Sermon Sunday 7th March 2021 Revd Tudor V Roberts.
Exodus 20:1-17, Psalm 19, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, John 2:13-28
I wonder what do you put your trust in? Who or what wows you? Do you sometimes think I or little me could never be like him or her? In our celebrity centred society, it is easy to feel that if you are not amazingly good looking, and or creative and or intelligent and rich that you simply cannot get on in life. Now you and I are not that silly to believe such thoughts, are we? Well, if we are honest a teensy-weensy bit of us does think like that.
Thankfully, todays scriptures show us a different way to live, I wondered when looking at today’s readings what was the connection between all four scripture readings , Exodus 20, Psalm 19, John 2, and 1 Corinthians 1.I think I have it and wanted to share with you what I have discovered. If I had to sum it up on a T shirt it would be this:
4 Contentment Go 2 God
In preparing sermons over the last 3 years, I have used a tip I picked up on a FIEC training week with an evangelical Minister friend. That is, I write out each scripture reading in full, by copying/handwriting each reading in an exercise book. In South Korea, some Christian believers write out the WHOLE New Testament as a way of growing in discipleship and often learn it be heart (well, the keen ones do!) As I did that with today’s readings the power of Exodus 20:1-17 really came through to me. I have read the 10 commandments many times but never actually written them out in full. The beauty and simplicity of the ten commandments came to me afresh with great power. Then Psalm 19 reflects why God’s word is so powerful, it makes the reader radiant! Why? because it is perfect and makes wise the simple.
Now, I do not think that means that if you stick these verses on your fridge so that you see them each time you go to get cheese and milk, that is not job done! What God invites us to do is hide his word in our hearts, dwell on it, wrestle with it, and even write it and out and memorize it, and as James says put it into action, and above all ask God to show you what it meant and now means. Regular meditation of God’s law putting the word into action and letting it soak into us, like raspberry juice soaking through a summer pudding, is a marvellous antidote to what the world may throw at us.
The precepts of the Lord are right says the Psalmist in Psalm 19 giving joy to the heart the commands of the Lord are radiant giving light to the eyes as we read the 10 commandments it is the logic and beauty that shine through.
Now, St Paul loved the word of God, He loved the Law, He probably knew Leviticus and Exodus and Deuteronomy very well, especially as he was well trained in the law. But one day he was converted to the cause of Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus Syria, and he was never the same again; now he was a Jesus follower. What a challenge he then had to take the Gospel out of Jerusalem, out of Antioch, into the Greek speaking world of Asia Minor. He had to take the gospel out of a Hebrew culture into a Greek Culture. Greek philosophy was amazing; Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Epicurus, etc Greek writings were amazing then and now, much of our modern culture flows from this wisdom. Much that we have in the Christian faith stems from Jewish Old Testament religious culture and history. Paul does not criticise Jewish Piety or Greek philosophy per se, but what he focuses in on is this; where the Jews looked for Signs, where the Greeks magnified Greek wisdom above the marvellous Gospel of the Cross of Jesus Christ, there was bound to be a clash. The Bible itself is replete with wisdom literature; Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Proverbs are all replete with Wisdom. But Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 wants the new believers to not emphasize wisdom or a seeking of signs over the simplicity of the Gospel’s he writes (1 Cor 1:18-22)
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”[a]
20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
To preach before a Jewish audience and/or a Greek audience that the Messiah’s salvation winning death on a cruel Roman cross was an offence to their intellectual and cultural sensibilities. Jews lifted up signs and miracles, and Greeks emphasized “Knowing wisdom”. Now it is important to emphasize that Paul is not saying do not use your mind; in Deuteronomy God through Moses tells the people they are to love the Lord their God with all their heart, body, and Mind. When I was in South America as a Missionary some Pentecostals (a minority to be sure) taught that in preaching you did not need to study Theology, just trust in the Holy Spirit, of course they were right in a sense! Jesus never said Go forth and be like Anglican Vicars, have a study full of Books.!, But Paul is not advocating anti-intellectualism. What he is saying is that to all women and men and children, The Cross is an offense to our sensibilities, and in Corinth many of the first believers did not come from grand backgrounds and creeping into the Church were those who said “I have had this mystical experience” follow me! What St Paul rightly does is point to the power of the Gospel over any other world view, in fact says Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:25 the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.
I am grateful to the very brainy men and women I trained with at All Nations College who were going out globally with Wycliffe Bible Translators (The summer Institute of Linguistics) to translate the Bible into one of the World’s 3,700 languages. Historically we would not have our Bibles in English if it were not for the brilliance of Wycliffe and Tyndale and other translators that followed them. We need bright Bible translators and theologians like John Stott and NT wright, and Tim Keller. But a child of three or four can know more of the Glory of God in one small moment of divine inspiration then all of those wonderful people because Divine knowledge of God comes from God, from the Holy Spirit. What Paul IS saying is that every person at some point has to look at the cross and see that there the Son of God took for you and me all of the world’s sin on himself in utter humiliation and weakness and obedience to his Father ( see Romans chapters 3 to 6).The danger in all of our churches is that we become like the world we elevate “knowledge” above obedience and love of God.
Jesus in John 2 says
18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
23 Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name.[b] 24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people
There in the Temple of Jerusalem in John 2 Jesus clears away the clutter of money-based religion, and then John records that Jesus had by his actions and words drawn to himself people who believed in his name. Like the simplicity of God’s law in exodus 20, like the beauty of God’s word In Psalm 19, Jesus drew people to himself. And then John says Jesus knows what is in a man. Jesus knows what is in you and me. He knows that you and I can be drawn to him by the beauty of creation mentioned in Psalm 19, he knows that all of us need the boundaries mentioned in Exodus 20, but he also knows the history of Israel and the secrets and wonders of Greek culture, he knows that you and I ultimately need his death on the cross to bring each one of us back to God. And St Paul wanted men and women to know that even if we think we are not bright or intelligent by the world’s standards, or even if we think are mini-Einstein’s we are all equal in this; the death of Jesus on the Cross is the great leveller; the winner of a Bible Mastermind and the person who gets zero out of hundred on a Bible quiz are equal in this; Jesus and his sacrificial death on the cross is for all humankind. If we believe what he did there to take our sins and forgive us, that is the key to knowing all of God’s Love.
God bless you all as we go through Lent to the Cross and to Easter.
Tudor Vaughan Roberts 7.3.21
Almighty God,
whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain,
and entered not into glory before he was crucified:
mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross,
may find it none other than the way of life and peace.
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.