Rediscovering the Gospel - Part 9

Before the service Chris had a picture of free range chickens.

He grew up and his parents had free range chickens in the

garden and they were extremely happy and healthy.

And also there's a lot of mess and that's our aim at hope.

It's we don't want to have battery farmed people.

It's a very, very serious point I'm making that are weak and

anaemic and will kind of produce the goods, but a kind of real

deficit. So we pay a price in that.

It's not, we're not going to be a battery farm church.

We're just not going to be that. And I think when we've paid that

price, we can know that we will be healthy and well because

we'll be deeply relationally connected with God and each

other and everyone. So I just want to kind of like

show this is what lead leadership is making these

choices that are costly because we are convinced that a more

relational way to live is the way God's designed us to live.

And that's very hard to put into a religious context, but we're

committed to that. So I wanted to share that word

free range chickens. We're going to produce healthy

eggs and mess. And today we've got Bill

speaking 3rd on the series of crucifixion.

And we are wrestling with a big conversation that's going on.

And we want hope to be really on the front foot of this

conversation about really why did Jesus die?

That's a big conversation now when you came here, like maybe

screaming with your kids in the car or you're like had a big

night and you're just kind of wanting to have a decent Sunday

or you've got a really stressful job.

You might be thinking, why the heck do we keep thinking about

why Jesus died? Just tell me how to live and

have a happy life and, you know, give me a pat on the back and

send me off. And in some ways, we can never

go wrong through this whole process with just loving God and

loving our neighbour. If you want to know how to live

a happy life, love God and love our neighbour and we will be

fine on that for the rest of our lives.

We could never think or meditate on anything beyond that.

And at the same time, what we're digging into is the nature of

this God we're loving and there and the nature of the neighbour

we're loving. So it's helping us to understand

who God is, who humans are and how we're designed to be.

So we're wrestling with some complex and controversial

issues. And what Chris and I are going

to do is we're kind of sitting with these things and then

probably around the summer, maybe come through to a place of

Kate. How then do we live, which is

the main point of this? And Bill will be, he's doing one

more set of three on faith in the summer term and then three

in September of therefore how do we live?

So it kind of fits in with that sense of, OK, in conclusion,

having wrestled through what we think the nature of God is and

how who Jesus is and, and what his death meant, we then can be

people who are equipped to live well.

So bear with us in this process. The image I keep getting is the

yeast in the dough if anyone's actually made bread from

scratch, rather than the fake version, which is you just put

stuff in a KitchenAid and let it sit there for about 5 hours.

What I mean is people who actually need, you know, like

really need with their arms and hands every single day yeast

into a dough. Jesus said that's all the

Kingdom of God is. Like there's a, there's a kind

of a wrestling and a, a process and a fermentation that happens.

That isn't that that makes us fitter and stronger and produces

good bread, but it, it's not, it's not a supermarket loaf.

So that's what we're doing and we won't need to do it for a

very long time. So you can breathe on that.

But today we are going to look at the third in Bill's

miniseries. He's just been doing on the

crucifixion, digging into Romans.

And what we all need is revelation.

We need literally God to reveal reality to us.

This isn't something we can get through intellect.

The flesh counts for nothing. The flesh resists the reality of

God. The flesh can't understand the

things of God. So we need to humble ourselves.

It's an anti elitist way of life.

We literally need to humble ourselves.

Every single person, old or young, whatever our background

is, we need to humble ourselves and ask God for revelation.

So we're going to do that now as Bill speaks, God, thank you that

you love to reveal yourself to us.

And I've just been reading in Luke, when you say the son, the

father can only reveal the son and the son can only reveal the

father. And, and we, we need you to

reveal yourself to us. We need you to do that.

We need you literally to unveil our hearts and minds so we see

more clearly. The eyes of our hearts are

enlightened that we may know you better and know being

experienced you. And so we welcome you today.

We welcome you to come through this morning through Bill's

teaching, through what we perceive in Romans, through our

conversations. We welcome you.

We want to know you more and experience you more so that we

can fulfil that command for life, to love God and love our

neighbour as ourselves. Amen.

Thank you Alice. OK, you ready for more Romans?

Here we go. This is Romans 6 started last

week. We were looking at Romans 5.

