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The Messiah’s Secret – Pentecost 1

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The Messiah’s Secret – Pentecost

Evening Lectionary: John 16: 4-15. Exodus 33: 7-20. Revised Standard Version Bible
Human beings can step into the fishes environment and swim with the fish. We can climb on board a space craft that is propelled into space by a rocket and step out of our air environment into space.
In both instants we cannot live in them permanently in our natural state, we need the air contained in cylinders and wet and space suits to protect our bodies.
Through the Holy Spirit being sent into the world at Pentecost, God has made it possible to enter into His eternal dimension through his indwelling presence within the Christian.

Visual Aid.  A play dough fish in a bowl of water.
At home we have a gold fish and it lives its life in the
water.

We live in a band of air that covers the globe.

In the Exodus reading  God met with man in a tent. 

Moses and the people of Israel were travelling through the wilderness towards the Promised Land. They lived gathered together within the camp area, but in order to meet with God they were told to go from the camp to the Tent of Meeting which Moses had pitched some distance away. In this designated place Moses and any person from the camp met with God on a one to one basis. Exodus 33: 7-11.                                                                                           

God our Father sent the Holy Spirit into the world to reveal Jesus to us in a personal way by dwelling within a person, on a one to one basis.

God’s love reaching out, our meeting place with God is at the cross of Jesus while we are still in our sin. Scripture says: “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Not only so, but we rejoice in God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through whom we have received our reconciliation.” Romans 5: 8-10. 

The Holy Spirit was sent into the world at Pentecost and he reveals Jesus to us.
“The Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness and judgement.” John 16: 8. Dis – ease  or ill at ease . The TV Soaps are meant to portray ordinary people’s lives and the drama of it all is being worked out in each episode. In the stories we see the sins of the flesh causing pain and distress and were God is at a distance almost out of sight for many people.  The TV soaps only occasionally portray the way of life that brings love, joy and peace the Christian way. 
“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.  Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”                                                           

Visual Aid.

A bowl with clean water, a few drops of red dye and a small quantity of bleach
Add a drop of red dye into the water, the red dye represents impurities in the water. (fallen nature and sin in our blood)

I then pour the bleach into the water and the red dye disappears. Representing  the cleansing of the impurities. (Our sin cancelled out) 

The blood of Jesus going into action when we turn to Jesus recognising our sin against God. It is also a picture of repentance and forgiveness. 

The Bible teaches us that life is in the blood, however, in our blood we carry the hereditary fallen nature of Adam and Eve. The application of Jesus’ blood blots out the hereditary sin of Adam and our sin of the past and present. Repentance on our part brings about forgiveness and reconciliation with God. “Repent therefore and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out  . . . . and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus.” Acts 3: 19, 20.  

Moody’s Stories   
“In Ireland some time ago a teacher asked a little boy if there was anything that God could not do. The little fellow said, “He can not see my sins through the blood of Christ.”                                            From the mouths of babes such profound words. 

As a result of us having faith in Jesus’ blood  we receive his promise. 
Jesus said, “If a man/women/child loves me, he will keep my word, and the Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him.” John 14: 23
The promise of eternal life entering into the Lord our God’s kingdom. 

(Some Christians say you are not a Christian until you have the baptism of the Holy Spirit or until you speak in tongues. Paul’s letter to the Romans 10:9 does not say that, he wrote: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved. . . no one who believes in Jesus will be put to shame.” A person will only confess that Jesus is Lord by the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12: 3.)

Having received both God our Father and Jesus the Son of God  the Holy Spirit puts substance to our faith, through a variety of ways. 

Through someone praying for us. Paul praying for the members of the church at Ephesus, “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. Ephesians 1: 16.

The words of the Bible drop from our mind down into our heart. Continuing with the letter to the Ephesians, ”That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the glorious inheritance in the saints.” Ephesians 1: 17, 18. The enlightening of the eyes of our heart is were our head knowledge about Jesus, becomes heart knowledge. 
“All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said he (Holy Spirit) will take what is mine and declare it to you.” John 16: 15.
The words of Jesus expresses God’s love for us and his words become alive, living words as they are acted upon by God’s Holy Spirit.                                                                                                                      

Move from being under law to being under grace. Paul’s letter to the Galatians he reminds them that he is justified by faith and not by the works of the law. Salvation is received as a free gift, we can not earn the gift by our own merit, we can only accept what Jesus has achieved for us by faith.  “ I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; the life I now live in my flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2: 20.   
When we understand we move forward in faith, receiving what Jesus has done for us on the cross. We depend upon God for his love and forgiveness. 

