My voice is not very strong this morning
for some reason, which is never very strong,
so you can guess what the reason is.
I'd like you to turn with me, please,
to 2nd Kings, 2nd book of Kings, and
chapter 4, 2nd Kings chapter 4.
Appreciate it, Mary's playing this morning, thank you,
thank you.
All right, I'm in chapter 4, and looking
down to verse 8.
Now there came a day when Elisha passed
over Shunam, where there was a prominent woman,
and she persuaded him to eat food.
And so it was, as often as he
passed by, he turned in there to eat
food.
She said to her husband, Behold now, I
perceived that this is a holy man of
God passing by us continually.
Please let us make a little walled upper
chamber, and let us set a bed for
him there, and a table, and a chair,
and a lampstand, and it shall be when
he comes to us that he can turn
in there.
And the story continues, but I will not
continue to read.
Let's just leave it there for now.
I think what I want to say, more
than anything else, is our exposure and our
interaction with others inevitably deposits an impression upon
them for better or for worse, and that's
how it is, isn't it, in life.
I suppose common features that we could think
of are, well, perhaps our dress, the way
we present ourselves, the manner of our speech
will make its own unique impression.
Perhaps the topics that we commonly choose to
discuss will also make an impression.
Some people will leave the impression that they're
a very humble person or individual.
There will be others who will give the
impression that they're anxious to impress one way
or another.
I think there will be yet others who
will be discerned to be insecure, maybe even
spiritually unclean.
Maybe from time to time we will sense
that there's some demonic darkness involved in the
life.
So there's a whole variety of ways in
which impressions are made that are unavoidable.
For the most part, they're not being made
deliberately.
They're just the impressions of who we are
and how we present ourselves and how we
interact with other people.
We're reading here about this woman, and she
has a husband, and, of course, Elisha is
the prophet of God in the story.
The woman didn't see an Elisha, I'm sure
of this, she didn't see a cross hanging
around his neck.
Well, of course, she wouldn't.
Anyway, that particular stage in history.
She wasn't looking at a T-shirt with
some religious slogan or statement or even scripture
on it.
And I'm equally certain that she didn't pick
up on the bumper sticker he had on
his car.
But she picked up this, that he was
a man of God.
That's the first thing.
And I've asked myself, you know, perhaps, and
I have to use my imagination, what was
it about him that created that impression?
I can't be sure that I'm accurate about
this, but perhaps it was the cloak that
he was wearing and the ritual fringes around
the cloak, which are prescribed in the book
of Leviticus, the fringes which would remind the
wearer of the commandments of God.
That would be, I think, a giveaway.
But more than that, it says here in
the scripture that she said to her husband,
I perceive that this is a holy man
of God that passes by us continually.
There was more to it.
There was, once again, no one can be
dogmatic about, well, it was this or it
was that in particular that impressed her.
But clearly there was an observation that she
made of this man that led us to
this conclusion.
There's no record given to us of the
first event that they met.
He passed by regularly.
Some of you will have heard me say
this before, commenting on this text, that a
memory I have was when I was still
yet a policeman and I was invited, I
was part of something called the Christian Police
Association and I was invited to speak to
a group of professing Christian policemen and I
chose this as my text.
I perceive that this is a holy man
of God that passes by us continually.
Clearly there was, as I say, we don't
know what happened on the first meeting, but
at some stage they decided, she and her
husband, to invite him in for a meal
as he traveled past and were led to
believe that that happened on a number of
occasions.
So this would give opportunity, sitting around a
table, there would be conversation and interaction with
him and clearly there was something more than
just his clothing that was impressing her about
him and led her to this conclusion that
this man is not merely a man of
God in a sort of a broad generic
sense of that term, but she said this
is a holy man of God, something deeper.
She had a sense that there was a
depth about this man spiritually that she was
picking up on and that was impressing her
and so on.
Before going any further, I want to ask
you to just use your own, perhaps it's
going to be your imagination, because you will
not be the best judge of this, but
I'm wondering how you may sense that people
discern you as you interact with them, the
people that you meet.
What impression do you make?
