Focussing on Jesus No.8 Jesus too ordinary

Well, this year, as you know, we're off to Romania. Last year we went to Pakistan, and I'd just like to say, Dave Hansen's here tonight. A big thank you to Dave and Irene Hansen, because if it wasn't for them, we certainly wouldn't have made it to Pakistan and back.

So we give them a round of applause. Now, if you got our notes and news today, you would have seen a picture and some names on the back. The only person I can make out in the picture is Jeff Hayden.

Look at that cheesy little grin. So what I thought would be good is if I introduce the people, and they came up, and we don't need a round of applause or anything, just so you know who it is, and they can stand alongside me. And unfortunately, because it's all alphabetical order, the first person that's going is Tim Clark.

So this is Tim coming up now. This is the T-shirt. He's fashioning there.

Very beautiful. And Inez Collier. Oh, right over there.

That's Inez. This is just so you know, because if they're all crowded up here, you wouldn't see them. That's Inez.

Then we've got her brother, James. And Hannah Eden. And Nick Frampton.

This is Nick, followed by Francis, Francis Gleaves. Might have to squash in here, folks. Paul Gray.

Paul Gray. Strolling up here. What a dude.

Joe Harmer. Steve Hodges. He's our main digger.

You can tell why, can't you? Okay. Alethea King, she's not here. She's going to be joining us on Thursday.

She's still at university. We've got Vicki Lockwood. That's Vicki.

And Becky Paris. I think you have to start a second row here, because we're running out of stage. Claire Phillips, followed by another Claire.

This time Smith Boys, who's our first aider. Just done a four-day course for us. John Tweed.

I wish yours was in the laundry bin as well. He told me it was. It wasn't, was it? Right, it's a new one.

Okay. Sandra. Sandra Tyler.

No one wants to go up the front here. It's okay. They won't mind.

Where was I? Hannah White. And Robert Wilkins. And leaders going.

These are meant to be the responsible people. Jeff Aden. Yes.

Ian and Zoe McCarra. Look back at the front again. Debbie Taylor.

And myself. And Paul Robinson, who's not with us. He's in Southampton or somewhere.

He's the guy from Link Romania. And is obviously a member of the church as well. He's the guy who's going to be looking after all the projects.

But let's find out exactly what we're going to be doing. So I'm going to pick on some people here. Let's start over here first.

Let's go to Hannah. Hannah, just tell us a little bit about the trip. What we're going to be doing.

We're going to build a children's playground in a city called Petula. It's a very depressed community and it's very black. It's a mining town.

So we're hoping the playground will help brighten the place up and bring the community together. Okay. Can I pick on you, Sandra? No.

Okay. I'm sure you said yes. Never mind.

Okay, James. Move out of the way, please. Okay, James.

Just tell us, we've had to raise some money. Just tell us how we've raised that money. It's been quite a few ways.

There was the main walk, which you may have already heard of. We did the South Downs walk, which was 104 miles, I think it is. And we all got sponsors for that.

There's also a car wash that went on. Those were the main two ways, anyway. I can't remember the other ways.

And there's a sports quiz as well, yeah. And we raised the money we needed, at least, anyway, and more. So it's all gone to... Okay.

Now, was that just the group up here, or was it anyone else? Yeah, it was the whole youth group, actually. The whole group was really good. And we had a lot of support, wasn't it? Finished? Right.

Sorry. Yeah, it's not just these people up here that have raised the money. A lot of thanks has to go to those that aren't going, because without them, we wouldn't be going.

So please remember them. I guess these are the people that are going and doing the hard work whilst we're there. There was an awful lot of hard work done here by the young people and also by the youth leaders as well.

Right. Who shall I pick on next? Everyone's eyes go down at this stage. It depends how far this wire goes.

Not very far. Let's swap mics. Right.

Now, we've got a load of playground equipment. No one's looking at me. Why is that? OK.

Can I pick on you, Becky? It's standing next to me. Can you tell us what you've been doing with the playground equipment? Basically just painting it up and sorting it out. Thank you.

