The Ballot Box

Our Lord Jesus taught us as we gather together to approach the Father in words which are so familiar. 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, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.

Amen. Special welcome to you this evening. There are two sacraments that we acknowledge in our free churches, two sacred acts in which we remember our Lord Jesus.

It's not often that those acts are combined in one service, but that's the occasion this evening. It's your privilege to be not a spectator, but a participant in these acts of worship. One is baptism, being immersed in water.

The other is the breaking of bread, remembering the death of our Lord Jesus on the cross, his broken body and his shed blood. So we're asking you with sensitivity and also with enthusiasm to enjoy this service and with reverence and with great love to worship God, our Heavenly Father. There's a lovely old hymn that continues our song of praise, to which we will now turn.

It's a hymn that comes from the Welsh and from the Revivals, written by a man called William Williams. 410. In hymns of faith, guide me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.

410. Please do sit down. Let's pray together, shall we? Father, we thank you for the magnificence of the vision of you, of the man who wrote that hymn, and as he knew that he was on a journey through life, we thank you for that assurance that he had that you would hold him by your powerful hand and that you would feed him and satisfy him all his journey through until the time when he came to cross the Jordan River, until the time came for him to leave this earth and then start a much greater life with you still in your own promised land in heaven itself.

Father, thank you for the confidence that you are still giving to men and women that this is so, that because of what you did through the Lord Jesus Christ in sending him to live and to die amongst men and for men, and then to be gloriously resurrected, that we might know that we too can follow him where he has gone with a new body to a marvelous new life with you in your home. And Father, we pray particularly for Lisa and Philip today that it will be a tremendous day for them when they are aware of the closeness of their God holding them with his powerful hand. Father, we pray for their families that this day might be a day that's special to them too and when they will feel the benefits of Philip and Lisa coming to trust you and know you in their lives, at the centre of their lives.

Father, so we do commit our time to you. We thank you that we're able to come in this way. We realize that there are other people, even this weekend, who are starting a new life of a different sort and we think of all those people who are streaming into West Germany now and we pray for them.

Father, we pray that as they think that they've come into some sort of freedom, that they may find the sort of freedom that they're looking for. We're not sure it's in one political system or another, though we pray that their transition will be an easy one and that you will care for them. But Father, most of all, we pray that for many of them that they will find the living God for themselves when they're in the West.

So Father, we do commit ourselves and them and those that we know, perhaps in any kind of trouble or starting out in a new life and a new existence. We think of those who are going to go to colleges or universities in the near future. Pray for those known to us that they won't be too lonely, they will find friends and Christian friends and fellowship there.

So Father, we commit this time to you and particularly Philip and Lisa, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, this week, hundreds and thousands of people have been converted because it's been a week where people have been paying for motorists to drive their cars into workshops and have them converted to lead-free petrol.

And I suppose that's the way in which we usually use this word converted, isn't it? Well, those cars, they don't look any different on the outside, but we know that inside they're now running on a new fuel. They have a new principle at the centre of their existence, if you like, and this fuel is one that is designed not to pollute the world. Well, the Bible says that we all, in our own way, contribute to the pollution of this world.

It's moral pollution. That's the way we're born and we too need to be converted. It's not something that we can do ourselves, and so we can't take any credit for us, but we need, instead of running our lives in our way, on our principle, we need to run our lives in God's way, on the Holy Spirit, if you like.

That's the power that is to motivate and empower our lives. And God gives his Holy Spirit to those who trust in his Son, the Lord Jesus, to take away their sin, to take away their moral pollution. Now just as everybody who went in to have their cars converted this week was given a sticker to tell the world outside that they're now running on lead-free petrol, so if you like, to think of it, baptism is a sticker or a badge for those who have come into relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

And they are saying to us, I belong to him now. He is my Lord. He gives me the power for my life, and I want to be obedient to him.

I have been converted. And that's what Philip and Lisa are saying to us this evening as we see them go under the water and come up to a new life. That's what the water symbolizes, going under to be buried to the old life and existence and coming up to a new one.

