6:30pm Service

Sunday 24th July 2016

St Mary's Church, Bury St Edmunds

Preacher: Duncan MacInnes

Galatians 4: 21-31

Galatians 4: 21-31 'Grace to the Barren'

In our series on Sunday evenings here at St Mary's, over the past few weeks we have been looking at Paul's letter to the churches in Galatia – Galatians. Galatia was a region in what is now central Turkey, and Paul's letter was to the churches in that region.

The context on the ground in those churches was a difficult one, for those churches were being challenged, and many believers led astray by false teaching, in this instance by the Judiasers – people who taught that in order to be a true Christian believer you had to follow the Jewish law – in effect to become Jewish. Paul writes this letter directly confronting and challenging this false message, and these false teachers – and in many parts of his letter he doesn't mince his words! And in its place Paul upholds, defends and affirms the wonderous, liberating, free gospel of grace alone; through faith alone; through Jesus alone.

In tonight's passage, Paul attacks these false teachers, the Judiasers, from a different angle to one before. He gives an Old Testament history lesson and applies it to his (and our own) time.

So let's have a look at the passage together, Galatians chapter 4 verses 21 to 31 on page 1171 in our Bibles.

At first glance it is a rather perplexing passage, with Old Testament history used in Paul's argument. And as such, it is a passage in my preparation, that I have been grateful for some really good commentaries!

We are witnessing an interesting period in history in the world, and certainly the western world at the moment. Economic turbulence has created political turbulence, in western Europe and North America. At the moment it seems political populism is in the ascendency – from Donald Trump in the United States, Marine le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in Holland, to UKIP and the 'Brexiteers' in Britain. Good on simple easy to remember slogans, and obvious 'common sense' solutions, but often (and usually most of the time) lacking in detail of how the policies they promote will be implemented, and the concessions, compromises and alliances needed for them to happen. Liking, following and voting for a policy is one thing, but when the rubber hits the road [PAUSE] Question mark?!

The influence and effect of the Judiasers in Galatia were a bit like the new populist poltics and politicians on the block today. They presented a popular and fresh (so it would seem to some of the Galatian Christians) take on following God. 'It's simple – to be truly Christian all you need to do is get circumcised and follow Jewish law'. It's something people can do – something that is tangeble, it's not spiritual 'head in cloud', just get circumcised, follow Jewish law, and hey presto! It must have been seductive, as Paul was writing this letter addressing the issue!

But like many populist politicians, the Judiasers lacked substance and reality, and overlooked history. Paul – who himself was one of the greatest Jewish scholars of his day - was about to educate the Judiasers, and give them a history lesson.

To Jews and the Judiasers Moses was the key figure in the Old Testament they looked up to, but it's Abraham who Paul points to in verses 22 and 23:

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise.

Paul is talking here of Abraham's sons Ishmael born of the Egyptian slave girl Hagar (in Genesis 16), and Isaac born of Sarah, Abraham's wife (in Genesis 21). As the Judiasers chief charge was circumcision and Jewish law, it's a bit strange – at first glance – that Paul here talks about Abraham and his sons instead.

Leon Morris in his commentary says:

“[Using the argument from Abraham] would have been a most unexpected use of the law. The Judiasers would have made much of the law's demand for circumcision and the observance of holy days and feasts, and it is highly unlikely that they would have paid a great attention to Abraham's offspring...The mother determined the status of the children (not the father), so the son of the slave girl was necessaily a slave.”

Abraham's son born of Sarah – the 'free woman' – was a gift from God, as Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90 years old! It was a gift from God, and a promise that God would build his people through the line of Isaac.

Verse 24:

These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves. This is Hagar.

This is quite an incendiary and very provocative thing to write amongst the Jewish and Judiasers. Paul is saying here that Jewish law first instituted at Mount Sinai when God met Moses on the mountain, is irrelevant, it's useless. In fact it's slavery. This is because the new covenant – an everlasting and unbrakable one – secured by the cross and resurrection of Jesus, has swept away the need for rules based Judaic covenant. It was a remarkable thing to say – here was Paul, one of the greatest Jewish scholars, one of the greatest minds, saying that Jewish law was in fact slavery!