I've been talking to some of you for
a long time, so one or two of
the things that I use to illustrate particular
points will be repeated.
But when I was reading through the scripture
and thinking about this particular feature in it,
I thought about something that took place in
1966 when my brother had climbed over the
Brethren Wall and gone to a meeting on
the outside of our group of assemblies, which
was not common in those days and we
didn't have exposure to other denominations at all,
so we were pretty exclusive.
And my brother came home seven years younger
than me, he was 17 at the time,
and he was trying to convince me that
I needed to go to one of these
meetings and meet some of these people and
I was resisting it because we were brethren
and we don't do those kinds of things
and so on.
But on one occasion I remember he said
to me, he said, Fred, he said, the
man who was preaching had white hair.
Don't forget, he was 17.
He said, the man who was preaching had
white hair, but as I looked at him
and as I listened to him, more than
anything else in the world, I wanted to
be like that man.
That's quite something.
And I'm speaking to quite a few people
here who have grey hair or no hair
maybe, one or two of us, or very
little.
But the point is, isn't that something?
And I'm asking you the question, how do
people perceive you?
What is it they detect about your life
that distinguishes you in a particular way?
Could it be that a teenager meeting you
for a little while would go home and
say to his older brother, I've just met
a man of God, a holy man of
God, and more than anything else in the
world, I found I wanted to be like
that man.
That's an amazing statement.
And he said it with full sincerity.
There was nothing trite about it at all.
So this is a really important question.
What is the manner and conduct of my
life and my interaction, my conversation?
Is it holy, my conversation?
Peter uses that word in the Old King
James.
Other translations have it, your manner of life.
But it's to be godly, holy and godly.
Could it be an accurate description of your
life, do you think?
And again, we can have sort of our
own ideas about it and using our imagination,
perhaps we could be foolish and imagine, well,
it probably is the way people see us.
But the real test, of course, is how
the people out there, whoever they are, and
in whatever context, whether they're members of your
own family or whether they're people that you
meet in the place where you work or
in the neighborhood or wherever it is.
I'm certain of this one thing for each
and every one of us here, that that
would be the desire, a deep burning desire
of your heart, that that would be true.
We all recognize immediately that that is how
it ought to be.
That is how we ought to be living
in such a manner and be so Christ
-like that people actually sense something of the
aroma of Christ or the presence of Christ
or the Word of God in the context
of our speaking or whatever.
And that's the real question that occurs to
me as I read this passage.
Let's just sort of pivot away from this
for just a moment or two.
When we find ourselves confronted with the word
holy, what really crosses our mind, and I
don't want to spend a long time, we're
not doing a big word search in scripture
to sort of get an answer to this,
but how do we understand the concept of
holy?
When I said a holy man of God,
something resonates within us.
What is it?
How could we describe that, do you think?
I know that God said concerning himself, two
very specific occasions I find in scripture where
we read God speaking.
He said, I am holy, and there are
other variations on that, but two of those
very clear statements, I am holy, we know
that God is a holy God.
The psalmist certainly was very clear on that
with a number of his own statements and
so on.
We keep in mind as we step into
this area of questioning that the holiness of
God is something that is utterly unknown in
this world.
If I can use the word carefully, it's
alien to this world.
It's something else.
Frankly, I feel, and I just did this
down as a note of my own, when
I think of the topic of the holiness
of God, I think rather than being able
to define it specifically, because I don't believe
that any of us are capable of doing
that, because it's something outside of this world.
It's outside the framework of anything that we
can comprehend and understand.
We can come up with a few neat
little definitions that are temporally satisfying in a
very limited way, but the thought that comes
to my mind is it's like a signpost
that's pointing into a thick mist.
In my early growing up days, living near
to the Irish Sea, and also taking into
account that we had a serious problem with
smog, as we called it.
Fog, you know, London fog.
Well, I came from Liverpool.
But fog was common in those days.
Almost everyone burned coal for their heating, and
the smoke would go up with whatever pollutants.
And, of course, with all the heavy mist
being near to the water and so on,
it would hang there.
And you've all heard the term P super.
Well, that's because very often it was like
a green mist.
