Sermon St Eustachius 9.45 21 November 2021 Year B Next b4 Advent Christ King
Daniel7v9-10,13,14         Psalm 93         Revelation 1v4b-8                  John 18v33-37(38)

Let us Pray:

What comes to your mind when we speak of ‘Christ the King’?
You may say, well, we are always talking about the kingdom of God, and for a kingdom there must be a King. How true, but does that really help us understand Jesus Kingship? For that we clearly need to know more about the nature, makeup and time of that Kingdom, for when we look around our present world with all its divisions, inequalities, poverty, oppression and pain, it leaves a great deal still to be desired to my mind. So what do we know about God’s kingdom, and its King, from scripture? There is a great deal, so we can only begin to scratch the surface this morning.

We know that Jesus himself during his earthly ministry often used the phrase, ‘know that the kingdom of God has come near’, so as we look at Jesus, we should get some idea of the kingdom that he came to initiate.
Jesus launched his ministry, very much in the context of what the Old Testament prophets said about a coming kingdom, and Jesus summed their thoughts up well in the words of Isaiah (58v6-7) when, in the synagogue in Nazareth he said, “the Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, liberty to the oppressed and the recovery of sight to the blind”. Now that’s the sort of kingdom I believe our world so desperately needs, and Jesus is the King who is going make that a reality at his return, at his second advent.

I think that even Pilate, during his confrontation with Jesus that we have just heard, had a glimmer of an idea that this man brought before him by the religious leaders, was more than could be seen from the outside. “So you are a king” said Pilate to Jesus. “You have said so” was Jesus reply. Yes, indeed he was the eternal King, but he was not to be a king in the way that most people imagined a king to be, a king to set them free of Rome’s power at that time in their history.

Saint John in his revelation was convinced that Jesus was far more than just any kind of king when he wrote, ‘Jesus Christ, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth’. John could see that Jesus was to be King over all the earth. And that is just what the scriptures have to say about the Messiah, and so of what we as Christians say of Jesus.

The great prophet Daniel (Dan 7v11), in his heavenly vision was given a glimpse of the coming time of Jesus kingdom, and he described it like this; ‘I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven’. Does  that ring a bell with you? Was it not the way that the two angels described the coming return of Jesus in the clouds at his second advent. Speaking to the disciples at Jesus ascension, the angels described that as the exact same way in which our Lord will return to the Mount of Olives.

And Daniel continues, ‘And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him’. Daniel was just one of many prophets to see the coming day of our Lord Jesus as King and ruler over the nations.

Also prophesying like Daniel during the sixth century BC, but maybe just a little later, was the prophet Zechariah. He also saw the return of Jesus to the Mount of Olives (14v6), and went on to say, ‘And the Lord will become King over all the earth’ (14v9). But Zechariah adds an interesting description of that time (14v16), ‘then everyone of the nations shall go up to Jerusalem year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast, the festival of tabernacles’. Can you imagine that time? A time when all the nations will have to overcome their prejudices and send representatives up to Jerusalem, and there to acknowledge Jesus the Jew, but the very Son of God, as King over all the nations.

And Daniel was under no misapprehension that this was to be just a temporary kingdom, ‘His dominion is an everlasting dominion and shall not pass away’. Later in his prophecy Isaiah describes what that time will be like. It will be a time of feasting (Is25v6) and where tears are wiped away; a time when we delight, as having waited patiently for our God, we rejoice that now at last our salvation is to be finally fulfilled.

So are you beginning to get just a little picture of what it will be like to have a kingdom where Jesus is King and reigns and rules over the nations?
And in the meantime, are we just to sit back and wait? Sadly that has been the approach of many in the wider church, but what do you think each one of us should be doing? Perhaps first and foremost is that we are called by our Lord to live righteous lives that befit our Lord and his holiness.

Paul, writing to young Timothy (1Tim6v11f) encouraged him, and so us, to, ‘aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness; and to take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, to keep the commandments unstained, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ’.
That is how we should aim to be living out our lives, living lives that delight God our Father, and our Lord Jesus, as we patiently wait the realisation of the coming kingdom.

