97 104 Breaking the Cycle

We're going to have a reading, the first half of Psalm 103. Praise the Lord, O my soul, all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

In verses 6 to 12, The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

He will not always accuse, nor will he harbour his anger forever. He does not treat us as our sins deserve, or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. This is Ephesians chapter 1, verse 11. I hope what I've said hasn't been too pessimistic, or touched a raw nerve.

But I believe that our God is a living God, and he has plans and purposes for us. And I believe that next year he has something in store for us, here in the Tab, in this town, in our lives, personally. And he will see us through the rough times and the hard times, when things are barren and dry and dusty, and he'll give us times to sing and praise, and know his presence too.

This is what he says about the condition of me, and the condition of those that know his love in their life. Starting at verse 12. Remember that you were separated from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenant of the promise, without hope, and without God in the world.

Pretty bleak. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away, have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one, and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in the flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.

His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one spirit.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together, and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord, and in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. He's got a purpose and a meaning in our lives.

He's got a work that he's going to do, and we have work to do for him. It's all yours, Tony. This morning I wasn't in church.

I was expecting to be in London actually, but circumstances turned out that I came back to Worthing late last night, and I wasn't feeling too well, as I was trying to recover from a cold. So, what I did when I got up and went down to our lounge having lit a log fire, I spent a couple of hours on my own. And I started to read one of my favorite books in the Old Testament.

It happens to be the book of Ecclesiastes. And maybe Ecclesiastes had had a bad day, because when he writes the book, he uses one word 38 times in 26 verses, and the word is this, meaningless, meaningless, meaningless, meaningless. Or if you put it into the authorized version's translation, vanity, vanity, vanity, vanity.

He's talking about life. Now, I read all the way through Ecclesiastes. I got my yellow pencil with me, so I was underlining it, and I was trying to absorb it.

But I don't want to impress you that I actually spent two hours just reading that book over and over again, because what I did alongside, I got hold of a copy of the telegraph's supplement from Saturday, and the Guardian supplement from Saturday. Now, they're both from different ends of the political spectrum. Right wing, left wing.

And as Steve indicated, because he was reading, because he's a bit more snooty than I, he was reading the Times. Both these papers also did a sort of digest, an evaluation of the last year. And I came to the conclusion that they'd been to the same journalist college that Ecclesiastes went to 3,000 years or so ago, or whenever he wrote that book, because really it wasn't exactly the most thrilling reading in terms of optimism.

Indeed, far from being optimistic, I noticed that both articles had this in common. They were both satirical. They were both quite cryptic in terms of their criticisms.

And, well, it seems as though when they wrote these articles, they'd had a very bad day, or maybe a very bad year. Let's just push that on one side. Christmas cracker jokes.

Eric Harmer once said that they never identify them. I mean, the author. When you hear them, you know why.

I mean, to take them outside onto Cicero Hill and to stone them would probably be too soft a death. One I came across was the dentist. Why was the dentist depressed on Christmas Day? The answer, he'd spent the previous week always looking down in the mouth.

Well, yes, enough of these Christmas cracker jokes, and we didn't pay very much for ours. Why did Paddy, the Irish conservationist, why did he take his bicycle into the bath? The answer, so that when he'd finished, he could recycle the water. Well, you know, that was a better quality box of crackers, obviously, because that got a greater response from yourself.

I want to put up the heading for the little address I want to give this evening, if we could have it right now. Because it seems to me that when you look at Ecclesiastes, and when you read the Guardian review of 97, and also the Telegraph's review of 97, and when you go back to the book of Ecclesiastes, you perhaps should be asking yourself, how do you break the cycle? I mean, this man does say, things are so, so pessimistic. Life is so difficult for him.

Let's take the text on that overhead that I picked out that I was mulling over. What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again.

That's verse 9 of Ecclesiastes 1. Say it with me, will you? What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again. In other words, the cycle of history is very difficult to break.

The thing that went wrong last year, went wrong the previous decade, went wrong the previous century, went wrong a thousand years ago. There's a French philosopher and he said, history teaches us that history teaches us nothing. In other words, the mistakes of every generation are passed on, from one group of people to another group of people.

And, as you get to the end of Ecclesiastes and the first chapter, it tells us, the more knowledge, the more grief. What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again.

