Sermon Tone Analysis

I wanted to start the talk today by saying a massive thankyou.

For me personally, without the support of PACC, I personally would have never had the opportunity of my life.

Way back in 2000, I was a new-ish elder, and was given the task of supporting our missionaries in the field - Richard and Anne.

They had been in the field for 18 years, and the church commissioned me to visit them (with Jen's permission), and they paid for half my air-fare from Paris down to N'Djamena to visit with them.

It was the first visit from a supporting church!

Of course, for me, my christian journey without my opportunity to serve our missionaries, Rich, Anne and Bethany, and with Hands at Work: Well - I wouldn't be who I am now.

Many of you knew me BA - before Africa - and it has changed me in many ways.

I was broken in many, many ways - and very tough to be in a church with.

(Many would say that I still am!)

But that, I have learned, is the truth of all of us.

But God wove PACC and Africa together somehow, and I owe a massive debt of gratitude to this church for Howard and Elizabeth Wilson's service that so entranced me as a teenager.

My testimony has been that God has called a nerdy, introverted, winaholic without much of a clue about the social world, to serve him in a local church for 47 years and counting - the same church that I first said to God - “I'm in” at 9 years old - and to have the privilege of learning from, and serving in Africa, over the last 18 years.

Two calls - one gradual and static in Caringah, then Kirrawee, one sudden and dynamic.

Both have been so essential to my Christian Life.

I am reminded about a book by Eugene Petersen - A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

I am so thankful that God saw in that 9 year old nerd someone that he could love forever, and someone that, eventually, miraculously, could follow in the Jesus Way for nearly 50 years, and be far more excited now, than Jen and I ever have been, because for nearly 30 of those 47 years, we have been a two, not one, and she has also been woven into my story.

Incredible!

And he wove me into a beautiful community, one that excites me more now than ever before.

I am triply blessed.

And that is how I want to start this morning.

On one hand, it is a story about Africa - about vulnerable children, about desperate poverty, and injustice.

About missionaries who need supporting 1000s of km from the comforts of Australia, from their families, from the opportunities that COULD have been theirs to succeed in plenty of other areas of life that pay MUCH better.

Both of these things to me are very, very worthy causes.

But really, those very worthy causes, have at stages been idols around my neck as well as perfumed offerings.

This is just so important that I want to say it again wider: The worthiest causes in the world can be the biggest idols in the world.

And those who are the most passionate, find it easiest to fall for this idolatry.

If ever any of the causes get bigger to me than God: If my prayer is - help me Jesus, so I can serve the vulnerable children of Africa better, then however Holy that prayer sounds, for me the red lights are flashing.

So for James - that is going to be a huge temptation.

To have Jesus as your helper - the enabler who can mean that you go deep with Hands at Work - that is dangerous ground.

My first lesson really comes before even the Bible verse: My heart, like John Calvin said 400 years ago, is an idol factory.

And doesn’t say, Clinton, for you, going to Africa is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

It also doesn’t say, Clinton, for you, Jenny is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

He doesn’t say Clinton, for you, Serving PACC is the Way the Truth and the Life.

As it says in Isaac Watts memorable words: All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood.

Underneath everything, always, must be a foundation that cannot be shaken.

That foundation is Jesus.

Nothing else can support the weight of my eternal destiny without falling into idolatry.

Jesus must mean more.

That is the hard truth!

Turn in your Bibles to .

(NLT)

Jesus, the Way to the Father

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled.

Trust in God, and trust also in me. 2 There is more than enough room in my Father’s home.

If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.”

5 “No, we don’t know, Lord,” Thomas said.

“We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one can come to the Father except through me.

7 If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is.

From now on, you do know him and have seen him!”

I want to be able to tell you about Africa, the children, the heroes, the circumstances.

But unless you hear this first, you will be wasting your time - and you might just be wasting your life as well:

We know that our final resting place as Christians, if we place our trust in Jesus, then we end up in God's presence, and ultimately the Bible speaks about an earth and a heaven joined back together with all the evil, brokenness and injustice healed, reversed and replaced with Shalom, His Peace, and His Kingdom.

As Sam Gamgee said in "The Return of the King" - is everything sad going to come untrue?

Well JRR Tolkien had it right when he spoke those words through Samwise.

I often forget in the middle of life's joys, work, hassles and tragedies forget that everything sad is going to come untrue when I meet my Heavenly Father.

But here is the thing that I would never have understood without Africa: I would, I think, have been content to acknowledge Jesus as the Truth, but I would have been sadly missing out regarding him being the WAY, and being the LIFE.

So my goal this morning is to try to communicate some of the wonder of the discovery that Jesus isn't only my Truth, but He is My WAY, and My LIFE.

My heartfelt yearning for each of you is that you will discover Jesus as your Truth - that you will indeed have a heavenly Father, whose rooms have been prepared especially for you!

That is God's love for you - - For God so loved the world - that we should not perish!

That is very good news!

But it is not the whole story.

Jesus is the WAY and the LIFE.

As John reports to us in .

I am come that you might have LIFE, Life lived to the FULL!

What I want you to see from this passage, is where the emphasis lies: Jesus wants to do two things in this passage: He wants to do the simple thing - to assure his disciples that they need not be afraid or troubled - that their destination is assured.

God is not making us compete to get into a limited resource.

"There is more than enough room in my Father's Home".

But the second thing is bigger, I think.

"You know the WAY to where I am going.

Thomas says 'we don't know the way', and Jesus says something so profound that it will take me till the end of my life to learn its truths.

- I am the WAY.

Jesus not only locks in the final destination, but He becomes our Journey.

We are his Followers now.

We don't find our own path, and then at the end, he plucks us from wherever we have wandered (even if we throw some money in the hat, and perhaps spend a bit of our time praying and doing things to win his approval) - he dusts us off and delivers us to his Father!

It might happen that way a lot, but that isn't what he wants for us.

What he wants for us is nothing less than HIS WAY.

How big is that?

It is massive.

It redefines the Christian Life.

It gives the Gospels the central position that they always ought to have had in our Scriptures.

Because in the Gospels - we see in the stories there what it means to walk in the Jesus Way.

Let me share with you a little about how this trip to Nigeria has helped me learn about the Jesus Way.

Firstly, I am hugely indebted to everyone who prayed for me.

Some of you have really dug deep in prayer on my behalf, mostly helping me soften my heart so I could be taught.

So for those people, thank you so much, these are my truths really, only, because of your works of intercession on my behalf.

****

Africa - a Huge Continent.

These next few slides are just placeholders, helping you to locate where things are happening.

People have said that this has helped a little in the past, so at the risk of too much data, here is a globe of the world, with Africa front and centre.

Africa's huge mass balances almost exactly the massive Pacific Ocean on the other side of the world.

Nigeria is at the end of the White line.

6 hours flying to the North gets you to London.

6 hours flying to the South gets you to Johannesburg.

So basically Africa is as high as the Pacific is Wide.

Pretty big, eh!

But for us at PACC, we have so much involvement here!

We have two arrows in black for where Rich and Anne have served in Chad, just probably 3 days driving from Lagos.

We have in purple the city of Goma.

This is one of the most broken cities on earth - the focus point for 7 million deaths in the past 23 years.