Manifesto 1 - Him Not Me (Jamie Haith)

Jamie starts a three part mini series entitled Manifesto! 

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Transcript

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Welcome to SGTM Talks. We hope you find this encouraging and inspiring.

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It's election time. Don't all cheer at once. I don't know about you, but my doorbell keeps ringing with all the candidates doing the rounds talking about their vision for what is government. They're all declaring their vision and their values, and they're busy expressing their principles. They're each giving us their respective party manifesto as the basis for their electioneering. But for all the words, what both the media and the person in the street are watching the candidates to see in any election is whether or not they really live out what they say they believe. Does it match up? Does it ring true? Because that's the ultimate test of whether someone deserves our vote, isn't it? Is there an essential authenticity? And all of this has got me thinking about our vision for us as a church at the parish level, here at St. George of the Martyr, right out to the global church, Big C. In these days, we're seeing our nation come to a point of asking very deep questions about the whole political process, peeling back the whole concept of liberal democracy and surveying its foundations. And in the same way, I believe we cannot start this new season that we're stepping into as we step into this really exciting project of refurbishing the church, reimagining this lovely old building, without first going to the roots of who we are and looking at what is this thing called church? What do we actually believe about church? And then, of course, do we live out what we believe about church? Do our lives reflect our words? It's one thing for politicians, but surely is the same is true for us, especially for us as Christians, as followers of Christ, as we collectively as the church, as St. George the Martyr, Queen's Square, London, WC1N3AH. I wonder, could this worshiping community be continue to grow as a place of deep honesty where people can be found and loved and directed towards God? Could this worshiping community be a place where the raw love of God has free reign to impact the very heart of London? Could this worshiping community grow as a destination, even, widely known for its authenticity, known as a place where people are confident in knowing what they believe and living it out in everything they do? So, what are we as church, what are the deepest scriptural principles for what we are doing here? What is church? What is St. George the Martyr? What do we believe we're doing when we meet together, when we share our lives with each other, when we're living out, and are we living out the rest of in the rest of our lives, what we say we believe? So I want to step away for the next three weeks from the lectionary readings, if I may. Today I want to bring you the first part of a three-part mini-series boldly entitled Manifesto. Next time, next week, we have Manifesto 2, We Not Me, about community, about commonly held faith, about how the Bible appears to be very, very concerned about the we of faith rather than the me of faith. Such an important principle for us to grasp in our hyper-individualized age. And then the following week, Manifesto 3 goes under the banner, them, not us. Mission. We'll be thinking together about how St. George the Martyr is not here for the sake of St. George the Martyr, for the thousands of people who live in this parish, for the tens, hundreds of thousands who walk past and work around here during the week. But this week, I'd like us to look for a few moments at the first key area of church manifesto one. It's all about him, not me. It's all about God, not me. It's all about him, not me. Worship. Put it all together, you have a pretty good manifesto for the Christian life. Church is him, not me, we, not me, them, not us. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter one for our scripture today. This is what Paul writes. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to God's holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reached their fulfillment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we who were the first to put our hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession, to the praise of his glory. For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all his people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his people and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that can be invoked, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come, and God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. Wow. Him not me. I have a question for you. Have you ever come away from a church service or you've been to a Christian conference and you come away from a session and heard yourself say, I didn't get much out of the worship this morning. It's easy to do. I know I've certainly done it, but there is one thought that's always brought me back to reality, and that's the simple reminder. Oh, wait, uh, wasn't for me in the first place, was it? Because the Christian faith, my faith, the heart of all worship, is him, not me. And that's what we see all over this chapter of Ephesians. I say Ephesians, I really want to say Ephesians, because I have four headings for us today, four aspects of our worship of God to take away and think