And the more you have knowledge, the more you have grief. The more or the less the inability to hold what is new and to apply new knowledge, especially in the realm, in my illustration, of medicine and bioethics. Listen.

According to the Guardian, in regard to the stuff of society and the fabric of personhood, there's little hope. It criticizes, last year, and we've still got a few days left, that the richest country on earth, the United States of America, was reluctant at a recent conference discussing ecological problems to cut down on the amount of poisonous, noxious fumes that it releases into the atmosphere. If you go from the United States and you go to Africa, and you start to examine what's happening in Africa since colonization was a thing of the past, and independence has taken over, you discover that Africa is very much like Steptoe's junkyard.

I mean, this past year, one of the most wealthy men in the world, called Mobutu, he went to meet his maker, and he left his country absolutely bankrupt. There's another African politician who, tonight, is in jail. I refer to the former president, Kayumba, of Zambia.

Wherever you look, whether it's in the western world, the wealthy part of our globe, or if you go to the subcontinent of Africa, what you find are illustrations, time and time and time again, of the same old problems being recycled, to the point that you have to agree with the writers of the Guardian and the Telegraph supplement, what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again, for more knowledge, for more grief. So I ask, how do you change the cycle? How do you shift things? How do you get yourself poised as an individual, us as a church, or our society as a whole, for what next year will bring, for what the next millennium will bring? Let me suggest one or two things. First of all, before you can change what a man does, you have to change what he is.

Before you can change what a man does, you have to change what he is. Now, this is what the writer of Ecclesiastes will tell you. He knows that things are very difficult in his day, and he himself represents a contradiction.

He doesn't really understand himself. He needs some heart surgery, not just in a physical sense, like the transplanting of another heart, he needs it in the psychological sense, in the personality sense. That's the reason why I took you to the verse from Corinthians.

If anybody is in Jesus, if anybody commits their life to Jesus Christ, then the beginnings of something new should be observed in that individual. Hong Kong is going through a great transformation, or has this last year. Started off as still a member of the British Commonwealth, now it's been absorbed into the Republic of China.

They've just killed one million chickens in the last couple of days, because the chicken virus has hopped from the chicken to the humans, and as a result there is another scare in terms of an animal disease being passed on into human beings. But they were absorbed, the Hong Kong people, into a society which in the last 50 years has seen the death of 5 million people. Now that, if you were in Hong Kong, would be a very scary thought, wouldn't it? To find yourself this past year absorbed into a society where human life seems to be so very, very cheap.

One of the greatest men I ever met was in China, and he was a man who spent a whole of his life opposed to that sort of society that held human life so cheaply. His name, Wang Mingdao. I met him in the back streets of Shanghai, in a little dingy flat at the top of several stories of several levels of flats.

And when I spoke to him, I said to him, Wang Mingdao, because he was pastor of a church like the Tavern, only it was in Shanghai, Shanghai Tavernacle. I said, how is it that you've managed to live so differently and direct your life to such good despite the fact you've been in jail for 28 years? And he told me of the day when Jesus Christ became his Lord and Master. He was a man living in a society that was very, very godless, and he was prepared to surrender himself to someone, some force, the love of God, that made him so very, very different.

Before you can change what a man does, you have to change what he is. Do you know, there was, in these last couple of months, a little questionnaire sent round, if you can believe it, the Anglican bishops. It must have been my journalist.

The journalist asked the Anglican bishops to name the Spice Girls. Only one could give you the names of all of them, the Bishop of Rochester. I don't know what it says about him, especially as he said that the Spice Girls were actually mentioned in the Bible.

If anyone can twist Scripture, then it seems to me that this was a very crass example of such. He said that women brought spices to the tomb of our Lord. Now push that on one side just for a moment.

Another questionnaire, at least another test, more seriously, was directed to bishops by the Guardian and reported in Big Issue, the magazine that is sold by people who have been on the streets without jobs and living very roughly. And all these bishops were visited by people who had no jobs at all. And they were asked to help.

And apparently only six or seven bishops actually invited the individual into his home, into his palace, gave food, talked to him and tried to help him. What is necessary? If you're going to change the cycle as far as our world is concerned, it's not just to claim to believe something, but as a result of that belief to do something. Before you can change what a man is, before you can change what a man does, you have to change what he is.

The idea of being new is quite prevalent in our vocabulary at the moment, isn't it, in the political realm? Again, check the Guardian and check the Telegraph and check the Times as they review the year. We've got new labour, a new beginning. But you can never really have, as an individual or our country as a whole, a new beginning unless there has been a change in the heart.

