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Click here to listen to the sermon. 18mins
Acts 11v1-18 Peter explains the Gentiles receiving the Spirit.
Rev 21v1-6 The new Jerusalem. The dwelling of God is with men.
John 13v31-35 Jesus going to the Father. A New Commandment.
New Things are Happening! Three great readings!
Jesus gives a new commandment, not based on external rules like Moses’ commandments but one based on the internal attitude of the heart.
This is the commandment that is most important if we are to be followers of Jesus and it reflects the way that God relates to us, in love and grace not judgement and rules. It reflects the gentleness of the Holy Spirit’s promptings within us. We are to love one another as Christ loves us, as God loves us, as the Holy Spirits deals gently with us.
This is the opposite of a self focused lifestyle where selfishness promotes me and my interests first. This is the Gospel of Christ and if we call ourselves Followers of Christ, then this is the central teaching of Christ for us all.
A New Commandment Jesus has given us!
Peter, (of all people) also experiences a new thing happening, one which ‘he’ in his natural human faithful zealous strength sought to resist. Three times God had to tell him in the dream in order to break through Peter’s self-thought righteous resistance. How often does God tell us things before we fully understand his purpose? How often do we press ahead with what WE think is right in our attempt to protect God, only to find out that we are indeed resisting God?
In this case God was doing something that was absolutely unheard of to the faith community, something that the most reverent and faithful for people found really difficult to accept, some thing that many continued to resist for the rest of their lives (and still do) and so missed out on the wonderful grace of God’s plan. Those dirty horrible Gentiles were entering the promise of God and receiving the heritage that was reserved only for the Jews.
We look back and think how stiff necked and spiritually blind the people were not to see it, even Isaiah saw it 650bc.
v17 “So I gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think I could oppose God.”
The gift that God has given us today is the grace and freedom to love and accept one-another, and so through our willingness to love and be a Follower of Christ, let him win others into his Kingdom.
Then we find in the Revelation of John, that God is doing another New Thing! He is building a new Jerusalem, and note the old one will pass away. v1. The old one of stone for a new one of flesh.
A New beautiful Jerusalem dressed like a bride ready for her husband. Note the highly relational imagery and the language is about people not buildings. v2
v3. And I heard a loud voice “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.” God is dwelling with His people just as Peter found in Acts, as the Holy Spirit came upon the Gentiles to live with them, and in them, as Jesus promised in John 14v15-18.
v5 “I am making everything new.”
v6 “To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all of this, and I will be his God and he will be my Son.” v7.
It is very clear from scripture that God is not merely tinkering with the OT Covenant by adding a few commandments or changing a few words here and there. He is radically and dynamically renewing, transforming, fulfilling and establishing a New Covenant, and not just with the one family of Abraham, but with all the families in the world, all the families in His creation. He clearly says, he loves all the world, his good news is for all, (John 3v16-17) and he has proved it and established it.
It seems to me that our view of God is too small!
We are still thinking like OT Covenant people, (that God loves us the best or the most because we are the faithful few, the remnant, based our righteousness), while at the same time God is busy at work with people out there in the world with all sorts of faith, and some with no faith at all, but who are experiencing His touch in their lives. (It reminds me of Peter and the Gentile Samaritans).
If we want to be ‘Followers of Christ’, then we need to follow him out there listening to peoples experiences of God and blessing them, and sharing our experience also, so that they might piggy back our experience and find their way to the Father through Jesus also.
Our theology and view of mission needs to be inclusive, and so starting with’ Dinners for 6 or 8’ and then in June ‘Supper Parties’, we can genuinely include people, and share stories, and love others as Jesus loves us.
A New Commandment I give to you. “Love one-another as I have loved you!”
A new thing I am doing, including others previously outside.
A new dwelling I have made, I will live with men, not apart from them!
