Patterned after Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, it’s long been seen as a time of ‘preparation’ – preparation for a lifetime of ministry in the service of Jesus.

It proved rather appropriate, therefore, that at today’s lunchtime service we were reflecting again on the ‘call’ of the Lord to Samuel. Here was the start of one young man’s preparation for a lifetime of service.

The thing in brief goes like this. The lad gets woken through the night, is unclear to start with that it’s the Lord who is speaking to him, but when that becomes clear, he’s all ears. The Lord gives the boy a message: it’s clear, specific, and not exactly good news for Eli the priest, the man whom it plainly concerns.

Eli the priest has heard this message before, so it’s not any ‘breaking news’ that Samuel’s being given by God. But the key thing in the episode is what Samuel will do with this ‘word’. Will he simply say nothing at all? Will he water it down and make it a little less hard on the priest? Or will he bravely tell it as it is, and pass on in its entirety the message God has given him?

How the young boy will respond determines what happens next. It’s a kind of Jesus-in-the-wilderness sort of moment in young Samuel’s life: a ‘testing’ time.

It’s a gentle introduction to the calling of a prophet. ‘Gentle’ because he’s only to pass this message on to one man in a very private place, and because it’s a message this one man has heard, as I said, before.

And by proving himself faithful in this small task, the Lord then entrusts him with more. The Lord appeared again - again and again – thereafter. He’s found a young man he can trust. And so the boy’s faithfulness in this first small challenge opens the way for a much more far-reaching ministry in days and years to come.

That’s the basic principle. Be faithful in the small things, and the Lord will gladly give you greater and growing responsibility.

Our problem is often, in hearing God’s word and in sensing some ‘prompt’ from the Spirit of God, that we say to ourselves it’s no big deal – and thus we don’t follow through on the word the Lord’s spoken to us.

And yes, at one level it often is ‘no big deal’: it’s not some life-changing, earth-shattering step that we’re called on to take. It’s maybe nothing more than writing someone a letter, or giving someone a call, or saying to someone you’re sorry.

No big deal. But it is nonetheless the ‘deal’. And if we can’t be trusted to follow this through when the stakes are small and low – well, we’ve only ourselves to blame if we find ourselves plodding for ever through the ‘shallows’ of the Christian life.

So – first day of ‘Lent’ and all that. Is there something the Lord has been speaking to you about? Something he’s called you to do? Some small thing that he’s laid on your heart and you’ve yet to get round to doing?

Getting back in the way of reading your Bible each day? Getting down on your knees, as it were, and engaging in regular prayer? Making up with a friend with whom you’ve not been in touch for a while?

Make a point, then, today of doing whatever it is. Be faithful in following through on this one small thing and be sure the Lord will then build on that and start expanding the ministry you exercise.

1 Samuel 3

¹The boy Samuel ministered before the LORD under Eli. In those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions. ²One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. ³The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was.

⁴Then the LORD called Samuel. Samuel answered, Here I am. ⁵And he ran to Eli and said, Here I am; you called me. But Eli said, I did not call; go back and lie down. So he went and lay down.

⁶Again the LORD called, Samuel! And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am; you called me. My son, Eli said, I did not call; go back and lie down.

⁷Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.

⁸The LORD called Samuel a third time, and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am; you called me. Then Eli realised that the LORD was calling the boy. ⁹So Eli told Samuel, Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’ So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

¹⁰The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, Samuel! Samuel! Then Samuel said, Speak, for your servant is listening. ¹¹And the LORD said to Samuel: See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. ¹²At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family— from beginning to end. ¹³For I told him that I would judge his family for ever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them. ¹⁴Therefore, I swore to the house of Eli, ‘The guilt of Eli’s house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering.’

¹⁵Samuel lay down until morning and then opened the doors of the house of the LORD. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision, ¹⁶but Eli called him and said, Samuel, my son. Samuel answered, Here I am. ¹⁷What was it he said to you? Eli asked. Do not hide it from me. May God deal with you, be it ever so severely, if you hide from me anything he told you.

