Church:
Emu plain Anglican has really been pushing people to think mission, to think 10%, to think connect 09, after the great presidential address by Peter Jensen this past synod. If you have not read it, go and read it now.
Emu plain's Anglican has also been actively involved in telling people the Gospel, such as men's dinner event where men can invite their non-Christian friends along to hear a talk on success. They have been involved in teaching God's word and also involved in equipping people to serve.
Scripture has been going well, the kids thanked us for our lessons before the holidays, that was nice, and its amazing how much they remember from our lessons. I pray and trust God will convict them to know him.
Sunday school has been going well. It's amazing how much energy those kids have, and wow, they are amazing prayers. It’s been encouraging to see them having a heart to open God's word; they love to bring their bibles.
I've also been actively involved in the evening service. Serving in ways as prayer, bible reading, leading and i preached yesterday on John 11. I've included the sermon on the bottom of this post.
CBM (Campus Bible Ministries):
CBM has been going well. We have been quiet busy in the past 2 months with mission week and various other things. Mission week was great, we looked at the book of Ecclesiastes, Highlighting the two main ideas, Vanity and Eternity. We made crosses with those two words on them and placed them around uni. We wrote up on a big chalk board 4 chapters of Ecclesiastes. Most of all, almost everyone did walk up and we had a few good conversations with people. It was interesting to see student's views on vanity, eternity and life.
The other big thing we did was the atheist debate, which went okay. We create a website, with discussion boards and the debate downloadable here. It was a bit uncertain if the actual debate was a worth while thing to do, however it is encouraging that they continued coming to our next meeting which was a normal meeting and spent most of the afternoon talking to us. Please pray for that, as it seems like a great opportunity.
CBM has been training Christians up in our training hour looking at the Cross of Christ, Why did Jesus have to die? What actually happened at the Cross? Etc, and also the students have been trained up in apologetics. These following four weeks CBM has been encouraging student to write their own bible studies on Colossians, providing they have done the growth group course. We also have the ball coming up in the distant future as well as NTE.
Uni
Uni has been going okay. Submitted my thesis draft, got a paper published in IEEE, going to a Engineering conference to present the thesis paper. All the fun! My supervisor and parents have been pushing me to do post-grad, but I think I will decline the offer. My course work has been going okay, having put much effort into them, but seem to be doing fine.
Other Parts of My Life
Well, my exciting news! I've have a lovely girlfriend, who has a heart to grow in her knowledge of God and telling her friends about Jesus. She is a shinning light in my heart :) And i thank God that she knows Christ as Lord!
I also went to challenge conference a few weeks ago. It was a great encouragement to seek God's kingdom first. We looked at the theme of the kingdom throughout the bible, we looked at the Lord's prayers, which the kingdom should characterise our prayers, we looked at what a productive person in the Lord should be doing and we looked at the full time ministry option. It was also encouraging to have a few of my friends come along. We had great conversations over food times and night sessions. One encouragement was to encourage our local ministers, as Ministry is not an easy thing to do. So Challenge was great.
Please pray for my Quiet times and prayer life, as usual its a rollercoaster. I think i need to plan to have a reading plan. Please also pray for my witness and perserverance with my parents.
John 11 – True Life Sermon
We all have hopes and dreams and expectations in life.
We all have a view of what life should be like.
I remember when I was growing up; I always wanted to be a scientist, because that’s what I thought life was about, I thought life was about being successful, about doing something that people might be proud of.
And I remember doing just about anything, to make that dream come true.
For example, as a 12 year old, I remember trying to make some sort of new fertilizer using a coke bottle, different types of minerals and even went into the effort of using some of the neighbour’s flowers.
Now that example might be a little childish, however where do you put your hopes and dreams and expectations into, what do you see as true life?
Well to help to us to understand what true life is and in particularly what God tells us true life is, we are going to turn to John chapter 11.
And to give you an idea about what I am going to talk about, I’ll be covering four main points in my talk.
Firstly the prologue of the Lazarus story
Then the Two meeting Jesus has
Followed by the account of the miracle itself
And then finally what does Jesus offer.
So before we being looking at John 11, let’s begin by praying.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for making yourself know to us and showing us the way of salvation through faith in your son. We ask yow now to clear our minds of any distractions and to teach us through your word, so that we can be ready to serve you, for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Point 1 – Prologue 11:1-16
Verse 1 – ‘Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.’