And there's more to be said about that.
Sometimes we'd be told at work that all
the transportation was being canceled, and so we
could go home early.
If you were sensible, you brought a flashlight
with you to work to help you find
your way home.
But anyway, I know what a fog is.
This is not a green smog that I'm
thinking about.
I think this is a mist that is
more defined as the glory of God.
It's the mystery of the true identity of
God that is beyond us.
And so we have words of Scripture and
statements, which are like signposts.
They point us in that direction, that God
is holy or the holiness of God.
And we say, yes, I believe that.
And we try our best to say, well,
I understand it.
But really we don't because it's too great
for us.
Because what we quickly pick up from our
reading is that really holiness identifies who he
is.
He is holy.
I am holy, says the Scripture.
And so really we've got a term here
in our language that is given to us
biblically or in the words of Scripture to
identify something of the very essence of who
God is.
It's not a reference to what he does.
It's a reference to who he is.
Our God is holy with whatever that means
and includes, which is beyond my comprehension.
That's God.
There comes a time as we read through
the Scriptures where we turn that last page
of the book of Malachi and we move
on into the New Testament.
It starts out the book of the generation
of Jesus Christ.
And we've moved at that point, although it's
not yet been inaugurated and certainly not explained
yet, but we've moved at that point out
from under the old covenant and we're moving
step by step into the new covenant that
God would make through the purchase of the
shed blood of Christ as we've been thinking
as we've broken bread this morning and so
on.
And so what I'm saying here is that
with this mystery concerning the identity of God
which has persisted before us as we've read
through the Old Testament Scriptures, we finally turn
to the New Testament and the person, Jesus
Christ, steps onto the stage of history and
he's put before us.
And we know how that there are a
variety of statements that we find then in
the New Testament that speak of him in
particular ways.
Not least of those would be the statement
that the word was made or the word
became flesh and dwelt among us.
The word of God, the logos of God,
the one who created all things and without
him nothing was created.
This eternal being stepped onto the stage of
history and lived among us.
The apostle John said we beheld his glory.
Again, he makes a variety of statements where
he speaks about we not only saw him
but we gazed upon him, he says in
his first epistle.
He says our hands have handled the word
of life and the writer to the Hebrews
says concerning him that he was the radiance
of his father's glory, the exact representation of
his nature.
And the hymn writer says, God in man,
the oneless blending.
The person of Jesus Christ or in the
person of Jesus Christ, heaven came down to
us.
God came down and chose to reveal himself
in human form.
This was entirely new.
We know that he came at that stage
in order to die and in order to
give his life.
He did live but he didn't come into
this world just to live as we came
into this world.
He came into this world to die.
He came so that he could as a
man, as a pure man, a sinless man,
present his life as an offering for us
all.
We understand that.
But the fact is during this period which
is recorded through the Gospels, God was manifested
in a manner that was formerly unknown to
men and women in the entirety of history.
God was revealed in human flesh.
And John, as I've been quoting him, he
would speak in these terms of astonishment and
amazement, of being transfixed, of not just looking
and glancing and seeing but gazing upon him
is the one word that he uses in
particular in his first chapter of 1 John.
He says, we've gazed upon him, suggesting that
we've gazed with wonder and amazement at this
mystery, the mystery that the God of creation,
the God of eternity, would come among us
and that we could be so honored, so
privileged as to be chosen to walk with
him and be fellowshipping with him, to hear
his word, to be exposed to his life
and more yet than that.
Glory to God.
And as he lived out his life, he
lived out his life as the ultimate Jewish
man.
That is, he kept and fulfilled all of
the various rituals and the commandments of God
as was required of the Jewish people.
At that time, of course, no one fulfilled
them as he did.
He fulfilled everything perfectly.
Every jot and tittle, he fulfilled it perfectly.
Not all the whims of the Pharisees, but
that which had been the word of God.
He kept that in every detail.
And he walked in absolute obedience to his
Father through the entirety of the journey of
those years that he lived on this earth.
He was undoubtedly the first and the ultimate
and most holy man to walk upon the
face of this earth.
He was impeccable.
He was flawless.