So let's hear from them both now, shall we, as to how God led them to this point in time and why they're up here this evening talking to hundreds of people wanting to tell them what the Lord Jesus has done in their lives. Lisa, I see you've come first of all, and tell us something. I'll just take the microphone right down.

Well, I come from a non-Christian background. Although my family aren't Christians, I've always been brought up with good morals and a belief in God. I've never doubted that God exists.

I always thought the ideas were rather old-fashioned, not about God, but about the morals, and I rebelled with most of my family against this as I grew up. At 14, my parents got divorced. I lived with my mother, and I was a very bad teenager, very selfish, and I caused a lot of pain and misery, which I didn't really realize at the time.

I'm very sorry for that now. At 17, when I was at Singapore College, I began searching for the truth, and I used to entertain Jehovah's Witnesses and take their magazine, and I read books about Buddhism and reincarnation, and I used to meditate regularly. That didn't really lead me anywhere except to an awareness, really, that there was more to life than how I'd been living it.

I left college and started working for a year before university, and I met lots of people at the job, lots of different people, and I realized a very important thing. You mustn't judge people by appearances, and I began to look outward more. One day at work, I suddenly felt the urge to go to church.

I hadn't been talking about church or anything. It just came into my mind, and I knew somebody that went, someone I worked with, so I went with her the next Sunday, and then I went to my local church every week and really began to enjoy the sermons. I'd sat through lots of sermons at school.

I'd been to Church of England schools, and somehow they were talking to me in a different way. They really seemed relevant. It wasn't just about someone that died 2,000 years ago that wasn't relevant now.

Last June, I became confirmed, and I started coming to the tab a few months ago, and my idea of a Christian really has changed since I've become one. I used to think that Christians were very boring, didn't seem to do anything fun like get drunk and smoke and go to nightclubs. I used to think they were very narrow-minded, and I used to wonder why they wore Jesus is alive badges all over their clothes.

But I didn't know what a Christian was. I'd never really talked to one about what they believed in, and realizing now, I was totally, I misjudged them. I really feel my outlook on life has changed since I've become a Christian.

The most important thing, I feel, is my awareness of my own sin. I used to think that I wasn't a lot worse than a lot of people, and perhaps a bit better than some, so I didn't see any need to change. I believed in God and thought that was enough.

I didn't really think about going to heaven or anything like that, but it didn't really occur to me. Now I realize that it isn't enough just to believe in God, and that in order to have a living relationship with God, you do need to accept Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer, and to ask him to be Lord of our lives. Only then can we enjoy everything that he wants us to have, such as a deep feeling of peace and happiness.

Since I've become a Christian, I've felt a real closeness to him. He's like a friend. He's there the whole time.

Quite often, well, sometimes I go away from him, but he's always there for me. Something may jolt my memory as to his existence and how I can talk to him, but it's amazing how easy it is to be distracted from that. But I've got closer over the last year, and I've realized that being close to God allows you freedom more than I could have imagined, because suddenly your insecurities don't limit you, as they do before when you don't have anything really to believe in.

So far from becoming narrow-minded or living a narrow life, I feel it's expanded. Since I've given my life to Jesus, he's done a lot for me. Too much to say now, really, but the main thing is that he's always there.

I've realized that, and I feel his presence in my life the whole time. He's like a guide and a friend, always there for me. Even if I go away from him, he's there.

In the last few months, I've seen three people very close to me come to know Jesus, my mum, one of my sisters, and a good friend as well. I feel honored to be able to stand here and testify to the power of Jesus, what he's done for me, and to say that Jesus really is alive. The badges were right all along.

Thanks very much, Lisa. Now, Philip, would you like to come up to the microphone? I was greatly blessed to be brought up with Christian parents, for I was three months premature and only weighing two pounds and five ounces. Many things went wrong in my early days with my hearing, and only in the last few years, after three operations, I have had better hearing.

It isn't a lot, but an improvement, for which I thank our Lord. I belonged to the boys' brigade and Sunday school at URC Gorin. Both have been a good foundation for me, for a lot of prayer has gone into my life, by many people, for which I thank God.

Coming to the tab seven years ago started me thinking more deeply, but I found taking that one step forward not easy. I felt another day, another time would do. Until the Billy Graham's living at the Assembly Hall came, I virtually went along every night.