Yes, there's a company in Staines that gave us a load of second-hand equipment, and we took hold of it and scrubbed it down and painted it. And obviously, it wasn't just these guys up here again. It was part of the youth group as well.

I don't think there's any other questions I need to ask you. Any questions from the floor that you'd like to know? Yes, we did. Yes, we got two, in fact.

The Colmans did have one in their back garden, believe it or not. Just sitting around. Are we all going in a bus? Yes, we are.

Yes, we've got one 17-seater from Sixth Form, and one 16-seater, which will be a 12-seater, because we're ripping four seats out for luggage from Getaway Cars. I hope it gets us there and gets us back. The playground equipment, I wrote to two separate playground people that basically bring the stuff in.

In fact, if you go to some of the parks around, you'll see RSS, which are the people that we got it from. Those are the people that responded. They said, well, come on up, see what we've got.

We went up there. They had slides. They had a big plane frame and lots of other things.

We took a big Arctic truck up there and filled it up and brought it back. They gave us stacks and stacks of that safety matting as well. Now, in England, there's EC rules in what we have to do.

A lot of playground equipment is ripped out, and it's still good, but it's not apparently safe. Now, this stuff is perfectly safe, isn't it? Yeah, perfectly safe it is. Obviously, we're trying to make it as safe as possible.

At the moment, all they've got is mud and water, so anything like matting is unheard of over there. It's very expensive stuff, so we're very fortunate to get hold of it. Where are we going to live? I'm going to pick on someone now.

Zoe, where are we going to live? The coal mine has a guest house kind of thing up in the mountains. It actually looks like a big Swiss cottage. We're very lucky.

We thought we were going to have to stay on a floor somewhere or something, but we've actually got beds, which is a good thing. We're going to be staying in a part of that big guest house. We've got evening meals.

We've got one night with a Romanian family. Not all of us in the same family, but split up. Otherwise, they'd have to have a big house.

We're going in pairs and staying with a Romanian family for a night. Let's try and link one or two scriptures together. They seem fairly unrelated on first reading, but here goes.

Listen. I'm plugging into the story, the historical account. I don't use the word story as though it didn't happen, of Noah.

Somebody reminded me this morning. Incidentally, those of you who were present, that if you want to go and see something that looks like Noah's Ark within the reasonable proximity of the south coast of here, then go to Brighton. They're right in the center of Brighton, almost a stone's throw away from the Clarendon Church Center, Christ the King Church.

There is a magnificent Anglican church, and it's built with the same specifications as the Ark. It's one of the landmarks of Brighton. Well, here in Genesis and Chapter 6, we find that Noah is told to build an Ark.

And obviously, he does it with wood. And God says to Noah in the 13th verse of this 6th chapter, I am surely going to destroy the world, so make yourself an Ark of cypress wood. Make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.

Now let's go to Exodus in Chapter 25, and here's some further instruction that's given in terms of carpentry. The Hebrews are in a wilderness in the Middle East, and they're told to make a tabernacle, a sort of portable church. And at the heart of the tabernacle, there's an Ark.

And so many aspects of the tabernacle and the Ark are to be made out of wood. And we're told in the 13th verse of Exodus 25, then make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. Now let's move on again to the passage that was read to us earlier by Georgina.

That's going to Mark's Gospel in Chapter 6. And there we find this comment made about the Lord Jesus, the 3rd verse. Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon? Carpenter, wood, making things. So it's amazing how many people have got strange ideas about the Lord Jesus, who he was, what he stood for, why he came into the world, what were his life's achievements.

I was in London yesterday addressing a meeting, at least not addressing, attending a meeting of several hundred people. And it has to do with an organization called Compassion in World Farming. And as I got there, I was given a very warm welcome.

And very soon I was introduced to another guest, a lady by the name of Joanna Lumley. And we got talking. I was introduced to her as a minister whose church had, they somewhat exaggeratedly put it, had founded a hospital in Bombay and was involved in youth work or endeavoring to get a hostel to house boys in Calcutta.