Jesus said much about the kingdom of God, a kingdom that has both an imminent and a forthcoming aspect. Luke (16v16 NKJ) records how Jesus said, “The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it”. Or as the New Living Translation, rather optimistically says, “and everyone is eager to get in”. That I believe should also be our vision brothers and sisters, a vision that motivates us to encourage all who we know to be among those who are ‘eager to get into the kingdom of God.

To that end we can all look to the Holy Spirit to transform our lives as we invite Jesus to become the King of our lives today.

We are called to use our gifts to show the love of our Lord Jesus; such deep love that Jesus went to Calvary to prove his love for you and for me. We can all work to build up this our lovely Church, and to invest our resources into making it a blessing, a blessing not just for us to enjoy, but also for all within our community here in this beautiful town of Tavistock.

Let us pray:
God our Father, help us to hear the call of Christ the King, and to follow in his service. Help us to build His kingdom that has no end; for he reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, one glory.                   Amen

Sermon St Eustachius 9.45  7 November 2021 Year B 3 b4 Advent Our High Priest

Jonah 2v1-5,10         Psalm 62v5-12         Hebrews 9vs24-end         Mark 1vs14-20

I wonder if you have ever had to appear in court? If so did you act on your own behalf, or did you employ the most competent solicitor or barrister that you could afford?

Well, the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews gives us great assurance that in heaven we have the most competent of advocates to act on our behalf before the throne of Almighty God. We have a high priest unlike any other. A high priest that the writer described earlier in his epistle as ‘after the order of Melchizedek’. A priest who has no beginning and has no end, one who is eternal.

That high priest is none other than the one who has redeemed us and we serve, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Jesus who existed with God the Father and the Holy Spirit before the creation of the world.  Jesus who chose to take upon himself our human form, yet without sin, so us to reconcile us to the Holy and Righteous God, our heavenly Father. Jesus who tabernacled here among us for some 33 years before entering back into highest heaven where, at the right hand of God, he is ever ready to make intercession for us. I hope you find that thought as encouraging as I do.

That same Jesus we read in our gospel, came to the Galilee after the arrest of John the Baptist to proclaim the good news of the gospel. To proclaim that we, who through our disobedience and neglect of the commandments and statutes of God, needed to be reconciled back to our Holy God and Father. To be restored to the position God had intended for us his children from before the foundation of the world. Restored so that we may share with God our promised eternal life in the coming new creation.

I wonder if those four early disciples, Simon and Andrew, James and John, knew what they were letting themselves in for when Jesus called them to leave their nets, and the family fishing business, and to follow him. I wonder, did we know what we were letting ourselves in for when we also  choose to follow after Jesus?

In their case it was not just to lose their livelihood and position in their society, it was to take up with a somewhat unknown, charismatic and itinerant Rabbi, he was a teacher from Nazareth of all places.

After all had anyone ever heard of anything good coming out of Nazareth?  Nathanael certainly did not think so when Philip said to him “We have found him of whom Moses in the Torah and also the prophets wrote”.

But three of those four men. Andrew, Simon Peter and John, had already spent some months with Jesus, for Saint John records in his gospel that they had previously gone up with Jesus to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover feast in the spring of AD 28. So they should have had some idea of what they might be letting themselves in for if they left all and followed after this Jesus. But were they yet ready to start ‘fishing for men’? No, that would take some more time moving around with this Rabbi and learning just who this Jesus really was, the Messiah, the Holy one of God.

It took another two years for them to understand about this Jesus, who could then say of them at the last supper (Jn17v7-8):

“Father, Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for I have given them the words which you gave me, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed you sent me”.

A lesson that I hope, each one of us here this morning has also learnt since we came to believe, trust and follow after Jesus, Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed of God.

Yet as our collect this morning reminds us, it is God the Father’s will to restore all things in Jesus his beloved Son, and then Jesus will become King over all peoples. That shall be a day when, as the alternative collect tells us, wars shall cease, and poverty and pain shall end, and the earth shall know the peace of heaven.

Are you like me, looking forward to that day? No more destruction of the rain forests, no more pollution of our fragile environment, no more loss of God’s beautiful species. I must say that I am, so let us pray earnestly that the world leaders at Cop26 in Glasgow start to work for that day by working to prevent any further destruction and loss of our fragile environment, there really is no time to spare.

