NOT WELCOME AT OUR CHURCH!

NOT WELCOME HERE

Who is welcome to church? We could glibly answer, “Everyone!” But we all know that’s not true. There is a group of people who will never be welcome to our church! This group consists of perfect people. Our church will never be for perfect people! We already have people who have done things they are ashamed of. We have former thieves in our church. We have former liars in our church. We have men who have betrayed their wives. We have wives who have betrayed their husbands. We have young people who have lost their innocence. We have business people who have cheated. We have formerly religious people who have perpetrated the most vile hypocrisies. Each of these people have found redemption after they were warmly welcomed to our church.  

The kind of church Jesus described to His original disciples was made up of people who were either reluctant to come to church, or worst still, unaware of its existence. Yet when these reluctant souls did come in, Jesus foretold, they would find love, acceptance, and forgiveness. 

But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’
Luke 14:16-17

JESUS NEVER DESCRIBED HIS CHURCH AS ‘NICE’

In this story, the Christ tells how those who might be described as ‘good’ or ‘nice’ were initially invited to the banquet. This is a picture of God the Father inviting people to His eternal heavenly banquet. But this lavishly generous invite met with an unappreciative response.

But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’
Luke 14:18-20

These were the invited guests who thought that the banquet was about food. The best banquets are never just about the food on offer. We see this same confusion today with those who think that the Father’s invite is an invitation to become religious. God does not invite people to become religious – He freely invites people to become to His heirs! C.S. Lewis once described this invite as being like someone who is offered a holiday at a beautiful beachside resort and upon arriving there they find the nearest mud puddle to plonk themselves down in and begin playing with the mud for the remainder of their holiday time, when just a few yards past the obscuring fence, is a beautiful beach to enjoy! The Father’s offer to enjoy eternal satisfaction is often rejected by those who think that nothing could be better than the mud-puddle they are sitting in presently!

The Host of the banquet then turns his attention to those who do not deserve his favour and instructs his servants to invite a different kind of people-

So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’”
Luke 14:21-24

JESUS DESCRIBED HIS CHURCH AS ONCE ‘BLIND & CRIPPLED’

The poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame accepted the banquet invitation with gratitude. None of these people had to be convinced of their woeful condition. It takes humility to acknowledge when we are poor, crippled, blind or lame. The guests to this sumptuous banquet discovered not only delectable food, but that their host had the power to cancel their debts, open their eyes, restore their withered limbs, and enable them to enjoy a dignity they had previously had no hope of. As outstanding as all this was, their Host was to do something else for them that far outweighed these acts of grace. Each one of these unloved orphans was made a member of His family and given the full rights and privileges of now being made a member of the royal family! 

Each Sunday as we gather, we are ‘shadow banqueting’. Our church service faintly reflects the Royal Heavenly Banquet which awaits us. We have each received with gladness the offer to come to that Banquet. Thus, each Sunday, we hobble, limp, and stumble along to the shadow-banquet. Our church is not comprised of perfect people. And neither was the early church. The apostle Paul described the church at Corinth, in Greece, as being comprised of formerly –  ‘sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, men who practice homosexuality, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, swindlers’ (1Cor. 6:9-10). He then reminds them of their adoption into God’s Royal family and their new identities-

And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
First Corinthians 6:11

Who is welcome to come to our church? Imperfect, flawed, broken, hurting, lost, lonely, confused, people – that’s who! Help me this Sunday to extend a welcome to people who don’t know any better than playing in life’s mud puddles. As this welcome sign in the entrance of Coventry Cathedral states, these people may look like they have it all together, or they may look like their life has fallen apart. It doesn’t matter. As the servant reported back to the banquet host, “There is still room for more!“

Pastor Andrew

The Beautiful Re-Prefix Of Christianity

While it’s true that Christianity is best spelt – D O N E, it is best described with words which use its beautiful prefix: re. These re-words are both a powerful set of descriptions and a set of glorious reminders about what Christ has done for us.

The Gospel has given the world a graphic and richer meaning to its uniquely used words: grace, love, eternal, mercy. But the Gospel is captured with re-prefixed words.

We should never take for granted just how beautiful the Gospel is. For those who have failed, it is the hope of a fresh start. For those who have lost their way, it is a light, a map, and a compass, to get them back on the strait and narrow path. For those who have been broken, hurt and damaged, by a world that treats people as things, it is the Owner’s Manual description of a person of infinite value to a God who loves them infinitely. For those who have lived their life without regard to God, His Word, His ways, or His will, it is the guarantee of His forgiveness and debt cancellation. For those who feel abandoned, alone, and rejected, it is the legal document informing them that the wealthiest Person in the Universe has personally sought them out and begun legal proceedings to adopt them and make them His heir! 

