Week commencing Sunday 28th February

Devotional Materials. Week Commencing Sunday 28^th February 2021

Call to worship

“In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude as Christ Jesus: who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.” Philippians 2: 5, 6

“God is love.” 1 John 4:8

Opening Prayer

Heavenly Father we thank you for your great faithfulness and unfailing love. We see your great glory and power in Creation, we enjoy the fruits of your Creation, so many material blessings, and we ourselves, along with the whole of your Creation, continue to exist moment by moment because of your sustaining hand.

Father we see your great patience and longsuffering with the People of Israel. Though they frequently rebelled against the words of your prophets, you were slow to punish and quick to forgive. We thank you that you love to redeem that which has grown ugly with sin, and create beauty in its place. We thank you for giving your own Son as an atoning sacrifice for the redemption for our sins, though it cost you everything to do so.

Thank you for that love which means that by your Spirit you have come to live within us. You do not give up on us, rather you work in our hearts and minds to refine and purify our lives; to increasingly free us from the grip of sin, and make us more like the true Son- the Lord Jesus Christ, showing more of his beauty of life, in gentleness and patience, in compassion and mercy, in a zeal for your truth and lives led for your glory.

Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven. Thank you our loving Lord. We praise you. Amen.

Opening Hymn

2 Praise him for his grace and favour
to his people in distress.
Praise him, still the same as ever,
slow to chide, and swift to bless.
Alleluia, alleluia!
Glorious in his faithfulness!

3 Father like he tends and spares us;
well our feeble frame he knows.
In his hand he gently bears us,
rescues us from all our foes.
Alleluia, alleluia!
Widely yet his mercy flows!

4 Angels, help us to adore him;
you behold him face to face.
Sun and moon, bow down before him,
dwellers all in time and space.
Alleluia, alleluia!
Praise with us the God of grace! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyRIVbdsi4c 

Reading

At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11: 25-30

Hymn (Guitar)

For this I have Jesus
For this I have Jesus
For this I have Jesus, I have Jesus
(Repeat)

For the tears that flow in secret
In the broken times
For the moments of elation
Or the troubled mind
For all the disappointments
Or the sting of old regrets
All my prayers and longings
That seem unanswered yet

For this I have Jesus
For the weakness of my body
The burdens of each day
For the nights of doubt and worry
When sleep has fled away
Needing reassurance
And the will to start again
A steely-eyed endurance
The strength to fight and win

For this I have Jesus
Graham Kendrick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYxSXHgMFmg

Sermon

We live in difficult days but I purchased a book recently that was highly recommended entitled “Gentle and Lowly”, subtitled “The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers” and have been encouraged as a result. The book is written by Dane Ortland (PhD Wheaton College) who is chief publishing officer at Crossway publications.

What I would like to do this morning is share with you much of the first chapter of the book, and I trust it will be an encouragement to you too:

His Very Heart

‘In the four Gospel accounts given to us in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John- eighty nine chapters of biblical text- there’s only one place where Jesus tells us about his own heart:

Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matt. 11:28-30).

In the one place in the Bible where the Son of God pulls back the veil and lets us peer way down into the core of who he is, we are not told that he is “austere and demanding in heart.” We are not told that he is “exalted and dignified in heart.” We are not even told that he is “joyful and generous in heart.” Letting Jesus set the terms, his surprising claim is that he is “gentle and lowly in heart.” 

One thing to get straight right from the start is that when the Bible speaks of the heart, whether Old Testament or New, it is not speaking of an emotional life only but of the central animating centre of all we do. It is what gets us out of bed in the morning and what we daydream about as we drift off to sleep. It is our motivation headquarters. The heart, in biblical terms, is not part of who we are but the centre of who we are. Our heart is what defines and directs us. That is why Solomon tells us to “keep [the] heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23). The heart is a matter of life. It is what makes us the human being each of us is. The heart drives all we do. It is who we are.

And when Jesus tells us what animates him most deeply- when he exposes the innermost recesses of his being- what we find there is: gentle and lowly.

Who could ever have thought up such a Saviour?

“I am gentle…”

The Greek word translated “gentle” here occurs just three other times in the New Testament: in the first beatitude, that “the meek” will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5); in the first prophesy in Matthew 21:5 (quoting Zechariah 9:9) that Jesus the king “is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey”; and in Peter’s encouragement to wives to nurture more than anything else “the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter: 3:4). Meek. Humble. He is the most understanding person in the universe. The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger but open arms.

“…and lowly…”

The meaning of the word “lowly” overlaps with that of “gentle,” together communicating a single reality about Jesus’s heart. This specific word lowly is generally translated “humble” in the New Testament, such as in James 4:6: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” But typically throughout the New Testament this Greek word refers not to humility as a virtue but to humility in the sense of destitution or being thrust downward by life circumstance. In Mary’s song this word is used to speak of the way God exalts those who are “of humble estate” (Luke 1:52).