What's more, in verse 25, Paul ladels on, and cranks up the rhetoric – the covenant at Mount Sinai is like Arabia, which to Paul's Jewish and Judiaser hearers stood as the land of Ishmail's decendents – the Arabs - very much foreign, gentile and looked down upon by Jews. But, whats more is that Paul, also says Sinai stands for Jerusalem 'because she is in slavery with her children'. Arabia and Jerusalem, one gentile and the other Jewish, but both under slavery to sin, both unclean because they have yet to be washed anew by Jesus.

But, verse 26, all who have accepted Jesus, and his offer to be washed anew, are now born into the Jerusalem that is above – the heavenly Jerusalem.

The Jews saw Jerusalem – as Jews still do today – as the place where the presence of God is closest to them. Muslims have to visit Mecca for the Hajj once in their lifetime, Hindus and Buddhists have their shrines and temples where the presence of god is to be experienced. Jesus says come to me, and I will give you rest. Come to me, and I will give you rest.

As Christians the true Jerusalem, the true kingdom rests in our hearts with the presence of the Holy Spirit. We do not have to go to a particular place to find God, and do rituals for him. God sought, found and seeks the lost through the person and work of Jesus, and only him.

Then Paul, in verse 27, quotes from Isaiah 54:

“Be glad, O barren woman, who bears no children; break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labour pains; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband.”

This is a well known passage from Isaiah, but why does Paul include it here?

There are two main reasons commentators give.

Firstly, Sarah, Abraham's wife was barren, but broke into laughter and joy at the birth of Isaac (which means 'he laughs') at the age of 90. Christians have reason to be joyous too, as we are barren – nothing do we bring to God but our dirty and sinful rags, but through Jesus we are made new and are reborn in the Spirit. We should rejoice in Jesus.

Secondly, the Isaiah passage alludes to the condition of Jerusalem just after the exile of its population to Babylon – a city deserted, 'like a barren woman'. But when the Jews returned to Jerusalem they were in greater numbers than before the exile, and Paul may well have been alluding to the even greater gathering of people – people coming to faith and following Jesus – as he was writing the letter in his own time. Church historians say that the first century was one of rapid growth in the church, at a period of time when lines of communications in the Roman world were more advanced, enabling the gospel message to spread far and wide. [PAUSE]

And all this is down to a promise, verse 28. The belevers in Galatia and belivers today, were and are children of promise, like Isaac, who was God's promise to Sarah and Abraham, belivers have salvation and the promise and guarantee of God's Spirit to be there with us. Paul here is emphasising again the continuation inside the new covenant of Old Testament history fulfilled by the new – belivers and followers of Jesus have the same promises and priveledges as Isaac, but even more so.

We as belivers are children of the promise, and are living that promise now, as we run our Christian race, but verse 29, we will face hurdles and stumbling blocks in our race. And these hurdles, opposition, like the Judiasers within the Galatian church, can come from within rather than from outside the church. James Montgomery Boice states that:

“The remarkable thing about the perescution of Christians is that this will not always be by the world but also and indeed more often by their half-brothers – the unbelieving but religious people in the nominal church”.

An example of this that springs to mind, is opposition to a new church plant in a local area from an established church in the same area that is not open to the gospel, and is scornful of the new initiative.

Two of the great Christian figures of the nineteenth century, JC Ryle, and Charles Spurgeon encountered great opposition from parts of the church and church establishment – what Boice calls 'unbelieving but religious people' – in their day. But they established ministries with a lasting legacy, pointed and helped thousands to know and love Jesus, and produced writings that build up and edify people today, and will in the future too. Whereas their opponents are largely forgotten.

Another great Christian figure, was the great Cambridge minister and preacher Charles Simeon of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, who also faced challenge and opposition from within the church. When he became vicar of Holy Trinity he started to face mounting opposition from the existing congregation of the church for preaching the gospel, instead of preaching what went before, very little really – just stories and reflections. Simeon carried on preacing the gospel faithfully and it attracted many new people to the church – more and more were coming to hear the gospel message through Simeon's preaching – so some of the people who were opposed to this locked their pews to the newcomers (in the days when the 'great and good' had their own lockable pews in many Anglican churches – pretty shameful really), so Simeon encouraged the newcomers to sit in the aisles of Holy Trinity! And this was not to be the first and only time he faced opposition.