Each of these aspects of the Father’s love revealed through His Son, Jesus The Christ, might be told with re-prefixed words.

For a person to receive God’s offer of forgiveness from their sins and eternal life with Him in Paradise, they must have the Holy Spirit help them to realise their true condition of guilt and shame before God. They must have the Holy Spirit enable them to repent of their sins. They must return to the Lord. In doing what the Holy Spirit empowers them to do they are regenerated (born-again). They are simultaneously reconciled to God the Father by Christ. They are also redeemed by Christ and adopted by the Father. 

This is what makes Christianity unique from all other ‘religions’. It offers people the hope of not only a fresh start, but the power to change, and become a new person. I am not who I was a few years ago. I will not be who I am in a few years. The Gospel is changing me. It is enabling me to become who I long to be and who Christ is wanting me to be. Because, in it I am enabled to behold Christ. And as I do, I am changed, transformed. This is why God has ordained for the Gospel to be preached each Sunday to His people so that they can behold Christ and undergo its transforming grace. 

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
Second Corinthians 3:18

It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, or what’s been to you, you can be reconciled to the Father, redeemed by Christ, and regenerated by the Holy Spirit. By beholding Christ in the Sixty-Six Books of the Gospel you are given a new start, a new beginning, a chance to start over, but more than that: you begin to become a new person.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Second Corinthians 5:17

You are never “a million miles” from God. You are always just one prayer away. 

Pastor Andrew

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THE THREE KEY Re WORDS OF THE GOSPEL TABLED

RECONCILED	For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Romans 5:10	The Gospel reveals the truth about our standing before an infinitely holy God: enemies. In John 3:19 Jesus declared this truth by stating that without being reconciled to God, we all hate God and love the darkness (deeds of rebellion toward God). We need to be reconciled by a Mediator. and through him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross. Colossians 1:20 Jesus Christ has reconciled those who put their trust in Him by paying our debt to God on the Cross with His own blood!
REDEEMED	In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. Galatians 4:3-5	In the days of slave markets, when family members were sold off to pay a family debt, another family member could attend the slave auction and ‘redeem’ the auctioned family member by ‘purchasing’ them to cancel the debt. This is the imagery behind the Apostle Paul’s language in Galatians 4 when he describes us as being enslaved with Christ coming to redeem us and then adopting us God’s children.  Becoming a Christian doesn’t just save us from an eternity in Hell, it changes our status from orphan to adopted heir with Christ! (Rom. 8:17)
REGENERATED	He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, Titus 3:5	Biblically, “death” is not the end. Neither is it ceasing to exist. Rather, it means separation. James tells us that the body without the spirit is dead. When a soul is separated from God because of sin, it is dead. “We who were dead in trespasses and sins have now been made alive in Christ” writes Paul to the Ephesians in chapter 2. When a dead soul is brought to faith in Christ by being reconciled by Christ when they are redeemed by Christ, they are regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Jesus told Nicodemus that this was like being born again (John 3:3).

NOT WHAT WE ONCE WERE

When Paul wrote to the Turkish Christians in Colossae, he was writing as a redeemed man to redeemed people. This is what Jesus does. He redeems. He takes broken lives and heals them. He takes lost lives and directs them. He takes loveless lives and adopts them. He takes enemies and makes them His friends. Jesus redeems. Paul reminded the Colossians about their redemption by Christ and it's good for us to be reminded of ours too.

in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins

Colossians 1:14

Everyday you pass by hundreds, if not thousands, of broken, lost, lonely, angry, people. These people are torn. They intuitively know that they are not at peace with God - and yet they are very wary of the Church. Who can blame them? Some people in some churches have been very poor ambassadors for Christ and have even been, at times, misrepresentations of Christ. Some. Not all. Not most. Not even the majority. Some. For the most part, most Christians in most churches were once-fallen once-broken once-lost once-unloved once-angry people, who have now been redeemed. These redeemed followers of Christ still struggle, still stumble, still fail - yet they are being transformed. They are no longer who they once were.

¶ We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints,

Colossians 1:3-4 

When Jesus redeems someone they feel different about others. Where they once felt indifferent they begin to feel a growing interest and love for others - especially their brothers and sisters. It's too easy in a Me-Centred World to be fooled into thinking that we only give our love to those who love us. This is conditional love. Too many people are loveless, not because they are not loved, but because they are difficult to love when they themselves do not give love. Jesus didn't become incarnate to be loved. He came to earth to love. He loves unconditionally. He loves limitlessly. Yet, we now love Him because He first loved us (1John 4:19). Christ's work of redemption transforms a human heart. It dramtically affects how and when we show love. This love from Jesus is different to earthly/natural love. It is a God-love called agapé. Agapé love is selfless love. Agapé love gives expecting nothing in return. It is described in First Corinthians 13. It doesn't have an ulterior motive. It gives and gives and gives. When I prepare a couple for marriage I try and try and try to give them a vision of this kind of love. I rarely succeed. I remind them that they are about to vow "to love...for better or for worse". I ask them if they still want to proceed with the wedding despite the eternal enormity of this vow. Only occasionally have I seen one of them hesitate in answering which gives me some glimmer of hope that they may have caught just a brief glimpse of what they are about to vow. I try to explain that this is agapé love that never gives up (1Cor. 13:1-4). It is the kind of love that is demonstrated before and sometimes even despite of the feelings of love. It is how God has loved us and demonstrated it by redeeming us. Our love from God is first an action then a feeling. It causes us to roll our sleeves up to help another person.