This is Romans 6 from verse one. First 11 verses.

What shall we say then? Should we go on sinning so that

grace may increase? By no means.

We are those who've died to sin. How can we live in it any

longer? Or don't you know that all of us

who are baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his

death? We were therefore buried with

Him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was

raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may

live a new life. For if we've been united with

Him in a death like His, we will certainly also be united with

Him in a resurrection like His. For we know that our old self

was crucified with Him, so that the body ruled by sin might be

done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin,

because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live

with Him, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead,

he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over

him. The death he died, he died to

sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but

alive to God in Christ Jesus. You may notice a #10 in there.

I, I, I missed one. I normally remove the the verse

numbers when I prepare a slide and one slipped through the net.

So I apologise for that. 10 Yeah, getting You're right,

Andrew, I can only apologise. I'm the only one to blame.

Thank you for that feedback. So I got a new phone, new mobile

about four weeks ago. You know how some people when it

comes to technology, they're, I think they're called early

adopters. They like to have the latest

thing. Now.

I don't know what the name is for the other end of the scale,

but I'm the other end. Luddite is probably sorry,

whatever techno fear is what I have.

So I had an 8 year old phone. It was called a who are we?

Which was great. You know, every time I got a

text it was like it asked me this philosophical question and

it was a good question. You know, who are we really?

Anyway, after eight years, my who are we conked out.

So I had to get a new phone and it's been 8 years since I've got

a new phone. And the process of I spent a

whole evening reloading all my apps as I believe they're

called. And every single app they were

like these terms that, you know, you have to read through the

terms and conditions. And so I got the first one and I

got down to clause 17 and I thought, this is ridiculous.

Do people actually read this stuff?

Well, that's what I conclude. I mean, it's you all know this

because you get the latest phone every six months.

This is news to me. And I I every single app, you

know, after after half an hour, I was a pro.

I was going, yeah, accept, accept.

Yeah, whatever. Yeah, yeah, fine.

Now this passage I would suggest is like the small print for

baptism, OK, because I'm, I, I didn't read the small print for

all my phone, all, all my apps on my phone.

I just clicked through and I said yeah, yeah, I'll sign up

for that. I didn't read, I didn't check

the detail. I didn't really know what I was

signing up for. Here's my question.

When you were baptised, if you've been baptised, did you

read the small print? Did you realise what you were

signing up for? Did you realise that you were

announcing your own death? I didn't.

I mean I, I've had three goes at being baptised to be honest.

Now did I understand what I was doing in any of those 3

attempts? Probably not really.

I mean, in my own defence, the first one was when I was six

months old, so I didn't didn't really know what was going on.

Apparently our dog bit the vicar, that's according to my

mother. But whether the dog bit the

vicar or not, I've no idea. I don't remember anything about

it. I was six months old.

But the second attempt or kind of attempt was I was 16.

I'd become a Christian at school and the thing you did at my

school, if you were a Christian, was you got confirmed.

So I did the confirmation thing because it's what you did.

Did I know what I was doing? It was just what we did.

And then when when I was a student, I was a student in

Manchester at Manchester, Polly and I went to this wild and

crazy church that told me that getting confirmed being

sprinkled as a baby and then confirmed that didn't count.

What you wanted was proper baptism, which meant being an

adult and being in a swimming pool in Manchester with two

blokes pushing you under the water and, you know, lots of

people watching. Now that's proper baptism with a

capital B. Did I understand that time?

I mean, I should have got the message, you know, there was

these two people trying to drown me.

You know, I'd if, if I'd been paying attention, I'd have

realised that it was somehow to do with death, but I hadn't read

the small print. I love verse 3 in this.

Don't you know, I hear Paul saying to me, don't you realise,

don't you realise Bill, what this is all about?

Aren't you paying attention? Don't you know that you're

telling people that you're choosing to die?

Baptizo is is a Greek word and it just means immerse.

It just means immerse and Paul is saying if you're immersed in

Christ, if you're in Christ, then you're immersed into his

death. That's what you're doing.

That's what we're announcing when we get baptised.

That's the contract we're signing up for.

