Judgement and Mercy

Friday 8 August

Malcolm Duncan spoke at the final celebration of New Horizon 2014. Here’s a summary of his message:

Sometimes we can make quick judgements. In the blink of an eye, we come to conclusions without knowing the full facts. There are those who think Christians should not judge anybody. Others seem to enjoy pointing out everybody else’s faults.

How do we make good, honest and right judgements ? One verse sits in the centre of this chapter – “In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you, this is the law and the prophets.”  In this passage, Jesus starts to talk about our judgements about others. It explores humility and honesty.

A quick overview of Matthew 7

• Verses 1 – 5: Our relationships with one another should be marked by a willingness to be humble and honest with ourselves and with each other.
• Verse 6: Our relationships with those who are aggressively rejecting the gospel demand great wisdom.
• Verse 7 – 11 Talks about our need of God to empower and enable us.
• Then the golden verse (v 12): our attitude demands a pro-active choice of humility and honesty.
• (v 13 – 19) The final verses contain three tests for spirituality.

Making judgements

What Jesus does not say jwe should never use our critical faculties. At times, we are required to make judgements but it is the way we make judgements that is important.  Kindness in judgement was a spiritual requirement in Jewish tradition. Jesus rejects nit-picking, small-minded, harsh judgements.

When we pass judgements, we must remember that we are NOT God. Here is the challenging reality in this passage, “With the judgement you judge, you yourself will be judged.” If I make a harsh judgement of someone else, I’m effectively saying to God, “Please judge me this way.”

That should stop us dead in our tracks. If you jump to conclusions and believe the worst, are you willing to be judged in that way? How many times have we made a judgement that has been far too quick?

If you are going to point out the bit of dust in someone’s eye, then take the four by two out of your own eye!! Get your own house in order, first. Make sure you apply the same standards to yourself!

We can be so quick to defend our own lives and then point the figure at other people. We can do it with our denominations and churches. We can be quick to compare our best with other people’s worst.

Mercy floods scripture. In Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” there is a line, which can be paraphrased, “Remember that the one that could have judged you, died for you. You need to remember that before you make a judgement on someone else.”

Remember how much you’ve been forgiven before you jump to a quick judgement of others. We are not called to compare ourselves to one another but to Jesus!

The necessity of right judgements

However, if you don’t have discipline in your church community, then you are not a New Testament church. We do have to make judgements. It can be painful.

The scary thing about this section of Jesus’ teaching is that He says there are people before whom you must not cast the pearl of the Gospel.  There are those who are persistently, consistently and aggressively rejecting and humiliating the Gospel . We need discernment and wisdom.

Three tests of our spirituality

• Are you taking the narrow road or the broad road? Are you choosing what is hard or what is popular?
• We are all called to be fruit-inspectors – not to find nit-picky holes but to assess the validity of people’s faith by the fruit of their lives.
• What happens in the storm? The stuff that is still standing after the trial is the stuff that is real.

Ask and it will be given to you

The teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is challenging, transfixing, demanding and impossible. In all of this, we get to the point where we say, “How are we supposed to do this?”

And at that point, Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find…”

The Sermon on the Mount is impossible without the indwelling, abiding, continual power of the Holy Spirit. This is not about trying harder. It is allowing the power of the Spirit to flow through you. . Without Him, we can do nothing. But when His grace, power and mercy flows through us we can do all things.

God calls us to constant and continual dependency. How many of us would last if we only breathed once in a while? We need to breathe every minute. Just as often as you breathe in life, you need the Holy Spirit’s infilling. Within Him, you can do nothing. The Sermon on the Mount ends with a call for an absolute dependency on God’s Spirit.

We come to conferences like this asking God to change our circumstances and the community we’re going back to. What if God wants to change you?

There is nothing that the power of Christ cannot achieve. The power of the Holy Spirit gives us authority to live according to His ways.

 

His presence in our pain

Thursday 7 August

With harrowing reports from Iraq ringing in our ears, Malcolm Duncan spoke from John 11 on the issue of suffering.  Here is a taste of his moving message:

On 5 September 2002, at 7.30am I left the house I was staying in Fortwilliam park in Belfast and I put on a clerical collar and a suit and I got into my car and I drove to the Shore Road and I parked the car and I walked into a funeral parlour. I went into a small room and I knelt beside the coffin of my father and screamed at God, “Why?”

My father had dropped dead on the Saturday before. The only thing I had prayed for all my Christian life was that my father would come to faith. I dreamed of being able to serve him communion. But it never happened. I was angry and confused.

We got home and I said to God, “Please don’t let me have to take a funeral for at least a month.” And two days later, I had to take another funeral! For six months, I kept saying, “Why?” Eventually, I wrote in my journal, “One day, God will give me the answer to every question I have ever asked. Until then… I trust Him.”

Have you ever cried out to God, “Why?” How can we not be moved when we hear the stories of Christians around the world that are suffering such horrific persecution. At some point in their life, every Christian will go something that causes them to ask, “Why?” Mary and Martha went through that experience when Lazarus died.

The sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one who you love is sick.” Never think that sickness or death or suffering or unanswered prayer are an indication that God does not love you.  There is a cruel theology in the church that says if you are facing illness or sickness it is because you don’t have enough faith – that is NOT the case.  Suffering does not mean that God is punishing you.

