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In this podcast, we share our sermons and teaching from our Sunday Celebrations + some other additional teaching content.
00:06
Let's just pray. Holy Spirit, we ask that you would enable us to see what we need to see, to hear what we need to hear, and then to do what we need to do. In Jesus' name, amen. I um hope you're finding real benefit from the series that we're doing on mission. I'm learning good things.
00:30
Right from the start, think Harry introduced us or introduced me to the concept of main character energy, which I'd never heard of. But when he talked about it, I recognized it because when I was a boy, I used to go to the cinema. And when I came out of the cinema, I would try to talk like John Wayne, or I would do the hip and shoulder walk of Robert Mitchum.
00:57
I didn't know I was doing main character energy, but there you go. But the one person I really want to walk and talk like, of course, is Jesus. And I've been reading about Jesus. Is that good? I hope you read about Jesus. We don't find much about the first 30 years of Jesus' life, but what we do see is instructive. There was an order.
01:26
Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem on a planned visit expecting the baby, but they had to go to comply with the Roman census. And after Jesus was born, they went as planned to Jerusalem to consecrate him to the Lord.
01:43
and then as planned, they returned to their home in Nazareth. What they couldn't have planned for was the visits from the shepherds who'd encountered angels, visits from wise men who'd been led by a star. I don't think it fitted into their plan when they were met by Simeon and then Anna in the temple in Jerusalem who brought blessing and prophetic word to them. These were apparently spontaneous events.
02:13
Or maybe we should say that they happened in accordance with God's overall plan, of which they could only see a small part.
02:24
I'm aware that today is recognized by many as Pentecost Sunday, remembering the day when the Holy Spirit came suddenly and powerfully upon a group of believers to inaugurate a whole new era in the purposes of God. I have planned what I believe God wants me to say this morning, but if God has other plans of which I am as yet unaware,
02:52
and he decides to break in and break out, that's fine by me. I only see my bit of the picture and I run with that. God sees the whole picture and I submit to His sovereignty. Okay? After the birth of Jesus and the incidents around that, the only other incident in the first 30 years of his life was the visit to the temple when Jesus was 12.
03:21
You probably recall the story. It says, his parents went to Jerusalem as they did every year. According to custom, it was the regular routine of their lives. But on this particular occasion, Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem and Mary and Joseph didn't know where he was. And the question I ask is, did he plan in advance? I'm going to stay. I want to find out about all this. uh
03:51
Mosaic law and the rituals and so on. Was it just boyhood curiosity? We don't know. Maybe he intended to get a foretaste of the kind of confrontation he was going to have in later years when he began his ministry. And these were the guys he would have most problem with, the religious leaders. It's clear that there was a rhythm and a routine to the life of Jesus with Joseph and Mary.
04:21
And when he began his ministry, he didn't abandon that. He went to the synagogue regularly following custom. But now, of course, he had an ear and an eye open to the possibility of what God might say. I wonder if he knew that day when he went into the synagogue and they handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
04:46
Did he know that he was going to be reading these words? The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind. And then he handed the scroll back and he said, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. I wonder if he knew in advance that that was going to happen. We don't know.
05:14
But what you find through the Gospels, either the writer or Jesus Himself will often pinpoint that what is being said or being done is to fulfill the Scriptures. Whether there's a plan in operation, I'm not sure. What I'm sure of is that Jesus was always prepared in Himself. It's not all random. Jesus had absorbed
05:40
the books of the law, the prophecies, he knew what we call the Old Testament thoroughly. He was well versed in what God had already said and what had been written down. And that gave him a groundwork for his ministry.
05:59
I suspect that this is probably true of you, it's certainly true of me, but there have been times in my life when I've come up with what I thought was a brilliant idea. It must be of God, and I go for it and pursue it with all my heart, and it turns out to be rubbish. Yes? Yes? Come on, be honest. Thank you. It's not just me. God's kingdom does not advance on the basis of our good ideas.
06:30
I think of an example, Sarah, Abram's wife, had what she and her husband thought was a good idea. God had told them they would have a son. Sarah knew she was well past normal childbearing age, so she thought up this idea. Said it to Abraham, he went along with it, you can get my maid Hagar pregnant and we'll have a son. And Abraham went along with it. Ishmael was born.
06:59
And that has caused a whole string of problems lasting for generations ever since. Sarah's solution was perfectly acceptable according to the custom of the society at the time. But the big mistake was to go the way of the culture rather than the way of the covenant. God had spoken. God was going to fulfill the promise His way. They should not have taken over and said, well, we're going to do it our way.
