Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] I can't think of a better thing to talk about this morning as we're sat in a building that is earmarked for demolition.
[00:00:13] That's what this place is earmarked for. This has been. It's been decided that this building is no longer of use. And so the idea is that the owners of it, that they're going to bulldoze it at some point and put something new here.
[00:00:28] And of course, we all know that buildings don't age well and things don't always last forever.
[00:00:34] But I love that we have stepped into a place that someone thought was discarded and abandoned and rubbish and turned it into something with a purpose.
[00:00:46] And I can't think of a better picture of the gospel than the one that you sat in this morning. That the gospel of Jesus Christ takes lives that thought they were abandoned, thought they were worthless. And he gives us purpose and life and meaning, and he tells us that we're not to be discarded, we're not disposable, but we are significant and we are loved. And he has a plan. And I love the love that many of you put in these past few weeks to help in this be possible and the care and the attention and the hours and the sacrifices that you have given to make this possible. And I love that God is constantly giving his attention to ordinary people like you and me. And he's constantly giving us his attention and his affections to let us know that no matter how worthless we feel we are, that he has placed a value over our lives, that he is not going to discard us, he's not going to demolish us, he's not trying to knock us down, but he's trying to restore us and build us up. And he is a God of restoring, reuniting and recovering. And just quickly, these three points this morning, the psalmist in psalm 80 says these words, restore us, God. Make your face upon us, that we may be saved. Restore us, o God, in this disposable world where we seem to get through so much stuff, if you ever take any stuff in your car to the local recycling center and see the queues of people disposing of items that a few years ago they were purchasing, once they were a value and once they were good, but now they are to be thrown away.
[00:02:43] And in this world where so much seems to be disposable, we have quick fashion that seems to make our clothes only last a season. There are so many aspects of this world that have a disposable nature to them. But God is a God whose love for us, for you, for me, is never for a season. It's always forever.
[00:03:08] That's who God is. That's what he does.
[00:03:12] And I love that there is a rise, actually, against this consumeristic world of throwaway fashion and throwaway household goods. I love that in this world today, that there is a rise of what we call restoring business, where furniture has a second life given to it, where people have learned the art of polishing or painting or renewing and buying something that someone else has discarded and thought is of no use, and to put some new life to it and make it one of the centerpieces of someone else's home. I love the rise of secondhand shops, that you can buy clothes that someone else has discarded, someone else has thrown away, and you can make new use out of it. We enjoy going and shopping in charity shops and finding something that someone else had no use for any longer. And we look at it and we go, that will work.
[00:04:19] That will be good.
[00:04:21] And I love that God is a God who places value on those who feel discarded.
[00:04:31] Second hand clothes are often called pre love today.
[00:04:36] They were once loved, and they can be loved again.
[00:04:41] And maybe you felt that once you were loved, but maybe the hurt and the abandonment and the things of this world, the tough days of life, have eaten away at that sense of love. I want you to know you're not pre loved. You are loved.
[00:04:58] God loves us and he restores us.
[00:05:04] He places value upon us.
[00:05:08] He wants us to know that we are priceless.
[00:05:13] This psalmist said, restore us. Make your face shine upon us. And when our lives are illuminated by his radiance and by his face, we begin to discover our value again.
[00:05:26] He's a God who restores, but I love that also. He's a God who reunites.
[00:05:32] I love the story, the famous story in the Bible that Jesus told. It was a parable that he told of a son that had rebelled against his mother and father and took the inheritance before his dad died and went and squandered it on wild living. And the son got to such a place that he thought that he had reached the lowest point. He'd spent all his money. All his friends who were only around him because he had money, had all abandoned him. He was lost. He was alone. He was at the lowest point of life. And at that moment, he recognized the desperation of his need and thought, well, I am going to go back to my father, but I can't go back as a son. He'll never accept me as a son. But maybe he will take me on as an employee, maybe as a servant. And so with humility, he goes back to his father. And his father doesn't just reluctantly send a message through one of his workers to say, okay, I'll speak to him or I'll give him a job. But his father spots him on the horizon because he's been looking for him. He's been searching for him day after day. It wasn't a coincidence of time. Every day, God, the father that that story is a picture of is looking on the horizon for those who are lost to return.
[00:06:57] I hate losing things.
[00:07:00] Honestly, I hate losing things. It doesn't matter what it is.