¹⁸So Samuel told him everything, hiding nothing from him. Then Eli said, He is the LORD; let him do what is good in his eyes.

¹⁹The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground. ²⁰And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognised that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the LORD. ²¹The LORD continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word.

1 Samuel 4

¹ And Samuel’s word came to all Israel.

Being faithful with the one small word which the Lord had spoken to him ushered this young boy into a lifetime of nation-changing ministry.

May we have the courage and strength to be just as faithful ourselves with all that the Lord has been saying to us in these days.

Yes, I know there are all sorts of good resources already out there and being widely, and fruitfully, used. Top of the pile, of course, are Alpha (which we’ve used here with a degree of regularity), and Christianity Explored (which we haven’t used – at least not yet).

And down the years we’ve also used here our own Coming Alive! (which is now actually out of print – if you want spare copies, we have a monopoly on them and store them all in the loft here at our Halls!).

Gnawing away in the back of my mind for years has been the thought that all of these courses demand too much.

They’re all good courses and all of them broadly cover the same basic ground. And all of them fall into 10 parts: and it’s that which for a variety of reasons began, a long while back, to trouble me.

What does it say to your average ‘enquirer’ when the course that you offer is 10 sessions long? My guess is it says that the whole Christian thing is really pretty complicated. If it takes 10 whole sessions to put you in the picture then it surely can’t be as simple as some folk make out!

Does it really take that long to introduce people to Jesus? Is the process of entering the Kingdom of God deliberately tough and prolonged – a kind of bureacuratic endurance test to discourage illegal immigrants?

Are we trying to put people off? Are we trying to keep people out?

Well, of course we’re not. It’s just that sometimes, I fear, it must look or feel that way.

So, as I say, I’ve been working now for a while, on a slightly different approach.

I don’t want to waste any time at all in re-inventing the wheel. So I’m happy to draw on all of the spiritual, ‘wheel-making technology’ that’s been developed over the years by both Alpha and Christianity Explored.

Alpha, for instance, restored to the church the significance of the meal as an ideal learning environment. Relaxed, informal, welcoming, warm and inclusive.

Then again, one of the strengths of Christianity Explored has been its use of a book of the Bible (Mark’s gospel) as the basis for the course. It encourages the reading of the Bible, and doesn’t simply cite convenient texts to prove a point: it says, go check the thing out for yourself.

Coming Alive! was designed to be adaptable: capable of forming the content of an introductory course, but equally able to be used on a one-to-one basis, as and when the need and opportunities arose. To make a person wait for as much, perhaps, as another six months to get started on a course, when they’re ready and raring to go right now, seems rather like missing a trick.

What I’ve wondered, therefore, for quite some while is whether it’s maybe not possible to combine the best of these slightly different approaches, and condense the whole thing into a much more attractive and realistic size.

A short introductory booklet, comprising 5 parts rather than 10.

Tied in completely with the gospel of Luke (I know it’s the longest, where Mark is the shortest, of the four accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus – but I’ve got good reasons for thinking in terms of Luke!).

And flexible enough to be used in a whole variety of different ways – from a 5-part course, through one-to-one instruction, to an ‘on-your-own’ exploring of what the whole thing’s all about.

The resource is still embryonic. Conceived, but not yet birthed: but very definitely now ‘growing in the womb’. I work away at this project whenever I get the chance.

Because I’ve long since lost count of the number of times I’d have loved to have had such a thing as this to hand, to have been able to say to a person enquiring -

‘Here, take this: and work your way through it yourself. It isn’t long, you can go at a pace that you’re comfortable with; and from time to time we’ll run, for all who might wish it, a five week course that’ll cover the ground – or we’ll put you in touch with someone who’ll be more than glad to work through the booklet with you.’

10 weeks sounds a bit more like an initiation course than a simple introduction. It’s a taste of what it’s all about that people are surely looking for, not a full-blown thesis.

The gospel isn’t complicated! Paul in his preaching boiled the message down to two short words – Jesus and the resurrection. A person and an event.