In 1831 towards the end of his ministry at Holy Trinity, Charles Simeon was asked how he coped and persevered through all the many challenges he faced in his fruitful ministry there, Simeon replied:

“My dear brother, we must not mind a little suffering for Christ's sake. When I am getting through a hedge, if my head and shoulders are safely through, I can bear the pricking of my legs. Let us rejoice in the rememberance that our holy head has surmounted all his suffering and triumphed over death. Let us follow him patiently; we shall soon be partakers in his victory.”

It was like it then, and is thus today, we face opposition, but through prayer, and God's help, God – through Jesus, the one who has gone before us – will help us through.

Verse 30:

But what does the Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son.”

This is the conclusion to Paul's illustration of Hagar and Sarah's sons to make a point. Timothy George in his commentary says:

“[In writing] 'get rid!' of the slave woman and her son', Paul was calling on his erstwhile disciples to free themselves from the grip of the Judiasers and to expel them from their midst...This grim imperitive, 'get rid!' raises the issue of the limits of tolerable diversity within the Christian community. It is clear from Paul's Corinthian correspondence that he was quite willing to tolerate considerable divergences of opinion and even irregularities in order to preserve unfractured the unity of the church. But the false teachers of Galatia had transgressed those bounds. What they were advocating was a denial of the gospel itself. When this kind of heresy invades the church, there can be no question of compromise or concessions for the sake of superficial harmony.”

We must get rid of slavery to empty religion and those, like the Judiasers, who espouse it, and clothe ourselves in the assurance of Jesus' salvation, once and for all, that cancels out slavery to sin, and nullifies slavery to religion.

As Christians, verse 31, we are indeed children of the free woman – children of God who gives us true freedom from the power, the penalty and slavery of sin, and freedom from empty religion that enslaves so many today, just as it did in Paul's day.

So in summing up, how can we take tonight's passage and apply it to our lives today?

• We should question and test simple solutions. The Judiasers were offering a simple formula to add on, to add extra spice (but was actually poisonous) – Christians should become Jews to really be Christian. Paul calls this out – it is wrong, it is dangerous, it is slavery. We need to question and test what our leaders are saying by the ultimate standard of scripture. Does it sound a bit odd? We need to test and question it.
• We need to examine ourselves. Are we following people or agendas that are unhelpful in our walk with Jesus, and could knock us off course? We need to ask God for his help in highlighting areas where we still need to change, and for his help so we can make those changes.
• We must expect challenge and suffering. Jesus says 'take up your cross and follow me'. The Christian race is a race of endurance, it will have its hurdles to surmount, and those of us who are in ministry – of whatever shape or form – will face opposition and obstacles. But we have a great God who is there to give us the strength to stay the course.
• We should rejoice. God in his mercy and love sent Jesus to deal with all our sins – past present and future, and through trusting and following him, we are truly free, and heirs of the coming kingdom – now that's something to rejoice about!

11:00am Service

Sunday 31st July 2016

St Mary's Church, Bury St Edmunds

Preacher: Craig Young

Luke 12: 13-21

Today we will be looking at the reading from Luke which tells of the “Rich Fool”. It begins with Jesus being asked by someone to tell their brother to share their inheritance and Jesus responds in such a way that he is almost saying this is none of his business and please go and sort it out yourself. Jesus is here on earth for a short time and in that time he is to teach us how to live and not act as judge especially if we have the power to sort it out for ourselves.

I hope that by us looking at this passage today we can see how this parable shows us how to live rather than just appreciate how the foolish man in the parable got it wrong.

