24 November 2019

A Re-Focus: Trinity Church at Craigends Lane

Ephesians 1

As you know, we’re getting closer to moving into our new home base and so to help us all think about it properly, for the next three Sundays our sermons will be focussing (or re-focussing) on who we are, what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it.

As we’ve been talking about the home base, we’ve tried to make clear that it won’t be everything we might possibly want.  There will need to be some compromises and perhaps some experimentation.

There are however some things we won’t be experimenting on and today I want to mention some of those things.

Next week will be, what things can we do differently?

Then the following week will be, how can we do all this?  What helps or promises has God given us to enable us to be like what we should be like?

For today, it’s a re-focus on some of the things we pray will remain at the heart of Trinity Church.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, as a result of moving into the new home base, we all committed in a fresh way to the things that God wants to be at the heart of every church.

What are those things?

More than what we can could possibly mention in one sermon but I want to mention some.

And the first is:

1.God

What we want to be on about is God.

Now, you might say, “Well duh.  Come on Warwick, a church, on about God.  Thanks for stating the obvious.  Isn’t that just a given?”

I’d like to say it is something you can assume about any church, that what they’re going to be on about, first and foremost, is God, but sadly you can’t.  Especially if you ask the question, which God?  What sort of God?

From the beginning, Trinity Church has been committed to what we might call Reformed doctrine. Now I don’t know what you think when you hear the word “doctrine”.

Some people don’t like it, for various reasons:

“Jesus unites, but doctrine divides.”

“I don’t do doctrine, I just have the Bible.”

“Yawn…, boring.”

Well that’s a bad understanding of doctrine.

It’s not enough to say, “Well I just believe the Bible.”

To say “I believe the Bible” is good – so you should believe the Bible, but it begs a question doesn’t it?  The next question is, well what do you believe the Bible says?

The Jehovah’s Witnesses says they believe the Bible.  The Mormon says they believe the Bible.  The Roman Catholics say they believe the Bible.

Then it gets particularly pointed when you ask, what do you believe the Bible says about who Jesus is?

What do we believe and preach at Trinity?

A shorthand way of saying what we believe is Reformed Theology

Reformed doctrine is just a way of saying, “This is who we believe the Bible says God is.  This is what we believe the Bible says.”

Reformed theology can be summed up in a number of different ways.  You might think of the five points of Calvinism, you might think of the five solas.

But the most succinct summary (and incidentally the most convenient for today) is:

God alone is big.

We’ve said it before, and we’re saying it again now, because I hope we’ll be saying it again and again for many years – God alone is big.

Get that wrong and nothing else can be right.  Get that right, suddenly it makes it a whole lot easier to fit everything else together.

Let me ask two questions to help us think about this:

Q1. Who’s running the show?

We’ve read from Ephesians 1 and there are a number of verses we could pick up but just look at one with me for now.

1:11, In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who…

Him who … what?

Paul’s about to tell us something about what God’s like.  Who is this God of the Bible?

He is the one who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

He is sovereign over all things.

Now, what does it mean by all things?  Everything.  It’s worth being a bit more specific than that from time to time.

He is sovereign over Satan and all demons, over all angels – good and evil; sovereign over the natural universe, natural objects and laws and forces: stars, galaxies, planets, meteorites; sovereign over all weather systems: winds, rains, lightning, thunder, cyclones, hurricanes, monsoons, typhoons; sovereign over all their effects: tidal waves, floods, fires; sovereign over all molecular and atomic reality: atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons, undiscovered subatomic particles, quantum physics, genetic structures, DNA, chromosomes;

sovereign over all plants and animals great and small: whales and mountain ashes, giant squid and giant oaks, all fish, all wild beasts, all invisible animals and plants: bacteria, viruses, parasites, germs;

sovereign over all the parts and functions of the human body: every beat of the heart, every breath of the diaphragm, every cancerous cell, every electrical jump across a million synapses in our brains;

sovereign over all nations and governments and ruling bodies: senates and legislatures and presidents and prime-ministers and premiers, over judges and juries and courts;

sovereign over all armies and weapons and bombs and terrorists and peace-fires and not-so-peace-fires;

sovereign overall industry and business and finance and currency;

sovereign over all entertainment and amusement and leisure and media;

sovereign over all education and research and science and discovery;

sovereign over all crime and violence;

sovereign over all families and neighbourhoods;

and sovereign over the church, and over every soul and every moment of every life that has been or ever will be lived.

There is nothing in heaven or on earth over which Jesus does not have both the right and the power do with as he pleases.

The emphasis in this passage is God’s sovereignty in salvation.

It’s God who chooses, it’s God who adopts.  It’s Jesus who redeems, it’s Jesus who forgives.  It’s the Holy Spirit who seals, it’s the Holy Spirit who guarantees.  It’s God in Trinity from beginning to end and everything in between.

