14th 21st February 2021

Wednesday, 17th February, marks the start of our preparation for Easter 2021. Lent has become synonymous with self-denial.

Usually this takes the form of fasting from food, drink or some other worldly pleasure. If it brings you closer to God, there is absolutely nothing wrong in fasting.

However, the power of prayer must be at the heart of our observance of Lent.

Our deliverance from the Covid virus will continue to be at the centre of most people’s prayers, of course. We will remember and pray about many other things; for those who are close to us; family and friends especially, and we will pray for our politicians, those in poverty and those suffering through wars and famines etc. Then comes the difficult part; we must also pray

for our enemies too. This is never easy, but as we get ready to celebrate Easter, we need to bring to mind Our Saviour’s words in Matthew 5:43-48.

It is easy to brood on the past offences of other people and to bear grudges, but if this virus has taught us anything, it is that this life is short and is itself a

preparation for the life to come.

If through His unending love, God can completely forgive us, we must, in turn, soften our hearts and forgive all others, with no exceptions.

Richard McPhail

COVID 19 Update

It is with sadness that the PCC has decided to suspend communal worship within the parish during the current lockdown due to the greater infectiousness of the new variant and our responsibility to uphold the “stay at home” message from the government. For now our services will revert to being online or the service sheet being posted out. We hope and pray that this will be a short temporary suspension and we will be meeting ‘in person’ again as soon as possible.

We will still be opening the church for private prayer at 7pm on Thursday evenings, but this is to be in silence and we will continue to observe all the necessary precautions. And of course, anyone who has symptoms of COVID-19, has been asked to self-isolate having had contact with someone who has tested positive, or is feeling unwell, should not attend.

Our sermon is available (as video or audio file) on our YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyfZeMWItDiPU3ggBoLDLTw Alternative online live streamed services can be found at:

Holy Trinity, Platt: https://www.youtube.com/c/plattchurchmanchester St Clements Church: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChUN-OUQn9yee0Ov3URB4zw/featured

Christ Church, Fulwood:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8lzdLWFTWw5GGGijzKhd1Q St Stephen’s, Preston:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqauIahbANNiMN8ZbcHv9Uw You may find the links below of interest as we remain unable to come together for teaching, discipleship and support:

Bible App at https://www.youversion.com/the-bible-app/ : gives you tools to seek God’s heart daily: listen to audio Bibles, create Prayers, study with Friends, explore 2,000+ Bible versions, and much more

Online church: www.clayton.tv (for morning worship plus much more)

Daily Hope: 0800 804 8044. Free phone line offering hymns, prayers, and reflections 24 hours a day

The Parish Office is open on Wednesday mornings. At other times Cathy is working from home. If you need to contact her please ring on 01706 849128.

Mission Gift Day – Sunday 31

_{January 2021}

Please can you let us have your donations towards this year’s Mission gift Day as soon as possible. We are splitting all money raised between our mission partners Daniel & Mei Whetham and Manchester City Mission for their work with the homeless. Please consider and pray about how much you can donate/support our Mission partners at this time. If you would like to donate distantly please contact the parish office for the church bank details and reference your payment Mission GD. If you can, please gift aid your donations.

Pastoral Care

We are continuing to try to keep in touch with all our church family and you are doing a fantastic job of being there for each other. If, however you could do with some help or would appreciate some regular contact (you may be feeling ‘forgotten’), please do get in touch; just leave a message on the office phone or ring Margaret or Kim. Thank you

Support Christ Church & St Saviour’s when you shop at

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/ch/1134819-0

Greater Manchester Bereavement Support Service

Greater Manchester Bereavement Service can help to find support for anyone that has been bereaved or affected by a death. They offer support as well as advice on practical issues that losing a loved one may bring. Please visit https://greater-manchester-bereavement-service.org.uk/ or call us on 0161 983 0902 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm (except bank holidays) Wednesday, 9am to 8pm for help in finding the right support for you.

Readings:

This week: Mark 12.18-44 Knowing the Bible is not enough

Next week: Mark 13.1-37 How to see the times we’re in?