about. And each heading begins with E. Two E's to be precise. So that's eight E's in total. Never has anyone exegeted the book of Ephesians, thus, doubtless with very good reason. So our first aspect of worship, our first priority as followers of Christ is this exalt the extraordinary. Exalt the extraordinary. Exalt simply means to praise, to lift up. And praise is what we see four times in this passage of Scripture. Verse 3, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Praise for God and all that He has done. For He is utterly amazing and wonderful and extraordinary and other and higher and greater and mysterious and majestic. And as a result, all of our worship is merely response. Our worship is merely a reaction to God's previous and ongoing activity of love towards us. Look at the tenses that Paul uses here. The overwhelming majority of it, as you can see, is past tense. It's done. As Jesus put it from high on the cross, it is finished. And what that means is the seal of God's blessing is already over your life. God's purity and peace are already freely yours. God's love for you is total today and available. God's forgiveness of you is unquestionable today. God's father heart of love is unbounding towards you. In short, we don't need to ask God to bless us because he already has. Verse 3, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Our job is to simply stand in awe of that and thank him. Thank him for his blessing. Thank him for his creation. Thank him for making us, offering us the chance to be forgiven and holy and blameless. Thank him for his love. As the writer Richard Foster puts it, worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father. All that God has already done is utterly extraordinary. And we simply respond. And it's our first response, just as it is Paul's. Once he gets through his nice personal chapter, open his personal opener of his letter, and it is really nice. He launches straight into worship. You can see him, he's dashing through those first words. Paul, an apostle of Christ, Jesus, by the will of God to God's holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace and peace to you from God our Father to your Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be! He can't wait to get there. He virtually explodes with worship. The whole of this chapter reads like a great hymn in praise of the transcendence and majesty of God. St. Paul can't keep it in. That's why theologian Karl Barth puts it like this: Christian worship is the most momentous, the most urgent, the most glorious action that can take place in human life. In a human life. And crucially, that worship doesn't leave us away at a distance. Hundred yards away, a million miles away, standing in awestruck wonder of all that God has done, blown away by his transcendence, hushed by his power, fearful of his essential otherness. There must also be an intimacy in our worship. Just as there is in this chapter an expectation of a deep engagement with God, a gentle, tender communion with him. That he's here and he loves you. He's close to you. And not just on a Sunday, but every day, every moment. Even as we make our response of praise, we can, second EE, expect to engage. Expect to engage. Each one of us who believes has been, as Paul puts it in verse 13, marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory. Did you see that once again? It's past tense. It is finished. You have been marked with a seal. The deposit of the Holy Spirit, the guarantee of our inheritance, is in you. It's done and dusted. But it's also present tense. Our relationship with God through Jesus and by the Holy Spirit is dynamic and alive and growing. Look at verse 17. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better. And as we come in worship, and I mean in the fullest sense, as we draw together with liturgy and prayer and scripture and singing and to celebrate the Eucharist together, we come with the full expectation that we will not just thank God for all that he has done in the past, but that we will engage with him. And all that he wants to do in us today. It's the expectation that God is wanting to be with us. Isn't that lovely? And that the uniting of our spirits with his will bring lasting change, it will bring love, it will bring joy, it will bring peace, and as a result, a deeper understanding, it's a virtuous cycle of the blessings that we already have. That's the expectation we bring to our worship. It's the thirst for the living water of the Spirit of God. It's the desire to meet with, engage with, and be changed, become more like the living God. As the psalmist puts it in Psalm 42, as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, yearns for you, desires you. Oh God, my thirst, the thirsts, my soul thirsts for you, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? Urgency. Got to get close to you, gotta know your presence, gotta enjoy that intimacy with you, such urgency, such connection the psalmist has with his own need of God. A need that can only be satisfied by drawing close to God in gentle worship, acknowledging his presence and enjoying him. And the focus in that place is all on God. It's all about him, not me. NT Wright said this about worship. Worship is humble and glad. Worship forgets itself in remembering God. And that engagement with God, that focus on him, not me, has the most extraordinary way I've found, and countless others, and I'm sure you have as well, when we worship has the most extraordinary way of putting