Sure, you could write books about either and both (countless people have down the centuries). But if the message can be stated in two short words, it surely doesn’t need 10 substantial sessions to be giving enquiring people a simple introduction to it all!

Or have we actually been trying to do two rather different things by one and the same means? That’s to say, providing an introduction for enquirers; and giving new Christians a grounding.

Does it make him better able to get through to God? [Because if it does you'd better get him to be praying on your behalf]

Does it make him better able to speak to others from God? [Because if it does you'd better get him to come and have words with all of your unbelieving friends]

Is there still, in other words, a ‘priestly caste’?

Or, putting the question a different way, is there a reason for calling a minister names?

Like ‘Reverend’ (someone you should really revere – that’s what the word originally means, it’s the gerundive in Latin, if that means anything to you at all: if it doesn’t, think Ali G and an ecclesiastical version of his ‘respect, man’).

Or even the ‘Very Reverend’ (someone you should definitely go out of your way to revere and honour and ‘pedestal-ise’ – a rung or two down the reverence ladder from the ‘canonising’ step of so-called saint-hood).

Or the rather more homely ‘Father’ -  (someone whose authority you must obey).

It smacks a bit of the army. And I don’t mean the Sally Ann.

It can all get very confusing.

I recall going out to the shops one Saturday morning with one of my sons, little more than a toddler, I guess, at the time.

Within half an hour I’d been addressed as ‘Son’ (by a woman whom my own boy could clearly see was neither of his two grandmothers); ‘Father’ (by a parishioner who looked way too old to be a previously undisclosed brother to my increasingly troubled son); and then finally ‘Love’ (by a woman who, my son plainly thought, had no right at all to be filling his mother’s place).

The occupational hazards of a cleric out on civvie street.

But the names betray a very definite hierarchy. Fathers, canons, monsigneurs, bishops, all the way up to the Pope. Each one a rung further up the ladder from the one below: and presumably that bit closer to God.

Which is why, I suppose, in Presbyterian circles, ‘only the minister will do’: and why folk will sometimes complain so very loudly when ‘the minister’ hasn’t called.

No matter that any number of others have been at the door. No matter that countless other folk are offering up their prayers.

It’s a matter of personal pride for any Presbyterian worth his salt that he disavows the language of ‘the priest’. But the ‘priest mentality’ still persists in a hundred different ways.

Dress him differently. Ad-dress him differently. House him differently. Seat him differently in church.

A caste apart. The ‘priestly caste’.

You thought that maybe good old Martin Luther had long since nailed that distortion of the truth. As in when he posted his 95 theses onto the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg.

[He'd have been had up for vandalism today, I suppose, and made to pay a hefty fine. But  there was a pretty hefty price to pay back then as well.]

Here, for instance, is his 36th thesis -

36. Any Christian whatsoever, who is truly repentant, enjoys plenary remission from penalty and guilt, and this is given him without letters of indulgence.

Which, being translated, means you don’t need a member of some priestly caste to tell you you’re forgiven. And his next thesis was along similar lines -

37. Any true Christian whatsoever, living or dead, participates in all the benefits of Christ and the Church; and this participation is granted to him by God without letters of indulgence.

Jesus is our priest. Period.

You don’t need anyone else. You don’t need anyone else to serve as a sort of ‘go-between’ between you and the Lord. Jesus gives you the access. Jesus gives us that immediacy in relationship with God.

What does immediacy mean, after all, if not that there’s now no need for any other ‘middle-man’, to ‘mediate’ on our behalf?

So the ‘priestly caste’ is no more than just an historical artifact. It’s served its purpose and has now been made redundant by the priesthood of Jesus himself.

There’s one priest (Jesus). Or viewed in another way, because we’re now in relationship with him, all Christians are priests. We all now have that immediacy of access to God, through relationship with him.

Which is why we all get to be called a ‘holy priesthood’ by the likes of the big fisherman, Peter (1 Peter.2.5).

All this makes a difference when it comes to our learning from Malachi this coming Sunday morning. Read the passage, and be asking yourself the question – Does it apply to those who are our ministers? Or does it apply to us all?

Malachi 2

¹And now this admonition is for you, O priests.

