98 103 A Holy Innocence (Tony Sargent)

We're going to sing our first hymn which is 539, Once in Royal David's City. Father again we offer our thanks to you as a year has been reviewed, a year of your faithfulness, of your providential care, of your many manifestations of grace, and fortified by our experience of you in the past, we're poised in the present and expectant for the future. So God of yesterday, today and tomorrow, we thank you that you are our God and commit ourselves and this blessed fellowship to you and pray for a sense of your presence and the hearing of your voice in the exposition of scripture.

Amen. Tu bisitem. Well, it's been a long time.

Unfortunately, Reiner had very bad asthma during the night which kept us both up quite a lot and I had to leave her this morning. That's why I just arrived on time precisely. But she with me sends a love to you as we make our way through this Christmas season and on into the new year.

Glasgow is an interesting place. It may be by design that the Lord sent me there. Not exactly by choice would one shift from sunny Worthing to Glasgow.

In Worthing during this summer, it's a question of watching you don't get too brown as a result of suntan. In Glasgow, the problem is rust. I don't think they've ever had water restrictions and the rate the stuff's been coming down of weight, it's not going to change in the year to come.

But it's good to be back. You've been very much in my thoughts, prayers, especially glad to hear of Mark coming amongst you. I've only met him once, but having heard him by tape and what I've heard of him from colleagues, it augurs good.

I was preaching at an induction service just a couple of weeks ago, way up in the northern parts of Scotland. I was mindful of the fact that the apostle tells us that God has set in his church some apostles and prophets and pastors and teachers and evangelists. These are specific gifts that God gives to his church.

Interestingly, the apostle Paul in the Acts and the complementary epistles has said that he appoints elders, and the church, they vote for deacons. There is a sense in which there is a call that comes to a man who by God's grace is separated from the preaching, expository and evangelistic ministry. God has set such men, such leaders in his church, and I'm glad that within God's grace you have found such a man, and it's my prayer that God will bless him and you as you take his lead and as he helps in the oversight of this beloved fellowship.

Well, I'm hoping to be with you during the occasion of that induction, and look forward, therefore, to being back here in a couple of weeks' time. I went out, I think, just as Barbara was making requests for help because I didn't want to be convicted and feel that I should volunteer. Let's go back to the Christmas story as we're so close to it in terms of the recognition that this time of the year brings.

Matthew's Gospel in chapter 2. I can't recall how many times I've preached on the infancy narratives, but here is something that actually occurred to me. When I was in Sheffield yesterday, we drove down to the south coast during the late afternoon, and it was really prompted by reading from this particular passage where the wise men have engaged on their successful journey. They're about to go back home.

Joseph is told that things are a little hot as far as he, Mary, and the infant Christ are concerned, and they are, therefore, to clear away, not back to Galilee, but rather to spend time in Egypt as refugees. When they had gone, this is verse 13, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Get up, he said.

Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt where he stayed until the death of Herod.

And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet out of Egypt I called my son. When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled.

A voice is heard in Ramah weeping in great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more. After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph and in Egypt and said, Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel for those who are trying to take the child's life are dead. There's a simplicity amongst boys and girls which I think is truly wonderful.

A sort of relative innocence. Last Sunday I was at a place called Qumbanol and preaching and the secretary of the church kindly invited me back for a sort of impromptu lunch. Like me he seems to have the habit of taking folk back without telling his wife beforehand but also like myself he had an excellent wife as far as organization in the kitchen is concerned.

I was introduced to the little kids, one boy about six or seven. I knew they were going to do a nativity at night. They were calling the nativity Aladin.

Yeah, that's what I thought too but that was Scotland, remember. And I said to the little boy, What part are you playing? And he said, I'm the donkey. So he continued, he in his Scottish accent and mine in whatever accent it is that I've got.

And I said, What are you going to sing? It's a long way to carry Mary. And I thought for sheer ingenuity. And he sang it with such transparency, you know.

Dropped down the scale from seven to a few days. And look at a little child in a manger or in the maternity ward here in hospital in Worthing. And you've got a picture of relative innocence.

The innocence of a child. If we had read these words from the classic authorized version which has never been surpassed in terms of language of the Bible. You probably found a little caption over those verses.