Where is God in the suffering of His people? He is right beside them. The absence of His voice is never an indication of the absence of His presence. He promised, “Never will I leave you and never will I forsake you.”

Scars and struggles on the way
But with joy our hearts can say
Yes, our hearts can say
Never once did we ever walk alone
Never once did You leave us on our own
You are faithful, God, You are faithful

When Jesus finally reached Bethany, Martha said to Jesus, “Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died.”  Her faith is hanging by a thread as she struggles to believe.

Do we believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life? Lazarus did die but the tomb was not the end of the story.

Mary says the same thing to Jesus as Martha had, “If you had been here my brother would not have died.” Mary knelt at Jesus feet. She could not bring her praise to Him so instead she brought her pain.

When He saw the suffering around Him, Jesus wept. It is in the darkest moments of our lives that we grow even when our prayers are tears and sighs and groans.

Why did He cry? Jesus saw the destruction and horror of death and He entered into that suffering. He walks with you through the pain. He says, “I am here and I am weeping with you. I feel and identify with your pain. I am right beside.” He gives us permission to break our heart.

As Jesus says, “Lazarus come forth,” He demonstrates His power over death.  Death was not the final word.  I don’t think that God causes our suffering but He demonstrates His glory, His power and His grace through it.

Lazarus resurrection shows me that those of us who trust in Him will live even if we die. Death is not the last word for the believer.  He holds our hand!

God is faithful and present. With every fibre of my being, I know that every single child of God whose life has been taken in the Middle East or Iraq or elsewhere, has passed from death to life. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

With tears in my eyes and questions in my heart, I stand tonight and say, “We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”

God says, “Don’t think I don’t love you. Don’t think I don’t understand. Don’t think I have abandoned you. Instead, let me comfort you.”

The importance of trust

Wednesday 6 August

Malcolm Duncan returned to New Horizon as the speaker for the Evening Celebrations where he spoke on the Sermon on the Mount.  Here’s a taste of Wednesday evening’s message:

I once heard someone say, “I’m trusting God, touch wood, cross my fingers, praise the Lord…” Somehow, he had missed the point.

• Matthew 5 teaches a change in our hearts and our attitudes through God’s grace.
• Matthew 6 teaches about trust in our inner and outer devotion to God.

It is a very easy thing to talk about trust until it confronts you. Pastors and preachers can talk about trust. Yet in reality, trust can be difficult.

Exploring Matthew 6

Verses 1 – 18 talks about the three key elements of spiritual life: giving, prayer and fasting. Jesus is saying, you should be doing these things for God and God alone. Don’t do them so other people can see you. Do them so that your Father in Heaven can see you. This is all about a relationship with the Father – the inner devotional life.

Verses 19 to the end talk more about the outer life. Trust in God shapes our spirituality and our spiritual disciples. But trusting also evidences itself in the way we handle money, the words we use and what we do about our future.

The key verse in chapter 6 is, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and everything else will be given to you as well.”

Jesus – our hero

Jesus i wants his disciples to understand that when they have a relationship with the Father, then they cannot stand in the centre of their lives. They must exit the centre and allow God to take that place.

There is only ever one hero in the Christian story. And His name is Jesus. So often when we teach the Old Testament to children, so we call them to be “heroes” like David, Daniel and Moses. We should not teach our people that to be like David. Every story in the Old Testament ultimately points to Jesus. He is the hero!

In chapter six the inner transformation and the outer transformation fit together along the bookshelf of trust.

Devoted to Jesus

Too often we see prayer, giving and fasting as optional extras. We have change the words… “When you give….” Becomes “If you give..”

How is your prayer life? How are you and Jesus getting on? Do you have in your heart an utter devotion to Him? Has he won your heart?

A German theologian wrote, “If the Holy Spirit exited our churches 95% of our programmes would go on as if nothing had happened.”

The devotion that Jesus is talking about is not something that can be taught, it grows in our lives. It is a desire to have Him at the centre of our lives. Does Christ still have the centre of your heart? Does He still take your breath away?

Generosity

If you want to get your finances sorted out, get your heart sorted out.   What we do with our money is directly connected to our hearts.

In the Jewish tradition, having a good eye means being generous. Having a bad eye, means being stingy. It is not just talking about money, it is about generosity of spirit.

We can have a tight fistedness in our attitudes, a narrow minded, squinty-eyed meanness. What would happen if we compared our worst with other people’s best? What would happen if we were generous towards others in believing the best and speaking the best about them?

Do not worry

Jesus never gives us a command that is impossible to follow. He commands us, “Do not worry.” He tells His disciples, “Here’s why you shouldn’t worry because you have a Father who looks after you.”

God understands your worries and your anxieties. He cares about what we are going through. Again and again in this passage, Jesus uses the word Father. Sometimes we can lose our sense of God as our Father – He seems like a tyrant to us.

Jesus wants us to know that we can trust our Father in heaven. We find it hard because humanly our trust has been broken. God your Father knows your needs. He is interested in you. Everyday I have to choose to remember that there is no condemnation, God has welcomed me with open arms. It is out of that place of trust that you can face every day.

Seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness is an invitation to intimacy and trust. All of us struggle with trusting God. Ask Him to make you “open eyed” again. Allow Him to take your breath away.