Laying on of hands. The people at Samaria had accepted Jesus as their Saviour and were baptised but they had not received the gift of the Holy Spirit. “Now when the Apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit.” Acts 8: 14,15. 
What I have heard about Jesus, now I know it is true. I remember Miriam saying to me, “It was like scales falling from my eyes.” Hours before she told me she was going to see Rev Ron Freeman our Vicar (now with the Lord) she had some questions to ask him. I knew that after their discussion he would pray with her and using the gift that the Lord had given him which was for people to receive of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands. Miriam received the precious gift.  
It was my own experience too through Ronald’s gift, the Lord has put substance to my faith, I know that Jesus is God made visible in the flesh and the Holy Spirit is still at work in the world. (Approx two years before I had been healed of a sickness through the laying on of hands at a Bible Study.)

Baptism My sister at her children’s Baptism, (Anglican Church) the Lord added substance to her faith when she received the the Holy Spirit in power. Many people at their Baptism receive the Holy Spirit.

Humility.  For a number of Christians who have been brought up in the faith who have never had a ‘Damascus Road’ experience, but have received substance to their faith by the receiving of the Holy Spirit in a very unassuming way. 

Living in the Spirit of God’s Righteousness and Judgement.
It is like us, entering into the gold fish’s environment, we give the fish its food to sustain its life.  In order to sustain our life in God’s kingdom we need the spiritual food.
Jesus said, “My words are Spirit and life.” John 6: 63.

Christian Crackers by Phil Mason. “A lady was very nervous about her appointment with the dentist. Before leaving home she sought courage by reading the text for the day from her calendar. It was Psalm 81: 10:  “Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it.”
                 
The word of God guides us to share what we have with others, “And let our people learn themselves to apply good deeds, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not to be unfruitful.” Titus 3: 14
Quite often the Lord calls us to response to the practical needs of people, who through no fault of their own find themselves unable to feed their family so that they can pay their bills. As a result they need short term help to get through the crisis. Collectively we can help by providing food stuffs for the Food Banks or through networking or sign posting we can enlist the help of the appropriate organisations to suit their need.  

Every so often the Goldfish bowl needs to be cleaned out. There is debris on the surface of the pebbles and algae on the glass.  
We look to the Word to remind us of the things that pertain to a life of godliness. 
In 2 Peter 1 verses 3 -8 Peter confirms this equal standing that we have with the disciples in our faith in Christ. We do not need to the look to the world to live a fulfilled life, we have the Lord’s precious and very great promises and his divine nature that enables us to live a godly life.  

“For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and with self-control with steadfastness, and with steadfastness godliness, and with godliness brotherly and sisterly affection, and with brotherly and sisterly affection with love. For if these things are yours and abound, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  2 Peter 1: 1-8                                        

The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus continually as we are built up in through the study of the Bible.
The Holy Spirit will build us up in our faith through the study of the Bible, not through memorising scripture, although that is useful, but it’s as he reveals through the study, understandings about Jesus, that he is God made visible in the flesh,  Jesus is the living Word and in our relationship with Jesus, we have been crucified with Jesus and that we are raised up with him in his resurrection etc.
For example: through the study of Matthew Chapters 5,6,7. The Sermon on the Mount. The Holy Spirit revealed to me in the Spirit that Jesus taught the perfect law of God as he was God himself.
Through the study of 1 John that Jesus is the living Word, he is the Word of God clothed in the flesh etc.

