Happy New Year! Below my last for the year...

Flight or Faith or Both?
Sermon for December 30th 2007
As we come to the end of another year, we look back, if we dare, to see where we have been and wonder where we will go.
Like travelers on what seems, some days, a very long journey and on others we fear it may not last as long as we would like, we are sometimes wondering, sometimes fearful or at least unsure, and at good times, happy and content with our lot.
In our most contented times we know that God is in control, not in a fatalistic way, but in a way that acknowledges God’s personal interest in our lives.
Today we read of the family of Jesus on the move.
Known as ‘The Flight into Egypt,’ some see in this the plight of refugees in today’s world. In the ancient story of Jesus day and in the present time of refugees in Europe, Africa, and indeed all over the world, North Korea and China for example, we see or should be able to see through the eye of faith the faithfulness of the lovingkindness of God. God offers people a home.
Nobody belongs here on earth, wandering the earth forever. We are all meant to have a home, an eternal home, an eternal rest. But sadly some will never find it and like the strange wandering ghost of Jacob Marley, Ebenezer Scrooge’s business partner, they will never be at rest.

Isaiah’s message is altogether better:
Isaiah 63:7 “I will mention the lovingkindnesses (chesed) of the LORD and the praises of the LORD, according to all that the LORD has bestowed on us, and the great goodness toward the house of Israel, Which He has bestowed on them according to His mercies, according to the multitude of His lovingkindnesses (chesed).
63:8 For He said, "Surely they are My people, Children who will not lie." So He became their Savior.
63:9 In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence saved them; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bore them and carried them all the days of old.”
So God, says Isaiah, was always with His chosen people blessing them (7b), with His goodness and mercy through ‘chesed’ or lovingkindness. God shows favour, mercy, kindness; for that is His nature.
God claims these as His people (8) and chooses to save them and call Himself their Saviour (8).
He identifies with them personally in their suffering (9a), and sent His Angel to save them (9a), He bought them back redeemed (9b) and carried them all their days (9c).
He shows us:
God chooses some people over others.
We don’t like to (well PC arrests our thinking here) choose some people over others, to single some out, but we must! And in fact we do, all the time.
We do it when we honour a person (not a man) with a VC.
The latest VC went to: Corporal Willie Apiata, and rightly, he has not been far from acknowledgement and praise ever since.
Wonderful News!
Can I tell you that he could have been more greatly honoured than that?
I do not know Willies’ personal beliefs, but the highest honour says Isaiah, is for Willie to know that He has been personally chosen by God to be God’s own child.
Isaiah 63:8 “For He (God) said, "Surely they are My people…”
Of course the same goes for you and all of us here.
God chooses us out for redemption by His lovingkindness. We call it an act of grace: God’s riches given to us at Christ’s expense.
Unlike the receivers of the Victoria Cross, we do not contribute to our salvation. We do not give anything to God. He gives us His Son, that’s what Advent is all about!

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0707/S00006.htm
Pastor George of Worthy Ministries tells the “powerful story about a Dutch pastor and his family who had been hiding Jewish people in their home during the second World War.
One night, they heard the sound of heavy boots and the loud impatient knocking on the door. They were arrested and loaded into a cattle car (of a train). All night long, the pastor and his family rode along in anguish, knowing they were being taken to one of Hitler's concentration camps only to be separated from each other and likely killed.
Finally, the train stopped. The doors of the cattle car were opened. They were marched out and lined up beside the railroad tracks. But then something very strange happened. They discovered that they were not in a death camp at all -- they weren't even in Germany!

During the night a courageous employee risked his life and purposely tripped a switch which sent the train of prisoners to Switzerland, to their freedom. Instead of being marched to death, they were welcomed to new life. Wow! Thank you God. In the midst of his joy and relief, the Dutch pastor said, "What do you do with such a gift?"