² If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honour my name, says the LORD Almighty, I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not set your heart to honour me. ³ Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will spread on your faces the offal from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it. ⁴ And you will know that I have sent you this admonition so that my covenant with Levi may continue, says the LORD Almighty.

⁵ My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. ⁶ True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.

⁷ For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction— because he is the messenger of the LORD Almighty. ⁸ But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi, says the LORD Almighty. ⁹ So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.

So here’s the question again.

Does it just apply to those who are our ministers? Or does it apply to us all?

How you answer that question may well reveal the extent to which you think in terms of a ‘priestly caste’.

But it’s also the title I’ve given to a series of three sermons, preached in the latter part of January, explaining the stance which Christians are called to take on matters of sexual morality.

You can view and download the booklet with the three sermons here.

And I find I’m in good company, of course. It was what the apostle Paul was always praying as well. That the Lord would open the eyes of his hearers, that the Lord would enable the recipients of his letters to see.

What we see changes everything. Eyes get opened all over the place, and lives are changed for ever.

I recall a man, back in my Cumbernaul days, whose eyes the Lord opened at the top of a ladder as he went about his window-cleaning work. He’d been struggling for months with what his pastor had been teaching and then all of a sudden he saw it! It changed everything for him. He’s now the pastor of a mission down in Manchester and working away in gang-land.

Isaiah lived a very long time before ourselves, of course. And he wasn’t a window cleaner either (not to my knowledge anyway). He was a far better educated man with an enviable sort of pedigree. And pious with it, too.

But even a guy like that had to have his eyes opened. That happened during worship one day: and it changed his life for ever. And, through the ministry that he exercised, changed a whole load of other lives as well down the years.

When I say that I’m always looking for eyes to be opened, you’re maybe left wondering – what do you want folk to see?

Run through the texts of the Bible and it’s striking to find that the answer is always the same. It’s phrased in different ways, of course. But basically the answer’s the same.

Jesus. I want folk to see Jesus.

Because that changes everything.

Remember those ‘Greeks’ who got chatting with Andrew? (Peter’s brother, Andrew, had a wonderful knack of getting alongside and into conversation with all sorts of people: I think that’s why he’s rarely in the spotlight, he was so busy most of the time chatting away to the crowds of insignificant nobodies out on the fringes)

Those Greeks had a simple request. We want to see Jesus.

Or remember the Ronnie Corbett look-alike of Jericho, the rather greedy tax-man called Zacchaeus? The man who climbed a tree and went ‘out on a limb’? He wanted to see who Jesus was.

Well, that’s it exactly. I want people to see Jesus, to see who he is: I want folk to see who he really is, to see him in all his splendour and glory.

The way that Isaiah saw him. I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted.

I want people to see that that’s who he is. The King.

Like the old man John in exile, far away from his friends, and struggling in the face of Roman persecution – like the way he saw Jesus.

It quite bowled him over. Literally. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.

Pretty much the same as happened to Saul on the road to Damascus. He wasn’t at the top of a ladder – except perhaps the ‘ladder of legalistic righteousness’ where he’d striven all his life to be a rung or two above everyone else – and he certainly wasn’t a window cleaner: he was intent only on taking every Christian he met to the cleaners!

But this persecuting zealot, blind to the truest realities of the world in which he lived – his eyes were wonderfully opened in the middle of nowhere, and he saw Jesus. It changed everything, absolutely everything.

He’d been blind to Jesus, and now he saw him. And seeing Jesus, he found himself blind to everything else!

That’s what I pray whenever I preach. That’s what I pray every day. That the people among whom I serve would catch even a glimpse of Jesus.

Because the very sight of him as he really is – that’ll just take their breath away.

I’m looking for that this coming Sunday all the more so – because one of the bits of Scripture we’ll be reading then sees that same man, Saul (under his ‘new’ name Paul) praying pretty much exactly that.

If we were all to make that our simple prayer for this coming Sunday – what the prophet Elisha prayed for his servant Gehazi – O Lord, open his eyes so that he may see [ 2 Kings 6.17] – think what the result might be!

