Char Chpl Coping with Change

That Christianity is true, and I said to him, well, if we've been forgiven, the proof is that we forgive others. And very, very sadly, he said the Christians he knows doesn't live like that. So what a challenge.

Live the life. If we've been forgiven, the proof of that is that we forgive others. And we're going to have a passage read from the Bible for us now that is all about that, forgiveness.

We have lots of UK students in this congregation, but as Kerry said, her trip abroad made her realize that it's not easy to go to a different culture. You feel very alone, there's various challenges. But we have lots of international students in this particular congregation, so I've asked one to come and read this particular passage.

But first of all, before she does, I just want her to introduce herself. This is Xiaowen from China. Seeing as we've had their president here this week, it's particularly appropriate that we have a mainland Chinese.

So would you like to explain to them where you're from and what you're doing studying in Edinburgh? My name is Xiaowen Zhong and I'm from mainland China. I'm studying the history of non-Western Christianity in New College of the Edinburgh University. That's wonderful.

And now she's going to read from Genesis chapter 45, verses 1 to 18. So over to Xiaowen. Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, Make everyone leave my presence.

So there was no one when Joseph, when he made himself known to his brothers, and he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him and Pharaoh's household heard about it. Joseph said to his brothers, I'm Joseph. Is my father still living? But his brothers were not able to answer him because they were terrified at his presence.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, Come close to me. When they had done so, he said, I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.

For two years now, there's been famine in the land, and for the next five years, there will not be ploughing and reaping, but God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household, and ruler of all Egypt.

Now, hurry back to my father and say to him, This is what your son Joseph says. God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me.

Don't delay. You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me, you, your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds and all you have. I will provide for you there because five years of famine are still to come.

Otherwise, you and your household and all who belong to you will become destitute. You can see for yourselves, and so can my brother Benjamin, that it is really I who am speaking to you. Tell my father about all the honor accorded me in Egypt and about everything you have seen and bring my father down here quickly.

Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept, and Benjamin embraced him, weeping. And he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Afterwards, his brothers talked with him.

When the news reached Pharaoh's palace that Joseph's brothers had come, Pharaoh and all his officials were pleased. Pharaoh said to Joseph, Tell your brothers, do this, load your animals and return to the land of Gammon and bring your father and your families back to me. I will give you the best of the land of Egypt and you can enjoy the fat of the land.

Thank you. Let's pray, shall we? Father, we thank you for a Savior who is mighty to save, for a gospel which reduced to its essence so simple a little child can catch on to the meaning. And yet it has depths which are fathomless, that will ever baffle redeemed people throughout eternity.

We ask that as we approach this gospel, in all its simplicity and in all its profundity this evening, that you will do something fresh within our hearts, give us a clear understanding of what our goal in life should be, what it is that you have done for us through Jesus Christ our Lord. So open this book to us and make an indelible impression upon our minds and move beyond our wills to our emotions so that our response to your word shall be total. For Jesus' sake.

Amen. One of the things that I try to teach my students along with the staff who share with me the responsibilities of working as a university college is that you need a certain amount of precision in the language that you use. You've got to know your definitions.

I love India. Probably one of the reasons is what the Indians do to the English language, which next to the Americans is amazing. On one occasion one of my friends was in India and he came across a villager who was a bit miffed because the headman had handled him in an unjust fashion.

And this villager was an old man and he remembered the days of the British Raj when Lord Mountbatten, representing the British monarchy, was in control. And so he decided to write a letter. It's perfectly true.

He wrote a letter to Lord Mountbatten and he gave it to my friend who came back to the United Kingdom and posted it to Mountbatten. Now the Indian was a bit obsequious. He wanted to ingratiate himself and he wasn't too sure how to start off the letter.

Well, he nearly made it, but not quite, because he wrote, Your Royal Licentiousness. When Mountbatten received the letter, he wrote a note to my friend and thanked him for sending it and said it had made his day. On another occasion in India, in some meetings I was taking in an English-speaking area, I was amused to discover that all the handouts advertised that I would be bringing the evening massages.

I mean, it's pretty near. I mean, the difference between an E and an A is really very, very slight, but it does sort of part when you try to work out the two definitions. And yet, and yet, I subsequently thought that there is a relationship between preaching a message and bringing a massage, because my definition of preaching is something that affects a total being.

