Exodus, Feeding and a Future for the Church

So anyone who was lucky anough to spot that I had been keen to get my blog back up and running must have been wondering what on earth happened to information about that service I was preparing. The truth of the matter is that it took me longer to prepare the service because I really got enthused by God’s Word. It’s fantastic when God’s Word speaks and the more you look the more it speaks, its been a real blessing to me for me to prepare the talks for today’s service - I just hope they were a blessing to those in South Leeds who who heard them too.

So today the lectionary reading was John 6 - John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus walking on water. These famous passages of scripture have a slightly different ring in John’s gospel as his focus in telling the stories is somehwere different than the synoptics. John’s pasasges are scattered with references that Jewish people would make links to the Old Testament Exodus. Firstly John tells us that it was near the time of Passover, secondly there is a miraculous of feeding of people in the wilderness, just like the provision of Manna (bread) in the desert for the Israelites. There’s also the Jesus showing power over the water on the Sea of Galilee, as God showed he had power over the Red Sea when he parted it. And this reminds us to be thankful to God for his provision for us. During the Exodus, despite the people’s attitude, their grumbling, their discontentment, God conitnued to bless them. And so it was during the feeding of the five thousand. The people only wanted the healing of their sick, they had the wrong picture of who Jesus was, yet Jesus still provided for their need. We should be willing to share with the people the times when God has blessed us, and we should spend our lives in worship of God because of what he has done for us.

Secondly the feeding of the five thousand in John’s gospel points not just to the past but also the future. It was again at the time of Passover a couple of years later that Jesus would enter Jerusalem. There would be crowds following him again, on Palm Sunday they shouted praise, on Good Friday they shouted insults. Jesus would spend the last evening of his earthly life having a Passover meal with his disciples in which he again distributed bread. But these details are minute compared to what Jesus achieved on Good Friday and Easter morning. I belive that Jesus died to save us from our sin - you see when we act in the same way as the Israelites did in the wilderness, we separate ourselves from God. Jesus, when he died, took our sin upon himself, and dealt with all that separates us from God. His raising to life on Easter morning shows us that he succeeded and that sin and death were defeated - Jesus Christ has won the victory, and we can once again live in a relationship with God. The hope of Easter is that there is always more of God for us - that it doesn’t matter what we have done, who we are, we can find forgiveness and new life by trusting in Jesus as Lord, Saviour and Redeemer. He died for me and he died for you - are you going to accept him as your Saviour. Are you, like the small boy going to offer the little you have, your life, as an offering to God, placing it at Jesus feet and letting him nurture it and guide it?

Finally this passage shows sign for the future of the church. Jesus after the miraculous feed goes off up a mountainside to be by himself. When evening came the disiciples decide to head off back home without him. They set off back across the lake, there’s a storm and then they get terrified when they see a man walking toward them on the water. Jesus says , ‘Do not be afraid, it is I’, the disciples help him into the boat and immediately they arrive where they were going. The church is renowned for trying new stuff - at the moment the in-thing to do as a church is cafe church, pub church, skate park church, any type of church that isn’t in an old building on Sunday morning church. These are fantastic, and I wouldn;t want in anyway to dampen there work. However at times we as churches are often keen to do stuff because we see it working elsewhere, orbecause it is the in thing to do. But I wonder whether our journey’s and churches could be likened to the disiciples in the boat - are we in danger of setting off without Jesus. Is Jesus in the boat? Is Jesus in the URC boat? We can become the most wonderful group of people, doing loads of stuff, making ourselves feel good about what we do, we can run the best churches in the land, we can be at the cutting edge of religious life, but if Jesus is not in our boat then we won’t get to where God is leading us - in fact the journey has no purpose. We need to pray, study and learn hard in order to discern where God is leading, and make sure that it is where Jesus leading with him at the helm, not the in thing that feeds our human desires and egos. I hope and pray that I will do that in my minsitry, and I hope and pray that as URC, a collection of local churches we all do this.

Sorry for long post - but I got excited! I hope you are too. Praise God for what he has done, for the blessings he has given. Trust in Jesus Christ on the cross to bring us into a new relationship with our heavenly Father, and make sure as we journey as individuals and as churches that Jesus in the boat with us.

I’m hoping that this can be true of the holiday club in Knaresborough that starts tomorrow.
God bless.
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This entry was posted on 26/07/2009 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Paul's diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.