Verse 3 - ‘So the sisters sent word to Jesus saying “Lord, the one you love is sick.”.
We see here that a great need is portrayed by the sisters. A family circle is threatened by the possibility of a death and a desperate request is made to Jesus.
If you ever had a serious illness in your own family or even in a close friend, in these situations you do tend to get desperate.
And you can see here people, who are friends with Jesus, in fact we are told specifically in verse 5, that Jesus loved them. It was a desperate request.
Now, when you send a request to a friend, what sort of reply would you expect to receive?
Well I suppose it would depend on the seriousness of that request.
If you needed to borrow your friend’s lawnmower, would you expect them to come right away? Well not really.
However if you lived on a farm and someone in your family couldn’t breathe properly, Say you had a friend who was a doctor and only lived 10 minutes away. It would be fair to think that the friend would come immediately to help, wouldn’t it.
Now Mary and Martha had this kind of hope, they hoped that Jesus would come quickly.
However, what does Jesus do?
Verse 6 – ‘When Jesus heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was’. He deliberately delayed going to their help.
Now you can imagine how puzzling this must have been for the sisters, I’m mean, they had been terribly worried and all they can do now is watch their brother deteriorate to the brink of death.
A long, devastating day goes by and then the next day Lazarus flat-lines. Is Jesus all of a sudden being selfish and unloving? If Jesus had the power to heal Lazarus, why doesn’t he reply instantly?
Now Lazarus’ death might have taken place before the messenger reached him, or perhaps Jesus deliberately waited for Lazarus illness to be unrecoverable so that he could perform his miracle.
However, regardless of the reason, we are reminded that Jesus is not moved by external forces; he does everything in God’s time and according to God’s will.
Jesus had divine foreknowledge and wisdom in the reason why he delayed his help, even though this may not fit our human expectation or view of suffering.
However we are told in verse 4 that this whole situation with Lazarus is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified.
Therefore verse 7, Jesus announces his decision to go into Judea again.
However, the disciples in verse 8 make it quiet plain to Jesus that the Jews would not let him get away again.
We saw in the previous chapter that the Jews ever tried to stone him. You can see why the disciples were concerned.
Now the disciples were quiet ignorant of the situation and John shows their ignorance. And we can see this firstly in their misunderstanding of what Jesus meant by sleep in verse 11.
Jesus was speaking of Lazarus’ death but the disciples did not understand, they though he meant that Lazarus was just sleeping.
In the New Testament, the death of Christians is often spoken as sleep.
Now death is horrible thing and just by looking at the world around us, we can see that people fear death.
But for Christians, the mention of death as sleep reveals our hope, that death is no longer a foe we should fear. We will see why this is the case later.
Secondly, Jesus tells his disciples plainly in verse 15 that – ‘For their sake, he is glad he was not there, so that they may believe’.
Now again Jesus had divine foreknowledge of what he was going to do, he was going to perform the seventh and most climactic sign in the gospel to reveal his glory.
His joy for the disciples is that they may believe in him.
Well, let see what happens when Jesus finally arrives at Lazarus tomb, we are told in verse 17, that already four days had past and Martha in verse 39, comments that the body would have an odour by now.
Now before we see Jesus actually acting out his great miracle, we see the two meetings.
Point 2 – The Two Meetings
These meetings happen when the two women, Mary and Martha come running to meet Jesus and these two meetings help us to understand who Jesus is, and they reveal him in a remarkable way.
So verse 20 – ‘When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died”.
How did Martha feel? Well she was upset, perhaps even disappointed at Jesus.
But Jesus respond, verse 23 –‘your brother will rise again’.
Was Jesus speaking about the general resurrection at the last day as Martha thought?
Well if Jesus was merely a prophet or rabbi, he would have agreed with Martha’s word.
However let’s see what Jesus says about himself.
Verse 25 – ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’
Jesus is more than a mere prophet, he is the Son sent by the father into the world.
Jesus began with ‘I am’, this statement being the same statement God revealed to Moses in the Exodus, he is claiming to be God, and therefore he is the creator and redeemer of your life, both your spiritual life and your physical life.