I came away with something more to think about. By the end of the week, my questions have been answered. I knew Jesus was calling me to follow Him.

When everything fell into place, I had no more barriers to stop me going forward. I knew I needed Jesus, and to be obedient to Him. My conversion has been a great, gradual one.

I am only at the beginning of my conversion with Jesus. I will need all your prayers, and I thank you now for them. I want Jesus to be my friend and saviour, because in Galatians 2 verse 20 it says, I have been crucified with Jesus, and I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

The real life I now have with this body is the result of my trusting in the Son of God, who loves me and gave Himself for me. I am trying to love those who I don't get on with. Also, I am more happier and contented.

So if there's anyone in church this evening who is hesitating, don't, because it is wonderful. I am just going to sing that little song, Spirit of the Living God, Fall afresh on me. There's a very real connection between being baptised in water and knowing the further working of God's Spirit in one's life.

We're going to pray for these two candidates right now. You're not aware of this, because you don't know the young man who's just spoken as well as I do, but you've really just witnessed a miracle. If you'd have asked me when I first knew him to predict that he'd ever stand in front of a congregation of some 500 people without a flaw, give his testimony, I'd have said there was no way.

But our God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ever ask or think. And incidentally, those who are new to our church, I don't make that sort of claim every day. It's very sincere.

It's not exaggerated. Ray will just play that organ as a whisper, and we're going to pray for these candidates. Loving God and Father, as we commit this young man and this young lady to you, we thank you for them.

We pray that as Brother Tim and I lay hands on them, as we immerse them in a few moments in water, that they might know that profound experience of the overwhelming of your spirit, and know the smile of approval of the Lord Jesus upon them because they're doing what he asked them to do. Those who confess him before men, he will confess before his Father who is in heaven. The Holy Ghost shall come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses.

Lord, we just ask that you'll continue to bless their lives and make increasingly this service special to them, to their loved ones, and all in this tab, for Jesus' sake. Amen. The text that's being given to Lisa Etherington is, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And upon your confession of faith in our Lord Jesus, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The verse of scripture that's being given to Philip Gill is, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. In your confession of faith in our Lord Jesus, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

That little song that's being played says, Jesus, take me as I am. I can come no other way. I'm going to ask the folk on the projections to find the song.

Someone who's got songs of fellowship to give me the number, and I'd like us all to sing it. Two hundred and ninety-two songs of fellowship. Then Margaret leads us in another song.

Let's continue to give God all the honour and the glory for everything he's done for us, by singing to God be the glory, number 357 in hymns of faith. Take it on, take it on, take it on, take it on. Turn to God's word in Acts chapter 26.

Here we find that great servant of the Lord, Paul, confronted by King Agrippa, and King Agrippa says to him, now stand up and defend yourself against the accusations that have been brought before you. So Paul comes to his feet, and we begin to read in verse 2. So Paul motioned with his hand and began his defence. King Agrippa, I consider myself fortunate to stand before you today as I make my defence against all the accusations of the Jews, and especially so because you are well acquainted with all the Jewish customs and controversies.

Therefore, I beg you to listen to me patiently. The Jews all know the way I have lived ever since I was a child, from the beginning of my life in my own country and also in Jerusalem. They have known me for a long time and can testify, if they are willing, that according to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee.

And now it is because of my hope in what God has promised our fathers that I am on trial today. This is the promise our twelve tribes are hoping to see fulfilled as they earnestly serve God day and night. O King, it is because of this hope that the Jews are accusing me.

Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead? I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests, I put many of the saints in prison. When they were put to death, I cast my vote against them.

Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. In my obsession against them, I even went to foreign cities to persecute them. On one of these journeys, I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests.

About noon, O King, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads. Then I asked, Who are you, Lord? I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, the Lord replied.

Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant, and a witness of what you have seen of me, and what I will show you. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles.

I am sending you to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. First, to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God, and prove their repentance by their deeds.

That is why the Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me. But I have God's help to this very day, and so I stand here and testify to small and great delight. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen, that the Christ would suffer, and as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles.