And the writer of Hebrews has more to say that is especially relevant as we approach Advent. Advent, that time when we think not just of our Lord’s first incarnation some two thousand years ago, but also of his promised return at his second advent, at his second coming. Both the Old and New Testaments are teaming with prophecies of that time.

The return of Jesus is featured prominently in the Scriptures, yet most people are surprised to learn that references to the second coming outnumber references to the first coming by a factor of eight to one. There have been identified some 1,845 references to our Lord’s Second Coming in our bibles.

At Jesus first advent, Jesus appeared, as we read, “to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself” and that through his agonising death on Calvary’s tree, an event that will remain for ever as the centrality and turning point in human history. But our writer reminds us that the Lord will return ‘a second time’. Jesus has already dealt with the sin of the world, so what will take place when he does return? That is a long story and we cannot go into all the detail now, perhaps a good bible study sometime.

We also read this morning that at his return Jesus will, “save those who are eagerly awaiting him”. That raises a searching question for each one of us to answer, are we truly ‘eagerly waiting’ the return of our Lord, and the completion of our salvation? We have been redeemed once and for all through our Lord’s death, but we are all still, ‘a work in progress’. Our salvation is an ongoing process as Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians (2Cor3v18) for we are being changed from one degree of glory to another. That transformation will only be completed when we meet with Jesus in paradise or at his return. So can you see how it does behove us to be ‘eagerly awaiting’ Jesus’ return.

If we are not awaiting our Lord’s return and our full salvation, the writer of Hebrews gives to us some ominous, and warning, words. “It is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgement”. What do you make of that statement? Do you believe that there is going to be a judgement, or have we as individuals, and as a society, moved on from all that sort of ‘stuff’? We need to take care how we answer that question if we are to put our trust and believe in the scriptures as our faith requires.

There is a simple but true little phrase I heard many years ago, ‘Born once die twice, born twice die once’.

But what can I possibly mean by that? Think about it, and then remember what Jesus said to Nicodemus.

Do you believe the words that Jesus spoke to the Pharisee Nicodemus who came to Jesus by night, “You must be born again”? I trust that we all here have put our faith and trust in Jesus, and so we have been ‘born again’, we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, and so our eternal life is secure.

Can we then join with the psalmist (Ps62v5-6) and say, “Wait on God alone in stillness, O my soul; for in him is my hope. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold, so that I shall not be shaken”.

We Christians of all people have a hope, a hope that transcends anything that this world can ever offer. That hope is in the one true and living God. The God who has redeemed us through the precious blood of Jesus shed at Calvary. The God who St John records (Jn 14v3) could say that in Jesus, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also”. Do you not find those words most comforting that Jesus is now in the process of preparing an eternal abode for us so that we shall be with him in the coming new creation.

‘Joy’, said C S Lewis, ‘is the serious business of heaven’.

So as we carry that wonderful promise of our Lord with us, let us also remember the injunction of Saint Peter concerning this present world and age. In his second epistle (2Pt3v11) Peter writes, “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God”.

Brothers and sisters we are called, like those early disciples, to do all that we can to hasten Jesus coming again. Just think how you can work to help make that possible. But we are also called to live out our lives and show that we are Christian people, and as such are called to work to establish peace and harmony among all peoples, and especially to help those less fortunate than ourselves. We are charged to preserve this creation that God  entrusted into our keeping from the very beginning of time, and we are to declare that ‘the kingdom of God has indeed come near. Come near both at our Lord’s first advent, and now in Jesus working through us his people.

We all need to seek God earnestly in our prayers. To ask how each one of us can join with him in building the kingdom, and showing its beauty and fulness to our hurting and disordered world.  Amen

Let us pray:

God our Father, King of the universe, our refuge and our strength,
bring near the day when wars shall cease and poverty and pain shall end,
that this earth may know the peace of heaven,
we ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.         Amen

Sermon St P & St M 31 October 2021 Year B All Saints 4^th b4 Advent ‘Future’

Isaiah 25v6-9 Psalm 24    Revelation 21v1-6a John 11v32-44

Let us pray:

As we come together on this ‘All Saints Day’, we join with all our brothers and sisters across the world, the Church Militant, and with all who now make up the saintly body of believers who have gone before us, and are now in the presence of our Lord, the Church Triumphant. In the words of our psalmist (Ps24), we can all declare, ‘The earth is the Lord’s and all that fills it, the world and all who dwell therein’.