[00:07:04] Just a year. Last Christmas, we went for a family walk on the beach of Exmouth. And my daughter and son in law were with us and at the time they were living in Luton and they'd driven up in his van and we were walking on the beach and the sea was beginning to come in and we went back to the cars in order to drive back to our home for some food. And my son in law realized that he didn't have his keys with him.
[00:07:31] And we began to think of all the places we'd been on the beach and we began to retrace our steps to try to find these keys because he couldn't get into his van unless he had his keys.
[00:07:45] And I searched that beach. He searched that beach. We searched the beach. We went to every cafe to ask if they'd been handed in and we never found the keys. I ended up driving back to Luton in order to get a spare pair so that he could get back in his van and use it again. But you know what? It's been about 18 months beyond that time, 17 months. And every time I go to Exmouth, every time I am still looking on the beach, honestly, I'm like, one day they're going to be there. Come on. God, you can make this happen. It's getting a little bit worse. I went for a walk in Dawlish. I thought, well, the sea would take it out and maybe drop it on the beach of Dawlish. And I'm looking on the sand of Dawlish and thinking, maybe they're here. I'm sure if I holiday in France, I'll be thinking, maybe they arrived here. Wouldn't it be an amazing story one day to hold the keys? He no longer has the van.
[00:08:50] But we want the keys.
[00:08:52] I'd love to have those keys. I hate losing things, Nita, over our marriage. We were married 32 years and she's had a few wedding rings over that time. And how many?
[00:09:10] My daughter reckons five. Nita reckons three.
[00:09:16] And there was one particular wedding ring that was a bit different. It wasn't expensive, but it was a bit different. And she lost it and we just couldn't find it. And we've searched everything. We've moved house since and still think one day it might turn up.
[00:09:32] But I've even gone in secondhand shops, think maybe someone has handed it in.
[00:09:39] I hate losing things.
[00:09:42] God doesn't like losing things.
[00:09:45] He's a God who wants to reunite those who are lost with his love.
[00:09:53] And this world says a lot of really negative things about God.
[00:09:58] It has an impression that God is really not really a very nice person.
[00:10:03] Well, if somebody said that about you, and I didn't know you, I'd only have their opinion.
[00:10:13] But if someone knew you and they said that in this room, there are hundreds of people who know God, and we don't find him to be horrible.
[00:10:27] We don't find him to be someone who's against us. We find him to be someone who is really for us.
[00:10:34] And he's scanning the horizon, looking for those who are lost.
[00:10:40] And the son thought, there's no way he will accept me back.
[00:10:44] But the father went running to him and he threw a party and he celebrated. My son that was once lost is now found.
[00:10:55] This is the best party.
[00:10:59] I'll be tempted to kill the fattened calf if I find those keys.
[00:11:05] But I want you to know, God loves ordinary people.
[00:11:11] No matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, God loves you.
[00:11:18] And his heart is to be reunited with his love.
[00:11:23] And then finally, he restores. He reunites, but he also recovers.
[00:11:31] There's a story of a woman that Jesus met. She was filled with shame. In fact, she had so much shame in her life that she didn't do things the same time as other people because she didn't want to bump into others.
[00:11:47] That's quite a high level of shame. Imagine you having to go to the 24 hours Tesco at the quietest time of the night, maybe two in the morning, because you didn't want anybody to see you. Imagine living that sort of lifestyle. Shame where you felt you were so bad that you couldn't encounter anyone else. That was this lady.
[00:12:09] She was gathering water from a well at the point in the day that people didn't go out into the sun because it was too hot. But she'd prefer to get burnt by the sun than to meet people because her life was filled with so much shame, and she met someone.
[00:12:29] When your life is full of shame, the best person you can meet is Jesus.
[00:12:36] He's the best, not the worst.
[00:12:40] I meet people regularly, and they say to me, mark, I don't think. I don't think God would ever be able to accept me.
[00:12:50] I don't think God would ever be able to love me. You don't know what I've done. You don't know what my life is like.
[00:12:57] It's like going to the doctors and saying, I can't see the doctor because I'm too ill.
[00:13:02] Of course you see the doctor when you're ill. Of course you see Jesus when your life feels like it's unlovable, because Jesus is the one who comes alongside us and says, you are loved.
[00:13:17] You are lovely.