things into perspective, into context in our lives. All of our struggles, our woes, our problems, which is completely fine and natural and understandable to have. The moment we worship, somehow they take on a different. I remember when I first came to London, don't laugh, I came to London to try and become a children's television presenter. It we I don't think you need to tell you, it didn't work out. And I had a bunch of different auditions, and one in particular I really thought was going to be great. It was for oh gosh, it was actually about a five-minute walk from here on Grape Street down near Covent Garden. Nickelodeon, if you know that. So I auditioned for that, and I really thought I'd done well. Have you ever been to something you thought I did really well at that? And then you realize afterwards you really didn't. And uh they rang me up and they told me, Yeah, you didn't get the job, which is amazing. Normally with auditions, they don't even get back to you. But they said I said, Oh, can I get some feedback? Can I I was gutted? They said, Yeah, you came across really smug. I was like, Oh gosh, I was so hurt, I was so disappointed, I felt so small and lost. And I put on remember I in that moment I somehow knew I had a choice, and I put on this will age me, I put on a worship cassette, and I sat just listening to it, and something shifted. I was still apparently smug, and I had still failed the audition, and I was still felt a bit lost and stupid, but something shifted in my heart and my mind. And I read at that time, there's a beautiful line in Psalm 73, Psalm 73, written by a worship leader, Asaf. And he says this everything was oppressive to me. He's looking around at the world, he's looking at how people that don't honor God are really succeeding, and that those that are humble and do honor God are failing in life. He's like, And he says, all of this was oppressive to me until I entered the sanctuary, and then I understood. You're like, oh, it's the moment he stepped into worship that everything else kind of fell into place, takes on that perspective. As we engage with the Holy Spirit in our worship, one impact, one consequence is that the issues in our lives take on the correct perspective. And then as we continue this journey of worship, for which we certainly uh you know allow whenever we meet together, also just encouraging each of us to, I think worship music is a great way of just putting something on Spotify or whatever, just shifting in that moment, and you find your mindset shifting. And and then what happens is there's another double E coming up. We've exalted the extraordinary, we expect to engage, and then we experience uh the the wonders of that. And then I think it's perfectly fine to be careful now, express your emotions. E, e, express your emotions. My prayer for us is that we would be a church of freedom. Uh my principal at Ridley, uh, where I did my Cambridge, where I did my um seminary, as they call it, my theological training. Uh, Bishop Christopher Coxworth, he was the the um principal at the time. He wrote he's written an amazing book called Holy, Holy, Holy. It's about worship. He says this the experience of the transcendent freedom of God who chooses to come in our midst and to create in us the freedom to respond to him is the essence of worship. The freedom to respond. Freedom for me to be me before you, freedom to be yourself. Highly, I think we should highly praise freedom in our worship. Now, if you during the singing part of the service choose to express that freedom by sitting and quietly just with your eyes closed and just listening, great. Alternatively, if your expression of emotion is to stand with your eyes closed and your hands in the air, then great. You won't be told what you must or mustn't do here. We can afford each other that space and that freedom because look at verse 6. There's another praise. Verse 6, to the praise of his glorious grace, which is freely given to us in the one he loves. This is all about grace. It's about enjoying that grace that we've received from God and we give to one another. That love that's been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit and then that overflows our lives. Grace means freedom. Grace means space and acceptance. Acceptance, even when people, how should we put it, maybe get a bit carried away as they do in the modern age. Listen to what this one man wrote about a member of his church. During the singing of a psalm, you will see him singing with intense emotion, with the expression of his face adapting itself to the spirit of the psalm, and with tears often coursing down his cheeks. Yes, he sings the very marrow of his bones, with voices, face, and profound sighs, all showing how deeply he is stirred. You'd be forgiven for thinking that's a description of someone in a happy, clappy Western world church in the 21st century, whipped into a frenzy by drums, guitars, and smoke machines. That quote was written by Saint Augustine about a member of his congregation in the fifth century. There's nothing new, there's nothing wrong with expressing our emotions in worship. On the contrary, exalting and engaging with the living God, surely it should require it, even just a bit. I would love to think that we can grow as a church here in being a place where there's the most wonderful freedom just to enjoy God and to express the emotion of that because that is what life is all about. The Westminster Catechism, one of the greatest doctrinal documents