As is my wont in many of my sermons, I pose yet another question to you, what do you believe could happen in the future? I am not really asking you to speculate, and perhaps you will say, it has always been as it is and will go on like that, or as king Solomon said, and as is recorded in the book of Ecclesiastes (1v9-10), ‘The thing that hath been, is that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun’.

But is that what the scriptures actually say? Or do they perhaps have a deeper revelation and insight for us, being the word of God do they contain a revelation into what actually does lie ahead? Or has God left us completely in the dark?

I don’t think so. Our God is the one who declares ‘the end from the beginning’. The prophet Isaiah (Is46v10), tells us that God said, “I say, My purpose will stand, and all My good pleasure I will accomplish. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come”. And Saint John also thought that God revealed his coming purposes for us and recorded them in his Revelation.

John was given his revelation from Jesus when held as a prisoner on the Greek Island of Patmos, probably sometime near the end of the first century. Jesus gave to John, and as a result to all of us also, a small insight into the things that are to come. Some take what John wrote as purely ‘poetic’ and even ‘fanciful’, but why would God do that? Many of us take what John wrote, and what we have just read, as being a description of the new heaven and the new earth that God will at some time bring in, for what we know at present will pass away as God makes ‘all things new’. I wonder if you really believe that is indeed what is going to happen?

As always we need to put John’s revelation into the wider context of all the other relevant Old and New Testament scriptures, and so to paint a more complete picture of God’s revelation to us who believe. And all that is written needs to be set within the context of our Lord’s own words to some of his disciples when he was talking to them on the Mount of Olives of the times of the end (Mtt24v36) saying, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only”. So we must take care not to be led astray.

This morning I am attempting to put together a picture of what I, and many others, believe will one day take place, and maybe sooner than we think. You will probably not have heard a sermon quite like this before.

Taken together the scriptures all point to a great change that will come upon the world as we know it today. Perhaps some of you would join with me in saying that when we see this world so full of poverty, injustice, inequality violence and oppression, that time can’t come too soon, we do need change and transformation. So in a few words, what may there be in store for all of humanity?

Well, it seems that a time of great distress will come upon all the nations, a time commonly called ‘the tribulation’; a time that will last for a period of seven years, and certainly not a time to look forward to. But we Christians have a promise that Saint Paul makes in 1Thessalonians (1v10) saying, ‘Jesus will deliver us from the wrath to come’, should that take place in our generation. But that is yet another story, but it is good to know that Jesus is always looking to bless us his people.

After that time of tribulation that John graphically describes, the world shall see the return, the second advent, the second coming of our Lord Jesus. A time that we regularly affirm when we declare, ‘Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again’. But do we believe Jesus will return when we declare that later?

The prophet Zechariah says that the feet of the returning Messiah, Jesus, shall stand on the Mount of Olives (Zech14v4), and the two angels also attested to it as Jesus ascended from the Mount of Olives into heaven saying (Acts 1v11) “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

When that time does come, and our Lord returns, it will usher in a time that Saint John describes as a one thousand year period when Jesus will reign on earth from Jerusalem, and all nations will be subject to his royal rule, a time commonly known as ‘the millennium’. That time is described by the prophet Isaiah (Is52v7) as when, ‘Your God reigns’, and by Zechariah as a time when the nations shall go up each year to Jerusalem during the feast of tabernacles (Zech14v16).

It is a time that is hinted at in psalm 147 where we read, “The Lord builds up Jerusalem and gathers together the outcasts. He heals the broken hearted and binds up all their wounds. The Lord lifts up the poor. He has established peace.”

When that period of time is concluded we read of a final judgement for all peoples, those then living, and also for all humanity who have lived before, and those in the company of saints who returned with our Lord at its start (Rev20v12).

Then comes the time that we have read of this morning, an eternity when all shall be made new. It will be like the time God planned for all humanity from the beginning of creation, a glorious life for us that had to be suspended as a result of our disobedience to God’s commandments. A time of restoration for us who believe and have our names inscribed in the Lamb’s book of life, a salvation finally made complete, and made possible through the obedience of our Lord Jesus to die on the cross of Calvary, to restore our true relationship to a Holy God.