And what I want to do, by God's grace, is to give you such an understanding of the word forgiveness that you'll go away with a sense of deep gratitude to the Lord, even those of you who have known the saving grace of Jesus Christ for many a year. If you were to be asked to supply one definition particularly which isolates Christianity from Hinduism or Islam or any of the other great religious faiths, then my suggestion is this. Christianity is the religion of the forgiven.

Would you like to say that with me, if you agree with it? Christianity is the religion of the forgiven. It is, in effect, saying this, that here is my life, and my life is corrupt, my life is polluted by sin. All the wrong that I have ever done is there, illustrated by my wallet resting on my hand.

Here is the life of Jesus Christ, 32, 33 years he lives, and when he comes to the cross, he comes as a pure man, unsullied, as white as a lily, no sin at all. But as he dies, he takes upon himself my sin. It's transferred to his account, and that means that I have absolution.

The Bible says if you confess your sin, 1 John 1 verse 9, he is faithful and just to forgive your sin and to cleanse you from all iniquities. Christianity is the religion of the forgiven. The Keswick Convention in India, in February, was memorable.

Not because hundreds of people came to Calcutta and to a church somewhat similar, though a little older than this one. It was memorable because in Calcutta, thousands of Christians had joined together, not to come to the convention, though some of them had. They had come to register a protest to the Indian government.

The Hindu political party, which has just been returned to government, had allowed certain politicized Hindu to take vengeance on the Church of Jesus Christ and on the minority Islamic community. There's a place called Balasore, which is due south of Calcutta. If you imagine an ice cream corner, that would more or less give you the outline of a map of India.

Just under the ice cream on the right, there is Balasore, in the state of Orissa. A friend of mine, a colleague of mine from OM, married a doctor who had worked in Orissa for the same number of years as I pastored the tabernacle down in Worthing. He had been asked by the tribal people if he would continue to minister to the needs of the lepers.

He set off in his jeep with his two little boys who had been dedicated in Calcutta Baptist Church, in the heart of that great city, by the man who had invited me to preach in his church just after the convention. He told me about these little boys and how he had held them in his arms and committed them to the Lord. Dr. Staines never reached the leprosarium.

His jeep was stopped. Politicized Hindu, and I'm not suggesting that all Hindu act like this. Some are very gracious people, probably the vast majority.

They poured kerosene on the jeep and they torched it. Graham was burned to death in his two little boys. One of the hardest things I've done is to look at the photographs of the charred remains of this little missionary family.

The world press got onto the story and obviously the national press of India. They spoke to Gladys, who's now in Bangalore. They asked her reaction to what had been done.

And she said, I forgive. I forgive the murders of my husband. I forgive the murders of my little boys.

The Times of India ran the story front page. Time International, the magazine that goes around the world, also ran the story. And in this large meeting in Calcutta, a man came to the microphone who was not a Christian, a leading Sikh, and he said this, Christianity must be the true religion.

What other religious group within India would produce a woman who having seen this horrific thing happen, at least the remnants of what had happened to her family, would stand and say, I forgive. I forgive. But that is the heart of Christianity.

Moses stands, as we saw this morning, in the cleft of the rock. And he waits for the glory of God to pass by. And as God passes by, I have no words to describe this scene.

You have to read it in Exodus 34. The comment is made that it is the long-suffering God who forgives sin, who is making himself known to Moses. And that same long-suffering God made himself known by becoming flesh and dwelling amongst men.

I refer to our Lord Jesus Christ, whose very name indicates the objective for him being in the world. His name shall be called Iesus, Jesus. For he shall save his people from their sins.

Sometimes I tell my students that the best way to interpret the New Testament is by going to the Old Testament narratives. Or to put it the other way around, the best way to understand the Old Testament narratives is by pouring them through New Testament scriptures. This is the reason why we have two volumes that are bound together in this book that we call the Bible, the Old Testament and the New.

The New is in the Old concealed, the Old is in the New revealed. You need both Testaments. And sometimes the very characteristics of our beloved Lord Jesus are anticipated in the Old Testament and set out in all their perfection, in all their glory, in all their wonder, in the New.

And so here you find, in Genesis, in that passage which was so beautifully read by Chagall, the story of Joseph, which is basically a story of forgiveness. You see, these brothers of Joseph, for many a year, they had a skeleton in the cupboard. They tried to put layers on top of it, but really it would not go away.