07:31
Isaiah 55, 8 and 9. I hope Eli is awake at the back there. Good man.
07:41
words of God through the prophet, my thoughts are completely different from yours says the Lord. My ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. We know it's true don't we but it's so easy to forget when we come up with our bright ideas.
08:09
Proverbs 16 verse 9 says, we can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.
08:19
Has anybody been watching Race Across the World in the last few weeks? Yes? I find it very interesting. For those who don't know, it's pairs of people who are given stage by stage a journey to go on. They don't have a mobile phone, they have a limited budget, and they can't fly. So they have to work out. Well, this is my starting point. That's my...
08:47
intermediate destination, how do I get there? And they make their plans, but almost inevitably, because the um rail system in Uzbekistan isn't quite what they expected, they have to change their plans. Flexibility is the name of the game. And you know, as Christians, flexibility is very important, because situations change from day to day.
09:17
And we need the Holy Spirit's guidance to find God's way, which is always the best way. God's sovereignty is something we should never forget, never overlook. However wonderful I think my inspiration may be, I've got to take it in the context of God's sovereignty. The psalmist makes it very clear, Psalm 33, verse 8.
09:45
Let everyone in the world fear the Lord and let everyone stand in awe of Him. For when He spoke, the world began. The world should take note of what God has said. It appeared at His command, the Lord shatters the plans of the nations and thwarts all their schemes. I would like Donald Trump and
10:15
Vladimir Putin to know that word. The Lord shatters the plans of the nations and thwarts all their schemes, but the Lord's plans stand firm forever. His intentions can never be shaken. Isn't that reassuring? That the God that we serve has plans that will permanently stand and will never be shaken. And whatever the nations and the leaders of nations design,
10:45
which is different from that, they will come to nothing in the end. It may be a painful process, but that will happen. In the New Testament, we find Paul writing about God's secret plan, Ephesians 1 verse 9. God's secret plan has now been revealed to us. It's a plan centered on Christ, designed long ago according to his good pleasure. And this is his plan at the right time.
11:13
He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ, everything in heaven and on earth. That's reassuring as well, isn't it? God's plan has been revealed. It focuses on Jesus. If there's anybody here who hasn't got Jesus front and center in your life, would you please come and talk to me after this meeting? It is very important that you do that.
11:42
if you haven't already done it. So the trick is not necessarily to think up our own good ideas, but to tap into God's plans. And they require us, as His body now on the earth, to do whatever He calls us to do, to see the plan fulfilled, and to enable people to have an encounter with Jesus. And so the Scriptures encourage us to sow seed. Harry reminded us at the beginning of this series.
12:12
The seed will, some of it, go on unproductive ground, stony ground. It will produce no harvest whatsoever, but we still sow the seed wherever we go.
12:26
We have a job to do, going into all the world, discipling the nations, sowing seed. And as we go about the routines of our lives, work, shopping, family life, whatever it is, we have our spiritual antennae tuned in to catch those Holy Spirit whispers and nudges so that we can respond spontaneously to people we meet.
12:54
We can prepare ourselves so that we are ready for whatever the spontaneous may be.
13:04
For quite a while, over a period of months, I used to carry in my pocket a copy of a little booklet called Why Jesus. It's by Nicky Gumbel. part of the Alpha material. I wanted something with me so that if I came across somebody who showed an interest or was asking questions about the Christian faith, I could give them a copy.
13:31
And my copy became rather tired and tatty looking. So I decided I would order some more. And I felt God say, just order a few, order quite a number. And what I did was to give members of my Connect group a copy each of this booklet, Why Jesus? And one of the people in the Connect group was Mary Campbell.
13:57
And within a couple of weeks, she told us that she'd given hers away. She'd had a workman in the house, conversation had developed spontaneously, and there she had the thing ready. So she said, take this, have a read of it.
14:16
And Mary didn't just do that, she then went and ordered some more copies for herself. So thought it was rather good. So she set us a great example. Thank you, Mary.
14:28
I've actually brought four copies this morning. If there are four people here who genuinely would like to take a copy, to have it with you, not so that you can, well, do read it obviously, but so that you can give it away, that's the purpose. Please come and see me afterwards and I will gladly give you one.
14:54
I have to be honest and say that I used to go out without real expectation of having a good encounter, a God encounter. I was very casual about it. It was the attitude of, well, I'm going out. If God plonks somebody in front of me and there is a conversation, then I've got something. But it wasn't what we call intentional. That's the big word these days, isn't it? Intentionality. Yes.