We all know that with God all things are possible and that we should ask for His help in all that we do. However we need to be aware that as Christians we are in a unique partnership with God and that by seeking his help we should not be abdicating our responsibility to this relationship but seeking to shoulder that part of the partnership which we can. We need to think for ourselves, how we are to live up to God’s standards and values but do this by being informed by the example of Jesus and the Gospel message which he left us as the way to lead a Godly life. We need to trust in God but we also need to realise how much we are called to do as we discern what our part of the partnership will entail. In doing this we should be able to strike the correct balance in our partnership where we do the things which God knows we can do and ask Him for guidance to enable us to do it and then to ask that He take care of those parts which we cannot handle.

Jesus says watch out. Be on your guard against all kinds of greed because life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.

Looking at our rich Fool we can see that he owed everything to the Grace of God. Farming in those days and even today still depends on the grace of God as it relies so much on the elements of weather and soil which man cannot totally control. Of course with technology we can create an alternative environment and influence conditions to a certain extent with irrigation or by growing in shelters such as greenhouses but if the sun does not shine then all is lost. This man’s wealth was an activity that depended on God as it was not like buying and selling so his story is not really about accumulated wealth but how we relate to God as we go about accumulating wealth if that is where we find ourselves. It’s a parable about recognising that to live a good life we need to have a good relationship, a good partnership with God. Our man by contrast decided to store up great wealth but made the mistake of putting his trust in that alone. This is not an uncommon fault as history tells of business men, politicians and dictators who have done just that but we can also see that in the end their lives really amounted to nothing as their greed has brought them disgrace or disaster. By contrast there are very wealthy people who give the bulk of it away in acts of philanthropy and we can think of Andrew Carnegie or Bill Gates and by doing this demonstrate that there is nothing to be gained by storing up great wealth because they have recognised that more good can come from sharing their resources than locking them up.

Now I cannot comment on their partnership with God but I can look at my own partnership with God and try and see the point which Jesus was trying to get over with this parable. I live by the grace of God. I am not a fatalist but I do know that one day I will die but also that in life I have at least got this far. I am what I am and have been working in partnership with God. I often wonder what would have happened if I had given over more of my life to God, given Him a more prominent role in informing what I could have been but then I’m stuck with being me. How much better could I have been or more importantly how much better can I become if I try to do more for God’s work and take on more in my role as partner. Am I becoming lazy by expecting God to step in and do it all? Well Jesus says in verse 21 right at the end of our reading that we need to be rich towards God.

How do we become rich towards God? I will argue that as we develop our relationship with Him we need to discern something of His will that becomes part of and adopted as ours. There needs to be something in us which will truly reflect an aspect or a combination of aspects of Gods will for humanity and when that happens we can clearly see where we are to go. Some of us just get an inkling and need to work hard at putting God’s will into practice whilst others get it in spade loads and go off and do great works. What Jesus asks us to do is to trust in God and to develop a good working partnership with him by first of all following his example. This takes us right back to the beginning when before the parable Jesus is asked by someone that he tell his brother to share their inheritance. Jesus is not the judge in this family dispute and the man who is complaining should really sort this out for himself. Jesus does not tell him what to do but suggests that the pursuit of wealth may not bring true justice to this situation. If his brother does not share then he is at fault and our man needs to realise that true life is to be found in developing his partnership with God. It is more important to guard against greed of all kinds and be rich towards God because when all’s said and done it will be just you and God in the end and wealth will not count for anything but if you had any it’s what you did with it which will determine your character and how your relationship blossomed. In a way this sort of thing makes me shudder because I can always think of those times when I could have been rich towards God but failed to carry it through. God is a very good partner because he is always in helpful mode. He encourages us through the Holy Spirit to develop our gifts and is most patient with us as we struggle to become more than we are as we try to follow His will for the world. God himself helps us to become rich towards God if we let him.

The one thing which we should never forget is that God loves each and every one of us but he does want us to change in a way which will see us reflect His values much more closely. God wants to preserve our free will so it needs to be we ourselves who make the changes and this is how we get our partnership with God to work. When we meet challenging situations in our lives or read in the scriptures values that we must put into action we can become demoralised or demotivated. We might feel inadequate or guilty because we doubt or realise that we really need to raise our game and do better. Remember that due to His love for you God sent Jesus to find the in’s and out’s of us and that due to that humanity God does really understand our problems no matter how unique we think that these might be to ourselves. The forgiveness and Grace brought to us by the life and resurrection of Jesus present us with a powerful set of faith principles which will offer continual encouragement for us no matter the situation in which we find ourselves. This enables us to keep trying to effect the changes that we know we need to make and it’s never too late to do this.