That eternity of time is then a time of new beginnings, a time of such tremendous transformation when God the Father himself comes and makes his home with us. God changes his abode to the new Jerusalem, recreating a time like in the garden when with Adam and Eve God was described as walking with them in the cool of the evening (Gen3v8).

Saint John closes his great revelation with words from which we can all take encouragement, ‘these words are trustworthy and true’ (Rev22v6).

I hope that like me you will also take hope from these promises disclosed by Saint John, but what of the meantime? We are to remember that we are the Lord’s ambassadors and his representatives to this our present and fallen generation. We are Jesus body, his hands and his feet, here to carry his gospel of good news, a gospel of reconciliation for those who feel far from the living God. A gospel to give hope that there is a coming kingdom when all shall be made just and new. Let us pray that our families, friends and neighbours will want to join with us and rejoice in God’s immeasurable grace.

Let us pray:

God of all holiness, your glory is to be proclaimed to every generation, and as we await that time of your return, help us to rejoice in the saving faith we share with all your saints, and inspire us to follow their example with boldness and joy; we ask this through Jesus Christ, your Son, our risen and ascended Lord. Amen

Sermon St E 24 October 2021 Year B Last after Trinity Bible Sunday

Psalm 19v7-14            Isaiah 55v1-11                        2 Timothy 3v14-4v5            John 5v36b-47

Today is Bible Sunday but why do we celebrate it? Any ideas?

Well, because it is in the lectionary of course. But does that not beg the question, why then is it in the lectionary?

Do any of you remember the 39 articles of the Church of England? In the old days one had to study them before confirmation, not sure many do that today. Perhaps you have not read them in years, or maybe you have never read them, but are they not the basis of our Church. The virtue of the Book of common prayer is that it does have them listed at the back, and article six is still relevant for our worship and discipleship today.

Article six is on the sufficiency of the holy scriptures for salvation, saying that the scriptures, the bible, ‘containeth all things necessary to salvation’. So as the bible is the firm foundation for our faith no wonder we need to remind ourselves of its importance, and look at not just the impact it should have upon our lives, but also how important it is that the bible should be made available to all peoples throughout the world as well.

Many of us believe that God has not left us in the dark, but has made known his purposes for humankind through the revelation he has given through the prophets and apostles, and those revelations are contained in the scriptures, so it behoves us all to get to know the bible better. It is the reason that the Church for many centuries has believed that the bible should be available for anyone to read it for themselves, and not to be dependent on anyone else.

So if I ask you how many Bibles do you have at home, what would your answer be? Somewhere between zero and many, although I do hope zero does not apply to anyone here this morning. But when did you last read your own bible, and have you ever read it from cover to cover?

You and I have the bible readily available to read in many different and varied translations, and that helps to make it accessible for all to read and understand. It is available so we can deepen our understanding of God’s purposes for us as individuals, and that enables us to walk our pilgrim path as better disciples of our Lord Jesus. It is also available so society can develop and function as God in his grace and wisdom, has deemed it would be best for humankind to live and function. Sadly that is no longer the way of the world, and even of our own country.

But worse is that neither is it the prerogative for many people even as individuals in our world today, for they are denied access to the living word of God, they are not permitted to have and read the scriptures. That deprivation is either because the bible is a forbidden book to them, and we should question why it should be forbidden, or it is not yet been made available in that person’s native language for them to read for themselves.

The stated intention of the Wycliffe Bible Translators is that ‘Everyone deserves a bible they can understand’. Unfortunately at this present time 1.5 billion people do not have a full bible in their native or heart language.

That is why you will find in many parts of the world, and some of them very remote, and across virtually every continent, there are translators living with people to find the best way of making the bible accessible.

It means that those translators have to move into the delicate and difficult process of working with languages that are often spoken by a large number of people, but where there are no known Christians or churches.

For example, the Ceren language is spoken by over one million people in a part of Asia that is hostile to the gospel, but the people there are friendly and place a great emphasis on the provision of hospitality and generosity, but it is also a place of great spiritual darkness. Up until a year ago there was no standardised way of writing the Ceren language so you can imagine what extra challenge that must have presented to the translators.