He walked perfectly before his Father.
He honored his Father in everything.
And what we're looking at here and trying
to consider is God incarnate, God incarnated.
Wesley said God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly
made man.
That this could be is an amazing concept,
certainly.
That he could walk among us as a
man and yet never cease to be God.
He took this step himself.
He made himself.
Paul tells us that, Philippians chapter 2.
And he was everything and did everything that
makes a man human except sin.
He was not of the seed of the
first Adam.
Had he been that, had Mary made a
contribution to him, he would not have qualified
to become our Savior.
He had to be completely man, but he
had to be pure and spotless and sinless
in order for his shed blood to be
a satisfactory offering to his Father.
And we know that he willingly surrendered himself.
This awesome God.
He willingly surrendered himself to human limitations.
God in Christ became tired.
He became hungry.
He thirst.
He wept.
He had faith.
He felt pain.
And ultimately he died.
That dense fog that I referred to, that
heavy mist that I find in the Old
Testament that surrounds the being of God and
the holiness of God was somehow lifting during
the period of the life and ministry of
the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
As he walked upon this earth.
And man was able to gain a grasp
of the holiness of God to a higher
level than was possible in the past because
they saw God in human terms.
Yes, he was restricted.
He was contracted, etc.
But the fact is his life was distinctive.
This was the mystery.
He was one of us and yet he
was not one of us.
He was altogether separate from us and yet
in a sense he came in the form
that we could relate to and understand as
we watch the behavior of his life and
so on.
And man in studying these things begins in
some small degree to comprehend the incomprehensible, the
identity of our God.
We could look at some of the things
that he said but I'm wanting to focus
for a minute here on one of his
statements which I think of as it's like
a verbal explosion to us.
When he said, you'll remember the statement immediately,
he said, I am with you but I
shall be in you.
I don't know a better way to describe
that statement as being explosive.
This very God, this almighty, this I'm describing
or attempted to describe him as this spaceless,
beginningless God who spoke and creation sprang into
being and becoming a man walking about in
the area of Israel and Galilee and talking
to ordinary people and holding their babies and
blessing them and so on and so on.
But then as we begin to gain some
sense and understanding, albeit very small, of the
fact that this man is the Messiah, he
is the God, he's the almighty God somehow
here in flesh and we struggle to get
hold of it but then I hear him
say, I am with you but I shall
be in you.
Really, I sensed as I'm speaking to you
that it would be most appropriate for us
all to fall on our faces at the
very thought of such a thing.
I believe that this statement lies right at
the central core of the Christian Gospel and
frankly, I believe it is a great truth
that is commonly missed.
I think in our sincere efforts to make
the Gospel known to the multitudes, there's been
such an emphasis on trying to somehow make
it all simple and understandable and so we
have phrases like seeker-friendly and so on.
But what we've been doing, notwithstanding a degree
of sincerity, but we've reduced the irreducible truth
to some kind of lowest common denominator.
We've discounted the mysteries and the challenges and
the costs and all those things and we've
brought it right down so it's a most
attractive simple thing and we say with sincerity,
I'm not being foolish.
We say if you just follow this prayer
now that I'm going to pray, follow my
words and pray this prayer which we've chosen
to call the sinner's prayer and accept Christ
as your Saviour even though we don't find
scriptures like this anywhere in the Bible.
Accept Jesus into your heart and so on.
But we've made it sort of neat and
tidy and albeit attractive, we've surrounded it by
all kinds of glittery packaging.
Do you understand me?
So that the whole thing of Christianity has
become such an attractive appealing thing and this
very simple thing, sign here and you've got
your ticket to heaven when you die and
so on.
And again, I'm not being facetious or silly.
But the fact is we're told then what
you need to do, do read your Bible,
do attend the church and try, I'm not
saying it would always be put in these
terms, try to live your life as much
as you can in the way that Jesus
lived his life and so on.
And we present that as the gospel and
we've lost the miracle of it.
We've lost the miracle.
I am with you, I shall be in
you.
We need now to say, well, how?
How does this happen?
How can that happen in my life, someone
would be saying.