A whole crowd of people who’ve never really caught a glimpse of Jesus at all finding their eyes opened wide – and everything, everything changing. For ever!

Ephesians 1

¹⁵ For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, ¹⁶ I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

¹⁷ I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

¹⁸ I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹ and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, ²⁰ which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, ²¹ far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. ²² And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, ²³ which is his body, the fulness of him who fills everything in every way.

Ephesians 2

¹ As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ² 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. ³ 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. ⁴ But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions— it is by grace you have been saved.

⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith— and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no-one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

It should be an exciting time this coming Sunday!

The Lord certainly does, that’s for sure. I’d have been surprised, I have to say, if a few of those ‘raw nerves’ were not lightly touched by the Lord. His word is always very timely, always right to the point, and .. well, all through the Scriptures he does have that great and ‘uncanny’ knack of putting his finger on precisely the issues where things are not what they should be.

Think of Adam and Eve in the garden when they’d fallen for the lies of the devil and had done what they’d clearly been told they weren’t to do.

“Where are you?” asked the Lord. A gentle, but ever so searching question. Putting his finger precisely on the problem.

Where were they? Behind the bushes, hiding. That’s where. But they knew that’s not what he was really asking – as if it all was an innocent game of hide and seek they all were playing.

They knew he was putting his finger on the problem they were trying to cover up. They’d distanced themselves from the Lord: that’s where they were, spiritually. They’d got themselves into a right old mess: that’s where they were, spiritually.

And doubtless they knew it. What awkward questions the Lord seems to ask!

Exactly the same when Jesus pitched up at the well at Sychar in Samaria and met a ‘Samaritan woman’.

It was great to begin with, the woman must surely have thought – once she’d got over her obvious initial surprise that a Jewish man would speak to her as a Samaritan woman. She was surely beginning to find that ‘Church’, in the shape of Jesus, was actually really quite pleasant: she was accepted just as she was; she was asked to do things and found herself involved; and the ‘preaching’ itself (in what Jesus was saying) was at least intriguing and more than held her interest.

Maybe she started to think – if this is ‘church’ well maybe I could quite enjoy it! But then …

“Go, call your husband and come back,” said Jesus.

Oh dear! What a gift this Jesus had and has for putting his finger on the rawest of nerves in a person’s mixed up life. The one subject she would rather avoid. The one area where she’s really messed up.

“Er ..  I have no husband.”

Four simple words which hardly told the half of it. Four simple words behind which was hidden a catalogue of failure, sin and pain.

But there isn’t any hiding from the Lord.

“You’re right,” said Jesus. “The fact is you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.”

Where are you, woman?

Miles from where you’re meant to be. Miles from where you’d want to be. And both healing and forgiveness must always begin with our facing facts.

How exposed can a person start to feel? She must have looked round and felt that the whole world was seeing this painful exposure of her failure and her sin – though in truth, in his grace, it was only before the Lord himself that the thing was exposed.

That’s how it is with the preaching of God’s Word. The Lord through his Word and by his Spirit always touches those secret ‘raw nerves’.

It’s uncomfortable. Definitely. But there’s ‘salve’ on his finger when he touches the rawness, and that’s why he does it. He means to heal.

The ‘salve’ on the finger which touches the rawness is always ‘salvific’: it applies the saving grace and power of God to our lives at a major point of need.

The first five verses, which we looked at last Sunday, are richer by far in their truth than a quick, cursory reading might suggest. I think that we all found that.

It was good to fall back on the ultimate truth of the gospel – I have loved you, says the Lord. Good to be reminded and assured of that, God’s sovereign, covenant love.

But it was helpful, as well, to explore once again the nature of God’s love, in the final few verses we read: that he has loved this people by choosing them, by disciplining them, and by restoring them. Our notions of ‘love’ have often been weakened and cheapened so much by the sentimental, superficial ‘tosh’ which is fed our way each day from every other source.

The next little bit of the message which Malachi brings is hard-hitting stuff.