The slaughter of the innocence. And it was that that started me thinking in my native city yesterday morning. Innocence.

Where is innocence in this world? Where was innocence in the nativity story? My cousin would have liked me to have stayed on because his daughter has had a child. And the child today in the Catholic Church is being christened. The idea of a child being christened is because well the Catholic Church has a doctrine that without the christening of a child his or her eternal well-being is in jeopardy.

So according to Catholicism and to some degree though I'd make a qualification one has to recognize that when even a baby is born into our world there is an element of potential sin within the nature. Therefore the innocence of a child is a relative innocence. Where at the nativity was innocence to be discovered? Was it with Mary? Mary is an interesting character.

Not esteemed sufficiently by Protestantism in my opinion. But the Catholic Church goes too far. They will say of Mary that she is a redemptrix which is the feminine Latin for a redeemer.

And there I have problems. That she was a holy woman no one can doubt. She is unique in Israel.

The infancy narratives make it very clear that she of all women of all women has been elevated above all her sex. Yet when she hears of the birth of the Lord Jesus and has that lovely encounter for even the first Christmas with a homely business when relatives got together that encounter with Aunt Elizabeth when Mary engages in the Magnificat she talks about the great things that her saviour God has done for her. A faultless woman needs no saviour.

Mary, yes, remarkable, unusual, unique but in the quest for innocence you cannot stop with Mary in the nativity scene. What then of those wise men? These folk who came from afar. In modern parlance I think we would rate them as scientists.

They were certainly not people engaged in the black magic arts as some have construed the Patrick Moors of their days but hopefully they didn't talk quite as fast as he talks. They came in their wisdom and they brought gold and frankincense not as one kid on FM Classic said the other day, Frankenstein. They brought gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Gold for a king, myrrh for a priest. Frankincense, well, that would be necessary towards the end of the human span of the life of our Lord Jesus. These men came seeking a king and their very gifts seem to indicate that they had some idea that an exceptional person was born in the world and they needed to acknowledge him.

Innocent men do not have to search for God. One of the attributes of God is his innocence. There is no flaw on the character of the Lord.

Innocence, therefore, is a divine quality absolutely understood. It's an attribute of deity. That is why our Lord Jesus said on one occasion there is none good but God.

Only God is absolutely innocent. So these wise yet less than innocent men came from the Far East to the manger in Bethlehem. Job was a man who the scripture regards as blameless but again the blamelessness is relative.

You ladies get your best washing. Put it in the washing machine. Apply whatever detergent you want to apply and it comes out looking so white and then God sends the snow.

Take that washing, whiter than white. Put it on the surface of the newly formed fallen snow and you will discover that there is a whiteness far greater than the whiteness of your washing. So there is an innocence far greater than any of the relative blamelessness of someone like Job or the teenage girl Mary.

What about the shepherds? Were they innocent? These men who have been sung about millions of times down the centuries despise group actually as far as the social scale is concerned reckoned to be unclean. After all sheep are a bit smelly and therefore you don't want to sit next to a smelly shepherd in the synagogue or the temple. These men who when they heard that Jesus Christ had been born in Bethlehem were informed that coming into the world was a savior.

Now fellas you don't live far from Bethlehem. Get away from those undulating dales where your sheep are and move to Bethlehem because what he represents you need. So innocence was not part of the nature of the shepherds.

Then what about the authorities? The question hardly needs to be put. Rome was hardly faultless. The reason for sending people back to the place where they were born was in order to have them registered so that the punitive tax that Rome exerted from exacted from its citizens could be increased.

And Rome full knew well that the tax collectors were making a fine shekel or two on top of the so-called legitimate tax that they were imposing but turned a blind eye. And as for Herod who would dare to suggest that he knew anything of innocence probably couldn't even spell the word. Murder of his wife, murder of his kids, a tyrant of the tyrants.

Rome, Jerusalem, Caesar, Herod, the authorities, the politicians, far from innocent. It was the case then. It is the case now.

Clinton, Mandelson, Hussein, the politicians, the authorities, the powers that control our world, far from innocent. I once was in the company of the Archbishop of the Indian Ocean Islands an Anglican Archbishop, a godly man, reference has been made to bishops already by Ian this morning. He'd been won to the Lord by an equally godly man who comes from a different area of churchmanship than myself but I recognize and thank God for his spirituality.