15:24
So I've changed my attitude. I now go out expecting. I could well, I probably will, meet somebody when I'm walking in the park and we can have a conversation. I miss opportunities. Anybody here miss opportunities for that kind of conversation? Of course we all do. Don't beat yourself up because it's common. um
15:51
I wouldn't call this quite a missed opportunity, but there a young fellow the other day, I was walking along the road and he was jumping out of his car. He was obviously a builder, there was, you know, dust and stuff everywhere. And he said to me, hello, how are you? And I thought, that's very kind of you, thank you for asking, I'm very well. And how are you? He said, well, he told me he had a particular problem, he said, I'm just off to the doctors.
16:20
And he said, I can't stop. That was my excuse. I can't stop. I've got an appointment and I'm short of time. But as he ran off towards the doctors, he shouted out, wish me luck. And if I'd had more time, I could have said to him, luck doesn't come into it. But I can pray for you because there is a God who healed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it was sort of half a missed opportunity.
16:48
But I don't think it was my fault. That's my excuse anyway.
16:53
I do wonder sometimes as I read the life of Jesus how much he actually pre-planned his movements during the three years of his ministry. Did he have in his head a map, uh Galilee, Samaria, Judea, the Decapolis? I must get here, there, here, there, here, there, here, there. Or was it much more spontaneous than that? Did he know in advance the people he was going to meet on any given day? I don't think he did.
17:23
I really don't, I may be wrong. Tom Price who was with us the other week said he didn't believe Jesus started the conversation with a plan in mind. He just listened. He asked good questions and he listened to the other person's questions and detected the question behind the question to get at what the problem really was with the person.
17:49
And we've got to remember that when we read the Gospels, they're not intended to be an hour-by-hour account of every detail of every day of Jesus' life. It's very much edited highlights, as we would say these days. And bear in mind also the writers are looking back over a period of years. The accounts developed by word of mouth over the years and then eventually these men were called by God to write down.
18:19
what had been transmitted by word of mouth. Just pause for a moment. It's what? May the 24th today. How many can remember what you were doing on May the 24th 10 years ago?
18:34
a clue. I don't suppose you have either. But these guys were writing on that sort of basis many years after the events.
18:46
You never get the impression with Jesus that he was caught off his guard, probably because he was never on his guard in the first place. But he would go out, as we read, before dawn to a quiet place for close contact with his father. And then from that quiet place he was prepared for all the bustle of busy days and the demands of many people. I'm glad we've had that emphasis this morning on rest, on being quiet.
19:16
in the presence of God. Jesus was constantly waiting on his Father, reliant on the Holy Spirit, preparing himself without necessarily preparing a detailed itinerary for his day or his week. And I believe we can learn from that that he went out to a quiet place. If you read the biographies of great men and women of God,
19:42
And the key is always the time spent in the secret place. Their effectiveness in the public place was proportionate to their intimacy with God in the private place. And the same will be true for us.
20:00
In his day-to-day ministry, we find Jesus at times, he's dealing with one person, but then he's interrupted by another one. And he doesn't say, sorry, I can't help you now, but wait here till I come back. That's probably what I would have done. No. You remember the occasion when he was going to pray for a man's daughter who was seriously ill. And a woman came behind him and touched the back of his clothes seeking healing.
20:30
And he stopped and he spent time with that lady, assuring her that she'd done well, that she could have her healing. Her faith had brought her healing. So I don't know how long that took, but by the time he'd finished with that lady, the message came that the girl whose healing he was going to pray for was now dead. That didn't stop him in his tracks, of course. He just went to the house and raised her from the dead.
20:59
But what had he planned for that time? We don't know. I want to focus on one particular occasion in the life of Jesus because I think we can learn from it. It's in John's Gospel, chapter 4.
21:14
And I'm going to start at verse 3. reading in the New Living Translation.
21:25
It's quite a long uh version, so here we go. So, Jesus left Judea to return to Galilee. He had to go through Samaria on the way. Eventually, he came to the Samaritan village of Sychar near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water.
21:53
And Jesus said to her, please give me a drink. He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. The woman was surprised, for Jews refused to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, you're a Jew, and I'm a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink? Jesus replied, if you only knew the gift God has for you and who I am, you would ask me and I would give you living water.
22:23
But sir, you don't have a rope or a bucket, she said. But this is very deep well. Where would you get this living water? And besides, are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his cattle enjoyed? Jesus replied, people soon become thirsty again after drinking this water, but the water I give them takes away thirst altogether. It becomes a perpetual spring within them, giving them eternal life.
