What I realised I missed about meeting together on a Sunday & more.... -Midweek Message 23rd September 2020
Dear Friends,
I wanted to write about 2 things which came out of last
Sunday morning’s gathering, both as a result of a brief (masked) conversation
at the door.
Firstly, I realised (not for the first time but it struck me
forcibly again) how much I have missed meeting and speaking in person face to
face (or at least mask to mask) at a Sunday gathering. If you were there or you
saw it online, you’ll know we had been thinking about the wonder of forgiveness,
the amazing nature of God’s grace, as illustrated in Jesus encounter with the
sinful woman in Luke 7, who loved much because she knew she had been forgiven
much. In the wake of that, someone asked
me : When you have been a Christian for 40 plus years how do you keep alive
that sense of wonder? What a great question! – and one to which I’ll turn
in a moment. However, just the opportunity to talk further, to think further,
even if only for a few moments, with someone else was something I had been
missing. It reminded me why the writer of
the letter to the Hebrews exhorts his fellow Christians: Let us not give up meeting together, as some
are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more
as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10.25). It is that in-person, mutual encouragement of
one another, that iron sharpening iron, which
we all need and which is given by God as one of the primary reasons for his calling
his people to gather together.
I am both
grateful and grieved reflecting on that – grateful that some of us have had the
chance to meet again in the building but grieved that because of the ongoing
restrictions so many of us are denied the opportunity. Let’s cry to God that He
would open up the way for more of us to gather while at the same time continue
to look for creative ways in encouraging one another while we remain apart.
Secondly,
then, to the question – how do you keep alive the sense of wonder over God’s
forgiveness of us in Christ his grace towards us in Christ – perhaps especially
if you have been on the Christian path for a long time? It’s an important question because it is easy to sing the words, for example, of Amazing
grace and yet not be amazed, simply take Jesus and his gospel for granted. So perhaps you find yourself questioning yourself
in the manner William Cowper once did in his hymn O for a closer walk with
God
Where is the blessedness I knew
when first I saw the Lord?
Where
is that soul-refreshing view
of Jesus and his Word?
Let me
suggest one or two things:
1) for
those who can remember life before coming to faith in Christ it is a good to deliberately
recall the difference that He has made and give thanks. The great evangelist
George Whitfield used to return regularly to the exact location in Oxford where
he first came to faith saying of it: ‘I
know the place: it may be superstitious, perhaps, but whenever I go to Oxford,
I cannot help running to that place where Jesus Christ first revealed himself
to me, and gave me the new birth.’
John Newton of course wrote Amazing
grace as a means of expressing his gratitude to God for his conversion. Newton
is also helpful when we are conscious that we haven’t made the progress we
think we should have in the Christian life when he said of himself: “I
am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to
be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the
grace of God I am what I am”
2) for those who can’t remember life without Christ it is
good to ponder passages which describe all humanity (ourselves included) by
nature – for example Ephesians
2:1-3 As for you, you were dead in your
transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways
of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now
at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time,
gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and
thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. No matter how
early in life we were brought to faith in Jesus, it was in that basic condition
which Paul describes there that God found us and it required the same grace to raise
us to new life in Christ. We all in that sense have a very real before-and-after
story.
In that regard it is worth also pondering that
little parable Jesus told to Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7 of the two men who were
in debt by different amounts but yet shared the same essential condition Luke
7:42 Neither of them had the
money to pay him back. They were both totally at the mercy of the one to
whom they owed the money. When he
cancelled the debts of both, they both received such mercy. They both could
sing ‘A debtor to mercy alone’. That’s true of all of us but we can
forget it
3) As well
as looking back in time, it is good, though sobering and not very popular, to
travel forward in our minds to the end and the day of judgement. Read some of
the warning parables Jesus tells (e.g. of the wise and foolish virgins; the
talents and the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25) in which he speaks of the
separation that will take place among humanity that day, of the fearful reality
of hell. To realise that all that stands between myself and such a reality is
the grace of God in Christ is surely a prompt for praise. On that day, for every Christian believer there
will be no lack of gratitude for and wonder at what Jesus has done for them.
4) There’s
a lot more that could be said but maybe I can add one more: in your own reading
of the Bible look for examples of God’s grace to his people in Jesus. I saw one
the other day that I had never noticed before. It was in the words of
Jesus recorded in his resurrection appearance to the women in Matthew 28 when
he says to them Matthew 28:10 "Do
not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see
me." He calls his disciples his
brothers. He owns them as family. Why is that so amazing? Because the last time he had seen them just
before and during his trial, they were all disowning and denying him! That’s
grace! That’s the wonder of the forgiveness that he purchased for them on the
cross and that he extends and offers to all who will come to him and trust their lives to him
Yours in
Him by such amazing grace,
David
posted by David Scott at
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
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