And that, I think, is what Ecclesiastes will tell us. And certainly that's what the Apostle Paul has in mind when he says, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. The second thing I discovered from my reading from Ecclesiastes this morning is this.

Before you can change what a man is, you have to tell him what he needs to know. Notice the slight difference in emphasis. Before you can change what a man does, you have to change what he is.

But before you can change what he is, there are essentials he needs to know. What do people need to know today about themselves? I mean, some 4,000 people have been butchered in Algeria, killed, slaughtered in Algeria in the last few months. What do the people who actually perpetrated that crime have to be informed? What do they have to be told? What do you need to know about yourself? When you read through Ecclesiastes, you discover this.

The writer needs to remind himself that he's not just like an animal. Chapter 3 in verse 19. Man's fate is like that of an animal.

He's pessimistic at the moment. This is what he thinks might be the case. He looks at an animal, it seems to be exactly the same.

As an animal dies, so a man dies. As an animal breathes, so a man breathes. Can man have no advantage over the animal? Is everything meaningless? Does man go to the same place as an animal goes to? Or is it the case that the spirit of man rises upward and the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth? And as the Bible will tell you in its fuller revelation in the New Testament, and indeed there's indication of this in the Old, that an animal and a man is very different.

Because you are responsible for your actions. The things that you have done that are wrong to the Lord, you have to give an account for that. Before you can change what he is, there are essentials he needs to know.

He needs to know that he is not just an animal. He is accountable to the Lord. And what is more, he's made for eternity.

That's what Ecclesiastes says. He says that God has placed eternity in the hearts of men and women. How do we know that? Well, let's go back to the most remarkable thing.

Following the eviction of the Tory party from political control of this country, the next, or rather the, an even more remarkable thing that happened this year, and it's been touched on. What was it? It was the death of Princess Diana. And what happened when Diana died in terms of the reaction of the people? Well, they came out on the streets.

Hundreds, thousands. They brought their flowers. And we witnessed the most incredible outpouring of grief that this country has ever known.

And it was interesting that some of the little messages that were written on the bouquet of flowers were semi-religious. They weren't religious in the sense of being conservative evangelical expressions of faith, but they did indicate that Diana, in their estimation, though no longer with us physically, had gone to some form of heaven. She had discovered true happiness.

She was free indeed. And whatever you might have thought of the reasoning, and however cynical some might later have become about the outpouring of national grief, one thing was perfectly obvious, that over and above the tragedy, atheism is not a popular, popular creed in the United Kingdom. It's not that people don't believe it's that people need to be sharpened up on what they believe.

Because men and women know, naturally, that they're more than just animals. Men and women know that when you die, it's not just like a Christmas candle. You blow it out and it's no more.

When your body fails to support life as you have had it during the whole span of being on this earth, the Spirit goes. To where? It goes to your Maker. And it's this curious display of religious belief that came with the death of Diana that strikes me as being one of the most remarkable things that we knew during these last twelve years.

How, during these last twelve months, how can you break the cycle? In terms of changing a man? Ensuring that what has been will not be again? And what has been done will not be done again? How can you break that cycle? Well, before you can change what a man does, you have to change what he is. Before you can change what he is, there are essentials he needs to know. And then finally, in telling him what he needs to know, he is to be shown what he can become.

You know, when Jesus called men to follow Him, He invariably called young men, the disciples. And there's probably not one young man who, when he was first seen by Jesus, had he been seen by a modern missionary society for interview, it's most unlikely that he'd have made the grade. Because all of Jesus' young men had a degree of great immaturity.

So, why did Jesus call them? Well, when Peter comes into the company of Jesus, he says, Peter, you are Simon, but you will be. Jesus calls a man not for what he is, but for what he can become. So, this is what I need to remind you of, and this is what we need to remind our country of and its members today.

In telling people what they need to know, we need to show them what they can become through Jesus Christ. And when you move to the end of Ecclesiastes, the writer says, remember your Creator in the days of your youth. And right towards the end of that chapter, it tucks in this little piece of advice as well.

Remember Him before the silver cord is severed. In other words, remember Him before your deathbed. And the implication is this, that when you commit your life to God, if our nation as a whole, if it was possible to commit its life to God, then the Lord could bring to the forefront of our personality, of our society, those strong characteristics which, cultivated by the Holy Spirit, can become dominant, making us different.

