On a very sunny afternoon I returned to my Baptist church in the middle of nowhere to find the family atmosphere that I found last time.  It is Withyditch Baptist Church BA2 8AY and services are held at 3pm on the first Sunday of each month

Each time they have a visiting minister and this one talked about the reality of Easter. As before there were about a dozen of us. The format is very simple;  an opening prayer, a hymn, a reading, another hymn, the address, and a closing hymn. No pomp. No ceremony. Love it!

I enjoyed the conversations over a cup of tea and biscuits that we had after the service. I supported the preacher by saying that especially with AI, the artificial can seem real  and the distinction between what is true and what is made up becomes more fuzzy as we become more evolved in technocracy.

I had a chat with a young enthusiastic convert who described the moment that he gave his life to Jesus and he said it’s ‘indescribable’ at which I joked and said I think a better word is ineffable because it goes beyond language. We agreed that you can’t fake such feelings.

I mentioned the burial service I attended last Friday and how the person who gave the eulogy to the deceased had written a complete set of notes but put them aside and spoke from his heart.  the person who  I was speaking with today did the same thing and their audience responded by saying how moved they were by the result.

I was reminded of Matthew 10:19 when you are arrested, don’t worry about how to respond or watch to say. God will give you the right words of the right time. It will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your father speaking through you

I discussed the adjuration to ‘pray without ceasing’ which didn’t mean going around on our knees but having a prayerful attitude at all times. If you say you’re going to pray for someone or pray then it means that most of the time you are not praying and I don’t see how anyone can be a part of time Christian.

I think that’s what St. Paul was speaking about when he said ‘pray without ceasing’. It is good to read the full text

…admonish the idle, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. D 1o not quench the spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast to what is good. Abstain from every form of Evil.
! Thessalonians chapter 5 v14-v22.

While talking with someone I was given the most amazing website called sermonaudio.com  it makes my collection look fairly modest but someone has taken literally thousands of sermons, podcasts, broadcasts and put them together so that the wisdom is preserved. When I got home I had the pleasure of listening to Rev. Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones who I followed carefully in my younger years and sat in the chapel in Westminster listening avidly.

This is what should happen in a church after an address, people should discuss it and move It forward because an address is not just an academic thing, it’s not just hearing the word but hearing the word and doing it. ref.  the man who built his house on sand

The Address by a visiting circuit minister

……..There is a remembrance but believers normally make mention of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus every time they come together to worship and those who follow on with the Lord every day.

There’s some remembrance in the things that they’re doing and the scriptures that they read, there’ll be something to remember the events of Easter on a daily basis. But Easter turns our minds to real events. Jerusalem is real. The Feast of Passover is real.

The dreadful determination there was of so many in Jerusalem that time to get rid of the Lord Jesus. That was real, and the dreadful trial that he had to endure, the manner of his death, the crucifixion, which was also that the worst way to put someone to death, every spasm of pain that was endured, every humiliation that was visible to the crown was real, and the burial was real.

This desperate criminal, so they said, this man who must die and and now his life is taken by by decent, honorable men and wrapped in scented cloths, and it’s laid in a tomb quietly. The Saturday is real, or rather, as it was to the to the Jews, it was the Sabbath day, the day of rest, the day of rest that went right back to the beginning of Genesis, the creation of the world, a day of the week given to God and set apart from work, and that day is honored, and the Lord rests in the tomb.

Then on the first day of the week, there is that further reality of the stone that was put against the tomb. The stone is rolled away. The tomb is empty. And then the risen Lord Jesus appears to His disciples. Real events.

And Peter, I read from the first letter of Peter this afternoon, but in his second letter, Second Peter, it says, ‘For we have not followed cunningly evised fables. Peter wrote about these things. Peter was someone that the Lord Jesus chose to be his follower. Peter was with him as he went about Galilee and into Judea and watched the miracles and saw all the things that he did.

And Peter was there on that resurrection evening, when the Lord Jesus was suddenly standing in the midst of the disciples in the locked room. Tthe Lord was there, and Peter saw it, saw them, heard him speak. It was real, not cunningly devised fables. These weren’t things that Peter had made up. Why would he do that?

And there he was on even he was an eyewitness to see the risen Lord.He heard him speak so. Easter is the anniversary of an event in history that’s in the verses that I read this afternoon, Peter says of the Lord Jesus, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the earth, before there ever was a planet, before there was the universe that we know, before there was time and there was nothing but God,

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and nothing else then foreordained. It was planned out. It was set out in the mind of God what would happen.

And the events of Easter were determined. And it was all done in the full knowledge of the ugliness, the violence of what would happen at the cross, and that the it was going to be the very Son of God, the Lord Jesus, the very Son of God, one who was eternal, one who was perfect, one who was glorious. He would become the lamb that was going to be slain, put to death as a substitute. It was foreordained.