I refer to Father Trevor Huddleston. Huddleston became famous not only because of his work in Soweto and the fact that he was taking on the Afrikaner government when it wasn't fashionable so to do but because he wrote a book about the circumstances in Soweto and the townships in various parts of South Africa. His book became a best seller.

Not for your comfort. If you're looking for innocence today, there's not for your comfort amongst the authorities, amongst our leaders. The best of men are only men at best.

Not for your comfort. Even should you have the choice, opportunity of relating to someone like Mary. Even if you have fellowship with the shepherds or their equivalent and the magi.

Not for your comfort. You want to discover where innocence is? Then you go to the manger and in the manger there is a little boy. I was trying to find the poem but most of my books are up in Glasgow.

William Blake, at least I think he wrote it, The Ogres of Innocence. A poem which speaks of the sort of omens that are associated with innocence. And they're there in the manger.

The problem is that in our world today we are so far removed from innocence we do not recognize the omens when they are staring us in our face. So if you mention the word virgin, the so called man in the street will speak of some entrepreneur who controls several businesses and spends his spare time or some of it in a hot air balloon trying unsuccessfully to go around the world. And if you mention the word Madonna they will speak of some film star whose films were basically from the realm of the erotic until she took a star place in the Vita.

Lives in Beverly Hills. And somewhat blasphemy takes the name of Madonna. But at Bethlehem there was a virgin.

A real virgin. A true Madonna. And when the Bible makes reference to the way that she conceives a child God deliberately refuses to use the equivalent word fetus.

When Mary comes with child it is as a result of the divine seed being placed within her. And a holy boy shall be born from her womb. And this has happened.

And she places him in the manger. Here was an innocence conserved. Conserved by the miraculous activity of God upon this choice teenage lass from northern Palestine, northern Israel.

This lass who has kept herself pure. This lass who has gone to the synagogue. This lass who presumably went to the temple from time to time.

She becomes the handmaiden of God. So that an innocence might be conserved at birth. And Jesus is born.

Not for your comfort if you go into philosophy or astrology or whatever the wise men represent. Not for your comfort if it's just simply doing a domestic job like being a shepherd or the equivalent. Nothing dishonorable with that.

Don't misunderstand me. Nothing dishonorable in the pursuit of education. But if you're looking for innocence there is not for your comfort in either of those two wings of society.

Where is innocence? Where is comfort? And the answer is in the manger. Where a little child was born. An innocence conserved.

It was David who said in sin did my mother conceive me. Great David's greatest son never said that. There was no sin at the beginning.

There was no sin in the middle. He was not only an innocence conserved in his birth but there is an innocence preserved throughout his life. A plague on the politicians who put that rubbish on the internet detailing the stupidity of the President of the United States of America.

But there are a number of American politicians who at this moment are terribly discomforted. They've had no joy at Christmas. They've had no peace.

There's a crippled man in the United States who's a multi-millionaire and he made his dollars out of not just pornography but bestiality. He put an advert in the American national press offering one million pounds for evidence against some of these people who stood up against President Clinton and pointed an unqualified accusatory finger. Three of those men have already had to back away from the scene.

And the guy who puts out this obnoxious magazine says he has evidence of 12 others and week by week he's going to offload them what he knows in his magazine and on the internet. Jesus said, can any one of you convict me of sin? Come to me with your tape recorder in the morning. Bring your camera at night.

Don't put one advert by the whole of the Jerusalem Post and challenge people. Ransack the whole of the empire and find one thing that can be leveled at me in terms of me having fouled myself and the innocence with which I was born. And not one of our Lord's enemies took up the challenge.

His was an innocence conserved miraculously at birth. He did not partake of the fallen nature of Adam. His is an innocency which is preserved in the way that he lived.

And what's more, his is an innocency which was proclaimed at the point of his death. I do believe that God has a chuckle. I do believe that God has a sense of humor.

I think occasionally during these last weeks I've heard it. Some of you here are aware of my concerns that a church looks neat and tidy, warm and inviting, carpet sweat and emulsion on the wall and so forth, in as good order as you can make anything homely without turning it into a museum showpiece. A Glasgow is not like that, at least where I'm living.