May God bless that reading to us. Now that passage that Ian read, it has a very interesting sentence. It struck me on Friday, and I've been, by courtesy of British Rail, transported this afternoon from about thirty or forty miles due north of London, back down to Worthing, and I've been reflecting upon this text and what it has to say to you and to me.

I'm specially closing in on verse ten of Acts twenty-six, where the Apostle Paul says, I cast my vote against them. I cast my vote against them. I want to speak to you about the ballot box.

There is a sense in which one of the greatest privileges that we have living in the United Kingdom is the democratic way of life. We can choose our own government. We have the option of giving our vote and sending back to Parliament the member who we think fittingly should take the position as representative from our constituency.

Now, we're in the era of political party get togethers, aren't we? We've had the Greens and the SDP, we'll soon have the SLP, or maybe we've had them and I forgot, and we've had the Conservatives. No, we've got that pleasure in store. And of course, there's a Labour Party thing coming up as well.

The minor parties, they think the ballot box in this country is not used properly, because they feel that there should be proportional representation, the possibility of transfer votes. The Green Party, they were fairly well represented as far as votes was concerned in the last European election, but they never got anyone in, and our system is first past the post. So the Greens aren't very happy, and Dr. Owen is not very happy.

In fact, apart from Mrs. Thatcher, I don't know anyone who really is very happy. But it is a privilege. It wasn't that long ago when they didn't think women ought to vote.

Not that long ago since Mrs. Pankhurst had those arms of hers chained to the railings of the houses of Parliament. Not that long ago when ordinary working-class people were not allowed to vote, only the aristocracy could send their lords and barons and MPs back to Parliament. But it's all changed now.

We're in England, Britain, the land of the free. The Bible has a lot to say about voting, actually. The ballot box is something that crops up.

The book of Deuteronomy, Moses, he's speaking to the children of Israel, and he tells them to choose the way of life that they ought to follow. And he says in the 19th verse of the 30th chapter, this day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death. Now choose life.

He says, you've got an option. There's a ballot box, make your choice. Joshua, well he lived some time after Moses and he confronts the children of Israel in the last chapter of the book that bears his name, and he tells them likewise that they are to make a choice.

He says, as for me in my house we will serve the Lord, but what about you? What's your choice? Are you going to respond to the possibility of living life for God, or taking the steering wheel and driving yourself? And then Elijah the prophet, who lived many years after both Joshua and Moses in the 18th chapter of the first book of Kings, he has representatives of Israel in front of him and he castigates them. He says, how long will you hover between two opinions? Come on, put it on the line. Are you going to follow Jehovah, the God of the patriarchs, or are you going to follow Baal? Are you going to give your life to promiscuity and lawlessness, or will you submit to the Ten Commandments and by living faithfully and in trust and dependence upon God know His blessings on your life? You see the ballot box concept, it's right through the Old Testament, and when you come into the New Testament there's a fellow by the name of Pilate, and he's got a problem what to do with the Lord Jesus.

That's been a problem for many people, it is for some people here, and he has a nifty Roman sort of answer to his problem. He gets the worst chap in the cells, puts him alongside the Lord Jesus, believes that the Jews would be cute enough to go for Barabbas, but they were cute enough to go for the Lord Jesus, but they went for Barabbas, and Pilate says, which man shall I release? He wants to let Jesus go free, and they say, let Barabbas go free, and Pilate didn't know what to do, he was caught on the helms of the dilemma. He went to the ballot box and he got the vote, and he didn't like it, did he? Now here is the Apostle Paul, and he's reflecting upon his life, a time when he wasn't a Christian.

And he is with some remorse saying this, that there was a time when he had the opportunity to show whether he was for the followers of Jesus or against the followers of Jesus, and he says, I cast my vote against them. And shall I tell you something? If you vote against the followers of Jesus, you vote against Jesus himself, because the Lord Jesus said, He who receives you, receives the one who sent you. He's talking to his disciples.

He who rejects you, rejects the one who sent you. And here is Paul, or Saul, as he was known before his days of conversion, and he does not like the followers of the Lord Jesus. If you did wrong in Jerusalem, you would be taken to court, but the court wouldn't be called the Old Bailey, it would be called the Sanhedrin.