Martha responds to Jesus, verse 27 - “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”
What does Jesus reveal about himself to Martha? Well he reveals himself as the long-awaited deliverer, the One sent by God to accomplish his will perfectly,
He has also reveals his deity, his divine power, that he is the resurrection and the life, that he has the keys of life and death, the power to call the dead to life and that he is God.
This is what Jesus is showing us from his first meeting with Martha.
What about Mary, what happens when she meets Jesus?
Verse 31 – ‘When the Jews who had been with Mary in her house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”’.
We see that her response is similar to Martha’s response. Indeed both the women were upset. Jesus, seeing her weeping and also the Jews weeping, is deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.
Jesus sees the family’s grief; he understands the bitterness of death and is deeply moved by the wages of sin.
Jesus has come into the world to conquer the last enemy, the sting of death. And verse 35 - “Jesus wept”.
Jesus is indignant at sin, illness and death which are the results of our fallen world, yet the world that is at enmity with God is also the object of God’s love. And therefore it is not surprising that Jesus wept.
Well the Jews respond in verse 36 saying, ‘See how he loved him’, ‘could not he who opened the eyes of a blind man have kept this man from dying?’
Well the Jews just don’t get it, all they seem to see in Jesus’ tears, is a mark of love that he bore to Lazarus.
However what does Jesus reveal about himself to Mary and the Jews around her? Does he reveal his divine power as he had revealed to Martha?
Well it’s not so much a revelation of his divine power, but a revelation of his humanity. Jesus is God in flash, and if he is God, he must have the power to do something about the grave, but he is also fully man.
Point 3 – The Account of the Miracle (11:33-44)
So Jesus gets to the tomb, he tells them to take the stone away in verse 39, we see Martha commenting that there would be an odour by now as Lazarus is truly dead.
Jesus tells the sisters “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” Jesus then lifts up his eyes to his father and says “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.
I know that you always hear me, but I said this on the account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.”
Jesus is speaking to his father, showing the crowd around him, that he does nothing on his own accord, but does everything in accordance with his father, the one who sent him so that they may believe.
Verse 43, Jesus summoned the dead man. He cries out a loud voice, he addresses Lazarus directly by name and calls him out of the tomb. Lazarus is alive!
The only person who can speak to the dead and give them life is God. Jesus is the resurrection and the life; he is the life giver, the one who has power over the dead.
Point 4 – What Does Jesus Offer?
So what is true life? Where do you put your dreams and hopes and expectations into?
Is it success, or is it fame, or is it wealth, or is it simple just having a house, a car, being married and having kids?
Well the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes had experienced all his desires yet he tells us in Chapter 2 of Ecclesiastes that ‘I have become greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom has stayed with me.
I denied my self nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labour.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun’
The preacher had it all, yet he struggles because he fails to see what the point of it all was.
We can pursue all our pleasures like he did, yet we all share a common destiny, that we are all going to die one day.
Death is the great robber of life, as we saw in Lazarus family. It brings great grief in family members.
We need to take death seriously because death in the bible has to do with judgment; it has to do with us, facing the consequences of our rebellion against God.
Well if Jesus is the God man, the life giver, the one who has power over death, what does he offer to us?
Well verse 51 – ‘Jesus came to die for the Jewish nation and not only for the nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.’
Jesus had come to die to take upon himself the penalty of our sin so that he can gather Christians, that he can gather the church.
Jesus has conquered death in his own death and resurrection and unlike Lazarus, who ended up dieing again; Jesus will raise us up from the dead to live with him forever. This is why as Christian; death is no longer a foe we should fear.
Now Jesus wasn’t just the resurrected one, but he himself was the life of God, the resurrection and the life. And when he died for our sins, nothing could hold him down, he has been raised up in the glory of God, having paid for our sins, and he is alive now.
Do you believe that Jesus is going to raise you from the dead? Do you believe he is going to give you the resurrection life that he talked about, the true life, the life of God, the life of heaven, which is eternal life?
John also tells us in 1 John 5:11 – ‘God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his son. He who has the son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.’
This is where our hope as a Christian lies, to know that we have life beyond the grave, a life with God, where God will not abandon you to the grave because the grave will not have a final say in you.
Therefore do you live for Christ, Today? Do you believe in the one whom God has sent? Well let me close with Jesus’ words.
“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Well to next time, God Bless, Keeping Trusting That Jesus is Lord.
Laurence.