And what's more, the writer was put, he's also interested in animals and animal welfare. And Joanna Lumley looked quite enthusiastic about this. And she said to me, I understand you've written a book on this.

So I said, yes. She said, can I do something? So I said, what? She said, can I buy a copy? So I said, well, I won't sell you a copy, I'll give you one. And she went on to say to me, I've always felt that Jesus was a very sensitive and kind man.

I said, yes, that's quite so. I said, I'll give you a copy of my book on one condition. And she said, what? I said, I'd like you to read the chapter that I wrote, Jesus and the Animals.

And she said, Tony, I'll not only read that chapter, I promise you, I'll read the whole book. I would love to hear what the Bible has to say, what Jesus has to say about this particular subject. And then later on, as the celebration, it was the 30th anniversary of this particular organization.

As it continued, they read a number of congratulatory telegrams. And I'd sent them by email just a word of encouragement. And I said that I felt that cruelty was a sin.

And that the Bible in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and particularly in the teachings of Jesus, underline the fact that we are to be kind, kind to one another, and kind to our animals. And I could have gone on and quoted the Beatitude, which says, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy, mercy towards humankind, mercy towards those with whom we live. And suddenly about 800 people started to clap.

And I thought to myself, bless my soul. I mean, here I am in the company of some very well-meaning people, utterly unknown as far as I was concerned to them. And yet this celebrity said to me, I really would like to know what Jesus has to say in this sort of area.

And he was several or 800 people applauding the fact that someone had written in and commended them and said that the gospel message has application in an area that they had an interest but didn't realize it at all had any relevance. You see, there are people who are totally confused about what Christianity is, who don't fully understand that when Jesus came into the world, he came to achieve so many things. Their grasp of Jesus and Christianity is so narrow.

Now here is our Lord, and he comes to his own town, that is the place where he was brought up as a youngster. And he wants to teach them and indeed endeavors so to do. He wants to confirm his ministry by praying for them, by healing the sick.

And yet he discovers that there's a reaction, there's a resistance to what he wants to achieve. And the reason for that resistance is they've got such a narrow view of Jesus. Isn't he just a carpenter's son? How can he possibly come and preach in the way that he's preaching? How can he talk about God as though God is his father? How can he lay hands on the sick and they're healed? No, Jesus is just a carpenter.

We've just got a narrow stereotype view of who he is. I mean, his mother, she's around the corner. His four brothers, there, there, his sisters.

And Jesus spends a lot of time, indeed I suppose all of the 36 months of his ministry, his three years, telling folk why he's come, what he wants to do, and that he has an interest in the saving of souls, in the improvement of circumstances, in the mending of relationships. This is why Jesus has come to this world. And as I started to explain it just a little bit, by way of personal conversation, I was only a member, a guest, I wasn't speaking at all at Westminster yesterday.

But it seemed to make such an impact that when Joanna addressed that large group of people, she finished up by saying, God bless you. Just a little thing. But some indication, not only from her, but from others with whom I had conversation, that out there there are a lot of people who want to know more, who want to know more about the Christian gospel and the way that the Christian gospel applies to every circumstance of life.

And presumably, that's one of the reasons why our youngsters are going to Romania, or some of them, why one has set hot foot off to Kenya, and another, as I say, in Asia, and a couple going off to Germany. There is such a need, not just to be involved in doing things, though that's honorable, I'd be the last to argue against it, but there's such a need to give a definition of Jesus that's as broad as the New Testament is wide, and to indicate to people that Jesus Christ has really come into this world to address every situation. There's not one thing that he can't speak to intelligently, sensitively, and in a fashion which will improve the individual if he or she responds to what Jesus wants to do.

So, he's misunderstood here. They're disappointed with him. Just the carpenter, that's what they say.

I mean, you see, it's very difficult for us to appreciate what, at one level, a disappointment Jesus Christ was to the world in which he was born, and the country in which he particularly found himself. You see, they'd read the prophets. The prophets had talked about the coming of a Messiah.