The point in saying that Jesus is lowly is that he is accessible.

For all his resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, his supreme uniqueness and otherness, no one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ. No prerequisites. No hoops to jump through. Warfield, commenting on Matthew 11:29, wrote:

“No impression was left by his life- manifestation more deeply imprinted upon the consciousness of his followers than that of the noble humility of his bearing.”

The minimum bar to be enfolded into the embrace of Jesus is simply: open yourself up to him. It is all he needs. Indeed, it is the only thing he works with. Verse 28 of our passage in Matthew 11 tells us explicitly who qualifies for fellowship with Jesus: “all who labour and are heavy laden.” You don’t need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come. No payment is required: he says, “I will give you rest.” His rest is gift, not transaction. Whether you are actively working hard to crowbar your life into smoothness (“labour”) or passively finding yourself weighed down by something outside your control (“heavy laden”), Jesus Christ’s desire that you find rest, that you come out of the storm, outstrips even your own.

“Gentle and lowly.” This, according to his own testimony, is Christ’s very heart. This is who he is. Tender. Open. Welcoming. Accommodating. Understanding. Willing. If we are asked to say only one thing about who Jesus is, we would be honouring Jesus’s own teaching if our answer is, gentle and lowly.

If Jesus hosted his own personal website, the most prominent line of the “About Me” drop down would read: GENTLE AND LOWLY IN HEART.

This is not how he is to everyone, indiscriminately. This is who he is for those who come to him, who take his yoke upon them, who cry to him for help. The paragraph before these words from Jesus gives us a picture of how Jesus handles the impenitent: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! ...I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the Day of Judgment for the land of Sodom than for you” (Matthew 11:21, 24). “Gentle and lowly” does not mean “mushy and frothy.”

But for the penitent, his heart of gentle embrace is never out-matched by our sins and foibles and insecurities and doubts and anxieties and failures. For lowly gentleness is not one way Jesus occasionally acts toward others. Gentleness is who he is. It is his heart> He can’t un-gentle himself toward his own any more than you or I can change our eye colour. It’s who we are.

The Christian life is inescapably one of toil and labour (1 Cor. 15:10; Phil.2:12-13; Col.1:29). Jesus himself made this clear in this very Gospel (Matthew 5:19-20; 18:8-9). His promise here in Matthew 11 is “rest for your souls,” not “rest for your bodies.” But all Christian toil flows from fellowship with a living Christ whose transcending reality is: gentle and lowly. He astounds and sustains us with his endless kindness. Only as we walk ever deeper into this tender kindness can we live the Christian life as the New Testament calls us to do. Only as we drink down the kindness of the heart of Christ will we leave in our wake, everywhere we go, the aroma of heaven, and die one day having startled the world with glimpses of a divine kindness too great to be boxed in by what we deserve.

The notion of kindness is right here in our passage. The word translated “easy” in his statement, “My yoke is easy,” needs to be carefully understood. Jesus is not saying life is free of pain or hardship. This is the same word elsewhere translated “kind”- as in, for example, Ephesians 4:32: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted” (also Romans 2:4).

Consider what Jesus is saying. A yoke is the heavy crossbar laid on oxen to force them to drag farming equipment through the field. Jesus is using a kind of irony, saying that the yoke laid on his disciple is a nonyoke. For it is a yoke of kindness.

Who could resist this? It’s like telling a drowning man that he must put on the burden of a life preserver only to hear him shout back, spluttering, “ No way! Not me! This is hard enough, drowning here in these stormy waters. The last thing I need is the added burden of a life preserver around my body!” That’s what we all are like, confessing Christ with our lips but generally avoiding deep fellowship with him, out of a muted understanding of his heart.

His yoke is kind and his burden is light. That is, his yoke is a nonyoke, and his burden is a nonburden. What helium does to a balloon, Jesus’s yoke does to his followers. We are buoyed along in life by his endless gentleness and supremely accessible lowliness. He doesn’t simply meet us at our place of need; he lives in our place of need. He never tires of sweeping us into his tender embrace. It is his very heart. It is what gets him out of bed in the morning.

This not how we intuitively think of Jesus Christ. Reflecting on this passage in Matthew 11, the old English pastor Thomas Goodwin helps us climb inside what Jesus is actually saying:

“Men are apt to have contrary conceits of Christ, but he tells them his disposition there, by preventing hard thoughts of him, to allure them unto him the more. We are apt to think that he, being so holy, is therefore of a severe and sour disposition against sinners, and not able to bear them. “No”, says he; “I am meek; gentleness is my nature and temper.” (Thomas Goodwin. The Heart of Christ).