[00:13:19] And he spoke to this woman, and he began to reveal to her that he knew things about her life that no one else would have known if this woman had not disclosed it herself.
[00:13:35] And he began to talk about the areas of her life where she felt shame. And he loved her.
[00:13:42] And he began to recover her purpose and her life.
[00:13:47] Because jesus restores, Jesus reunites, and Jesus recovers.
[00:13:54] And the joy of the christian message is not about religion. It's not about becoming someone who does religious things or goes to religious places. It's about someone who is lost but now is found. Someone who was spiritually blinded, but now they see about someone who felt full of shame, and they now know they're full of love. That's what being a Christian is. That's why Jesus said, it's good news that I've come to bring. And in this world, oh, we're so. We're so cautious.
[00:14:30] We're so. We get offered so many good deals in this world, and. And then we get closer to them. We find their scams or that we've been tricked in some way or it's not as good as someone told us it was.
[00:14:43] But I want to let you know from my experience and from the many thousands of christians I've met and the many millions of christians there are across the world, Jesus really is the real deal.
[00:14:59] And he really loves, and he really is good news.
[00:15:04] And I want to pray now, and I want to invite you, if you know Jesus, to just take a moment to say, thank you, Jesus, that you have restored my life.
[00:15:17] You have found me, and you have helped me recover my purpose in this world.
[00:15:25] And if you don't know Jesus, I want to invite you to do one of two things this morning.
[00:15:31] The first one is to pray an introductory prayer that says, God, I don't know if you exist, but if you do, I've seen something in these people this morning that I would love to have their joy.
[00:15:45] If you do exist, will you help me find that?
[00:15:49] Will you show yourself to me?
[00:15:52] If he's not real, then praying that prayer is a no loss situation. Nothing's going to happen. But if he is real, I believe he'll hear that prayer.
[00:16:04] And then another prayer is for those who say, I really want to accept Jesus. I want to be found. I want to know his love. I want to know he recovers and restores.
[00:16:21] And for those in that prayer, I'm going to pray a simple prayer and invite us all to join in in praying it. Please don't feel obliged to pray this out loud. But if you mean it, if you would like to ask Jesus to restore you, to fill you with his value and his love, then you repeat these words after me and jesus will hear your prayer. And I believe his love will surround you and fill you right now.
[00:16:49] And I'm going to ask everyone else who's already done this to pray this along with me as well to encourage those who will be saying it for the first time. So let's pray this together.
[00:17:01] Jesus, I thank you that you love me and you gave your life on the cross for me.
[00:17:15] I know I've made mistakes and I've left you out of my life, but I want to be found.
[00:17:25] I want to be restored.
[00:17:29] So I ask that you forgive me and fill me and restore me in Jesus name.
[00:17:39] Amen.
[00:17:42] Amen. Everyone, just open your eyes.
[00:17:46] A beautiful moment that happens in our lives when that prayer that you've just prayed becomes a reality in our life. And if you prayed that prayer either for the first time or to come back to God, because maybe you've known him in the past and you've run away from him, but you come back to him. Now, this morning I'm going to ask you, while every eyes are open for you to raise your hand and just say, yeah, I prayed that prayer. By raising it, you say, yeah, I prayed it.
[00:18:18] And come on, let's cheer all these who are raising their hands right now.
[00:18:30] Well done.
[00:18:35] Those who raise their hands at the end of the service, there will be somebody down at the front here with some helpful information.
[00:18:43] And before you get stuck into the cake and the drinks and everything and enjoy the activities that are out there, we invite you to come to the front and see these people who have got these orange bags and they will be delighted to give you some further information and pray with you. But let's pray. Band are going to come and join us and we're going to finish off with our final song in just a moment. Lord Jesus, I thank you for your kindness.
[00:19:08] I thank you that you're not chasing us off from the horizon, but you welcome us. And I thank you for those that have been found today.
[00:19:17] And I pray that your spirit will restore them and help them know just how precious and valued they are.
[00:19:26] Bless them abundantly and for all of us as we think about the week ahead. Now, may we all know that you're with us in every circumstance, in every situation.
[00:19:39] And I pray that as we welcome you this morning that we will welcome you into our homes, our workplaces and every environment that we will be this week. So have your way. And as we pray in Jesus name, amen.
[00:19:56] Amen.