22:53
Please, sir," the woman said, give me some of that water. Then I'll never be thirsty again and I won't have to come here to haul water. Go and get your husband, Jesus told her. I don't have a husband, the woman replied. Jesus said, you're right, you don't have a husband, for you've had five husbands and you aren't even married to the man you're living with now. Sir, the woman said, you must be a prophet.
23:20
So tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it's here at Mount Gerizim where our ancestors worshipped? Jesus replied, believe me, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father here or in Jerusalem. You Samaritans know so little about the one you worship, while we Jews know all about him, for salvation comes through the Jews.
23:47
But the time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship Him that way. For God is spirit. So those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. The woman said, I know the Messiah will come, the one who is called Christ. When He comes, He will explain everything to us. Then Jesus told her.
24:17
I am the Messiah. Just then his disciples arrived. They were astonished to find him talking to a woman, but none of them asked him why he was doing it or what they'd been discussing. The woman left her water jar beside the well and went back to the village and told everyone, come and meet a man who told me everything I ever did. Can this be the Messiah? So the people came streaming from the village to see him.
24:45
Now I'm jumping down to verse 39 for the last little bit. Many Samaritans from the village believed in Jesus because the woman had said, he told me everything I ever did. That's the power of testimony we're hearing about this morning. When they came out to see him, they begged him to stay at their village. So he stayed for two days, long enough for many of them to hear his message and believe. Then they said to the woman,
25:14
Now we believe because we've heard Him ourselves, not just because of what you told us. He is indeed the Savior of the world. At the end of the two-day stay, Jesus went on into Galilee. So, I've chosen this episode because it shows Jesus as His most human, His most vulnerable in many ways.
25:40
Verse 6 spells it out, Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. Can you identify with that? Tired from a long walk in the heat of the day and he sat wearily. I bet he sighed as he sat down. ah Something like that. He was knackered. That's the expression we'd use these days.
26:07
He wasn't thinking about ministry, preaching, teaching, miracles. All he wanted was to sit, rest, try to relax in the midday heat, and can somebody please give me a drink? There's no pre-planned ministry on his agenda at this moment. Then the woman appears, and he's not bothered about normal protocol. Strictly, shouldn't address the woman on her own.
26:34
As a Jew, he would not be expected to speak to a Samaritan, but the only thing that matters is, please give me a drink. And it's only when the woman asks him a question that Jesus begins to set aside his own need and to deal with hers. Incidentally, I don't see any part of this account in John chapter 4 where it says that she actually gave him something to drink. It doesn't say that.
27:04
I wonder whether he ever got his drink. But he sets aside the heat, the tiredness, the inconvenience he must have felt, and he engages in a conversation that will lead not just to her conversion, but to an impact for the kingdom of her whole village. How far-reaching can a single conversation be? It might be somebody you meet or I meet.
27:33
And that conversation makes all the difference for eternity. Wow.
27:42
It has to be a word of knowledge when Jesus says, you don't have a husband, you've had five and you aren't even married to the man you're living with now. Words of knowledge, wonderful. We need them folks. It's part of the equipment that the Holy Spirit offers to us, but how many times do we ask God for a word of knowledge? Really, be honest.
28:10
I get what I call fishing words of knowledge. You know, I come into a meeting and I say, is there somebody here who has got a bad knee or a shoulder or whatever it is? It's fishing, throwing it out. And usually there's a response. If there isn't, never mind. But there are some people and they can be talking to an individual person and God gives them a very clear word specific to that person. I long for those words of knowledge.
28:38
Anybody else? We need to ask. We need to ask and believe that God will give them to us, part of the equipment.
28:50
After the weariness, the discussion about living water, the word of knowledge, and the discussion about true worship, Jesus convinces the woman that He is indeed the Messiah. She leaves her water jar. She goes off to her village to tell folks what's happened. Meanwhile, Jesus spends time teaching His disciples, that's the bit we didn't read, about harvesting for the kingdom.
29:16
And at that point, I have to ask, what plans did Jesus then have? Whatever they were, He abandons them because the village people come flocking to meet Him. They've heard the woman's testimony, they recognize the change in her, and they want what she's discovered. So they don't just hang around with Jesus, they beg Him to come and stay in their village. And He goes and He stays for how long?
29:45
Two whole days.
29:52
Amazing. Long enough, it says, for many of them to hear his message and believe. He recognizes the field that's ready for harvesting. And so that becomes his number one priority. Whatever else he'd had in mind to do on those two days, set aside. This is what matters.
30:17
How long is long enough?
30:22
how much time am I prepared to give to people.