And one of the things that was bound to happen is that their act of treachery, the callousness, coupled with the deception, would eventually come to the surface and it would have to be dealt with. I proceed too quickly. These brothers, when their younger brother was no more than a teenager, in their jealousy had him sold into Egypt.

As far as they were concerned, he was as good as dead. If ever a man had a right to hold a grudge against his brothers, that man was Joseph. Yet the Bible will tell us later on, as it unfolds this whole business of grudge and jealousy, and an inability to forgive, that if you have sourness in your soul, if you have the spirit of non-forgiveness, then actually it eats into you and it will destroy you.

So here you find a man who has a right to hold a grudge, and yet he doesn't maintain that right. His brothers are in front of him. The reason, well, there's been a famine.

It's a remarkable thing. It's affected the whole of the Middle East, and it has affected the stock market, and even the wealth that there is in Jacob and his household is really in the balance. It is of no value at all unless they can purchase grain, and the only place where grain can be found is in Egypt.

And the one who controls the granaries is none other than a strange, hardened prime minister to whom they have come on several occasions and found this contradictory personality, at times warm and friendly, at times distant and severe. They brought the younger brother, the last of their brothers, down, and it seems as though he has pilfered some silver cup from Joseph, although they don't know who Joseph is. And as a result, he wants to retain that brother in prison.

And suddenly the past becomes the present, and they realize they're in difficulty. The skeleton is starting to clink, so to speak, in the forefront of their minds. And they come before this prime minister in contrition.

And you get what amounts to a prayer of intercession and repentance, the like of which is hardly paralleled in Scripture in the last verses of the 44th chapter of this book. Let me tell you something. Our Lord Jesus Christ, if ever a man had a right to hold a grudge against his fellows, that man was the Lord Jesus Christ.

I looked for someone to have pity on me, and there was no man. At the foot of the cross, there are a handful of women. In front of the high priest, the religious leaders who were ordained to ensure that sympathy and fairness were part of Jewish society, those men handled him so cruelly.

And as for Pilate, he has a yellow streak down his back. He does not have the ability to go with the courage of his convictions. And so Roman justice is prostituted, and Jewish justice, as a man is pinned to death, pinned to the cross, dying in the most terrible death that man has ever invented to rob his fellow of life.

If ever a man had a right to hold a grudge, that man was Jesus Christ. Your assistant pastor's dad comes from South Africa, as does my wife. Many a time I've been in South Africa and stood by the hill that overlooks Table Bay.

And it is a clear day, as it often is, for Cape Town is not Glasgow. You can see an island about nine miles out. That island has become famous because it's the place where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for more than twenty years.

An intriguing man, Mandela. When he is released and becomes the president of South Africa, he writes a book. The book is entitled The Long Walk to Freedom.

And the extraordinary thing about that book is he doesn't seem to have any sense, any desire to hold recrimination and to act on that recrimination against the guards who urinated on him when they stowed him in the bow of a ship and took him on to robbing Ireland. He, who was the first black barrister in South Africa, treated like an animal, and yet when released and becomes the president of the republic, he doesn't get into his white Mercedes and leave Pretoria and go to the guards who had so inhumanely treated him. If you bear a grudge, you actually bite into yourself.

A bitter spirit destroys the personality. Here is Joseph, and his brothers are in front of him. And the emotion of Joseph comes to the boil.

He can contain it no longer. On one occasion, some years ago, I took some meetings at the University of Kent in Canterbury. It was hosted by the Christian Union.

And one of the things they asked me to speak on was is God passive or impassive? Does God have emotion? And the answer of the Bible is that yes, God does have emotion. And the emotions of Joseph, who anticipates our beloved Saviour, come to the boil here for these brothers in desperation are prostrate in front of him. Then, then, Joseph could no longer control himself.

And he dismisses all his attendants. For what is to happen now is so intimate that insensitive Egyptians are not to look on. Here is Joseph dealing with his brothers who are uncomfortable, who are going through the experience of conviction.

You can never know God's forgiveness unless you go through that experience. And the experience of conviction is one of the hardest experiences in life. It can drive a man almost to the point of suicide.

