Listen to our Liberty Podcast “Rejection”
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Big Jesus wins award for the ‘Best Community Entry’ in the parade.
We had a unique perspective on Jesus, His fame and renown. If the crowds were silenced even the stones would have cried out to Him.
This must be what it was like for Jesus to enter Jerusalem, re-enacted for the benefit of his LGBT people…What does this say for us and for Him?
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Mickey’s Poem
You took it all for me, everything.
Enveloping my being, illuminating.
Igniting my soul
Making me whole
We’re cleansed by your blood,
sanctified by your love,
refined by your holy fire.
You, Lord, our Lamb
spotless, no fault,
like pepper and salt.
You find no blemish,
No fault in us.
You are our flavour,
in you we have favour.
Our perfection in the Son
Our race has been won
Heb 10:10,14
Extracts from Jim’s Preach ‘The Precious Promise’
(God said) “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
“No more shall every man teach his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, ’Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. I will forgive their sins completely, and I will remember their sins no more.”
Jeremiah 31:31–34
The Old Covenant was an agreement between the people of Israel and God… and the terms of the agreement are summed up into a couple of verses in Exodus
Ex 19:5 if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Ex 24:7 and the people said, ‘All that the LORD has said will we do, and be obedient.’
And so The Old Covenant gave birth to the Jewish religion. Like all religions it was a system that promoted complex methods of worship and rules governing behaviour
It would only work to keep the people in harmony with God if the people carried out the agreement to the letter. But the people couldn’t do it. Humanity always breaks the rules, its part of our human nature.
Religious systems (systems that give a code of behaviour to make you worthy of God) never bring harmony, they bring disagreement and disharmony.
There are always disagreements about what the rules really mean and who is keeping the rules and who isn’t. The rules attempt to make you worthy of God but with a religious system you guarantee two things: failure and hypocrisy.
Failure because no one can keep rules perfectly. Hypocrisy because when you can’t keep the rules you have to pretend to save face.
Paul wrote in Romans 8:3: ‘What the Old Covenant could not do, because human nature was weak, God did Himself. He condemned the failures of humanity with its sinful human nature by sending his own Son, who came with a human nature… to do away with once and for all… all sin.’
Paul was saying that the Old Covenant, the Jewish Religious law was a method of dealing with sin but it was only a temporary measure. Because the people constantly failed to keep their end of the deal, God came up with a new plan that didn’t rely upon the people.
God promised a New Covenant that didn’t depend upon the people. It only depended on God and it guaranteed no failure, no need for the hypocrisy of covering up failure.
This was to be a promissory covenant. It was a promise made by God to those who trusted in what God said. They would put their trust totally in God to fulfil it.
In the scripture reading God said five times ‘I will’. (5 the number of grace/undeserved favour). There was no ‘thou shalt’ or ‘shalt not’, no do’s or don’t do. Just God saying I will.
The last two ‘I will’s’ are ‘I will forgive your sins and I will not remember your sins’. To paraphrase; not only will I forgive you your sins completely, I will also totally erase them from my memory banks.
The Old Covenant, the Jewish religion, could only cover sins whereas this act of grace promised to eradicate sins. All sins, past, present, future. The problem Paul had with the Christian Jews in Rome was getting them to trust in what God said and give up focusing on their do’s and don’ts.
It didn’t feel right to them to simply believe in a promise. They felt sure they had to do something.
Paul wrote to the Jewish believers in Romans 4:14 ‘if those who live by the Jewish religion and its laws are correct… faith has no value and what God said in His promise is made worthless.’ Because where there is no law, hence no rules, there is no sin …you cannot break what does not exist. So the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and so guaranteed by what God said’.
The new covenant promise dealt with sin completely. There were no rules to break. In Ro 3:27 Paul called this new covenant promise ‘the law of faith’. The law of faith works according to an order determined by God. The 3 persons of the Trinity are orderly, they work together in trust and harmony.
To participate in God’s nature (2 Pet 1:4) we too need to trust because it is the way the Trinity works in harmony. It is part of the nature of God. And God wants harmony between His people and with His people.
Creation started from nothing except what God said. The new creation starts from nothing except what God said. All the Trinity participated in the first creation, all participate in the new creation.
And so in the law of faith God’s people had to participate, not by natural human effort but by a supernatural intimate relationship with Him, brought about by faith in what God said.
As Gentile Christians we also have a promise based upon God’s faithfulness. It is so contrary to mainstream Christian religion we fail to believe it. The proof of failure is the disagreement and disharmony among Christians about what we should do and who is worthy and who is not.
Christianity built upon reliance on God’s promises brings us into a harmony based on knowing how much we all depend on Him.
When will we realise that we cannot participate in the divine nature by human effort? We can only participate by trusting in the absolute reliability of His greatest promise, Jesus.
Full Notes in Preaching
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