Not only in my 12 by 12 room but also in our college. The carpets are a bit threadbare and things ain't just what Sargent would like them to be. And it's a bit of a problem because he hasn't been long enough there to make his presence felt.

What's more we're strapped of cash in any case so I couldn't do too much about it. And occasionally I think I've heard the divine chuckle. I've taken you away from the sunny south coast to the rainy Glasgow from a church where you had some dedicated people to a situation which has been allowed to go at least for some years as far as the building is concerned.

I wonder if there's a chuckle in God and his reaction to certain events towards the end of our Saviour's life. You see his was not just an innocence which was conserved at birth, an innocence which was preserved in life, but it's an innocence which is proclaimed in death. But who makes the proclamation? Pilate.

Have nothing to do with that just man. The wife of Pilate is witness to the innocency of Christ. The Roman soldiers.

Surely this was a righteous man. A son of the gods. The thief talking to the other on the cross, straddling where our Lord's cross is.

Don't speak to him like that. You and I suffer the consequences of our sins justly, but Jesus, he's done nothing wrong. An innocence which is proclaimed in his death.

Where do you find innocence? Maybe you've lost yours. Maybe like me you've got pages in the book of your life and you'd like to rip them out. I'm old enough to remember Harry Belafonte.

One or two of you looked alive at that particular point as it brought something back. Harry Belafonte was a singer. Lungs that were large and a voice which was loud.

And I think I've got the right singer. When I say it was, I think it was Harry Belafonte who sometimes would sing the song, Lord, make me a child again just for tonight. Restore my innocence.

But you see, if that were possible, it wouldn't really help you. Because as Jesus once said to a religious teacher in Israel, even if you entered again into your mother's womb and you were born in the same way, you would just be a clone as well as continue to be a clown in the way that you live. The innocence that you and I require is an innocence that can be derived, that can be directed to us from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here is something for your comfort. You can go nowhere else. Bethlehem and Calvary, they speak to one another.

They're on the same set of scales. The Lord Jesus as an infant, the man on the cross as a Savior, Mary's lamb child, God's lamb, the Son of God who takes away the sins of the world. Like a beast, he goes towards those who will assassinate him and he puts up no resistance.

With a simple innocence, he hands himself over to those who will do him to death and he's pinned on the cross. Alas, and did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I? Was it for crimes that he had done he hung upon the tree? Nay, it was his own undying love and grace beyond degree. He surrenders his innocence and he makes it possible for the innocence that was his to be transferred to me.

I'm nearly through. There's a verse in the Bible that is a puzzle unless you agree with what I've just said. God says in the closing books of the Old Testament, I saw no sin in Jacob.

I did. I wouldn't have bought a secondhand camel from Jacob. I mean, he was so twisted that a corkscrew and he would have been comfortable partners.

What does the Bible infer? That when God looked down upon Jacob who has benefited from the amazing grace of God, he sees him not for what he is naturally, but for what he has become by grace. And that's how God sees me. If I look to myself, I'm not for my comfort.

I speak with loving respect. If I look to you, and no pastor can love his church more, that is not for my comfort because you cannot give me what I need. If I look to the Magi and to my books, that's not for my comfort.

I want an innocency which always escapes me. So where do I go? To the babe of Bethlehem's manger, to the Son of God on the cross who loved me and gave himself for me. And there the innocence that I desire is given me by God's grace.

May you know that holy innocency deflected to you from him today and every day. Let's sing. And the hymn we're going to sing is 191 in the Supplement.

Crown him with many crowns. We've got it on the overhead. We're going to that version because, as you know, the book that we use misses the best verse which speaks of our Lord Jesus and his dying on the cross.

This hymn positions as well for coming around the table of the Lord. 191, crown him with many crowns. Let me suggest you stand at least for the first two verses and then take your directions from Ian subsequently.

Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb of my soul. Awake, my soul, and sing of him who died for me. And may he rest, my righteous King, through all his triumphs on the grave.

And those victorious in the strife for us he came to save. His glories now we sing through died and rose again. Behold his hands and smiles in awe and peace, whose power and sceptres great he sees.

And all the earth around his face can see that God so proudly he sees.