Recommended Reading:-
‘Secret Affairs of the Soul’ by Paul Hawker
‘A New Kind of Christianity’ by Brian McClaren
Click here to listen to the sermon. 16mins
Moya Lethbridge
John 13:31-35
Do you KNOW how much Jesus loves you? Head knowledge? Heart knowledge? “How much do you love me Lord?” – “This much” – and he stretched out his arms and died.
Central fact of the faith, but much more in mind heart and behaviour.
John 13:34 – commonplace – “Love one another”. Did you notice “As I have loved you”?
John in epistle (1Jn 4:19) “We love because he first loved us”.
Our love is a response to his.
Letters between me and Chris during courtship and engagement – pages of it not just romance (some!) but details of everyday lives. He is interested in me, I in him. Love one another! A response of delight.
Meant to be like that between us and Jesus FIRST.
How did Jesus love his disciples?
· spent lots of time with them – you and Jesus? (Even to think of him at traffic lights or 5mins, 10 mins committed time?)
· listened to silly requests courteously (James and John, Mark 11:35-40)
· shared his heart in Gethsemane (Mark 14:34)
· washed their feet prior to this reading – even the feet of Judas. Take a moment to imagine Jesus washing your feet.
My first footwashing service in a Pentecostal church – not our culture but “if you know these things blessed are you if you do them”. Bond with person – also Maundy Thursday service.
But Jesus can wash my feet daily – offer to him irritations, anxieties, miseries.
[“Do quickly” to Judas – repentance not betrayal].
· on cross – “Father forgive them…” to all of us. (Luke 23:34)
This is the way Jesus loves YOU – always be there, longs for response, infinite forgiveness, receives you with every sinful and negative thing you know of yourself – laziness, self-satisfaction, secret resentment, addictions. Loves you.
New Wine in January – “I love you as you are not as you want to be”. Absolute blessing – for you too.
Ask Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus’ love to you, ask and keep on asking (Matt.7:7-11)
But a cost – always wanting more of me than I want to give.
· my supper or bed routine can’t be interrupted for Jesus – true for your marriage?
· My time for him limited to MY schedule – true for your friendships?
· Can’t stop reading book or favourite TV programme – true for your neighbours/friends/family?
When God spoke to me about prayer for KSA – my sister and brother dropped their busyness to pray with me, bless them.
Can I drop my schedules for Jesus – and others? That’s what he wants – to love as he loves us.
I miss it time and again but he LOVES me – and you.
Even one drop of this sort of love in this world counts.
Rev Jane Heyes
Love one another John 13: 31-35
It is really important to know where a reading fits in the Bible before trying to understand what is says.
This reading is found in John after Jesus has washed his disciples feet and after their last supper; Jesus final meal with his close friends. It is the first of a whole lot of teaching that Jesus does before he goes to the garden of Gethsemane and the soldiers arrest him. It is his last day as a free man.
Do you know the TV ad for life insurance where woman sits in front of a home video camera and says something like this- “Well if you are watching this then I will be gone. I just wanted give you some last bits of wisdom, to tell you I love you and say one last goodbye.”
I think Jesus was talking like that.
Jesus wants to ram home some things he hoped they would already have a grasp of but needs to make sure. He will be gone and it is their job to carry on bringing in the kingdom.
So that is the setting.
They are all sitting round the table and once Judas leaves the room then Jesus starts teaching.
V31 He explains that he is about to be glorified and when that happens then God will be
glorified too. ‘Glorified’, ’to give glory’ is a hard concept in our day and age. Dictionary mentions someone is made glorious by bestowing honour, praise, adoration to elevate them or light them up. So the disciples got the message that something Big was on the horizon and that they had better listen.
V33 then he is clearer than before saying that he won’t be here much longer.. now he really has their attention.
V 34 A new command I give you...
New implies there are some old ones.
Q- Can you think of other commands in the Old Testament section of the Bible?
10 commandments that Moses brought down from the mountain.
How many can you remember?
The old commands were a way of showing the people of Israel what standards God wanted them to aspire to. They were a set of laws to try to keep. The people of the OT were a
people of Law but Jesus was showing his friends that things were going to be different now.