I believe that this miracle, which again is
at the very core, the center of the
Christian gospel, can be illustrated and is illustrated
graphically and powerfully in the interaction between a
young Jewish virgin and the angel Gabriel.
You'll remember the occasion.
And I believe that this great truth, this
core truth of the gospel is woven into
that interaction that took place there.
I understand that what was happening in and
of itself, discounting for this moment the fact
that it's going to have a benefit for
us as we try to understand salvation, but
we understand that what was happening had to
happen the way it did in order to
make salvation a possibility.
But then as we watch and listen to
the interaction between the angel and Mary, something
resonates in our hearts as being true also
of the response which is appropriate so far
as grasping and experiencing the richness of the
gospel.
In other words, I read in Luke chapter
1, it says the angel spoke to Mary
and he said, and she was shocked, it
was an angel speaking to her, of course.
But then the angel spoke to her and
he said that you are going to conceive
a son in your womb and he shall
be called the son of God.
You know, that's precisely what we're talking about
this morning.
That's exactly what must happen in your life
and mine.
In fact, I'll go so far as to
say if that doesn't happen, we don't qualify
to be called Christian.
We're talking about a core issue here, that
we're sort of stepping into this holy ground
as we try to comprehend this even more
fully.
You'll remember how the apostle Paul is writing
to the Galatians and there's some background that
goes with this, but then we hear him
saying to them, he said, I'm labouring.
In fact, one translation puts it this way,
it's as though I am in labour until
Christ be formed in you.
He saw this, again, he didn't use the
word core, but he saw this truth as
the core issue at the centre of the
Christian gospel.
There's all of the truth that surrounds it,
all that had to be accomplished by Christ
himself at Calvary and the Pentecostal imparting of
the Holy Spirit and so on, and doctrine
that we have spelled out for us and
stretched before us in the New Testament and
in the epistles.
But the bottom line is, here, we're talking
about this God of eternity that we saw
demonstrated, we saw him expressed in the person
of Christ as we look through the story.
He who was the express image or the
exact image of his Heavenly Father, his Holy
Father, the Holy Spirit, now is bringing the
holy life of Jesus to conceive it in
the womb of a human heart is a
staggering concept.
But Paul said, that's what I'm praying for,
and it's as though I'm in labour.
He was in agony about it, he said,
because this has got to happen in your
life, and I'm going to keep on in
this labouring posture.
It's painful, but I'm going to keep on
until Christ is formed in you.
It must happen in your life, it must
happen in my life.
Mary is staggered.
I hope you feel that also.
We must, we must.
We're staggered.
What is this?
She says, how can this be?
She was saying, I'm a virgin, I'm unmarried,
I don't know a man.
How can this be?
And it was the response of the angel
that's so helpful to us.
He said, the Holy Ghost or the Holy
Spirit will come upon you.
And there was a holy thing that was
going to occur and come into existence in
her womb, it says here.
That's the only way it can happen in
our life.
It's not merely a matter of just identifying
with certain truths.
It's not sufficient to say, well, I believe
all that.
This must happen in our lives.
A Christian is one who is, where there
is Christ in a man.
A Christian is Christ in a man.
This is the miracle, this is the wonder.
It's not cheap, it was not purchased cheaply.
It's not something that we casually enter into.
It's something that needs to be presented as
the authentic biblical gospel.
This is what lies at the core of
it.
And then we come back to Mary again.
And there's no record given here to help
us out.
But we can't help but find ourselves imagining
in those fleeting moments having heard what the
angel has pronounced and stated to her and
how it was going to happen.
All of it was total mystery, totally beyond
her.
There was no way that she could cause
this to happen alone.
This had to be outside of herself and
no man could do it.
It had to be God.
It has to be God who forms Christ
in you and in me.
It has to be Him.
But in that moment, and I think there
must have been a moment of silence, I
don't know how long it lasted, but Mary
would think, this is going to impact my
whole life.
She had a man out there whose name
was Joseph and she loved him and he
loved her.
They were engaged together to be married.
They were like any good human couple who
reach this stage and they're anticipating a lifetime
of being together and sharing together and having
their children together and growing old together.