But it is, of course, precisely because God’s love for his people is both constant and strong that he’s able to speak as he does. He loves us enough to say the hard things, to tell us the home-truths we’d choose on our own to ignore.

Like your mother doesn’t worry what you’ll think of her or how you will react to what she says. If it needs to be said for your good – she’ll say it. Stomp off in a huff if you will, but she’ll say just what needs to be said. And one way or another you will listen.

Why? Because she loves you. You’re her child, the fruit of her own womb. She loves you as her very self. So she’ll not be afraid to hit you with the truth.

Malachi’s message from God has more than a hint of that sort of thing. He has loved us. So he’s every right, and every cause, to say the things he does.

And if we’re in danger of spiritual drift, then we need to be woken up fast. This little book at the end of the whole Old Testament is an object lesson in shaking down and waking up a people who are drifting into danger by the hour.

Malachi 1

⁶ A son honours his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, where is the honour due to me? If I am a master, where is the respect due to me? says the LORD Almighty. It is you, O priests, who show contempt for my name.

But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’

⁷ You place defiled food on my altar.

But you ask, ‘How have we defiled you?’

By saying that the LORD’s table is contemptible. ⁸ When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you? says the LORD Almighty.

⁹ Now implore God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you?— says the LORD Almighty.

¹⁰ Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you, says the LORD Almighty, and I will accept no offering from your hands. ¹¹ My name will be great among the nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name, because my name will be great among the nations, says the LORD Almighty. ¹² But you profane it by saying of the Lord’s table, ‘It is defiled’, and of its food, ‘It is contemptible.’ ¹³ And you say, ‘What a burden!’ and you sniff at it contemptuously, says the LORD Almighty.

When you bring injured, crippled or diseased animals and offer them as sacrifices, should I accept them from your hands? says the LORD. ¹⁴Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. For I am a great king, says the LORD Almighty, and my name is to be feared among the nations.

It’s worrying how strikingly similar the state of the people back then is mirrored in where we are now!

I know it’s the start of half-term for lots of our folk: and I guess quite a few won’t be there. A pity – this is a word we all need to hear.

(And I’m worried, too, that maybe having flagged it up like this a good few more will quickly choose to go away the weekend!)

‘Hospitality’ of the sort I was speaking of then is not an open-ended panacea obliging us to fling our doors wide open to just anyone.

“Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so some people have entertaoned angels without knowing it.”

That’s what the Scriptures teach, for sure. But read the thing in context and check the previous verse -

“Keep on loving each other as brothers.”

Our welcoming the Almond Vineyard Church, and offering them the use of our premises here for their regular Sunday worship, is patently different from our opening them up for acts of worship by another faith. At least, I hope that the difference is patent.

Much is made of the so-called ‘faith community’, a term that’s increasingly used to lump in a convenient bundle all us ‘odd-ball’ people who persist in a perspective which is plainly rather dated and naive.

As if we’re basically all the same, and it doesn’t really matter what we each believe. The key thing, so far as these social observers are by and large concerned, is we all believe. In something; or even Someone. In anything, effectively: it doesn’t really matter what. Whatever floats your boat, as they say.

The ‘faith community’.

A bit like the ‘rugby fraternity’ (it doesn’t matter at all which team you support, or even which code you prefer: you’re a rugby man).

Or ‘the travelling people’ (whereby a whole, colossal spectrum of such vastly differing people are all branded with a single – and often derogatory – tag: it doesn’t matter what sort you are at all, you’re one of the travelling people – enough said).

More and more the term, ‘the faith community’ is used like that. You believe – and it matters not a whit just what your faith believes, and in whom – or even what – your faith is placed.

But, of course, as those who follow Jesus the Christ, what we believe does in fact matter. It makes the whole world of difference.

You shall have no other gods before me, insists the Lord. That’s his top-of-the-list, starter-for-ten instruction. The first commandment in other words. No other gods before me, besides me, along with me.

“I am the way,” said Jesus. And in case that wasn’t clear enough, he spelled the implications out. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” Which bit of that is unclear?