Don't you know? Did you not read the small

print? One thing I've noticed in this

whole series which has been going on for months and months

is when I was told the gospel, the gospel I heard 40 years ago,

40-5 years ago, the person kind of justify or or backed it up by

quoting verses from Romans. And they quoted Romans 323 and

they quoted Romans 623 and Romans 5 verse 8.

Romans 5:8

And they said, look, this proves that the message is Jesus has

died for your sins. Therefore if you accept him into

your life, you will go to heaven when you die.

And here's the proof. These verses from Romans, and

what I've been trying to do is read Romans as though it is a

letter, as though it is a coherent argument, as though all

the bits join up into a single message.

And what I discover is I find myself thinking again and again,

where's Paul getting this stuff from?

I mean, hasn't he heard the gospel?

Doesn't he know that? Romans 323 says, and somehow,

Well, The thing is if you take a single verse out of context and

join it with another verse taken out of context and then a third,

you can pretty much get the Bible to say whatever you want.

Now, I'm not saying that that gospel is rubbish.

I think it contains lots of truth, but it's a very strange

experience to be reading through Romans and thinking, wow, this

is new, this is original. I mean, last week it was about

Adam and Genesis one to three and the Garden of Eden.

This week it's about baptism. You know, when have you been in

a gospel presentation, a gospel meeting, and it's been about the

Garden of Eden. But I would suggest that this is

that, that Paul's message is completely coherent, it's

logical, it fits together, it's a single argument.

It makes sense. One of my favourite Tom Wright

quotes is versus mean what they mean within paragraphs.

Paragraphs mean what they mean within chapters.

Chapters mean what they mean within letters.

If you put it back into context, you get the full picture.

So for example, last week. Do you remember last week?

If you were here, we looked at how in Romans 5, Paul compares

the story of Adam in the garden and the story of Jesus in the

garden. The story of Jesus life, his

death and his resurrection and the conclusion, the conclusion

at the end of last week was there are now two ways to be

human. Because of the life, death and

resurrection of Jesus, there is now a choice.

We can either be in Adam, we can be an Adam type of human being,

or we can be a Christ type of human being.

And that's the choice. That's the choice that the news

of the gospel, the news of Jesus, life, death and

resurrection, that's the choice it presents to us.

Now, what's the logical next question?

What's the next step? Well, Paul, tell me more about

this in Christ. What does it mean?

What does it look like? How do I do it?

What does it mean to live in Christ?

And this week that's what Paul tells us.

Romans 6 is all begins this great 3 chapters which is all

about what being in Christ looks like, how to live as a Christ

type human being and how to do it, how you can actually do it.

In practise. This is the human response to

the gospel message, which is the message of Jesus life, death and

resurrection. And what does he say?

What's the answer? The answer is that we are in

Christ when we imitate Christ, that the pattern of Jesus life,

in particular his the pattern of dying and rising, becomes the

pattern in our life. Our life retells the story of

dying and rising, of sacrifice and new life that becomes the

pattern of our lives so that the news of what Jesus did is not

just something that happened a long time ago that we somehow

get the benefit from now. Jesus is our model and we are in

Christ. We are Christian.

In other words, we're like Christ when we live out his

death and resurrection in our lives.

That's what it means to be a Christian.

Scholars have a word for this this idea because it's a key

theme in Paul. In lots of his letters, he talks

about this idea of how we respond to the message of Jesus

and and scholars call it cruciformity.

Cruciformity, the idea that we live a cross shaped a cruciform

life. We live a life which it looks

like dying and rising, imitating him.

It's an essential part of Paul's gospel message.

Didn't you know? Have you not read the small

print? Were you not aware?

I mean, we had communion early today, earlier on, and we went

round the room saying what it means.

We're eating Jesus, death, his body and his blood.

We're saying we want that in US. Baptism is saying we want to be

in it. Communion is saying we want it

in US. Us in him and him in US.

Well, thank you very much, Andrew.

Did you hear that? He said it's good.

It's nice to have feedback as you're going on.

Yeah, I know, Fickle. That's me.

But what are you saying, Bill? Are you saying we literally have

to die? You know, are you asking us to

be crucified? Well, in Bristol in 2026, it's

unlikely. It's unlikely.

But that's not really the I don't think that's really what

Paul is saying. What Paul is saying is that if

we acknowledge God, then every day.

