Link to Last sermon of Rev Chris Bedford: 15 January.
Sermon, 22 January 2012
Reverend Hilary Beresford
One of the biggest jobs parents and grandparents have today is trying to motivate our children to reach their potential. We're always looking for ways to inspire our kids. Many parents read
a lot to their younger children and sometimes we can find it hard to pick the stories that will motivate them. As a parent or grandparent, you know that each child is different—they have different personalities, different
skills, and different likes. I believe the number one way we can get through to our children is to show them that we care about them individually. By showing them you love them and that you're interested in what
they do, you can begin to make that connection. Then it's a matter of exposing them to different things to find out what lights a fire in each child's spirit and then helping them develop in those areas that interest them. We may
have a path we'd like them to follow, but it really helps to find out what they're interested in. I will always be grateful to my parents for encouraging me to dream. They wanted their children to think about things we
wanted to do, even if it seemed far-fetched. They talked to us about trying things that no one else was doing and didn't allow us to be defined by our surroundings or by anyone else's thoughts. Because of that, my sister chose
the university that would grow her rather than a scholarship that would define her thinking. We need to try to encourage our kids in the same way—try to get them to think outside the box.
What we tell our children is important, but the best way to inspire them is to show them—to be a role model for them. As God's children, He is our role model. He has taken His
time to reveal Himself to us, and He still has more to reveal! Harry Emerson Fosdick in his "guide to understanding the Bible"
asserts that the concept of God found in the Bible is not static or absolute, but rather an evolving one that progresses over time from the primitive monotheism of the earliest patriarchs toward the more refined notions of the prophets and the New Testament. God is ever revealing more of Himself.
Our task today is to so show our relationship with God to our kids that it will spark a desire in them to ignite their own relationship with God. Let us take a look at how God has revealed Himself through Scripture. From the
first chapter of Genesis a confident monotheism is revealed. Exodus tells us that the Israelites had not known their god, Yahweh, by His name. In the prophets too – Hosea reports God as saying,
"I am Yahweh thy God from the land of Egypt,"
(Hosea 12:19; 13:4), and Jeremiah places Yahweh's relationship with His people in the Mosaic period, (Jeremiah 2:1-2.) and Ezekiel represents God as calling Moses' generation "the day when I chose Israel."
(Ezekiel 20:5.) The distinctive faith of the Hebrews began with the covenant between them and God. Yahweh was conceived as graciously choosing a new people and the people were conceived as deliberately accepting God. God then went on to reveal Himself not just as a mountain god, but as God of a nation. The God of Sinai also shows Himself as a god
of war, battling for His people and leading them to victory. He then shows Himself as God of the sky, controlling thunder and lightning and as God of the heavens, where humanity would not invade this side of death. {Yahweh
jealously protects the heavens from humanity's invasion in the story of the tower of Babel, (Genesis 11:1-9.)} The next revelation of God was through Hosea. He went beyond the idea of God as judge to the idea of God as saviour.
Hosea saw God with passionate earnestness refusing to give up his people and determined to save them from their evil. So the Jews, both of the Old and New Testaments began to think of God as holding a fatherly love. In
Ecclesiasticus stands the prayer' "O Lord, Father and Master of my life…" (Ecclesiasticus 23:1.) - Sounds like the beginning of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples! For, as we pass from the Old
Testament into the New, God remains the same. Just as Wesleyanism started as a phase of Anglicanism and remained so until it was coerced into separatism by the Church of England itself, so the first Christians were simply Jews who
had found the Messiah and who intended remaining as the true Judaism within the larger matrix of the national faith. God has revealed Himself as universal, not only in the sense of being cosmic, but in the deeper and more
difficult sense of being God of all mankind alike and being "no respecter of persons.'' (Acts 10:34.) Paul had done his work and the church was an inter-racial, international brotherhood. God is revealed
as the eternal Spirit: God of no special nation and of no chosen race, accessible everywhere to every soul without requirement of special ritual or legalistic act, who, being spirit, can be worshiped only in spirit, who, being
love, dwells wherever love dwells, and who supremely has shined in the face of Jesus Christ. This is our challenge today: To continue to let God reveal Himself through us, through our families, through our
community, so that all might see the glory of God and come and worship Him, not only as a baby in a manger, but as The One who was, and is and is to come – without end. For where does the image of God that we all hold, end?
To listen to God in prayer and praise and share the wonders He reveals and to help
ignite the spark of eternity in our children, in ourselves, in our community – To the glory of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
"God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I Am Yahweh: and I
appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as El Shaddai; but by My name, Yahweh, I was not known to them." (Exodus 6:2-3 ).
Sounds familiar?..... Isn't this what we do at each sharing around the table of communion?
God is not static; God is continuing to reveal Himself. The body of Christ has the challenge to keep up with this revelation.