This would change everything.
In that moment, she would be bound to
come to the conclusion Joseph will never believe
what I'm going to tell him.
Of course, we know that God had all
that looked after and He arranged for the
angels to go and have a chat with
Joseph.
But this was Mary in the presence of
this divine being, this heavenly being, and He's
making these staggering statements to her.
And she realized that to give any kind
of nod of approval or acceptance of what
was being put before her would change her
life forever.
The cost was inestimable.
At the very least, it would be to
lose Joseph.
And that would be the end of the
world for her, I should think, emotionally, she
would think.
It would be scandalous to conceive and bear
a child outside of wedlock in the small
community in which she lived.
She wouldn't blend into some big mega city,
but her family would know, her neighbors would
know.
It was a scandalous thing that was being
put before her.
Apart from being beyond her ability to measure
or understand in any degree at all.
In a heartbeat, she said, yes, that's the
thing.
In a heartbeat, she said, be it unto
me according to your word.
That's amazing.
And I'm reminding you this morning, this is
the truth that lies at the core of
the Christian gospel.
In that moment, I believe that holy, holy,
holy life of God took up residence in
her human body, in her womb.
Mary did make no contribution to this.
It was God, as someone once put it,
it was God burrowing her womb.
But nevertheless, she agreed to it.
And she knew what it would look like
to others.
But the fact is, that is exactly what
must happen to every person who is responding
to the Christian gospel.
And like Mary, it will cost you everything.
No exceptions.
This is not just a ticket to put
in your back pocket or put in a
safe place which is going to supposedly get
you through when you reach the pearly gate
situation.
No, no, not at all.
This is a different issue.
It's going to cost you everything.
And frankly, I think, you be the judge
of this, I think there are few people
in our culture, in our Christian culture as
we call it, who are really genuinely understanding
this and who are genuinely prepared to pay
the price that's involved.
And so what do we do?
We listen to something like this and we
retreat back into something that someone has called
Christian light, which makes no demands on us.
But we don't reap any of the benefits
either.
By the same token, we just have pious
words and ideas that we believe certain things,
but we've never really had this encounter with
the Spirit of God and we've never recognized
the challenge, the demands of God upon us.
The issue is not just me accepting Christ.
We've made it cheap by those very words.
But it's me now, illuminated by the Spirit
of God, yielding myself and giving myself to
God.
Be it unto me according to your word,
Lord.
Whatever it's going to cost.
Jesus didn't sugarcoat the truth in any way.
We've looked at this before.
He didn't hide the fact that if you
make this kind of choice or this response
to God, better put, you're going to be
persecuted.
He was right out front.
He said, they persecuted me, they will persecute
you.
If you've got his life in you and
it's being lived out through you as God
intends it to be, you will be persecuted
too.
You won't be the famous man of the
moment, or woman of the moment, and so
on.
He didn't say, by the way.
He said, if you're thinking that I've come
to bring peace, he said, I've not come
to bring peace.
I've come to bring a sword.
This is going to upset family people.
He didn't say just make a mess of
your family for the sake.
He wasn't saying that, but he's saying, in
order to follow me and be obedient to
me in every single thing, there are going
to be people in your family that are
going to be offended by it and they
won't want to be around you anymore, and
there's a cost involved in all of that.
That's what Jesus is talking about.
He was so honest and right up front
with these things.
The question, I suppose, is I'll draw to
a close here.
In the light of all this, what will
your answer be?
Will we say, as we understand the truth
coming freshly to us, be it unto me
according to your word.
How does a hymn writer put it?
He says, cast out my sin and enter
in.
Be born in me today.
There'll be a lot of people singing those
lines, but do we really know?
The Apostle Peter said this in his epistle.
He said, what sort of people ought you
to be in holy conduct and godliness?
Charles Wesley says, O glorious sound of gospel
grace, Christ shall in me appear.
There's more to that that's wonderful.
I think only on the basis of this
kind of response to this great core truth
of the gospel will there be any hope
that the people you and I interact with
daily will be inclined to say this is
a holy man of God, a holy woman
of God that passes by us continually.
Let's pray.