As we sit before him, he will ask us stuff, He'll ask us to do

stuff, and that gives us a choice.

And when? When we're before him and we say

you are my God, you are my Lord, and he asks us something, then

we find ourselves in exactly the same position as Adam in the

garden. We find ourselves in exactly the

same position as Jesus in the garden.

We're faced with a choice. Are we going to say yes or are

we going to say no? Do we acknowledge that he is

God? Do we accept him as our personal

God? Do we think he knows what he's

doing? Do we think he's good and wise?

Do we trust Him that that's the position we're in if we say

you're my Lord? And The thing is, the point is,

if we say yes, if we're faithful servants, if we want to obey his

command to love Him and love our neighbour, to serve Him and

serve our neighbour, there will be a cost.

There will be a cost. It'll often involve sacrifice.

It'll sometimes involve suffering.

And the question is, are we willing to lay down our lives in

that sense in order to say yes to him?

Are we willing to do that? Because that's the contract.

If you read the small print Haven't You heard?

We had a perfect example, really perfect example, a couple of

months ago. Someone here was talking about

their process of adopting two children and they described

exactly that process, of having a growing sense that this was

something God was asking them to do.

And then realising that it would be a huge ask, that it would

look like laying down their lives.

There would be a great cost, a great sacrifice.

It would mean giving up so many things and they chose to do it.

That's cruciformity, that's the cross shaped life.

That's what we say we want to do when we get baptised.

And now I know what you're thinking.

What you're thinking is, Bill, I thought the gospel meant good

news. I thought this was about good

news. And all you're talking about is

cost, sacrifice, suffering, death, laying down your life.

Is that really good news? Because it doesn't sound like

it. Is it really good news?

Yes, absolutely. This is the good news.

Why? Well, verse 4, we were therefore

buried with him through baptism into death in order that what's

the outcome of that choice? In order that just as Christ was

raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may

live a new life. That's why we do it where the

passion of Jesus life was laying down his life in order to

receive new life. And the promise for us is new

life. And that's, that's the promise

which will be fulfilled if we're willing to lay down our lives.

The the example I've mentioned before of the couple who chose

to adopt what I clearly remember is this difficult process.

But then the person speaking said the result has been, she

said, it's life, it's real life, it's rich, satisfying life.

And it's so much more than the humdrum, everyday, slightly

dissatisfying life that the world has to offer.

And that's the whole point. That's a that life, that eternal

quality of life, the life of the age to come.

Zowy life, life in all its fullness is available now if

we're willing to lay down our Adam life.

That's the contract, that's the deal, that's the small print.

When I think of this, I, I always, it reminds me of

something I did in my 20s. I think it's telling that the

example I I just gave of the person who spoke a couple of

months ago, that's real for them right now.

Whereas when I want to look for an example, I have to go back

decades. That probably tells you how good

a Christian I am. But in my 20s, I helped on these

teenage house parties. And what I remember is every

single I I did it year after year and every single year in

the weeks leading up to the house party, I would say to

myself, why did you agree to do this?

Why? What were you thinking?

I mean, I, I was, but I was mid 20s.

I had, I was working for the first time in my life.

So I got four days, sorry, four weeks.

I got 4 weeks holiday a year. And this meant sacrificing a

week's holiday a week out of four just to, you know, be with

these spotty teenagers. And it was a it was

uncomfortable. You know, it wasn't a luxurious

place where it took where it happened.

It was hard work. It was the whole thing leading

up to it was about the cost. And I'd say to myself, why am I

doing this? I didn't feel like doing it.

I didn't want to do it. Why had I said yes?

And then I'd get to the week and it would be a taste of heaven.

It really what every single year I would say to myself, Oh, yeah,

Oh, yeah. That's why.

That's why I said yes. And I'd sign up for the next

year. It was life.

It was life in all its fullness. It was a taste of heaven.

That was my experience. And I think the deal is you need

to make the sacrifice in order to experience the resurrection

life. It's a package.

It goes together. The Christian life is not a menu

in a tapas bar, but most of us treat it like it is.

You know, we read one of our favourite verses will promise

peace or joy or love, and we'll say, Oh yeah, I'd like some of

that along with my king prawns and my patatas.

