourth part of the gospel message for the early church: death, tomb, resurrection and now witnesses!

That first century saw many witnesses able to communicate their experiences of a risen Jesus. Luke who is writing the book of Acts keeps coming back to the same thing: witnesses. Since his first sentence, “In my former book Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach” Luke has been referring continually to the fact that there were witnesses.

At the first advent there were many witnesses and we can name every character in the nativity scene and the journey towards it and from it. We even know some characters that somehow have appeared in there but the Bible doesn’t mention them!

What good is a dead witness? All these characters are gone now. It must have been great to live in the days when you can hear the story from one of the witnesses: Listen, I was there, this is what happened!

However there is one witness who was there and who is still very much alive and Luke is the one who writes of Him. Luke likes his witnesses as we now know!

Let me embolden the person so you can spot Him:

Luke 1: ³⁴ “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” ³⁵ The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” …³⁹ At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, ⁴⁰ where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹ When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit….⁵⁹ On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, ⁶⁰ but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.” … ⁶⁷ His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:⁶⁸ “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,     because he has come to his people and redeemed them.

Luke 2: ²⁵ Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. ²⁶ It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. ²⁷ Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, ²⁸ Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: ²⁹ “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. ³⁰ For my eyes have seen your salvation, ³¹ which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:”

We can be so grateful that the one witness who is still alive is alive in us!

If there is one thing that the Spirit would want to say to you as you journey through advent it is this: “I was there! I was at work. I made things happen. I directed the journeys of the witnesses. In fact I was more involved then has been recorded! (That’s just my imaginative thinking!)”

“I was the power that conceived Christ within Mary. I was filling lives. I was revealing messages. I was moving people into the right places. I was there.”

Just slow everything down now. Before you do another thing. Pause. Breathe. God who is in you, the Holy Spirit, witnessed the whole story of the coming of Christ.

The Holy Spirt witnesses not by reminding you of the story rather He works the story of Christmas into your life so that you are continually changed by it. May He work that story in you again and again and as He does you will live your life in such a way that it will appear you were a witness to the event.

Advent – the God of the Resurrection

Acts 13: 30

“But God raised him from the dead”

The message of the church was and has always been ‘death, laid in the tomb, resurrected’.

What has resurrection got to do with Advent?

Surely it only appears at Easter?

That is certainly where we have reserved the word. One of my pet-hates is going to Church at a time of the year when the service is not focusing on the certain aspect of God for that day, ie. On Pentecost Sunday I want to hear of the Holy Spirit. I don’t want to be hearing about the story of Noah. I want to celebrate the events at the right time.

But today I wake to a difficulty. This week I am teaching the Christmas story in the 30 degrees heat of the Ivory Coast. It feels like the UK is having a glorious summer and it feels wrong to preach on Joseph and Mary and the birth of Christ. My mind is struggling with the adjustment!

So here we are, restricted by the plan of this devotional blog walking through Acts and we have this verse, “But God raised him from the dead” and it is Christmas!

I think the problem with my pet-hate is that I put these amazing words such as Resurrection and the Incarnation into secure unbreakable categories that actually then only focus on the grandiose understanding of the verse and miss a simple truth.

The word ‘resurrection’ simple means in Greek, ‘standing up’. It is ‘anastasis’.

Of course this is profoundly used for the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead and at the last judgment we too will rise.

But it means standing up, let’s not forget that also.

This Christmas we are again focusing on the birth of Christ. I have been blessed with 2 children and from birth I have seen their every development. I remember how they learned to crawl and then to stand. In learning to stand they learnt that after falling they stand again despite the fear of falling on the next step.

Isaiah said that the people walking in darkness have seen a great light (9:2). We do not have to stumble in danger now that the light has come. We can stand.

Zechariah sang that the coming redeemer has shone ‘on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.’ (Luke 1:79).

The resurrection power of Jesus is for now not after we have died. It is to enable us to stand again even in the difficult dark day, not after the ordeal.

Who put the ability for the Christ-child to get out of the manger himself and to stand? Who created the innate power within all of creation that whether a flattened flower or a fallen child (or adult!) or animal to get back up? Surely it is the Creator God with Resurrection power.

At that first Easter God raised Jesus from the dead but He had been raising Him at the first Christmas too.

Today no matter your state or status, circumstance or category, let God cause you to stand up. You can do this. You can rise in your life. You can think new thoughts again. You can reach out for joy. You can believe again. You can dream. You can stand up.

Resurrection is to be celebrated at the first Advent as well as the second.

Acts 13: 29

“When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb.”

The Apostle Paul saw the higher purpose in Christ’s life and death. The higher purpose was found in the fulfilment of the Jewish prophecies.

More than any other gospel writer Matthew will refer to the Old Testament prophecies over 60 times. Here in the birth story:

“All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet (Isaiah) …” Matthew 1:22

“When Herod called together all the … teachers of the law … he asked them where the Christ was to be born. ‘In Bethlehem in Judea’ they replied, ‘for this is what the prophet (Micah) has written …” Matthew 2:5

Describing how Joseph took Mary and Joseph to Egypt until after Herod’s death: “And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet (Hosea) …” Matthew 2:15

Herod ordered the killing of the boys who were two years and under … Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled …” Matthew 2:17

Speaking of how Jesus went to live in Nazareth, “So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets (?) ‘He will be called a Nazarene’” Matthew 2:23. The (?) because no singular prophet is recorded as saying this phrase. But Matthew records it as plural, prophets, indicating that they would use the theme of that sentence in their sayings. It could also be Matthew recording Isaiah 11:1: “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit”. Though there is no mention of Nazareth anywhere in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for Branch here in Isaiah is NZR and it could be that Matthew was referring to the branch as the coming Messiah.

Isaiah, Micah, Hosea and Jeremiah are all used by Matthew in the telling of the birth of Christ.

So why does Matthew do this?

He is keen to show that Jesus and the gospel story are built upon a strong foundation, that there is no other way to understand Jesus apart from the story of God in the Old Testament. The truth once hidden is now fulfilled in Christ:

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the Incarnate Deity!

If that is the truth of Jesus, then what of us? One of those same prophets, Jeremiah, at the beginning of his prophecy says that before we were formed God knew about us.

With this firmly in mind then the message becomes more about the fact that our lives are governed by Gods design. This is His story. We are here for him, for His good pleasure. We are here to serve Him with everything.

You are not here by chance, accident or mistake. But for His purpose. We were meant to be, no matter our status, circumstance or difficulties. This is our moment. We can bring glory to Him. He designed it to be so.