Here is Joseph, and he appreciates the problems that his brothers have. And he's going to deal with them as our beloved Lord dealt so tenderly with a woman taken in the act of adultery, as our beloved Lord deals with the woman who comes into the garden that first Sabbath morn, almost juxtapositioning the character of Eve in the Old Testament who first sins and leads Adam into sin. How like our Lord Jesus to select of the human race one of the weaker sex and reveal himself to her and to speak her name in such a fashion that she realizes who he is, the master.

Joseph dismisses the Egyptians in order to make his dealings with these increasingly convicted brothers easier for them. I have everyone leave my presence. So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers.

And he wept loudly. If I had a camera and lived in Old Testament times, this is the picture that I want. He reveals himself.

He says, I am Joseph. And in amazement they look. The Egyptian dress which has helped to in some way make him look as though he is not a Hebrew, that melts away as they come close to his features and they see those same similarities as they themselves have.

They listen to him no longer speaking in the Egyptian language and suddenly they realize it is. He is Joseph. And the news terrifies them.

I confessed this morning to have an interest in animals and animal welfare. I like books on animals. I was almost brought up on wind in the willows.

Do you remember Ratty and Mowly? C.S. Lewis? He quotes them so I can quote them from the pulpit here amongst intelligent people from the University of Edinburgh because we are not in Glasgow anymore. Mowly and Ratty are in a rowing boat and they are going to Pan Island because Pan is the god where they worship. And Mowly says to Ratty, as they come near, Ratty, aren't you afraid? And Ratty says, I'm not afraid.

Afraid? Afraid, Mowly? Afraid of Pan? Of course I'm not afraid. And yet, oh Mowly, I am afraid. Oh how I fear thee, living God, with reverential fear.

Fear is part of the emotion of coming back into a faith relationship with God. When the Lord Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, that in itself, though a wonderful thing, that in itself unique, that a phenomenon, is not the most wonderful thing. On top of that is the question that needs to be asked and answered.

This risen, resurrected Christ, what is his temperament? What is his attitude? How will he treat fallen men and women like Caiaphas and Annas and his disciples? How will Joseph treat his brothers? I am Joseph. Come close. Is my father still living? His brothers were terrified.

Come close to me. When they did so, he said, I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here.

Because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. And so he brings in, he invokes the sovereignty of God and the reason, the divine reasoning behind the Lord bringing Joseph into Egypt was eventually to further the purposes of God. Now don't misunderstand Joseph and don't misunderstand our Lord Jesus.

Neither will tell you that sin is something that can suddenly just be blinked at, suddenly be turned over and be of no consequence. He's not teaching that. What he's teaching is that what they did was a heinous act.

Sin is a terrible thing. But God can overarch human sin. God can, even from the death of Jesus Christ, get great benefit.

Because he is the omnipotent God. He can use the evil of men, bring it within his sovereignty and achieve his objective. So Joseph, and the incarceration in Egypt and all that he went through, sees this as being just part of God's eternal program, not only for himself but for his brothers, not only for his brothers but for Israel, not only for Israel but for the world.

I am your brother. God sent me here. He makes it so easy, as our Lord Jesus makes it easy for you and for me to come to him.

No matter what we have done, no matter what pages we would like to be torn from the diary of our life, he tells us to come and he will erase them. As far as the East is from the West, so far has God removed our iniquities from us. Do you know why on the streets of Bombay and Calcutta and many of the great metropolises in our world, why the poor people make little altars at night and have their candles and have their incest? It's because they're afraid.

Afraid of what? They're afraid of Pan. They're afraid of the gods. And the fear that they have is a fear that can never be stanched until they have a greater understanding that those gods are not gods comparable with the Supreme God.

The Supreme God and Father of our Lord Jesus is one who, in revealing his glory, reveals his forgiveness. He lets it pass by. Moses saw it.

The brothers, in the form of Joseph, see something of the divine benevolence, the divine forgiveness. And when the beloved Christ is back from the dead, he says to this woman, who is honoured to proclaim the message of the resurrection, he says, go and tell my disciples, but don't just tell my disciples, let Peter also know. Again you see the forethought of Jesus Christ, making it easy for the disciple, who above all disciples disgraced the very word disciple.

He would have said, though all men deny you, you can count on me. This, my friend, is the forgiveness that the Old Testament anticipates and the New Testament reveals when you think about our Saviour. What is the uniqueness of Christianity? Christianity is the religion of the forgiven.