Please take time to read ahead

Christ Church and St Saviour’s

Parish office: 624 2326

Emails: [email protected] Website: www.christchurchchadderton.co.uk

The Parish of Christ Church Chadderton

& St Saviour’s Chadderton

Sermon Sheet

Sunday 14

February 2021

by Dave Skinner

Knowing the Bible is not enough

Grace mercy and peace from God our Father

and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Reading:

Mark 12.18-44

Introduction

What is the Bible? The answer should be obvious to evangelical Christians because it is their authority in all things theological and doctrinal. We are told in 2 Timothy 3:15 that it is able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. It is God’s will revealed to us. It gives historical evidence for the faith we have. It gives us hope for the future and assurance for the present.

But today, my purpose is to show that knowing the Bible is not enough. And this will become clear as we study this passage in Mark.

The people who claimed to know the Scriptures were the very ones who opposed Jesus who is the ultimate revelation of God. He is the centrepiece and goal of Scripture. Isn’t it ironic that the so called “teachers of the law” did not recognise the Messiah? So, what was missing? They, and their followers, show us that knowing the Bible is not enough.

There are four things that are needed for the Bible to become a living word of God for us:

i) The power of God ii) Love for God

iii) The Christ of God iv) Faith in God

Background

The different characters mentioned in our text are:

I. The Sadducees. They were not a large group, but they did have a large influence. They held power in their wealth and intellectual abilities. Although they were generally not thought well of by the common people, it was hard for anyone without their learning to argue against them.

II. The “teachers of the law”. They were well educated in the Scriptures and the Prophets. The law is used here in the context of the Jewish religion as a whole with its commandments and religious rituals. One might also translate the phrase as “teachers of religion”.

III. The religious people who were following the teachers of the law by giving their tithes.

IV. A poor widow with nothing to her name apart from the 2 coins in her pocket.

1. Knowing the Bible is not enough unless we know the power

of God (18- 27)

The Sadducees were very narrow on Scripture. They held the five books of Moses above everything else. They believed that only these books contained truly authoritative teaching. They were also rationalists. That is, they did not believe in anything supernatural. They did not believe in the resurrection (v.18). Other teachers of the law, including the Pharisees, did not agree with their views. Nonetheless, the Sadducees were an influential group.

They approached Jesus with a question which was designed to show that the resurrection and the law of Moses were in contradiction. Their “killer”

question was about a woman whose husbands kept dying and left her childless. According to the law of Moses she must remarry and keep remarrying the brothers of her first husband to provide continuity of the family line. The Sadducees ask “in the resurrection whose wife will she be?” When people ask questions about the Christian faith, we need to be wise. Are they genuinely interested in an answer or are they trying to catch you out? Either way, we can learn a lot from the way that Jesus answers the Sadducees.

Jesus uses Scripture to correct and rebuke them. And he uses a passage from the part of Scripture they regard to be authoritative, Exodus 3:6.

You may be thinking that this passage does not even mention the

resurrection. However, it says that God IS the God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob, not that he WAS their God. The only way God could have still been the God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob, at the time he spoke to Moses from the burning bush is if the three patriarchs were still alive!

The mistake the Sadducees had made was to limit God to their own

understanding of how the world works. For them there was only the here and now, what can be seen and touched. But God is without substance. He is by definition supernatural. He is before all things. He is I AM. God simply is – always has, always will.

Although they did believe that God made everything, they did not believe that he could recreate a human being from the decayed remains of a dead corpse. That is why Jesus said that they did not know the power of God (v.24).

There are professing Christians today who deny divine creation, the virgin birth, and the resurrection. They explain the miracles rationally or relegate them to illustrations. According to them, the feeding of the 5000 is a lesson in sharing rather than a supernatural act of Jesus.

So, let me ask you:

Do you believe that God created the universe? Or do you fear the intellectual superiority of highly intelligent people like Brian Cox who deny creation? Do you limit the Bible to a book of teachings and good ideas about how to live? Or do you believe in the power of God?

Do you read the amazing stories of the flood, the Red Sea parting, the manna from heaven in the desert as historical events that demonstrate the power of God?

If you deny the power of God, then the Bible remains a religious book

offering no true hope beyond this life. We live in dark days. Death is closer today than yesterday. It’s not only in the news from far away countries; it’s on our doorstep. The Bible offers us the best hope when we take on board what God has done in the past so that we can put our faith in what God says he will do in the future.

God raised Jesus from the dead by his power and he will raise us too by that same power on the last day.