But when the Old Testament makes reference to the coming of the Messiah, very often it uses graphic language as though the Messiah will come with a great amount of clout, you know, electricity across the skyline and thunder. He'd really make an impact. And here is Jesus, and, well, he's baptized by John in the Jordan.

He goes around teaching, but he doesn't take on the Roman Empire. He doesn't make too much of a fuss in terms of being in Jerusalem and performing the rites of the high priest. And when he gets back to Nazareth, it seems so incredible, these claims that he's making, these hints that he's more than just an ordinary man, that they just can't be so.

He doesn't have the trappings of greatness. He can't possibly fulfill what the Old Testament prophets were intimating about Messiah when he comes. Isn't he just a carpenter? Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon many years ago.

It was a famous sermon, and it was published and was duplicated thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of times. Do you remember the occasion when Mary is in the garden, Mary Magdalene in the garden of a resurrection? And Jesus has been entombed, and Mary is there. She's crying.

She's lost the fellowship of the man that she loved, the man who gave her back her self-respect. And the situation is even more grave because, well, the grave has been rifled. The body has been taken away.

And there is Mary absolutely distraught, and the tears in her eyes becloud her judgment as well as becloud her vision. And suddenly she sees somebody, a shadowy figure, and she thinks he's the gardener. And the Bible says that she responded, supposing him to be the gardener, if you've taken away Jesus' body, show me where you've put it, and I'll go and minister, supposing him to be the gardener.

And Charles Spurgeon said, well, let's suppose that really he is the gardener, and let's make certain conclusions as a result. If he is the gardener in our lives, well, let's take our inspiration from Spurgeon, but not in respect of Jesus as a gardener, in respect of Jesus as a carpenter. You see, literally he was.

But I'm not just talking about Jesus and his ability with wood. I'm talking about Jesus and his ability with people. What does a carpenter do? He forms.

He makes. He almost creates, although he has original substance to work on, so the word create needs to be put in inverted commas. I took you to a couple of incidents in the Old Testament where you get a literal example of carpentry.

I mean, this ark that Moses and presumably a large labor force made, I said Moses, Noah, with a large labor force made. The wood is, we're told it was cypress wood. But when you think of the instructions that God gave the Hebrews to make a tabernacle in the wilderness, then we're told that the wood that was available was called acacia wood.

Now, just hold it for a moment. Just give me your concentration, and then you'll see where I'm going. If you're wandering around in a desert, it's not too easy to make a chair.

Why? Because, obviously, there aren't great oak trees. There aren't great pine trees. All that there was in the desert was acacia wood.

Acacia wood is rubbish. It really is. I mean, there's no self-respecting carpenter who would choose to work with acacia wood.

I mean, you can imagine what life is like in the desert. It's pretty hot for you. It's pretty hot for me here, actually, this evening.

But if it's hot for human beings, it's equally hot for plants, and it's difficult for them to survive. And so you get the acacia bush, and it grows in such a sort of higgledy-piggledy fashion. It's all over the place.

The branches, they're skewed. They're gnarled. It's not the wood that the carpenter would choose.

And yet, God said to the Hebrew carpenters, through Moses, Go and make me a tabernacle. Make me an ark. Make it out of acacia wood.

The most difficult wood to make stuff from. Now look, when Jesus comes on earth, he's going to make a church. What's he going to make a church from? I don't mean a building.

I mean people. People in Romania. People in East Africa.

People in Uganda. People in Worthing. Do you know something? People can be very difficult.

If you want an illustration, go and have a look in a mirror. People can look pleasant. They can look young.

They can look old. And sometimes the looks that they have don't always indicate the difficulty that they represent. You who are going to Romania, I mean, God bless you, you're going to go several days in a small minibus, a couple of them, together.

What fellowship. What tremendous opportunity for getting to know everything there is about each other. What possibility for grating with one another.

What possibility when it gets hot for tempers equally to get hot. I mean, I was once a student, believe it or not, many years ago, we bought a bus. £120.