But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 
First John 3:17

Paul reminds the Colossians that the means of their redemption was the Gospel. It was upon hearing the Gospel that their hearts were transformed. 

because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel,
Colossians 1:5

The Gospel calls people to accept the truth. It requires of us that we accept the truth about ourselves. This takes unnatural humility to admit that we are rebellious, wayward sinners. It requires that we accept the truth about God being the holy, just, and loving Creator. It confronts us with our need for a Saviour and that this Saviour is Jesus the Christ. The Gospel declares that our salvation is provided unconditionally by God as an act of His grace. The Gospel then summons us to respond to this offer of grace. And the Gospel of a loving, giving, sacrificial Saviour motivates us to bear fruit that glorifies God.

...the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth,
Colossians 1:5b-6

ONCE PROUD NOW HUMBLE

Jesus wants His followers to be blessed and effective at whatever they are called to do. He has ensured every possible means for this to happen: His Word, His Ministers and His Church. 

just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf
Colossians 1:7

For these means of success to be realised, it requires the follower of Christ to adopt a posture of humility. This too is a major component of our newly redeemed life. Once we were proud, angry, envious and unforgiving. But Jesus has redeemed us. His Spirit within us enables us to humbly walk after Christ by applying the Word of God prayerfully to our souls (who can read Romans 12:1-3 and not be humbled?). His Spirit enables us to humbly receive direction, correction and instruction from God's appointed ministers who steward His Word to His people. And the Holy Spirit places the believer into a local church where the graces of God are ministered to, through, and by the fellow members of this local assembly of believers. Paul told the Colossians that their redemption was being made effective as they learned about the grace of God they had received and loved one another with the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.
Colossians 1:8 

KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING

God's primary concern for you is not your happiness - it's your fruitfulness. You can only begin to reach your potential as a human being by being redeemed by Christ. Once redeemed, God is able to redeem your past - your past failures, your past mistakes, your past regrets - He redeems all of you! It was the Apostle's prayer for the Colossians that they grew in their understanding of what it meant to be redeemed. 

¶ And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,

Colossians 1:9

Paul had already told the redeemed Colossians how God brought about this - by being taught the Word of Grace from God's appointed ministers of Grace. He now prays that it will happen in a blessed way. Added to this he prays that they might also be given wisdom (knowing how to apply this knowledge for the benefit of themselves and others) and understanding (a deepening sense of trust in God amidst the times of intense confusion of what God is doing and why He might be doing it). Knowledge, wisdom and understanding are the graces to Christian maturity for the redeemed.

so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.
Colossians 1:10

I pray this prayer for my own life. And like any prayer we pray to God for our hearts to be conformed to His, the opportunities for God to positively answer it come when I find it most difficult to do so. The virtues of godliness listed in Second Peter chapter 1 can only be experienced where there is opposition to them. I can only truly develop the virtue of steadfastness when I am feeling like quitting (2Pet. 1:5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 2Pet. 1:6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 2Pet. 1:7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love). I can only acquire the maturing virtue of love when I am sorely tried by hard-to-love people. I wonder how different our city would look if all the redeemed of God walked in a manner worthy of the Lord being fully pleasing to Him who also were bearing fruit in every good work? My hunch is: different. 

May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,Colossians 1:11-13 

Those Christ has redeemed are no longer who they once were. They have received a supernatural strength from God and even though their circumstances are adverse they are enabled to endure and be patient with joy. And Paul has said all this so that he could remind the Colossians of this - 

in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Colossians 1:14 

In other words, we are not who we once were. And as we continue to follow Christ, we will not be who we currently are. We are redeemed by the Redeeming God. This the God who hears our cries, sees our tears, and knows our thoughts. He knows what's been done to us. He knows what we've done. He knows where we hurt and why we do so. And despite our brokenness, lostness, ugliness, He has redeemed us and loved us. And now He works by His Spirit to strengthen us, bless us, and make us into highly fruitful vessels of His love. We are no longer what we once were. We are redeemed.

Ps. Andrew

WHO ARE THE 144,000?