It was entirely the will of God to bring this about. It was set up in place in the mind of God. It was there. It was all set out. He knew all the details of what was going to happen. But then it was made manifest. The Son of God was manifest. He was seen. He came into this world. He was born in Bethlehem. He was seen by men and women. They heard him speak. They saw the miracles that He did, the people that he healed, and everything that was done,it was there.

It was manifest. It was seen by people. He was manifest. His power was manifest. And when he spoke, when he talked to the crowds, it was said of him that no man spake like this man, what he had to say was so clear, and people just listened spellbound to what he was saying. And it all made sense to their ears.

Easter is rooted in time and space, but Easter also belongs to eternity.

When Peter is writing this letter, first letter to Peter of the first letter of Peter, he’s writing this letter to believers, those who come to faith in the Lord Jesus. They put their trust in what the Lord Jesus has done. And he says, Peter, says to them, you were not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold.

And even today, silver and gold are things which are which are precious, which are expensive, and there is a standard in rhythm, and they are much prized for people to use for jewelry, for adornment. And the price of gold is quoted in pounds per ounce. It is so expensive – gold, it’s even the tiny amounts of God is worth a good deal of money.

But in the end, even gold and silver, things which we might seek to obtain, enjoy receiving and getting. In the end, they are corruptible. They’re just bits of metal. And time will eventually come to an end, and the gold and silver will be gone. And when we leave the scene and go into eternity, we can’t take gold and silver with us, there’s no use to pay our way any further.

We weren’t redeemed by silver and gold. That would only work in this world. If and we were redeemed from our vain conversation. Peter says, it’s not just idle chatter conversation, it’s the manner of our lives, and it is vain. in general, the things that we do and people we meet and whatever, a lot of it is empty and worthless.

And every step that we take and every conversation we have, we fall short of the glory of God, unless there is something within us, even those who’ve come to believe in the Lord Jesus, there is something within us which seeks to promote our own ends. We talk about things which promote us.

And before the natural man, there is the judgment of God, the God who has made us, who has shown us so much of himself, will call us to account, but the same God who has seen one after another of us turning to our own ways, he is active. He acted before the foundation of the world to make a way for us to be spared the righteous judgment that will come.

Those people who are aware of who they are, of what they have done before the sight of God, such ones can cry out to that same love, seeking forgiveness, and they are redeemed. It’s not just a question of saying sorry and then everything’s all right. There is a price to be paid.

There is a judgment to be faced, but that redemption price has been paid by the Lord Jesus, and a very precious price It was, it wasn’t money, Peter says, and it was the precious blood of Christ, and when the Lord Jesus was there upon the cross, His blood was shed, and that blood was very real. It’s something that’s absolutely necessary for life, but the blood of Christ is something which has eternal value.

He shed His blood in time there at Calvary, you can put a price on silver and gold. Price changes every day, you look at that in the stock market, but the value of this precious blood cannot be calculated, and it’s not corruptible, and the value will never diminish and time will end.

The Bible tells us how things began right at the beginning, but the Bible also tells us that there’s coming a time when time itself will end and this world will be wrapped up and finished with, and a new World will be brought in.

But there for all eternity, the precious blood of Christ will secure the redemption of the believer. Peter writes that first letter, and he says he’s writing to the strangers that are scattered throughout Tarsus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, and in amongst that, there are individuals, there are couples, there are families who had this one great thing in common, that they had come to believe in God.

Verse 21 Peter says, who by Him, that’s by the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by him, do believe in God because of what the Lord Jesus has done, because of who he is, they’ve come to believe in God. It wasn’t their natural position. That wasn’t how they started. They came to believe in God, and through hearing about the Lord Jesus, they believed and God who had the power to raise this man from the dead and to set this same risen man at his own right hand on the throne of heaven, that he says that your faith and hope might be in God.

That is what has been done for all those who believe in Him.  And Peter says that you might believe wholeheartedly that God moved in eternity to establish a costly redemption, that whoever comes to God confessing their sin, they can know that they are redeemed from judgment, and there is the glorious hope that this redemption is for all eternity.

God has foreordained this,- he set it in place. He’s put every block in the path, every piece of the jigsaw has been set in place and is right, but in time and manifestly seen before men, the Lord Jesus has shed His blood. But each and every one who hears these words needs to believe, to decide for themselves whether to avail themselves of this wondrous truth and to ask that that precious blood was shed for them

Because they come to face their knowledge of sin and they want to deal with it, or else they can ignore it, this precious blood, and those will have to face the full judgment of the God who is holy and righteous and just and in eternity, those must pay the consequence of not believing in what the Lord Jesus has done.

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