2. Knowing the Bible is not enough without love for God

(28-34)

A teacher of the law heard Jesus debating with the Sadducees. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the

commandments, which is the most important?”

Unlike the Sadducees who asked a question in order to catch out Jesus, this man is genuine. He really wants to know. We must discern when people ask us about the Christian faith. We should respect those who are genuine and not be afraid to challenge those who are just looking for an argument.

The Jews at that time had hundreds of commandments. They had expanded on the 10 Commandments handed down to Moses. There was ample scope for the forest to be lost among the trees. Jesus helps the man find the forest again.

He answers the man with 2 foundational commandments from Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19. (Read verses 29 to 31).

The first tells us to love God completely. The second command to love our neighbour is an outworking of the first. Love for God will naturally result in love for neighbour because every human being is made in his image. We love God with everything because everything we are and have belongs to him. He is infinitely superior to us, so he deserves to be loved infinitely by us.

Obviously, we are incapable of that, so we are to love God with what we do have - our whole being.

Jesus is not saying that we should love our neighbour as ourselves because we think a lot of ourselves. We are to love our neighbour as ourselves

because he or she is of the same substance as us – body and soul. They are equally made in God’s image, along with us. We may be taller, smarter,

richer, better behaved, have a cleaner police record than our neighbour but we are all equal in nature and value in God’s sight.

When despots want to persuade their followers to commit genocide – the holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia and Bosnia, for instance – the first step is to dehumanise those they want to annihilate. Then their victims are no longer seen as equals. They become another species in the people’s minds and they become capable of perpetrating genocide.

We should never think, “I could never do that” – millions of normal German people participated in the holocaust passively, if not actively. When we marginalise certain types of people because of their skin colour, country of

origin, religious belief we are potential fodder for someone to stir up our hatred to action. It has happened many times in living memory to people just like us!

This teacher of the law affirms the answer of Jesus. Not that he is in any position to judge, but his affirmation indicates agreement – like we might say “Amen to that” to show we agree with someone’s point. The man gives us a good example to follow by repeating what he has heard in his own

words to show that he has clearly understood. Sometimes we think we have understood something, only to find that we cannot then explain it to

someone else. Don’t be afraid to repeat what you have heard from your teacher.

Jesus approves of this man and encourages him by saying that he is not far from the kingdom of God. Genuine enquiry of the things of God are the way into the Kingdom. Paul told Timothy that Scripture is able to make us wise for salvation. It is good for us to encourage unbelievers who respond

correctly by telling them that they are on the right path. It does not mean they are home and dry. But they are seeking and we should spur

them on.

3. Knowing the Bible is not enough unless we know the Christ

of God (35- 40)

Sometimes God tells us things in the Bible that are hard to understand.

To us, it is hard to understand that Christ is fully human and fully God at the same time. How can God be reduced with the frame of a human being? How can God still be omnipresent if he is limited to time and space in a human body like the rest of us? Maybe these were the thoughts that made it hard for the teachers of the law to understand Psalm 110 which Jesus quotes.

This short psalm is quoted in the NT more than any other OT passage. The apparent paradox is: the Christ is the son of David and his Lord at the same time. Protocol dictated that David must be his son’s lord, not vice-versa. To be David’s lord, Christ must have preceded him. To be above David, the King of Israel, Christ must be God himself. To be David’s son, the Christ must be human too.

So, what Psalm 110 is saying is that the Christ must be both divine and human. When we investigate this paradox further, we conclude that God could only become human and remain omnipresent if he is triune, 3 persons in the one Godhead – Father, Son & Holy Spirit.

The teachers of the law did not submit their wisdom to God’s wisdom. They had much to lose by doing so. They liked to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the marketplaces (v.38). The sin of their heart made them proud. To understand what Psalm 110 tells us about Christ requires us to humbly submit our intellect to God’s wisdom. Today, in our evangelical churches, we might intellectually ascribe to the divinity and humanity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity but still be like these teachers of the law who loved to be seen.

When we preach and teach well, people will complement us. This is a great encouragement. However, it can easily become the thing we crave. We start to make sure our teaching pleases people and doesn’t confront or upset

them. We begin tickling people’s ears with our preaching & teaching because it makes us popular.