30:27
I've told you in the past about odd occasions when I've been in the park and I've spoken to somebody and they needed healing and I prayed and it's all over in ten minutes and I've never yet said to anybody, don't we go to the cafe and have a coffee and I can talk to you about Jesus. That's missed opportunities. Sorry Lord. I know there are people here who would do that.
30:54
The Apostle Paul, accompanied by Silas, had his own schemes of travel to meet various churches in Greece and Asia Minor. And a couple of times he sensed an angelic no entry. um I won't read it all because time has gone by. But twice he sensed no, whatever I'd planned for that, that's wrong. Went somewhere else, no, that's not right. And then he had a vision.
31:22
the man from Macedonia, pleading with him, come over here and help us. So he goes. And the outcome is pretty dramatic because Paul and Silas find themselves in Philippi being arrested, stripped, beaten, thrown into the inner dungeon of the prison with their feet in the stocks. And amazingly, there's no suggestion between them that they got their guidance wrong.
31:52
having ended up in this apparent mess. They don't express any regrets about their situation. Quite the opposite. At midnight, in this condition, what are they doing? They're praying and singing hymns to God. And God responds with an earthquake. The prison doors are thrown open. The jailer's about to commit suicide because he thinks that he's lost all his prisoners. Paul says, stop.
32:19
The jailer asks what he must do to be saved, Paul tells him, and the guy and his whole household are baptized. How long did that take to convince all these people you need Jesus in your life and then you need to be baptized, ignoring all the beating and the bleeding and the pain that they were going through? None of that was in Paul's plan.
32:46
but God had his ways of establishing a kingdom outpost in the city of Philippi. Paul and Silas went with the flow, painful as it was to see things through. All of which suggests to me that in the work of the kingdom, the most important thing is not, I got a plan, but rather, am I ready for any eventuality?
33:14
Most of us are wired in such a way that we prefer the familiar, the predictable. We'd like life just to go in obvious stages, from here to there to there to there. And God says, well, I've got a different plan. I'm going to take you out this way, and then we're going that way, and then we'll be up here, and then we'll be down there. Actually, He doesn't tell us all that in advance. He just leads us stage by stage. Are we willing for that? It can be painful.
33:44
It can be costly. It can be inconvenient. 1 Peter 3.15 says this, if you are asked about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it. Always be ready to explain. But he says you must do this in a gentle and respectful way. So how can we be ready? I will finish with this. Five things quickly.
34:13
so that we can be ready for whatever God presents to us. Number one, put on the whole armor of God. We're not going to read it now, but you can check Ephesians 6, verse 10 and following all the things we need to be secure in our relationship with God, the whole armor. Number two, prioritize the secret place. We said earlier, there is a correlation.
34:40
between the quality time we spend waiting on God and the effectiveness of our lives for the King and the Kingdom. So prioritize the secret place. Number three, build a reservoir of God's Word. There is no substitute. However good other books may be, however good your Bible reading notes may be, they are not a substitute for the Word of God itself.
35:11
Number four, be constantly filled with the Holy Spirit. Oh, when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit 30 years ago, yes, maybe you were. But are you filled with the Spirit now? Are you equipped and ready for any eventuality now? That's the offer that God makes. In Ephesians it says, be constantly filled with the Spirit. Koryten Bum.
35:41
used to use this lovely woman of God, she survived the concentration camps in the Second World War. She said, how much of value can that do by itself? Answer, absolutely nothing. It's useless, isn't it, by itself. But...
36:03
What can it achieve now? Yeah? It's been filled with life and potential and power. Yeah? That's the same with us. Be constantly filled with the Holy Spirit. And number five, practice a brief testimony. We've had testimonies this morning. Practice just one way in which you can say to somebody, this is how God has changed my life. That's all it needs.
36:33
You can argue about doctrine until you're blue in the face. You can argue about creation, whether God exists until you're blue in the face. They can't argue with your testimony. I can say to people three times I've been healed by the direct intervention of people praying. And I can tell them. You can't argue with that. So practice a brief testimony. Okay, time is gone.
37:00
I will just say this, if you would like to ask the Holy Spirit to refresh you, to refill you, to re-equip you, would you please stand and we will pray.
37:30
Father, we recognize your sovereignty over this world that you created and over our lives. We recognize that your plans, your purposes are far beyond our understanding. But Lord, you've called us to be sowers of seed, workers in the vineyard, reapers of harvest. And we want to do that, So we ask you, please, by your Holy Spirit, would you fill us again
38:00
with your presence, with your power.
38:05
Would you make us more like Jesus? Would you make us ready for any eventuality, any contact that we may have today, tomorrow, this week, the rest of our lives?