In reality Jesus didn’t give them a new law but it was a simplified summary or the essence of the OT teachings.
Love one another.
From now on followers of Jesus were a people of Grace. (God’s riches at Christ’s expense.)
A people influenced not by a mindset of trying to get things right and then feeling guilty when they can’t but of the freedom that comes with forgiveness, a people of generosity, abundant life, breaking down barriers that divide, a people of love. So so so different from OT living.
As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Criminal Minds- our ‘Love map’ set by age 6. How we love in our lives, this ‘love map’, is a reflection of how we ourselves were loved and what we learned from the examples of giving of love that we saw around us. So Jesus is saying not only that he loved us therefore we should love others but that the way he loved us is the way we should love others!!! If
# 11.this was a cartoon then there would be one whole square with ‘Gasp!!’ written in it in capital letters, because we know how much Jesus loved us...He loved us to death; the ultimate sacrifice.
Activity- lolly pass
1. We can’t give love if we don’t know that we have any ourselves; that we are loved.
2.We can’t give away lollies or love if we don’t have enough ourselves. Thank you.
Firstly we can’t love unless we know we are loved first. Personal story (really know that God loves me, ask ‘show me you love me so that I can know’...)
Secondly we can’t give out love unless we have enough to give away in the first place.
If love were lollies we could say we can’t give away lollies unless we have some.
And the love God gives us is not just for ourselves but to give away.
Juan Carlos Ortis -worked with Billy Graham became senior pastor of the largest evangelical church in Buenos Aires. He ministered at conventions, religious congresses, universities, seminaries, and churches across five continents. Famous for his series of Sermons on love. He moved to a new church preached on topic love. When he had preached on the topic for several weeks in a row someone asked him why he didn’t preach on any other topic his answer was ‘When you all start living with love I will stop preaching on it!’
Love is not just for us but is given to us to pass on to others.
V35 By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
At a recent seminar on Conflict resolution in the church the speaker said that conflict arises every time there is change therefore we won’t be able to avoid it. She warned us not to see conflict as a distraction from the core business of what a church is but to see it as the core business of what church is all about. The way we deal with each other in good times and bad is a reflection of how we are living ‘love’. Do we try gently to resolve the conflict and therefore restore the relationship or do we distance ourselves from it and let those relationships wither and hurts remain.
Jesus is and was all about relationships and not about rules. Being a Christian is all about love. The giving of love, the receiving of love and the restoring of loving bonds.
How do we do this? How can we pass on God’s love?
1.Golden rule says ‘always do for others as you would want them to do for you’.
2.Knowing the right ‘language’ Which of those choices did you prefer? # the 5 love languages by Chapman and Campbell. They suggest that people give and receive love in 5 different ways and will actually prefer one particular way. Some like to hear of love in
words, others prefer touch, acts of service, gifts or quality time
This book is in our new Parenting Library available at Offspring and will be in the town library too or can be Googled. It is s great way to make sure that the love you are giving someone is really reaching them. One child may prefer cuddles and touch as a way of receiving love so if you bring them a gift and they just put it aside don’t be upset. It just wasn’t the right language for them. Jesus had a hot line to know what a person needed to hear but we might need to closely observe people to find out their love language then we can really love them in a way they understand.
3. Make sure that every morning you ask God for the ‘lollies’ that God wants you to give away today.
So let’s not just tell others that we go to church or bombard them with information about Jesus. Let’s show them love in a way that they can understand.
Let’s show them love in the name of Jesus.
As followers of Jesus that is our core business.
Some love Language Questions
1.Would you rather that someone...
Gave you a hug and rubbed your tired back
Or
Helped you with a chore that you needed to finish?
2. Would you rather that someone...
Sent you a present
Or
Popped in to have a chat and spend some time with you?
3. Would you rather that someone...
Said well done you worked really hard at that
Or
Sat and watched a move with you?
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