The Dobel speaking people live on the Aru Islands of Indonesia. The aim of a Wycliffe translation team there is to complete the translation of the New Testament and three Old Testament books into their language by 2025. Two British translator are being helped by a local man called Eka.

Do you believe that God can reveal himself in dreams today? We know that Saint Peter when staying at Simon the tanners house in Joppa had the same dream or vision three times before he was convinced that God was calling him to take the gospel to the Gentiles. Well, Eka began his journey of faith, and to help with Bible translation when he had a dream of Jesus coming to him and saying ‘Come and follow me’. Since reading God’s word in his heart language of Dobel, he has put his trust in Jesus and has become faithful in prayer and experienced the Lord transforming his life.

But as I mentioned earlier, there are many countries where the bible is prohibited, so how then may people in those communities get access to the scriptures and hear the gospel of our Lord? It is in such places where Radio, Satellite Tv and the Internet have a big part to play.

Can you imagine slowly writing out the verses, chapters and books of the bible by hand as you listen to the radio. That is the way many people  gradually gain access to the word of God, and then like Eka can testify to what a significant change takes place in their lives as they come to know the love, grace, forgiveness and salvation provided through hearing, and then belief, in the gospel.

One such listener from NE Africa wrote to FEBA Radio how when searching for any programmes in the Amharic language they had come across a message about life after death in Arabic which was a language that they could follow. Continuing to listen to the broadcasts slowly their heart lit up and they confessed Jesus as Lord, but were afraid to tell their Muslim family who, not liking the Christian faith, could disown him.

How we need to pray for the many secret believers who are in a similar situation of fear, persecution and loneliness.

One can see how such secret believers may often echo the words of the psalmist (19v10) and say about the scriptures, ‘More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold’. Can we echo those sentiments of the psalmist, and also say how, ‘the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul’. Do you find your spirit, your soul, revived by the word of God as you read the scriptures, as you read your bible?

For that is why we have the scriptures, and why there are so many people striving to make them available, and as the Bible Society would say, ‘to bring the bible to life’. The Bible Society had its origin in 1800 when a young 15 year old Welsh girl was determined to buy a bible to read for herself, and that sparked for the Reverend Joseph Hughes a question forchurch leaders: ‘If a bible for Welsh speakers, why not for the kingdom? And if for the kingdom, why not for the world?’

Today there are national Bible Societies in over 150 countries, not just making Bibles available, but also providing Bible study courses, leadership training, and now even taking the ‘open the book’ initiative of bible stories in our schools, into schools in other countries.

And coming back home, how many of you have been followers of Agatha Christie’s ‘Poirot’? David Suchet who has played the part of Poirot in the tv series became a Christian as a result of reading a hotel-room Bible in 1986, that was more than likely placed there by the Gideons.

He says that after his conversion he decided he wanted ‘to put my voice to the Bible – not only bits of the Bible but the whole thing.’ Many years later, he has achieved his ambition, and you can now obtain a complete audio Bible.

The prophet Isaiah knew that it was the scriptures to which we should ‘incline our ears’ (55v3), for it is through them that we come to God, they are the waters to which we come if we are to find life. And Jesus calls us to follow after him if we wish to have that life in all its fulness (Jn10v10).

So when we look around our hurting and disordered world, can we not recognise that it is only in the scriptures, and the salvation they describe through putting our faith and trust in Jesus the way, the truth and the life, that lives may indeed be transformed for all those who, in the words of today’s collect, ‘read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them’.

In our reading from John’s gospel we too are like the people to whom Jesus said, ‘You have never heard his voice or seen his form’. We may not have physically heard the voice of God, but that does not mean God has left us without his revelation, he has made his purposes clear through his words recorded and written for us as we read the holy scriptures.

We are not to become like those who in Jesus time, and sadly some still today, search the scriptures and thereby think that they have eternal life.

We as Christians know that our eternal life is secure through our faith and trust in Jesus, and strengthened through our fellowship in the gospel.

But we also are to search the scriptures because with the help of the Holy Spirit, they make known to us how we should live out our lives to God’s praise and glory, for we live in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation as Paul said to the Philippian Christians (2v15).

May we then on this Bible Sunday be encouraged to pick up our bibles with a renewed enthusiasm and hope, to search the scriptures, and so to become the pilgrim believers that God longs us to become, for we are his children.