How do you break the cycle? How do I ensure that if not on a national basis and a personal basis, we'll be different during the years that is to come? Well, by reminding ourselves that before we can do, we have to be. And before we can be, there are certain things we need to know. And in reminding ourselves what we need to know about God and about the fact that we're not animals, that we are destined for eternity, we are also to be reminded what we can become.

So here are three things finally for you to take into the new year. To break the cycle, I summarize with the rest of this overhead. Gearing for change in 98? Stop and think.

Read and pray. Be and act. Stop and consider who you are and what you could be doing with your life and whether or not you have embraced Jesus Christ as your Savior.

Read your Bible a chunk day by day and pray to the Lord. Be a Christian and show that you are a Christian not just by what you say but by how you act. Back again to my text.

What has been will be again. What has been no one what has been done will be done again. The more knowledge the more grief.

A way to break the cycle. Stop and think. Read and pray.

Be and act. If any man is in Christ he is a new creation. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you. We thank you for the possibility of transformed lives through our Lord Jesus Christ. As we look on into the future thanking you for your grace in the past we nonetheless face the future living ourselves in a troubled world with so many problems and so many irresolvable difficulties.

We pray that in this world you will take us and use us making us to be a different people and we ask that our lives may count for you. Lord, we realize that this past year has brought many surprises many changes many things that are now completely different from what they were at the beginning and yet the same problems confront us as a society as a whole. Lord, we're asking that you will take the simplicity of the gospel and in changing us and continuing the work of transformation you will affect other people.

So bless this church bless this country and have mercy on our world for Jesus' sake. Amen. Let's go to our last song, 229 Here I am wholly available as for me we will serve the Lord.

Amen. You know that's what God is asking for, not our ability but our availability and service for Him. My father-in-law is ninety-four years of age, and with his mate, who is just a slip of a man, ninety-three, they go door-to-door as well in a little place called Belvedere in Cape Province, Durbanville in Cape Province.

He says he never has any problems in terms of people being rude to him on the doorstep and he never gets asked any difficult questions. Probably the reason is he's half deaf so he wouldn't hear them anyway. But isn't it quite a challenge when Bob comes this evening and these two that I've just referred to, and one man who lives in Koinonia, the old people's home just across the road, he's ninety-six.

Last year he wrote his own tract. He went from house to house, visiting every home in about a mile area of where he lives, giving out leaflets, ability, availability, that's what God is asking of you and me and asking of our church as we move forward into a new year, breaking the cycle by being committed to Him. Father, take us, we pray.

We thank you for your goodness and your grace. Thank you for being able to spend this last Sunday evening of an old year in your house. Thank you for folk who took the time.

We ask that you'll be with them and bless them and grant them a good new year and help us all, Lord, to serve you more faithfully than we have in times past. Keep your hand upon our world, the global situation, upon our nation, upon Europe, upon the world, upon this church, in the name of Jesus our Saviour, Amen. Can I ask Bob if you'd like to come up and join us? There are a lot of things that go on in the tab that I'm very much not aware of and a lot of faithful people that undertake all sorts of jobs around the town in the name of the church and meeting folk and Bob, you're going to come and tell us something of what you've been doing with door-to-door work.

That was a bit past the wheel. Come on. Thank you very much.

I'm glad you said yes. I said yes. Well, actually, it begins, as far as you're concerned, I begin by knocking on the door and smiling broadly all over my face and saying, I am so glad to see you.

At least I got some kind of reaction from that. I always start like that. You knock on the door and say, hello.

Develop your own hello style, you see. Hello. I'm delighted to see you.

That makes them feel good, you know. And they're as nervous as kittens and you don't have to be nervous at all. I mean, you're in charge.

You've come. You're calling the tune. But actually, it begins a good half an hour before that because we're going to speak about door-to-door evangelism.

And it doesn't start at the door. It starts where you're praying about a half an hour away from there. So supposing I go out door-to-door tomorrow or the next day, I assure you I'll begin it by a half an hour earlier than that in prayer in my own room.

I live in Heaton Road, so you can call on me and pray with me, you see. And then after that, I walk to the number seven Cambridge Road or whatever it is. I may not be a number seven, but I'm going to Cambridge Road because my block is a block which is just near the tap.