When we decide to follow Christ we enter into a partnership with him and adopt his values.

Through the work of the holy spirit who Jesus has sent us we have a guiding influence who on one hand helps us to see where we need to change and on the other makes God aware of our struggle. No matter what the outcome as long as we want to keep trying to develop our partnership with Him God will not give up on us. In this partnership relationship we need to be aware that God does more for us than we do for Him. Whist we may quite correctly feel that we can never do enough for God we actually do well because of our desire to be rich towards Him. Not only will we know peace and contentment in this life but as followers of Jesus we have him as our brother and he has promised that as such we will be co-heirs with him in all that God the Father will give us in inheritance of the Kingdom. God has adopted us as his children and as such would like us to do our bit to sort out the problems of the world by trusting in Him. Trusting Him to be in charge of the big things in the big picture but hoping that we will do all we can to support him in those little things which we can influence. We need to look to our relationship with him and to deepen it by honing those skills and gifts which he has given us. We need to guard against greed and be rich toward God. How we do this is our mission in the world.

6:30pm Service
Sunday 7th August 2016
St Mary's Church, Bury St Edmunds
Preacher: Dorothy Haile

Esther, chapter 1:

Tonight we are starting a new series at our evening services, looking together at the book of Esther. We don’t know who wrote this book, but the internal evidence suggests that it was written by a Jew who knew Persian customs well, and who also knew how the Feast of Purim started. This suggests that the writer was almost certainly someone who lived in a Persian city and wrote soon after the events themselves. It is interesting to note that God’s name, and his role in saving his people, are not specifically mentioned in the book, perhaps because it could have been politically dangerous in the local situation. Apparently though there are acrostics of YHWH in the Hebrew, and it is very clear that God’s providence and sovereignty were behind the situation. As we learn more of the story in the next few weeks we shall see that God used what we might think of as a very unlikely means to save his people from serious danger and even genocide.

In Biblical history the story takes place among the Jews who are living in the Persian Empire. Some had returned to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel a few years before when Cyrus began his reign in the Empire, and it seems that Esther’s story took place before the times of Ezra and Nehemiah. Many Jews were still living in exile, and some of them were in Susa, the winter capital, where this story takes place.

This is the 5^th century BC. In secular history the events are about Xerxes, who has recently come to the throne of the enormous Persian Empire at the age of 36. If like me you grew up with the KJV, you will remember that Esther’s king was called Ahasuerus, which is the Aramaic version of his Persian name; Xerxes is the Greek version, used in the NIV. His father Darius the Great had already acquired a huge empire and had wanted to expand it by defeating the Greeks, who - especially Athens and Sparta - were at their peak at this time. But in 490BC the Persians under King Darius had been defeated at Marathon. Now Xerxes wants to avenge that defeat and try again. The Vashti incident happens while Xerxes is preparing for his campaign, almost certainly in 483BC, and then he goes to war – he defeats the Spartans at Thermopolyae in 480 (but the Spartans are heroic!), and in the same year the Persians are defeated in a naval battle at Salamis. The next year the Greeks defeat the Persians at a much less famous battle called Plataea and the series of wars ends with Persian defeat. Chapter 2, where Esther enters the story, takes place after the war.

This first chapter is about power. Who has it, how does it show, what does it do?

Xerxes has power. He is the ruler over 127 provinces from Egypt to India. He needs his whole empire on side for his attack on the Greeks so he is giving all these nobles, officials and military leaders a great time with six months of entertainment, presumably a sort of rolling banquet. At the same time he is assessing their loyalty and their resources. This is an example of what is often called ‘conspicuous consumption’, and it was very conspicuous. V4 says he ‘displayed the vast wealth of his kingdom and the splendour and glory of his majesty’. At the end of his elaborate entertainments for the out of town people he gives a banquet for his own staff and other locals in Susa. It isn’t a small event either, but a full week of an extravagant banquet in a luxurious environment. If it was anything like what we know about our own country’s history there would normally have been a huge gap between the top and the bottom in society, with most of the people living in squalor and the top few living in luxury. So to give the people at the bottom a taste of luxury living was probably a PR success.