We do not contribute to God’s gift of salvation to us in Christ.
But we do accept it with humility like Corp.Willie Apiata accepted His VC.
Back at the beginning of July this year, when asked about his actions in Afghanistan, Corp. Apiata said with great emotion:
“I was doing my job and looking after my mates…
When asked what he was thinking about at the time he said:
“Where’s my buddies? How can I help them?”
His action in saving his friends is the kind of loving action commended by Jesus when He says how his followers should act: "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.” (Jn 15:13)
And the Apostle Paul speaks of the same thing when he says: “For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5: 6-8)
What a friend we have in Jesus, eh?
The point is that it is unusual. The VC is given for special action above the call of duty or of preserving your own life.

Jesus Christ died for unworthy people, yet He went ahead and did it…for you.
God acts deliberately to secure your salvation, as Isaiah 63 v 8 tells us.

1st He chooses us in Christ before the world was made: “…who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began…” (2 Tim 1:9), says Paul and Jesus says: “Here am I and the children whom God has given Me."(Heb2:19)

2nd Then He acted in compassion to redeem us from the curse of the law. “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us…” (GAL 3:13)

3rd He promised us through an eternal covenant that He will keep us forever in His loving care. "Nevertheless I will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you.” (EZEK 16:60)
And in Hebrews He says to you: “Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant make you complete in every good work to do His will…” (HEB 13:20-21)
This all because of Jesus’ actions on our behalf as He
lived,
suffered,
died and
rose again
to put us right with God the heavenly Father.
It is all part of the divine plan orchestrated by the God whose lovingkindness the prophet Isaiah knew.
That is why we can respond to the love, reply to the purpose within God’s plan, and take up God’s promise for ourselves:
“Whoever calls on the name of the Lord WILL BE SAVED!” (Rom 10:13 Joel 2:32)
There is no doubt about it on God’s side.
What are you waiting for?
A vision, a miracle?
You may wait a long time!
Faith, ……………..faith, ………………. faith,
We are put right with God when we practice faith in Jesus Christ.
We learn about that when we read the Bible. Matthew tells us of the family of Jesus who went into Egypt to escape any harm coming to the Child as a result of the infanticide being enacted by the king of their day, Herod. As soon as Joseph saw and heard the angel’s message they went in
faith. They were learning of the God who cannot lie and who had promised them salvation before time began. They were learning to live in hope, to practice faith, to be faithful to God.
As Paul says further: “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Rom 10:17)
The prince of preachers, CH Spurgeon says:
“Faith lays hold upon the Lord Jesus with a firm and determined grasp. She knows his excellence and worth, and no temptation can induce her to repose her trust elsewhere; and Christ Jesus is so delighted with this heavenly grace, that he never ceases to strengthen and sustain her by the loving embrace and all-sufficient support of his eternal arms. Here, then, is established a living, sensible, and delightful union which casts forth streams of love, confidence, sympathy, complacency, and joy, whereof both the bride and bridegroom love to drink. When the soul can evidently perceive this oneness between itself and Christ, the pulse may be felt as beating for both, and the one blood as flowing through the veins of each. Then is the heart as near heaven as it can be on earth, and is prepared for the enjoyment of the most sublime and spiritual kind of fellowship.” (C. H. Spurgeon: Morning and Evening: December 28, Morning, e-Sword Bible)
A story from Our Daily Bread.
David Roper writes: A friend of mine spent several months rebuilding an old Ford Bronco (a four wheel drive truck) and turning it into an off-road vehicle for use here in Idaho. He kept it in his garage under lock and key. When Christmas came, Gary thought, What better place to hide my daughter Katie’s present.
Shortly before Christmas, someone asked Katie what she was getting for Christmas. “Oh,” she replied, “I already have it. It’s a bicycle in a box under the Bronco in the garage!”
I don’t know what methods Katie used to discover her present. But I do admire her unshakable confidence that the bike was hers even though she did not yet have it in her hands.
That confidence reminds me of the apostle Peter’s words: “[God] has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:3-5).
What is reserved for us? Our inheritance—heaven, and a legacy beyond description that rests on the certainty of eternal life, “which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began” (Titus 1:2). — David H. Roper