Let us pray: The shorter collect for Bible Sunday

Merciful God, teach us to be faithful in change and uncertainty, that trusting in your word, and obeying your will, we may enter the unfailing joy of Jesus Christ our Lord.         Amen

Sermon St E Evensong 12 September 2021 Year B T15         The wicket gate
Psalm 119v73-80                        Exodus 18v13-26                        Matthew 7v1-14
Let us pray:

Are you doing too much?
Joy tells me that I am, and as I approach my 78th birthday she is probably correct. Certainly Moses father in law, Jethro-the priest of Midian, thought that Moses was doing too much in trying to judge all the people on his own. Yet Moses, at the ripe old age of 80, had only just begun his forty year ministry to lead the Hebrew people out from their bondage in Egypt, across the wilderness, and into the land promised by God to Abraham that was to become their everlasting inheritance.
So it seems it is never too late to be called into the service of God, but we are not to take on too much, or as Jethro said to Moses, “You will surely wear yourself out”.

As we serve the Lord, in all our work we need to pray like the psalmist (119v76-77), “Lord, let your faithful love be my comfort. Let your tender mercies come to me, that I may live, for your law is my delight”.

Moses had been called by God not only to lead the people out of Egypt, and into that promised land, but also to judge the people, to arbitrate between their disputes, and there were certainly many of those. No wonder Jethro advised Moses to appoint helpers to share out that burden, and it was also to encourage the people to take some degree of responsibility for themselves. That was reminiscent of what Saint Paul said much later to the Philippian believers, and is true for us also (2v12), ‘work out your own salvation with fear and trembling’, and that salvation is to be ‘worked out’ in the light of what God has revealed to us in the scriptures.

But what form should that judgement to be exercised by Moses helpers take? It was to be a ‘right judgement’, a judgement showing no partiality. A form of judgement that was revealed to Moses when God gave to him the commandments at Sinai. And in our reading from the sermon on the mount Jesus speaks to us also concerning judgement.

I do not take Jesus words, “Judge not that ye be not judged” to mean that we are never to judge, if that were to be the case then our society would soon degenerate into a form of anarchy. What the Lord does tell us is that we need to take care over how we judge, we are first to look into our own lives before we offer advice to others.
This of course is implicit in the golden rule, the royal law, described by Jesus during this discourse like this, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets”.
We are perhaps more used to this being phrased in the words we had last week from our reading from the letter of James, the Lord’s brother and leader of the Jerusalem Church. James clearly sets out as pre-eminent in his epistle ‘the royal law’, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (2v8), words we regularly use at our communion service.
This ‘royal law’ was fundamental to our Lord’s own teaching (Mk12v31), but it was not a new teaching, it had earlier been set out in the Old Testament in the book of Leviticus (19v18).
This ‘royal law’, together with our foremost duty to love God, is a complete summary of all that was given by God in the law to Moses and also to the prophets, which together with the Apostles teachings, are the foundation of our Christian faith.

Jesus then introduced some most significant words, some may say most disturbing words, but words that we all need to consider deeply. Words that show the path to our eternal inheritance with God. “Enter through the narrow gate”. Does that phrase bring anything else to your mind?

Those of you familiar with Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrims Progress’ will have made the link. When our pilgrim comes to ‘the wicket gate’ Christian asks Evangelist “Whither must I fly?” Then Evangelist directs Christian to the Wicket Gate and to the steep and narrow way beyond, just as Jesus described it would be. So what does that wicket gate represent?
It represents our Lord Jesus Christ who told us that he alone is the way, the truth and the life, and that is what our Lord was also saying in this discourse. The path that Christian had to follow up to the ‘eternal city’, and that same path that we as believers are called to follow, is hard, but it is the path that leads to life. But, as our Lord said, the sad and distressing thing is that there are few who find it.

How we need to pray that the media will once again open up to the gospel, that we shall see an awakening as in previous generations, and that our churches will once again be filled and our nation transformed for the good of all; and for the praise and glory of the one true and living God.
Let us Pray:
A prayer set for the end of our reading from psalm 119 in daily prayer:-            God our comforter, send your Holy Spirit
to reveal your hidden mercy even in our failures and troubles;
we ask this for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.            Amen