We are built up and strengthened in our faith, as the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us in the study of the word of God. The choice of the translation of the Bible from the Hebrew and Greek is very important to me because of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in revealing Jesus through the study of both the Hebrew and the New Testaments.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
angel, healing through the communion, heart of flesh, heart of stone, Marah, Martin Luther, messengers, Moody's Stories, Naaman, Stone, tomb, Zephaniah

The Messiah’s Secret – A Stone Rolled Away

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The Messiah’s Secret – A Stone Rolled Away

Evening Lectionary   Matthew 28: 1-10, 16-20. Zephaniah 3: 14-end. Revised Standard Bible. Picture – A typical tomb with a huge stone to cover the entrance.                                                                                                          
Seeking Jesus. 
Matthew wrote that the women wanted to see the sepulchre, they were grieving and probably wanted to be near Jesus. When Mary Magdalene and Mary arrived at that tomb, an earthquake occurred and at the same time an angel rolled the stone away from the entrance to the tomb. Matthew 28: 1-10, 16-20

Stony Hearts. 
We can have a stone covering our heart, until it is removed by the operation of God.   John Wesley heard a reading of Martin Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans, and penned the now famous lines “I felt my heart strangely warmed”.   His heart of stone had become a heart of flesh. John Wesley had made the connection were his head knowledge became heart knowledge.  His heart, his soul transformed by the operation of God.  Luther taught that salvation is not earned by good deeds but received only as a free gift of God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer from sin.                                                                                  

Paul made the connection with Ezekiel’s prophecy in his letter to the Corinthians and his own experience, “And I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them; I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 11: 17-20.   How he must have rejoiced in realizing that this prophecy was being fulfilled when he wrote to the Corinthian church.  

“Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men; and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 
2 Corinthians 3: 1-3.           
The letter contains the life in the Holy Spirit taught by Paul and each Christian evangelizing the personal knowledge of the resurrection in Christ. 

Paul knew that Ezekiel’s word was referring to a person coming out from under the law to being under grace. From being motivated by doing things by a set of rules, to the rules becoming part of us, the law written in the heart. The law encourages us to be self righteous by looking to ourselves to fulfill God’s laws, but we fail we can’t keep the law, the system breaks down and we are convicted of our sin by our conscious bearing witness of our creator’s laws.

Smith Wigglesworth in his book “Ever Increasing Faith” wrote, “There is a great difference between a pump and a spring. The law is the pump, the Baptism is the spring. The old pump gets out of order, the parts perish, and the well runs dry. But the spring is ever bubbling up and there is a ceaseless flow direct from the throne of God. There is life.”  

The cross is where Jesus changed us from working like a pump unable to keep God’s law, to being able to keep God’s law through the nature of God being at the centre of our being. 
God’s love for us payed the cost, the price for our sin in Jesus’ death, and changed us from being under law to being under grace in his resurrection. The new order of life in Jesus’ resurrection; we are constantly being filled with the spring of eternal living water straight from God’s throne.

Jesus’ Baptism of the Holy Spirit pointed to in the Hebrew Scriptures.   
 “Then Moses led Israel onwards from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur; they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah, because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” And he cried to the Lord; and the Lord showed him a tree, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.” Exodus 15: 22-25. 

 Baptism 
The desert with its desolation of life it is like having a knowledge of God but not knowing him. The dryness that seeks to quench its thirst is like a person that is seeking Jesus.
The bitter water represents the sin that weighs us down, like a stone. 
The tree represents the cross were Jesus’  death on the cross pardons us from all our sin against God. 
The sweet water representing forgiveness and the receiving of the Holy Spirit. 

From having a distant coldness between ourselves and God, to having a loving heart for God, with his nature, his way of doing things in our hearts. The Lord’s concerns being ours, we will to do the will of God. 
The new life in the Spirit that Paul taught and from the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence, we love to do the things that are right, pure and holy and we shudder at the things that are wrong. The devil will tempt us and we may fall, but he that is in us is greater. In falling we learn how to stand against the principalities and powers.

Faith and Grace in receiving the Good News about Jesus.
The angel was a messenger of good news telling the women that Jesus was risen from the dead. And he asked the women to tell the disciples “Go and tell the disciples that Jesus will meet them at Galilee.”  

The women became the messengers 
The disciples went to Galilee to the mountain where he had directed them. When they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. 

Today we are messengers of the Good News, God can change the hearts of the doubters. 

Moody’s Stories.  
“On his visit to Scotland Moody met a man who wanted the people who he employed to be reached with the Gospel, so he invited them to go and listen to Moody.  One of his employees who he invited declined, as he did not like what he had heard about Rev Moody.  