We don’t know all that much about Xerxes’ character, partly because most of the records come from the Greeks, who were his enemies. Herodotus says he was cruel and despotic even towards his own household, and had a violent temper. He was fairly young, had lots of women available in his harem, and was politically ambitious. We do know that in the end he was assassinated by the commander of his own bodyguard, so probably his hold on power was always a bit precarious as it tends to be in large states where the ruler has to be successful in order to retain his position. In that kind of situation threats to his power need to be dealt with decisively, so the challenge from Vashti has to get a strong response.

At the end of the week of feasting, when Xerxes was at least somewhat drunk, he decided to liven up the proceedings by calling for his Queen Vashti to come and entertain them by displaying her remarkable beauty. I had always assumed that she refused because she did not want to have to show herself off in front of a big crowd of drunken men, and that may indeed be the simple reason. However, our reference book for this series suggests several other possibilities: perhaps she was exhausted after entertaining the women at their own banquet; perhaps she was pregnant, or recovering from recently having given birth to the heir to the throne, who was born in that year; perhaps she was aware that to show herself off in front of all these local guests, who would have known her and would see her again in future, would be especially shameful; perhaps she was a bit drunk herself because of her own banquet. Whatever the reason, she refused to come.

Refusing the command of a tyrant like Xerxes was always going to be a red rag to a bull. He wasn’t used to being defied, least of all by a woman – this was certainly a male-dominated culture. Xerxes was very angry and so he consulted his legal advisors and astrologers to make sure he got the right solution. I suppose they could have tried to calm him down and lower the temperature, but perhaps they didn’t dare; others suggest that they wanted to take advantage of this unexpected opportunity to gain more power at home. Whatever the reason, they advised the king to make a new law, to banish Vashti completely from the king’s presence and to remove her from being queen, so that women everywhere would realise that defying your husband has serious consequences. Xerxes agreed, and a new law was passed, to apply everywhere in his empire, that ‘every man should be ruler over his own household’.

How can we apply lessons from this incident to ourselves?

I asked who has power, how does it show, what does it do. If we slightly redefine power to mean getting your own way and influencing or controlling other people, then it looks more familiar to us. Some of us may think we haven’t got any power, but we all have influence on situations and people. Here are a few questions for me and each of us:

• Xerxes got his own way with his subjects by showing off his possessions and impressing everyone; then by ordering his queen to do something inappropriate, and then by sacking her. What do I do to get my own way?
• Xerxes’ advisers, whose careers depended on his favour, decided to please him even if it meant doing something unjust. How often do I carefully respond so that I don’t displease someone who has influence in my life?
• Xerxes’ advisors recommended an option that would give them advantages at home. How often do I manipulate a situation to my own advantage?

I’d like to suggest that for me and also for you, reflection on those questions can be quite salutary.

What other applications can we see?

God’s sovereignty, which is behind the scenes in this whole book. Remember how when non-believing king Cyrus came to power he allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem? As the book of Esther starts God is still at work and we shall clearly see it in coming weeks. What about us? The world situation looks increasingly dangerous and unpredictable. Our own political scene has gone through major changes in a very short time. Do we believe that God is on the throne and that he will, as ever, bring good from evil, even using world powers who do not acknowledge him at all. We do have to remember that God’s definitions of both good and evil may be different from ours.

Finally, Paul tells us to pray for leaders and authorities. In 1 Timothy 2: 1-6 it is very clear. How often do I pray for President Putin or President Assad? Rarely I’m afraid. Much more often for the US and UK political scenes, and we all need to do that.

So as we start this series, let’s remember Lord Acton’s comment about human power: ‘power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. Worth remembering as we pray for leaders. Let’s also remember that ultimate power belongs to God, who as Paul says in Acts 17, ‘is the Lord of heaven and earth’. He is also completely just and righteous, which makes it possible for us to trust that he knows what is right and in the end he will bring about justice, and glory to himself.