Q1. Who’s running the show?  God is.

Q2. What’s the end goal?

What’s the purpose of all of this?  Great, so God’s sovereign, but what’s his end goal?  Does he have an end goal?  Is it all just random?

If we were to read through Ephesians 1 and ask the question, what is God’s purpose in choosing, adopting, redeeming, forgiving, what is God’s ultimate purpose for all this?  Well the answer could hardly be clearer.

Three times Paul give us the ultimate reason.  God has acted this way, v6, to the praise of his glorious grace.  V12, so that we might be to the praise of his glory.  V14, to the praise of his glory.

Paul could hardly be clearer.  The ultimate purpose is not for us.

The fundamental reason why God does what he does is for his own glory, and it’s a glory that he will not share with anybody else.

The story of the Bible is: God is big, God is big, God is big.  Jesus is big, Jesus is big, Jesus is big.

And if that’s God’s story, then we’d be really silly not to make it our story.

It’s not going to be easy

1. We’re spring loaded to think about us

Our default nature is to think about our needs, our preferences.

Ever since Adam and Eve tried to bring God down and raise themselves up.

The temptation was, “You’ll be like God.”  “Mmm, that sounds alright.”

Our parents fell for it, and in them we have all fallen for it ever since.  It’s now part of our nature.

Ever since then we’ve been trying desperately to convince ourselves (with technological advances or management skills or athletic prowess or academic achievements or sexual exploits or countercultural hairstyles) that the image in the mirror really is glorious and satisfying.

1. We live in a culture that repeatedly tells us in various ways that there actually is someone else in this world who is big – and that’s me.

Most decent social commentators will say that we live in a therapy culture.  There’s on overarching emphasis of feeling good about oneself, and it’s a distinctive feature of our contemporary Western world, where a sense of your own well-being or self-esteem is everything.

So the culture’s focus is on self, maybe we should just embrace it and go with it and fit our church around that.

1. We live in a culture of small-God churches and small-God beliefs

So you often hear things like:

• I just like to think of God as… (insert own opinion)
• I stopped going to that church because I wasn’t get much out of it
• Doesn’t Jesus just want me to be happy?

Many sermons are on how great Jesus thinks we are.

It’s not going to be easy because of what’s out there, and because of what’s in here.

It will be what’s best because we’re made to delight, not our greatness, but in the greatness of Jesus.

Hence the need for re-focus, and re-re-focus.

How do you know if that’s what you’re committed to a God who alone is big?

If we’re committed to that, then there’ll be some other things that follow, that we’ll also be committed to:

1.Listening to God’s voice

 “Of course I love you,” the husband said to his wife as he was flicking through the channels on the TV.

“But you never listen to what I say…”

“Sorry, what’s that?”

If we’re committed to those we say we love, then, it goes without saying, we’ll listen to what they say.

If we’re committed to praising the glory of Jesus, then we’ll love listening to what he says.

What would you say is the most important element in our church service?

The most important element is reading the word of God.

The second, and closely following that, is hearing the word of God proclaimed.  God means for preaching to be central in local churches.

We exist to know God and to display what He is like.

We can know Him ONLY BECAUSE He reveals Himself to us.

He reveals Himself through His Word.

We sit and hear the word of God proclaimed.

We don’t gather and try and work out for ourselves what God’s like.  We don’t just have a time of sharing.

We need someone week in and week out to stand up and say, “This is what God has revealed about himself.”

True preaching is not a re-telling of the preacher’s own personal opinions or experiences or stories.

Instead it is a proclamation of the objective truths found here.

It’s not going to be easy.

Isn’t preaching a bit old-fashioned and out-of-date?

Why don’t we do something else, interactive, exciting?

Yawn… boring.

It’s not going to be easy when we think about, what sort of preaching will we be satisfied with?

Do we just want preachers who won’t ruffle any feathers?  Or do we want preachers who preach the whole council of God?

It is because of what’s out there and what’s in here, the temptation will be to either sideline preaching, or water things down to make them more palatable.  To be less offensive or to sound nicer to more, we’ll just not say this, change the way we say that.

The thinking will go, in order to reach more people (a commendable goal), we’ll dilute the message, change the message (not a commendable goal).

Like church cordial, you can water it down to make it go further, sure.  But, as the proverbial saying goes, in the end it ain’t worth drinkin’.

When we’ve got a God who’s as big as this, why wouldn’t we want to hear about him?

Not only is Jesus the biggest person in the universe, he’s also the most interesting.  We’ll never get bored with Jesus.  And if we do, the problem’s with us, not with him.

It won’t be easy, but it will be what’s best.

2.Loving the local church

Paul says at the end of Ephesians 3, to God be glory (where?) in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations.  The local church is the primary means through which Jesus’ glory is displayed on earth. 