We project onto Jesus our skewed instincts about how the world works. Human nature dictates that the wealthier a person, the more they tend to look down on the poor. The more beautiful a person, the more they are put off by the ugly. And without realising what we are doing, we quietly assume that one so high and exalted has corresponding difficulty drawing near to the despicable and unclean. Sure, Jesus comes close to us, we agree- but he holds his nose. This risen Christ, after all, is the one whom “God has highly exalted,” at whose name every knee will one day bow in submission (Philippians 2:9-11). This is the one whose eyes are like a “flame of fire” and whose voice is “like the roar of many waters” and who has “a sharp two-edged sword “coming out of his mouth and whose face is “like the sun shining in full strength” (Revelation 1:14-16). In other words this is one so unspeakably brilliant that his resplendence cannot adequately be captured with words, so ineffably magnificent that all language dies away before his splendour.

This is the one whose deepest heart is, more than anything else, gentle and lowly.

Goodwin is saying that this high and holy Christ does not cringe at reaching out and touching dirty sinners and numbed sufferers. Such embrace is precisely what he loves to do. He cannot bear to hold back. We naturally think of Jesus touching us the way a little boy reaches out to touch a slug for the first time- face screwed up, cautiously extending an arm, giving a yelp of disgust upon contact, and instantly withdrawing. We picture the risen Christ approaching us with “a severe and sour disposition,” as Goodwin says.

This is why we need a Bible. Our natural intuition can only give us a god like us. The god revealed in the Scriptures deconstructs our intuitive predilections and startles us with one whose infinitude of perfections is matched by his perfect gentleness.

It is who he is. It is his very heart. Jesus himself said so:

“Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

(From “Gentle and Lowly” Dane Ortlund. Chapter 1. Published by Crossway. 2020. ISBN: 978-1-4335-6613-4).

……………………………

Prayers

Father we praise you for your miracle of love by which you used the death of Jesus on the cross to set us free. The place of defeat has become the place of victory; in the humiliation of one man we are confronted by your glory; where life was lost we find eternal life. (Alan Gaunt).

O God, make me quicker to praise than to criticise.

Help me never to forget to thank people for anything that they do for me.

Make me always ready to speak a word of praise and of appreciation.

Grant that I may take no service for granted, and that I may allow no help to pass unnoticed.

Make me quick to notice when people are upset or depressed, and give me the ability to speak the word which will help and cheer them.

All through this week help me to think far less of myself and far more of others, and so to find my own happiness in making others happy.

This I ask for Jesus’ sake. Amen

(William Barclay)

Our Father in heaven: please forgive me for the wrongs I have done: for bad temper and angry words: for being greedy and wanting the best for myself; for making other people unhappy: forgive me heavenly Father (Dick Williams)

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9).

Prayer Diary for March

1.         During this month pray for the whole country, that there will be a sensitive response   
             to the Government’s leading.
2.         Our Minister, Rev. David Barnes, his Ministry over Easter.
3.         Our Church Secretary, Wendy Breese, and her sterling work.
4.         Dick Gibb as he retires from the Treasurership and wisdom in dealing with the

             Church finances in the future.
5.         The diaconate for spirit-filled wisdom.
6.         Our caretaker, Rosalyn, and all who care for our premises.
7.         St. Margaret’s Church; its’ Rector, Rev .Mark Standen.
8.         For teachers and children, especially if schools reopen.
9.         Judy Cook; her work in Thailand, and as she mourns the death of her mother.
10.       All who are mourning the death of loved ones.
11.       A strong, enthusiastic missionary involvement.
12.       Tim and Linda Hobson.
13        Safety and security in Angmering.
14.       Our musicians and the ABC Singers; thank the Lord for them.
15.       Spiritual and numerical growth in the church.
16.       Paul and Alison Guinness; their family as they plan to return to Burundi.
17.       Members and friends unwell or housebound.
18.       The Immanuel Church: Rev. Ben Redding leading.
19.       Those feeling lonely; to meet the Gracious Friend.
20.       Doctors, nurses and hospital staff; to know God’s strength.
21.       David and Lorna Sivyour; pondering the Dell Club future.
22.       Our Government; to have God’s wisdom at this time.
23.       Mary and Martin Barber and the work in Madagascar.
24.       The worldwide church and for all suffering persecution.
25.       The Torch Fellowship; that it will be able to resume soon.
26.       As, hopefully, restrictions ease; that there will not be a resurgence of COVID-19.
27.       Thank the Lord for lengthening days.
28.       PALM SUNDAY; May the Easter message go forth strongly.
29.       The church nationwide will proclaim the full Easter message.
30.       The Angmering churches to work together for the Gospel.
31.       For us all to consecrate ourselves to the Lord’s service this Easter.

Hymn

2 Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged;
take it to the Lord in prayer!
Can we find a friend so faithful
who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness;
take it to the Lord in prayer!

3 Are we weak and heavy laden,
cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Saviour, still our refuge--
take it to the Lord in prayer!
Do your friends despise, forsake you?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In his arms he'll take and shield you;
you will find a solace there.