There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in. And yet, and yet I have not done justice to the word of God, for I have put the balance, the weight on one balance, but it also needs to be placed on the other.

You say, what do you mean? Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses and forgive us our debts as we forgive those who have trespassed, who have sinned against us. How do you know that you are forgiven? And the answer is, how are you treating other people having claimed the absolution that Jesus Christ has given to you? So Gladys, with the microphone pushed in front of her, she says, I forgive.

I forgive the detractors from the Christian faith who have lost themselves in Hinduism. I forgive those who have torched my husband, my sons. I'm so glad that Chawan read from scripture.

In her native Shanghai, about twelve years ago, I went looking for a man, a man who had been pastor of Shanghai Tabernacle for longer years than I had been a pastor or almost. He was placed in jail. I was on my way to Korea and I heard he'd been released.

So I stopped from Hong Kong, off from Hong Kong, went to Shanghai and with the simplicity of a very naive Englishman, I wandered around the streets of Shanghai. I didn't know a soul, I didn't know a word of Chinese. Eventually two little boys came and spoke to me with English with an American accent and said, Mister, are you looking for someone? Can we help you? I said yes, so I pulled out from my shirt pocket the Chinese characteristics of Wang Mingdao's address.

They took me down the back streets of Shanghai. Eventually I climbed the steps of a cramped out block of flats and got almost to the top. Knocked on the door and a toothy Chinaman opened the door and looked somewhat amazed at this six foot two Englishman standing unannounced on the threshold of the house of the flat.

I said, does Pastor Wang Mingdao live here? He smiled and said, come in. He took me into an inner recess and there is an old man crumpled over with age with his wife on the floor caressing his legs as though she would never let him go again. Mrs. Wang Mingdao was blind and he starts the pastor to speak to me and I said, who I am is unimportant but we've both been pastors but I have not been in jail but I'm going back to my church Worthing Tabernacle.

I want you, Wang Mingdao, to send a message to my people and tell them how God kept you for more than two decades in your condition as a prisoner. He started to tell me about the nearness of Jesus Christ and the love that he had in his heart for Chinese people even his persecutors and instead of actually recording a message for my congregation he started to sing in a thoughty, inarticulate fashion but we were able to discern the words all the way my Savior leads me what have I to fear beside can I doubt his tender loving who through life has been my guide and he told me that the testimony that he had borne in Shanghai and others alongside him had so caught on in central China and north China that the message of the gospel had gone out untrammeled it had gone out in a remarkable fashion to the extent that the growth of the church in China is one of the greatest miracles that there has ever been since the day of Pentecost. I'm through.

Or nearly. On the internet last week I picked up from my colleagues in Bangalore that they compute that as a result of the death of Graham Staines the gospel has reached more Indians in the last year than almost and I don't know how you can compute this almost all the evangelistic activities of missionaries since the day of William Carey what fell India what brought India to a standstill almost was handling a message of forgiveness over against the barbarity of a man and his kids being burned to death. The world needs this message.

The world needs to hear not just that Christianity is the religion of the forgiven but that Christians are the community of those who forgive. And whether it's in Northern Ireland or Croatia any part of Asia any part of the Americas or Africa this is the flag that we fly that wins the attention of men and women to the degree that we forgive having been forgiven. We establish our credibility in Edinburgh.

We establish our credibility in Scotland. The Church establishes its credibility in the world. We say to the crucified risen Jesus because of what you have done for me I accept your salvation having confessed my sins and as a forgiven person I go out to forgive those who have trespassed who have sinned who have in some way offended me.

I bear no grudge for I leave my grudges at the cross as I bask in the forgiveness that you offer. What is the uniqueness of Christianity? We are the people who have been forgiven. What is our distinctive? In the way we behave we are people who forgive.

Let's pray. Father we're grateful a gospel that goes beyond definition a love that knows no limits a saviour who dismisses no penitent soul. We're grateful.

If you should compute iniquity who would stand? But there is forgiveness with you. We thank you. Enable all of us here to enter into that forgiveness and as Joseph blessed his brothers and his father help us to enter into the piled up benefits of belonging to the household of faith of being enriched in the way that you have enriched your son.

Enable us to live for his glory now and until he comes or calls. Amen.