Now follow this carefully, you see. I knock at the door. I know one out of three, four or five, there's no one there.

But supposing someone comes in answer to my knock here and comes and stands there. So here you have a situation where this poor little fellow, a chap like this, a big, tall, strong, strapping fellow like this, he is here. How do you mind standing up? Can you make it? I can just about do it.

If you can do it, I can do it. And I try to shake hands with him because if you can get a good grip, he can't run away, you see. So it's as good as a shake of hands, you see.

And then how do you continue from there? So, well, I come from the Tad, sorry. I come from Worthing Tabernacle. Do you know where that is? Well, it's only down the road along there, but nine out of ten, they don't know where it is.

That is surprising, but you just have to face the facts. So I've shaken hands, you see. I say, now, do you know where Worthing Tad is? That means no.

Well, you take about 50 yards along here, turn left and walk straight down, and on the left-hand side, there is a lovely building known as the Town Hall. That's where you don't pay your taxes, isn't it? Absolutely. That's the place, that's the Town Hall.

You cross the road and there is Worthing Tab, Worthing Tabernacle. Now, it's got about it here in this thing. We give out this little challenge magazine, and it says here that it's positioned opposite the Town Hall, right in the heart of Worthing.

This lively church is made up of people of all ages and walks of life, drawn together to praise God for the new life they experience through trusting in Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. Now, the whole object of this exercise, I think we have ten in the team going to various areas, and we'll say a few words about the tab, but that's not the most important. The important thing is to present every single person around this tab of ours with the Lord Jesus Christ as a living Savior and Lord.

Now, that's a wonderfully thrilling and a privileged thing to do. Just, this is the first time you meet this guy, and you ask him if he knows Jesus Christ as his Savior, as his Lord. Well, generally, they mumble something, you know, and after a bit, a fellow said to me the other day, well, I happen to be, I couldn't quite think of what it was.

I'm a Jehovah's Witness. All right. Is that right? Well, no, but yes.

I'm a Jehovah's Witness. I said, well, don't bother about that. Just come along to the tab, and we'll tell you about the Lord Jesus Christ.

We just want to introduce him, you, to him. So that's door-to-door evangelism. It begins there, half an hour from your starting point, when you're praying, Lord, guide me to every place where I should go this afternoon.

I make my visit to each one a powerful, life-giving blessing. You pray something along those lines. You get the idea.

And then you start off, and you do say in an afternoon, say, I'm old and feeble, so I might do a couple of hours. I might do a couple of hours, yes. And just to present the people around the tab with Jesus Christ as a living person, that is so tremendously exciting.

You know, I can't understand why you're so kind of blase about it. When I smile, there's practically no one smiling in the tab. They're all asleep or something.

But you just imagine that you have the privilege of representing. You've just had Christmas. You've spoken of Emmanuel, of God being with us.

And then from your quiet little home, you go to this place. You knock on the door and disturb his peace. And say, I've come to tell you about the present living Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

There's nothing more wonderful than that. So you should do that. Now, there are about 10 of us.

We want, and I did the other day ask for 80. I don't think that just in terms of logistics, we could handle that. But we could take care of another 10, couldn't we? So any volunteers after tonight, you can see me, I suppose, if you've got that amount of courage.

You can see me or someone else who looks as if you might be part of the team. And give in your name. And we'll take it on just the first 10.

So if you're queuing up in a rush to join us, we'll just take the first, the cream of the crop. Just 10 people will come, and we'll add them to the existing team. And by this time next year, we'll have given a good, in-depth evangelism of the area around the town.

Now, one visit doesn't do that. So we have a follow-up team. So I have made the initial contact with quite a number of people by now.

But my second, the second in the team, will follow up. And he'll say, well, you remember that person who came the other day? Well, I just want to talk to you about what he was saying. And he'll develop it.

That's our follow-up work. So that's most important. Here's the tab.

And we're inside. That's fine. But it's the hundreds of people who are not inside that concern us.

So go knocking on their doors. Pray and present Jesus Christ to them. And invite them to come to the tab.

And then this team that's fast adjoining us will do the follow-up work afterwards. Does that cover the ground? That sounds splendid. Thank you.

Good. Let's take a look. Lord, I lift your name on high.

I'm so glad you came to save us. You came from heaven to earth to show the way. Lord, you came from heaven to earth to show the way.