V22,23.  Where do we go to see the fullness of Jesus?  In the church.

And so to be on about magnifying Jesus, means asking what’s best for the church.

Carson: Often we evaluate alternatives by thinking through what seems best for me.  How often do we raise, as first principles, what is best for the local church?

When faced with, say, a job offer that would take you to another town, or a decision about family commitments, or how I’ll spend time with friends, or who should I marry, or how big the house should be, or should I make that purchase, … how quickly do you employ Paul’s first principle here: What would be best for the church?  What would be best for my brothers and sisters in Christ that make up the local church where I belong?

God created this world for the praise of his glory; that through Jesus he would be seen to be great.  The primary means through which Jesus’ glory is displayed is the local church.

It’s not going to be easy

To be concerned with what’s best for the church takes an investment; an investment of time, investment in relationships.

Not easy because the church is full of awkward people, people like you really.  Look around.  Weak, full of failings, fragile in so many ways.

Not easy to be committed to such things.

When we think about its position, central in the sovereign plans of God to glorify his Son, then that changes everything.

Sure it might look weak, but great position, in the sovereign plans of God in glorifying his Son.

Why wouldn’t we be committed to it?

If we’re committed to saying God alone is big, then we’ll be committed to listening to his word, loving his church, and thirdly…

3.Living as family

Our relationships with each other, speak volumes about who we think Jesus is.

It’s the way God made all of us to be.  He made us to hang together.  Not to be hermits living in our caves called our homes, but to be living in communities.  In our towns, streets and sporting clubs and work places and wherever.

 God especially means it to show best in churches.  We aren’t here as a bunch of individuals to do our own thing.  Belonging to Jesus is about being in relationship with him and with his children.

Which is why the Bible speaks so much about it.  Dozens and dozens of times the NT uses the phrase one another.

• Greet one another
• Encourage one another
• Show hospitality to one another without grumbling
• Love one another with brotherly affection
• Outdo one another in showing honour
• Be kind to one another
• Forgive one another…

Why has God made it to be like this?

He’s made it to be like this because God himself is community – Father, Son, Spirit – and he means us, local churches, to be communities, to display and declare who he is.  Other-person-centred, loving communities.

It’s one of the evidences that they’ve been saved.  1:15.

Now that’s not going to be easy, because I’d rather be loved than do the loving.

I’d rather think about my rights and my reputation than I would yours.

Again, is it God is big, plus you’re pretty big yourself, you deserve to be acknowledged for what you’ve done, not treated us a light weight, served by others, given some of the praise?  Or is it God alone is big?

You can get hung up on what’s fair for you and have a small Jesus.  But you can’t be always concerned about what you deserve and have a Jesus worth magnifying.

A life that’s concerned for magnifying Jesus won’t be hung up on my rights or my reputation.  In a culture where it’s largely about what I have or what I deserve, that sort of life will show the value of Jesus even more.

Boice: “Nothing is so needed in our churches, humanly speaking, as a new generation of people who are really willing to be nothing in order that Jesus Christ might be everything.”

It’s not going to be easy, but…

It’s going to be what’s best

We’re made to delight in greatness.  That’s how God’s made us.  To see something great and marvel at it.

During the award ceremony, after Roger Federer won the Australian Open final in front of a packed Rod Laver arena, one of the commentators asked, “Why hasn’t anybody left yet?”  And the camera panned and showed all the seats were still full.

The game was over, it was late at night.  Why weren’t people going home?

Then Jim Courier, whose commentary I’ve grown to enjoy, answered, “People are soaking up being in the presence of greatness.”

I think he was right.  Why would you want to go home when record 20^th grand slam winning all round good guy Roger Federer was still there?

We’re made to delight in greatness.

Why would you want a church whose focus was on you?  Why would you want to listen to preaching which focussed on my needs or told me how good I was or what I need to do to be my best?

We’re made to delight in greatness, and Jesus is the greatest being in the universe.  Why would we want to sell ourselves short by having our focus on anything other than him?  Why would you want to give second preference to the very means he has established to display that glory?

Now’s a great time to re-focus and re-commit.

And in doing so we hope that it might throw more fuel on the fire of our passion for the Lord Jesus and seeing his name honoured.

Our agenda is very simple.  It’s not going to be easy, as I said but it’s not complicated.

Our agenda is, how can we better know and make known the greatness of God, the supremacy of Jesus.

By God’s grace our focus will not be on our needs and our preferences and what makes me feel good.  It will be on knowing and making known the greatness and goodness of Jesus and then will the longings of our hearts begin to be satisfied.

By your grace give us what we need so that as a result of moving into the new home base, we all commit in a fresh way to the things that you want to be at the heart of every church, that we might know and make known the glory of Jesus more in the future than we have in the past.