Talking of Jesus, the apostles insisted, “salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” There are a whole load of names, and religions, and ‘faiths’, devised by men, sure: but only this one name, only this one way, only this one Person, given to us, from on high.

To suggest, even implicitly, that in the end of the day all such other ‘faiths’ are just equally valid alternative ways to God, is itself a straight denial of the clear and consistent message that God himself has given. And opening our halls to any old Tom, Dick, or Harry of the religious world, would be tantamount to doing just that.

But the Almond Vineyard Church are led by David and Lis – not Tom, Dick, or Harry.

David and Lis stand shoulder to shoulder with us in terms of their love for the Lord Jesus Christ, their passion for the gospel, their standing on the Scriptures as the very Word of God, and their desire in all things to bring glory and honour to God.

And the Almond Vineyard Church are very much brothers and sisters in Christ.

Romans 16

¹I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Cenchrea. ² I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been a great help to many people, including me.

The Scriptures encourage us to see that through that sort of hospitality we may actually be entertaining angels unawares – who knows? Which makes it all the more exciting, of course!

Except that this time we do in fact know. And yes, it is ‘angels’ we’ll be entertaining – and are fully aware of so doing.

Entertaining is maybe not quite the right word. Giving them the run of the place. Allowing them the use of the premises to do what angels are meant to do. Enabling them to take up a temporary residence here for one afternoon a week – or, as I said at the start, to  ‘lodge’ with us here.

‘Angels’. Another word for ‘messengers’. God’s messengers.

Which is what the disciples of Jesus are called to be.

And the Almond Vineyard Church are a good example of exactly that.

They’ve met in a school for long enough, and over the years we’ve had more than a little contact with them as a church and with many of those who’re involved.

The pastor and his wife are a lovely Christian couple, just like his parents whom I first met years ago. The church have used our premises here a lot – for seminars, conferences, even for the wedding of their former Church Administrator.

And now, as a church, they’re on the move. A collective ‘taking up your mat and walking’ sort of thing. The school where they met for their worship is no longer an option at all, and they’ve been conscious for quite a while now of the call of the Lord to be focussing all of their labours elsewhere.

A bit like Abram of old, they’ve left the home that they’ve known for years, not knowing where they are going. But confident that the Lord himself will direct their paths – and provide for their needs en route.

Which is where we come in. A Bethel type of staging post. A place for them to worship on a Sunday afternoon (when our halls themselves are enjoying a sabbath rest); a place which is a sort of home-from-home for them, and yet a very definite stepping stone to where they’re meant to be.

What a privilege to share in their journey. What a joy to be partnering people like this in the cause of the gospel of Christ.

And what a pointer, too, who knows, to the shape of God’s future, when denominational ties give way, more and more, to a partnership in the gospel among those, across the spectrum, who share so much in common.

Hebrews 11

⁸By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. ⁹ By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰ For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

¹¹ By faith Abraham, even though he was past age— and Sarah herself was barren— was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. ¹² And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. ¹³ All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. ¹⁴ People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. ¹⁵ If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. ¹⁶ Instead, they were longing for a better country— a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Hebrews 13

¹Keep on loving each other as brothers. ² Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

We had some time today with a group from the Almond Vineyard Church. A sense of God’s presence and blessing was very much in evidence.

And from there it was straight to another, rather different context, where a good few hours were spent in a exploring, at least in a very initial way, a similar sort of partnership in the gospel. But more of than another time!

There certainly is, more and more, the sense of the Lord kind of re-configuring his church!

It’s short, written in an easy-to-read sort of style, and uses a Q & A approach to work through the main truths of Scripture with which you need to be familiar.

And it starts with a statement we’d tend today to call ‘the bottom line’. The truth which undergirds everything else.

“I have loved you,” says the Lord.

I have loved you. Not exactly complicated. Not exactly difficult to comprehend.

You’d have thought.

But back in 1998 a very capable scholar (and a wonderfully gracious Christian man) called Don Carson delivered the W H Griffith Thomas Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary under the broad title of ‘The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God.’ (The four lectures are available now as a book)

Don Carson is Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, with a long and notable track record of writing and speaking. The guy knows what he’s talking about.