Yeah, get me some of that piece. I'd love some of that.

And God, why am I not feeling peaceful?

You promised peace and I asked for peace.

I'm still slightly anxious about this situation.

Where's the peace, God? Liar.

I thought you promised. Well, no.

The deal is if you choose to be in Christ, then you experience

resurrection life. And we have a number of

different words to describe different aspects of that

resurrection life like Lovejoy, peace, patience, et cetera, et

cetera, life, love. But you get it all when you sign

on the dotted line. Now that's it's not hard and

fast. My, my real life experience is

that God is generous. He's so he's far more generous

with this stuff than I deserve. And he gives me a taste of all

of this stuff. And I think, oh, more please.

And then he says, OK, you can have more, but you need to take

a little further step in terms of sacrifice.

Are you willing to give that up? Because this is a process, but

this is the choice. I'd say overall it's a package,

not a menu. What I find is the more I'm

willing to empty my own life, the more he fills it with

delicious things. A few last week, I think, or the

week before Christmas was asking me about this series and Chris

said, are you going to talk about the fact that this isn't

about what happens when we die? That the gospel isn't about what

happens when we die, that it's about now, that it's about

putting it into practise now. And I said, yeah, probably

because that's the big question. You know the gospel I heard 45

years ago, the message was if you sign on the dotted line now,

then you'll reap the benefits when you die.

It's about that, your destination when you die.

But then in Christian, when I became a Christian, it was more

about it's not just about when you die, it's now.

It's about living the life now, putting it into practise now.

And I'm pleased to announce that Paul is quite clear that this is

all about what happens when we die.

It's all about what happens when we die.

It's just that he brings forward his death and makes it.

Now his death is something that has already happened.

He counts himself as dead. So this is what we experience

when we die. Have a look at this.

This is verses five to seven. Look at the tenses, the tenses

in this For we have been united with Him in a death like his.

That's already happened. We've already joined Him in that

death, for we know that our else old self was crucified with him.

Done deal. It's in the past.

Anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

The new life starts now. I retired last week.

Absolutely. I decided to bring it forward.

I I mean state retirement age is 67.

I think if you're a bloke you should know and I'm only 61, but

I was fed up with that life. I was sick of living as a slave

to sin. Sorry to Bristol City Council.

I was sick of that meaningless, empty, unsatisfying,

unfulfilling existence. And so I laid down that life

last Monday in order to live a new life.

I put it to death and I discovered a new Lord and

master. And she's giving me a list of

it's all right. She's in youth.

She doesn't know a new Lord and master with a list of tasks,

which I'm glad to obey, but I'd be mad to go back to the office.

Why do I want to live there? I've, I've, I've, I've rejected

that way of life. Verse 11, Paul says, in the same

way, count yourselves dead. Count your consider yourself

dead. We're all going to die anyway.

So why not live now as though we're already dead?

Because if we do, because we will then start to experience

the resurrection life today. And then when we die, it's just

more of the same. It's just an upgrade now.

What does Paul say? To live his Christ and to die

his gain. If we're living the resurrection

life now, then that's true. If we're in Christ today, then

to die is just more of the same. So the gospel is absolutely

about today and our response to the gospel, the way we receive

the gospel and engage with it and put it into practise, is to

imitate Jesus life, to imitate the gospel message of dying and

rising again in our own lives every day.

That is the cruciform life and it is life in all its fullness.

But how do you do it in practise?

It's a neat theory and it sounds attractive, but if I'm honest,

I'm I'm Adam. It's so hard.

It's so hard to do that day after day.

It's such a challenge to lay down your life, to choose death

in order to live. The encouraging thing is that

Paul knows that. He absolutely knows that and

where he goes next in the second-half of chapter 6 and

then seven and eight is all about how we actually do this,

how we actually live that cruciform life in reality, the

process we go through in order to become the kind of person who

can be in Christ rather than in Adam.

And so that's where we're going to go next in June. 3 more weeks

of this in in June, but that's the next big theme.

Oh, thanks, Alice. So we are gonna have a time of

response now. And I think someone once said

they don't deal with theoreticals.

They deal with God doesn't deal with theoreticals.

He deals with the person. And we don't deal with

theoretical things. We have to surrender.