It was a religious court, like they have religious courts in Iran, run basically by the ayatollahs, by the leaders of the Muslim communities. Now the court in Jerusalem was called the Sanhedrin, and it seems as though Paul, or Saul, was a member of the Sanhedrin. And what had happened was simply this, Jesus had been crucified, there were some who believed to have been raised from the dead, and that news went around like wildfire on the streets of Jerusalem, from house to house, from person to person, and large numbers of people, including priests, were being saved.

And they were called Christians, the followers of Jesus, it was really basically a nickname. And Paul, who's actually a member of the religious elite, he's a Pharisee, he doesn't like the idea that Christians should be pushing their particular beliefs. And so when they're brought in front of the court, when they're on trial, Paul says, I cast my vote against them.

Now look, when God looks down upon this congregation, young folk and old folk, He has, in effect, designed this evening's service to have, if you please, a ballot box. Now don't think that through literally in terms of a literal ballot box. Hear me and you'll understand where I'm coming from and what I'm saying too.

I believe that when God gives a man, such as myself or Tim or anyone else who occupies this pulpit, a message, He gives them a message to declare to the people in terms of not just wanting them to listen to what is said, but to make a decision. The whole of the ministry that I have personally exercised here over getting on for two decades has always been a ministry, especially on a Sunday night when I wanted a verdict. You can go away from here thinking, what he says is a load of cards wallop.

In one sense I don't mind, because at least you make a reaction. I do mind in as much as I think you're wrong and I think that your conclusion will do you eternal harm. That's my opinion and I've got Scripture backing it.

But at least you're making some sort of response. But what you can't do when you listen to a message like this being preached, is try to affect what Pilate did. What did Pilate do? Well, he washed his hands of Jesus.

In other words, he employed a tactic today we would call abstaining. I'm neither for him nor against him. Now Jesus was gentle.

The first prayer I was ever taught by my mum when I was a kid to the degree that I can remember, those early years of my life, was gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little child, pity my simplicity. There was nothing matter with a prayer. Our Lord Jesus is gentle and he is meek, he's not weak but he's meek.

And so when the Lord Jesus boxes you in and says if you're not for me you're against me, he does so wishing you to take great, or to put great seriousness behind the words that he is uttering. You are at this moment either for Jesus, a Christian, or you are against Jesus, not a Christian. There is not a third way.

In one sense I wish there was but I didn't write the Bible. Paul, choose you this day says Moses. Joshua says ask for me and my family, we've made a decision.

Elijah says, if I can use a colloquialism, why are you pussyfooting around Israel, why don't you come to a decision? And when Paul is confronted in the earlier years of his life with claims of Jesus, in the form of Jesus' disciples, he says, I cast my vote against them. There wasn't a third position, there was a middle one. Why did Paul cast his vote against the disciples? Well, he did it out of sincerity, but you can be sincerely wrong.

I used to work with a little lady called Miss Smith, what an unusual name. Leopold Street Sheffield, the education offices, I sweated for two years there and then left. Went to college.

Miss Smith, with her bony finger, would look across because her desk was adjacent to mine and she would say, because I was just a little bit, I was going to say provocative, a little bit too assertive in telling others the age of 16 that I got a whole of life worked out and everyone had to be converted. And she pointed her bony finger at me and she said, Tony, all roads lead to heaven. If you're sincere, you're all right.

Well, bless her heart, she meant it. But it's not true. You can be sincerely wrong.

The apostle Paul, before his conversion, he got it wrong. He was sincere, he felt that, well, these Christians, they were standing for something that endangered the religion that he'd been brought up himself to believe and to promote. It wasn't just a false sincerity or a wrong sincerity that provoked Paul to cast his vote in the wrong direction.

There's also a measure of prejudice. Now hear me, the majority of people who are not Christians are not in the category of believers simply because of prejudice. Paul didn't believe that it was possible for God to manifest Himself in the form of a carpenter, the carpenter to live in the obscurity of Nazareth and ultimately in three years proclaim the message of God to the world, be killed on a cross and be raised again in the power of an endless life.

That, to Paul, was a nonsense.