And what he has to say, always thoroughly rooted in the Scriptures as the very Word of God, is theologically substantial, pastorally wise, and spiritually challenging.

So when a man of such calibre comes along with a book whose title declares that the doctrine of God’s love is difficult .. well, you and I are bound to sit up and take notice.

Have we missed something obvious? Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Like – Er, what is it that’s all that difficult about the love of God?

Don Carson has the good sense, and the kind pastoral grace, to start by setting out some five good reasons why the doctrine of the love of God ‘must be judged difficult’.

1. The widely disseminated belief in the love of God is set with increasing frequency in some matrix other than biblical theology. “The result is that when informed Christians talk about the love of God, they mean something very different from what is meant in the surrounding culture. Worse, neither side may perceive that that is the case.”

2. We live in a culture in which many other and complementary truths about God are widely disbelieved. “The result, of course, is that the love of God in our culture has been purged of anything the culture finds uncomfortable. The love of God has been sanitised, democratised, and above all sentimentalised.”

So people will very happily take on board the notion of the love of God, while (equally readily and probably even more speedily) dispensing with the rather less palatable (to our contemporary culture) realities of the justice of God, the wrath of God and the sovereignty of God.

3.  The most energetic cultural tide, postmodernism, powerfully reinforces the most sentimental, syncretistic, and often pluralistic views of the love of God. “Because of remarkable shifts in the West’s epistemology [how we know things] more and more people believe that the only heresy left is the view that there is such a thing as heresy. They hold that all religions are fundamentally the same and that, therefore, it is not only rude but profoundly ignorant and old-fashioned to try to win others to your beliefs, since implicityly that is announcing that theirs are inferior.”

The love of God is predetermined by the culture, in other words, to be a love which is, and can only be, an all-embracing, universal, everyone-will-be-all-right-in-the-end sort of love: which makes, as Carson goes on to say, “the articulation of a biblical doctrine of God and of a biblical doctrine of the love of God and extraordinarily difficult challenge.”

4. Precisely how does one integrate what the Bible says about the love of God with what the Bible says about God’s sovereignty? Or putting it another way – “This sideof two world wars; genocide in Russia, China, Europe,  and Africa; mass starvation; Hitler and Pol Pot; endless disgusting corruptions at home and abroad – all in recent history – is the love of God such an obvious doctrine?”

5. The doctrine of the love of God is sometimes protrayed within Christian circles as much easier and more obvious than it really is. “This is achieved by overlooking some of the distinctions the Bible itself introduces when it depicts the love of God.”

There are various ‘versions’ of the love of God, in other words: various ways of speaking of the love of God. His providential care for all that he has made, and the ‘covenant’ and ‘saving’ love towards those who are his people in Christ Jesus. Both truly the love of God, but their practical implications are markedly different.

It’s quite striking that there’s a sense in which you’ll see all five of these ‘difficulties’ in the space of the first 4 verses of Malachi’s message -

Malachi 1

²I have loved you, says the LORD.

But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’

Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? the LORD says. Yet I have loved Jacob, ³ but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.

⁴ Edom may say, Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins. But this is what the LORD Almighty says: They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the LORD. ⁵ You will see it with your own eyes and say, ‘Great is the LORD— even beyond the borders of Israel!’

The doctrine of the love of God had become problematic for the people of Israel.

As it has for many today.

For some it’s at a philosophical level [How can there be a God of love when there's so much evil and suffering in the world today? Surely either God lacks the power to remove such evil, in other words he's not really omnipotent and soverign; or he lacks the will to do so, in which case he doesn't really love us and he doesn't really care? You've heard the argument any number of times, I'm sure]

For some it’s at the experiential level [How can there be a God of love when my son has been killed, or my husband has gone off with some other woman, or my house has been burgled, or my health has been dreadful for years, or .. (well, you can fill in the blanks for yourself)? Again you've heard the argument any number of times]

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? I have loved you, says the Lord.

But it can be a real problem for a lot of folk. And that’s what I mean when I say that Malachi is extremely down-to-earth and practical from the off.