to come out of the English Reformation, both asks and answers this is what is man's chief end, humanity's chief end, humanity's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Can we agree on that today? Let's agree that we want to be free to enjoy God together. Exalt the extraordinary. Expect to engage. Express your emotions. Fourthly and finally, expend your everything. With all I've said, please don't get me wrong, our worship is not just about singing, praying, expressing ourselves through song or other way in an hour or so on a Sunday. The whole of our lives are oriented towards God. This is about the whole of our lives, the way we behave when no one's watching, the way we care for our parents, the way we treat our waiter, the way we take time and listen and care and show that love. Just this week, two days ago, I went to the memorial of a dear, dear friend. He was this crazy adventure guy, went all over the world. He's in the SAS, so he started out with that, and then he just spent a life adventuring. And he was, I think, the closest I've ever come to having a spiritual mentor figure. He died ice climbing in Scotland a few weeks ago. And he just had the most wonderful marriage and the most wonderful kids and the most wonderful story. But the thing about him, this memorial service, there were 500 people there. And time after time, as people got up to speak, they talked about how he made them feel. You know that phrase, people don't care how much you know, they care how you made them feel. That's what people will remember. And he had this most Ralph, his name was him had this most extraordinary ability to just engage and listen. And even though he was super busy doing all kinds of things, make you feel like you were the only person in the room that he had all the time in the world. That's worship. When you can show that level of love and care and acceptance to another human being, and for them to feel the love of God and the peace of God and the care and the attention of God. Wow. Worship is about all of that. It's about our generosity, it's about our humility, it's about our desire to bless the lives of others. This week, you can be the most extraordinary worshipful blessing bringing God into other people's lives just by the way you are. It's all worship. It all says, Lord, I love you. And I want to express my love for you by eloquently expressing your love to other people. We'll come on to that in the following weeks. We worship God through our money. My money. We say my money. Lord, it's your money. How do we worship God with our money? Simply this accept that God is the one who gives you all the finances, he gives you the ability to work and to and to create wealth, and then we get to enjoy the worship of giving. I'm really bad at this, but let me encourage you, give here. If you want to give, give here. You can even do it by Bitcoin now. We're the first church in the country. You can give by Bitcoin, so you can drain your account today. We're really laid back about it here. I'm so terrible at it. I don't like to ask. But we've got great needs here. You know, we've got this wonderful lottery grant, but we need to come up with a lot of money to match fund. So if you know someone that's got loads of cash and they want to give to this, then great, go and talk to them this week. Meanwhile, we'll do our little bit, won't we? We'll, you know, offer books up. I picked up those books. That was a whole Luton Van Worth on Friday. And uh we we can do more. Maybe you've got some books you can give, and we can continue just drip by drip by drip, just giving and giving and giving. Great dreams we have about what God wants to do with us as a family here. I was thinking, we we came up with this idea uh a while ago that I think it would be good to continue with. You know, eBay. I I jokingly called it St. GBay. I was thinking, what if we just gather stuff? You know, we've all got stuff in the attic or at home or stuff that you think, well, I'm not gonna bother to put it on eBay myself. But that's another way of giving. And maybe you go, actually, I've got that, you know, that set of golf clubs that's probably worth a couple of hundred quid, but I'm never gonna use them again, and I can't be bothered to sell them on eBay, so bring them here. Let's let's do that together. It's another way of giving. It's not just about giving 20 quid at the machine back there. There are loads of different ways of giving. Doesn't matter where you give, as well. I'm not saying just give here. If you find you're drawn somewhere else to give, then do it. But what does matter is that we discover that priceless truth of truth of life, that life and worship is all about him, not me. My money is God's. Also, my time is God's. I would hate that we um allow ourselves to think that we can just, well, if I give my money to church, uh then that will pay the staff to do the jobs and get the stuff done. No, I think we this is so much more. We all need to grow together. I'll say more about this uh next week. Well, that means doing stuff together, finding our gifts, serving when we can. Not that it's a set of diary commitments, but it's because we're a family and part of the that part of our worship of God is by being a faith community together, doing what we can, finding something that we enjoy doing. Shout out to Che Quan on the tech, and the same to Simon. They you know, these guys they they come in early on a Sunday and they they wouldn't say that they're the you know the biggest