We deal with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that

is in front of us right now. The thing that said we're

attached to, the thing that we think is shiny and will give us

life today, that's the thing. We we are being invited to

crucify, walk past and move into the tree of life, into Jesus.

And I think that's the way we can have this transformation

happen into us, be forged in US. So what I'd love us to do is, is

quieten ourselves and listen, what?

What's the attachment? What's the thing that God is

saying if I'm sorry, the enemy is saying lying to us and if you

could just have that you could just sort short circuit this.

If that shiny happy thing, that thing that will give you life.

You know what the pull is. We know what the pull is.

The Holy Spirit shows us immediately and and what I want

us to do is either today or find people we walk closely with to

say stand with me like Jesus invited his friends to stand

with him and Gethsemane, just stand with me that I can say no

to that and then say yes to to Jesus.

And what I think is a really helpful understanding of the

word faith because we've almost become faith is like a creed.

We believe, but actually the word pistees is far more like

trust. So I don't actually use the

faith, the word faith much anymore.

I always when I hear it, I think trust.

Do I trust Jesus? Do I trust him with this thing

that's that's pulling me to to let it go?

Do I trust him with my finances? Do I trust him with career?

Do I trust him with relationships?

Do I trust him with things that are going on in the world?

Do I trust him? It's the vulnerability, the

unravelling, the weakness of actual relationship rather than

the self governing, autonomous. I'm just going to live grasping

this thing in independence from God.

So that's what we're going to do.

And I know some people when I think of the journey of the

cruciform life, some people are on their their horses riding

into Jerusalem. You think of Palm Sunday.

They're in a position of, you know, it's good, their lives are

good, the career is good. They haven't hit the cruciform

life yet. Then you have other people who

it's, it's very, very disruptive and they're feeling their world

starting to shake. And then you have, you know, we

see we stand with each other and we hit those places of

Gethsemane, which are deep and personal.

And we just have to be aware when we're in them and other

people are in them just to be with them.

And then, you know, there's, there's the process of

crucifixion and then there's a relief of death when the things

just we just died. It's just died and, and it's

just buried. And then these unbelievable

radical experience of God raising dead things back up that

you never, ever thought possible.

You, you could, it would be on your wildest dreams that he

could bring resurrection. And we're all in those journeys

in multiple ways in multiple areas of our life.

And it takes an emotionally healthy community to be aware of

the stage another person's in, to rejoice with those who are

rejoicing because they've come through to resurrection.

And to mourn with those who are mourning because they're in a

process of cruciformity. And as people say, we're in

battles and blessings. At the same time, we can be

experiencing 1 area of unbelievable favour and

breakthrough and ease and resurrection and another area of

extraordinary pain. And so that's the complexity

following Jesus. And what I'd like us to do now

is, is to kind of come to a place in an area where we're

wrestling to say we trust. That's the thing today we try, I

trust you with this. So I'm going to pray now and I

have some time of quiet. If you'd like to find someone to

pray with you, please do that here or could pray with any of

us up here or if you know there's someone you can pray

with. But if Jesus needed people to

stand with him, we do. There is no such thing as

following Jesus on your own. He put us in a body and it's the

body that gets formed. Lord, we welcome you here.

Thank you that you, you walked this path and you said no

student is above their teacher. This is the path you walked and

this is the path we walk and, and we walk it with you.

And so we, we just call into the light.

Now, any area, the area of attachment, it could be

attachment, it could be idle, it could be something we're

grasping for that the that is like the temptation of the tree

of the knowledge and good and evil today that it's the thing

we're facing today. And we ask you to show us what

it is and we ask you to take us through a, a kind of an internal

surrender that we can trust you with this particular area or

person or way of life. We just, we just pray you take

us there really gently. Now, I'd ask people to turn to

the people next to them to start to share anything, to ask for

prayer. And we're up here.

If you want to pray with someone a bit separately, come to us up

here. And we want to stand with each

other in this process, to mourn with those who mourn, rejoice

with those who rejoice, but be people of faith.

We actually trust God with these precious things in our lives.

And I'm going to this is the official end of the service.

So if you do need to collect children, please do that.

But please don't leave without being prayed for if you'd like

to, or offering to pray for someone else and stand with them

through this process of surrender.