I paid to Salford Corporation near Manchester. It was a single-decker bus. It had one of these sort of protruding compartments where the bus driver was on his own and the rest of the bus was sort of private to him.

And we took that bus from London to Jerusalem and back. And I was one of the drivers. And I had never driven anything larger than a Morris 1000.

You imagine going down Baker Street with 22 students, yourself being the 23rd, driving a bus of that sort of dimension. We lived in that bus. We slept in that bus.

We did everything in that bus. And by the time we got to Jerusalem, we'd had a lot of sort of Christian equivalent of civil wars. Not easy to live in an atmosphere that's close and be bonded together.

Now, Jesus had this problem with his disciples, you see. And so, what he does is this. Because, remember, we're thinking of Jesus as the carpenter.

And Jesus is concerned to fashion from human beings something that will fit into his church. And he's got a more difficult job than the carpenters in Sinai working with acacia wood. When Jesus first spies a man called Peter that we know of in the Bible, on first reading of Simon, he sees this disciple, not in terms of what he is then, but what he can become.

Because what he is then is pretty difficult. He's a hot-headed sort of man. A.W. Tozer said of Peter, he's a typical American.

He acts before he thinks. Now, Tozer was an American, and I think he was doing himself down, or at least he could have made the description also applicable to the British. There was a lot of work that Jesus had to do with Peter.

There was a lot of work that he had to do with all this bunch. You find him here in the synagogue at Nazareth. His contemporaries, those who lived with him, didn't really understand what he was about.

And just following this incident, you find Jesus sending his disciples out. And then later on, he sends them out again. What do they do? Well, it's just like a trip to Romania.

It's just like a trip to Germany today. He sends them out as relatively young men, and he tells them to go and preach the gospel. And they have to hang in together.

And the Bible thanked God he's honest. And it tells us that sometimes the disciples had great difficulties, and Jesus had difficulties with the disciples. So what did he do? What he does is what a carpenter does.

I mean, you get this acacia wood, and it's gnarled. It's irregular. So you need your knife, and you chop off the bits that are not going to be used for the tabernacle furniture.

And when you've got it as reasonably smooth as you can, you take a plane, and you cut it down. And sometimes you'll have, as a carpenter, to go against the grain. Sometimes you have to go against the pattern of the wood.

It's tough work. And Jesus sometimes did that with his disciples. And one of the things that you learn when you are together and situations get a little heated, after you've said you're sorry, and after you've got your relationship back in order, one of the things you learn is that Jesus put you there to smooth you down.

In fact, very often he'll put one difficult person with another difficult person so that there can be a clash of difficulties, and the net result, hopefully, is as they rub against each other, they will get smooth. This is what the carpenter, you see, endeavors to do. He goes against the grain.

He can work with the most unlikely pieces of timber. This was the case with the carpenters in Sinai. This is the case with our Lord Jesus.

This is the case with the tab. Those of you who've just come in lightfully this evening, we're glad to see you. But if you think we're a bunch of people who find it easy to hang in together, you just don't know our history.

Fortunately, we're not a church that's always at civil war, but we have known our differences. We have got strong opinions. We have got one person who on some issue will think this way, and another person on that same issue thinking another way.

But the glory of Christianity is to get all these people to bind together. Change my metaphor. It's like a jigsaw puzzle.

One little piece, one little piece, one little piece, and all interlocking. And this is the mastery of Jesus, that He can so cut that one bit will fit with that bit, will fit with that bit, which will fit with the other bit. You see, He's the carpenter.

Now this isn't imagery run wild. This is biblical. It's Old Testament stuff.

It's New Testament stuff. Here's the Apostle Paul. And he speaks about himself.

He speaks about the church in Ephesus. And he said, we are His workmanship. What does he mean? Well, look at you.

What you used to be like, you Ephesians. And he tells us a little bit about the background from which they come. And then they offered themselves into the hands of Jesus.

And He fashioned them. He got the chisel. He got the hammer.

And eventually He gets them together as a working community. Jesus will use the most unlikely bit of wood, the most unlikely bit of humanity. He will go against the grain.