tech genie in the world, would you? I mean, Che Kwan is, maybe. Simon's definitely not. Um, but you know, they give, they say, I'll try, I'll give it a go. That's what Vivi's doing. She's you're training up, aren't you, Vivi? Stop hiding. Um, you know, we can all do something. Finding something you go, I just I'm gonna give in this way. I'll say more about that next week. And thirdly, uh, our money, our time, and social action, social justice. This is central to worship. You only have to read scriptures like Isaiah 58, Amos 5, all about loosening the bonds. Again, we'll talk about this in future weeks. But one thing I want to encourage you to do is to, I made sure it went live yesterday. I'm just gonna check on my phone right now. He says, going like I need my glasses. So if you don't, who does Instagram here? Does anyone do Instagram? Two people. Do you do three people, four people? Come on, we all do Instagram. I know you do. Please, can you do me a favor? Can you follow me on Instagram, Jamie Hayes, right? And then what you'll find is um the latest post that I've put up is is this one. So this is that's you can't really see it. I should have put it on the big screens. This is Nigel Skelsey, who's the founder, the writer and founder of the recovery course. And we're gonna start this uh on the 3rd of June, six weeks course, six-week course. And uh there's a link there for listening to I I do a podcast. Now, I I if you know about my podcast, I apologize for the very cheesy name. It's called my surname is Jamie Haith. The podcast is called Faith with Haith. That's really cheesy, but I'm unashamed. Anyway, so I interviewed different people, and the person that I interviewed, and it went live yesterday, is Nigel Skelsey. Go and listen to that, and you'll hear what the recovery course is all about. That's your homework, is to listen to Nigel Skelsey and to find out because I think it's really important that we totally, each of us, gets behind this. Because this is such an incredible offering to this local community to be able to say, God is a God of freedom. We want to see people's lives impacted, we want to see that freedom in people's lives. And the recovery course is beautiful. It's not, it's it's not, and this is a thing I really wanted to say here today. Come on it, even though you might say, Well, I'm not really addicted to anything. Fine, let's do this as a church. And what you find is you go, actually, yeah, I didn't realize, but I kind of I do have a sort of a draw to that thing, and and and that substitute, it does, it does attract me. And I think that's that maybe some things have more power over me than I have over them, and and it's understanding ourselves, and it's also being here to welcome and to love those that are coming to seek freedom. So have a look at that, listen to that podcast, become an expert on the recovery course, and let's invite people and pray for people together. Finally, to send you off into your week, your money, your time, social action, social justice, bringing freedom to people. It's all worship. What about work? Where have we got this idea that worship is only for an hour on a Sunday? Whatever you do tomorrow morning is worship, can be, should be, all done for the glory of God. I love verse 11. In him we were also chosen in order that we who were the first to put our hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory. Might be for the praise of his glory. You bring God praise by just being you. Kathleen, as a nurse, that is worship. Andrew, with all you're doing for the environment, that is worship. Chequan as a doctor, that's worship. It doesn't feel like it a lot of the time. At times when you go, there's a teacher, at times you're gonna go, this is a dragon, I hate these kids. It's but it's worship because you are being in that place. We who were the first to put our hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory. With all the strength and the passion and the gifts, with everything we are, we worship God with our lives, with every breath of our lives. The magnificent Oswald Chambers, and I'll finish with this, in the magnificent My Utmost for His Highest, puts it like this: Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best that you have, and whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Let's commit to worshiping God with all that we are this week. And that we remind ourselves and each other every day that it's about Him, not me. Let's pray. Thank you for your goodness, Lord. Thank you for your love. Thank you that you are worthy of our worship. You are worthy, Lord. We exalt the extraordinary. Thank you, Lord, that you are transcendent. You are other, you are greater, you are far more than we could ever grasp. You are infinite and you are beautiful, and you have done such great things. We bow down before you. But Lord, thank you that we can also expect to engage with you. You draw us close, you draw us into intimacy. We can know you, God, as Father. Lord, would you release our emotions in that, Lord? Let that overflow and let us enjoy you and be unashamed of enjoying you. And Lord, as we give our whole lives, as we expend our everything as our worship, I pray for just the most amazing week for each of us. I pray that you'd flip something, would you flip a switch as we go about our work? That we know we I'm doing this for you, Lord. I am being for you this week. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

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