No one sets out in any kind of ministry to desire people’s praise more than God’s pleasure. It creeps up on us. When we go through tough times, we seek the reassurance of the people rather than the strength of God to sustain us. The fidelity of our preaching and teaching becomes compromised. We must not become like these teachers of the law who loved to walk around in

flowing robes and be greeted.

Correct Christology – the person and nature of Jesus – is not some esoteric theological oddity for students and professors at Bible colleges to

contemplate. It is the unique claim of Christianity. Diminish the divinity of Christ and you’re left with another human hero who is powerless to answer your prayers. Diminish the humanity of Christ and you’re left with a Deity who cannot sympathise with your troubles in life.

4. Knowing the Bible is not enough without faith in God (41-44)

Jesus, like all good teachers used examples from real life to illustrate his teaching.

Rich people were coming into the temple treasury and throwing in large amounts of money. You can easily imagine the approval of those watching. Who doesn’t want big givers in their church?

But then a poor widow comes in and puts two small coins in. What difference will she make to the work of God on earth? Jesus knows that many people will think like this. We’re the same. It’s all very well having asylum seekers come into your church but if they comprise the majority of

the church then how will the church pay the pastor, the heating bills, the repair bills, let along buy Gospel tracts to give out at Christmas and Easter? Jesus is using the example of this poor woman to illustrate what true faith looks like and how God reacts to such faith.

She has faith that God can make much out of little. He can provide the means to pay the pastor and the bills and buy outreach materials. He can provide for the widow too. She will not go hungry. We don’t know how that will happen, nor did she. But she acted in faith. God loves poor people like this widow. Not because they are poor, but because they often have a faith that leaves the rest of us standing.

As churches we often build bigger buildings and make ourselves more comfortable before giving away our finances to church plants or fellow churches that are full of asylum seekers or jobless folks from the council estate. We like to make sure we have enough cash in reserve in the church accounts. Just in case! When we do that, we are demonstrating our faith in savings, not Jehovah Jirah!

Don’t get me wrong, financial stewardship is godly and important. But let’s be honest. Do we truly stretch ourselves when discussing the budget? We should never “test God” by unwisely starting huge projects without thinking it through. But when we seek God in prayer for wisdom and faith, we will be able to take on and give away much more than we ever thought possible.

Conclusion

The Bible is the inerrant and infallible word of God. It did not have its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, Peter tells us in his second letter. Therefore, we must use the Bible as a pair of spectacles through which we can see God’s character, power, love and revelation.

The Bible does transports us upwards when we know the power of God. The Bible causes our hearts to burn within us when we know the love of God. The Bible causes us to worship in wonder when we know the Christ of God. The Bible stirs us to trust God with everything when we have true faith in God.

Prayers

Take time to pray for:

Our world: Corona virus pandemic, climate change & stewardship

of the world; those affected by the military coup in Myanmar,

our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world

Our country: Our government and leaders, our scientists, doctors

and researchers, Schools, teachers and students as they

continue to teach/learn distantly, those affected by the

restrictions & recession, people affected by the recent floods

and cold weather

Our church and community: our parish family, a new shepherd for

our flock, learning to work together with St Mary’s, our

mission partners

Ourselves: to grow in understanding of Jesus’ love and grace, to

put our trust in our Lord and Saviour

Please remember:

 the frontline NHS and staff in care homes etc

 Key workers including supermarket workers, delivery drivers, food

manufacturers, school teachers and public transport providers

You may end each time with:

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Prayer requests:

 Eddie Wilson: recovery and healing after recent stroke & fall

 Alan Dean: for recovery and healing

 Norma Howe

 Doreen Buckley after another fall

 Mary (Bola) Amusa, Linda Mushiko and Eunice Hamed for protection

for them as they work with increased risks of COVID infection

 Audrey Newton: for healing, recovery and wisdom for her doctors

 Esmee (Derek & Audrey Newton’s granddaughter) and her

 Sienna Grace (for continued improvement)

 Pauline Dalton: for God’s sustaining love throughout treatment and

wisdom for her doctors

 Mildred West & Edith West

For the family and friends of:-

The Lord’s prayer

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name, your kingdom come,

your will be done, on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours

now and for ever. Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and

minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ

our Lord; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and

the Holy Spirit, be upon us and remain with us always. Amen.

Christ Church and St Saviour’s

Parish office: 0161 624 2326

Emails: [email protected] Website: www.christchurchchadderton.co.uk