Moody wrote: “Several times this man was asked by his employer but every time he refused, until after we left town and went away up to Inverness, the employer had some business up there, and he sent this employee to attend to it, in the hope that he would attend some of our meetings. One night I was preaching on the bank of a river, I happened to take for my text the words of Naaman, I was trying to show the difference between men’s thoughts and God’s thoughts. 
This man happened to be walking along the bank of the river he saw a great crowd, and heard someone talking, and he wondered to himself what the man was talking about. He did not know who was there, so he drew up to the crowd, and listened. He heard the sermon, and became convicted and converted right there. Then he inquired who was the preacher, and he found out it was the very man, that he said he would not hear – the man he disliked. The very man he had been talking against was the very man God used to convert him.” 

Moody was trying to show through the true story about Naaman the difference between men’s thoughts and God’s thoughts. God used someone who was his enemy to be the means of his healing of his leprosy.
Israel under Assyrian occupation were enemies of Syria.      ( Syria had recently rebelled against Assyrian rule and had gained their independence.)  Naaman the Syrian Commander had captured an Israeli girl on one of his raids into Israel, and she became his servant and was one of the messengers to Naaman, from her he heard of great healing taking place at the hands of Elisha. 2 Kings 5: 1-16. 

 God acted on Naaman’s faith and by grace he would be healed through the prophet Elisha’s ministry to him.
 In faith Naaman sought permission from his King to make contact with Elisha. The Syrian King could have pointed out that they were enemies with Israel, but that stone was removed by grace. 
The King sent Naaman bearing great gifts of gold, silver and festal garments along with a letter to the King of Israel asking him to heal Naaman of his leprosy. Even though the King of Israel was affronted by this request, by grace Elisha hearing about it, stepped in, convincing his King that it would be good to let the Syrians know that there was a prophet in Israel. 
In faith Naaman went to Elisha’s home he expected to speak directly to him, but instead Elisha sent his servant to him with a message. (another messenger to Naaman.) He was instructed to go and bathe in the river Jordan seven times and his flesh would be made clean. Naaman was angry and at first and refused to do as Elisha suggested. However, he relented persuaded by a servant and he went down to the Jordan and dipped seven times. To his amazement he was healed. Naaman offered a gift to Elisha but he refused to accept it. By grace Naaman was blessed by his enemy, who wanted nothing in return.

I knew a man who had a wonderful Jesus -like gift of healing, I thought of him as a walking Bible, he used to say often to me,“The power’s in the Word Dorothy.” I used to ring him up when I wasn’t well and he would pray for me over the phone and it always worked, as I had faith in his ministry, just like the girl who told Naaman about Elisha.                               
 Mr Oldham died in the late 1990’s, then I had to look to the cross for my healing as I didn’t know anyone with the gift of healing. I take the words that Matthew recorded from Isaiah 53, “He took our infirmitives and bore our diseases”and also he bore the sin of humanity that nailed him to the cross and more importantly Jesus winning the victory over them by God raising him up from the dead. By my faith I expect, my healing through the operation of the Holy Spirit working with the Word, as God my Father loves me and wants to restores my well being. 

A month ago at our evening Communion service I brought a problem that I had to the Lord. I waited until the receiving of the tokens, the bread and the wine I visualized Jesus bearing my problem on the cross and as I handed it over I thanked the Lord for my healing through the victory in Jesus’ resurrection and it worked problem resolved.Matthew 8: 17

This reminds us of Zephaniah’s prophecy. Zephaniah 3: 14 end
“The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you in gladness, he will renew you in his love.  . . . “At that time I will bring you home, at that time I will gather you together; yea, I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes,” says the Lord.”


Zephaniah prophesied that God would gather together the Jews under the King, the Messiah. Their king having such love for them. It was expressed in his ministry, in being mighty to save.
At the time of Jesus Jews from every nation where dwelling in Jerusalem. Those who came to faith and joined the community in Jerusalem, after the dispersion of the Christians Peter wrote to the exiled Jews of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, encouraging them in their suffering as they looked forward to Jesus’ return. 
 Acts 2: 5, 8-10. 8:1.    1 Peter 1 :1.  Zephaniah 3: 14-end.  

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”
Zephaniah had prophesied that their King would be praised among the nations. For the last 2,000 years the message of the good news about Jesus has been received among the Gentile nations. Every generation witnessing to the resurrection of Jesus. He is risen indeed.