And ultimately He'll make a perfect fit. And now, the reason Jesus, and with this I close, the reason why He's qualified to work at this level is because, you see, He knows not just about wood. He knew that literally.

He was a carpenter. He made the best yokes in town. No animal ever had a chafed neck because of wearing something that Jesus made.

Jesus had tremendous compassion. Whatever He did, He did it with perfection. But not only in terms, I think, of literal carpentry, but He also knows about human beings.

He knows about you. He knows about me. You see, this is where my metaphor really falls down.

Jesus has such an understanding of human beings, their failings and their flaws. And when He went to the cross of Calvary, He went to die for your sin, for my sin, for the things that you have done that are wrong, for the things that I have done that are wrong. And as a result of going to the cross, so to speak, our Lord has given the equipment to work on humankind, to cleanse us from our sins, and to gradually transform us so that we become more and more like Him.

All those people in Nazareth, they said of Jesus, He's only the carpenter, and actually they were labeling Him. They were suggesting that He was the illegitimate son of Mary. They don't even say that Jesus is Joseph's son.

Isn't this the son of Mary? Because there was rumor mongering. They knew that the birth of Jesus was a little bit unusual. And here is the implication.

This Jesus is a man who was born in illegitimacy, just a carpenter, just the son of Mary. His brothers, his sisters are here. Don't listen to this man.

And yet, you know, with the slander that was embedded in that evaluation, there was also truth. He is the carpenter. He does work upon men and women.

You, me, youngsters going to Eastern Europe, as well as Western Europe, to Uganda, to Kenya, youngsters and older people staying here at the tab. Thank God for the workmanship of Jesus. Thank God for the workshop of Jesus.

Thank God that when He uses His tools, He uses them skillfully to create the least amount of pain. But He will exercise pain, cause pain, and exercise firmness in order to get us to be fashioned in His likeness. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we want to thank You for Your infinite patience. We think of those old carpenters with their crude tools, chopping away at the cypress wood, and later in the wilderness, their equivalents, their descendants, chopping away at the acacia bushes, working on that most difficult of wood. And we visualize what they made as a result of their effort.

But then we see that as parabolic, of an even greater degree of carpentry, of an even greater carpenter, even the Lord Jesus. We thank You that He served Peter, not for what he was, but for what he could become, after having been dealt with by the expertise of Jesus. Lord Jesus, You see us, not for what we are, but for what we are becoming and what we will become.

And we're grateful. Now be with these youngsters. Wherever they're going, bless them, grant them protection.

At difficult and painful moments, help them to sit back and think about what their pastor said a little while ago, that the pain sometimes in relationships, the frustration that comes in going on an exploit like this, is all part of the carpentry process of You binding them together and making them better fitted as members of Your Church. So continue now with us in this service. For Jesus' sake.

Amen. Back to Nick and Jeff. In Psalm 149 it says, Sing a new song.

And we're going to sing another new song. The last time I said this, at Ashburnham last weekend anyway, everybody knew it. So, maybe a lot of you already know.

It's called, By Jesus my Saviour, Lord, there is none like You. And it should be coming up on the overhead projectors. Shall we stand and sing? This is a great song, I think.

I love the second line, Lord, there is none like You. There is no one like Jesus. And if you don't know Him, then He's a good person to get to know.

And I'm sure the person you came with may be able to help you. By Jesus my Saviour, Lord, there is none like You. By Jesus my Saviour, Lord, there is none like You.

By Jesus my Saviour, Lord, there is none like You. By Jesus my Saviour, Lord, there is none like You. Praise to the King.

Let us sing with awe. Let us smile. Oh, we speak for joy.

Nothing compares to the King in you. By Jesus my Saviour, Lord, there is none like You. All our days, I've lost in praise.

The wonders of your mercy. Your shelter, tower of refuge and strength. Making bread, the things we worship.

Shout to the Lord, all the earth let us sing. Power and majesty, praise to the King. Mounted by love and the spirit of love.

And the sound of your name. I speak for joy at the words of your hand. Thank you.