Giver of Life

Mount Everest is the highest peak on Earth, standing over 29,000 feet tall.

It's esteemed as the pinnacle of mountain climbing.

It was first climbed in 1953 by Tenzing Norgay, and I keep thinking Hillary Clinton, but it's not that.

Edmund Hillary in 1953.

In 2024, by this year, the feat has been accomplished nearly 12,000 times.

It costs, on average, about $100,000 US dollars.

So it's not a cheap hobby, neither is it safe.

330 people have lost their lives trying to get to the top.

If you've watched a documentary on climbing Everest, you'll know that a lot of people lose their lives at the bottom, just after base camp, where the glacial ice moves around.

But many more as well come to their end in what's described as the death zone.

It's right there towards the top.

It's part of the mountain with an altitude above which the pressure of oxygen is insufficient to sustain human life for even a short period of time.

And this point is normally tagged at about 26,000 feet.

Climbers at this point become disorientated because of the lack of oxygen.

Their breathing is short and shallow, and it leads to a loss of bodily function, ultimately, tragically for many, leading to death.

Unless, that is, you carry oxygen with you.

And with oxygen, climbers who are short of breath and fatigued and disorientated, after breathing the elixir of life, oxygen, they are able to keep going and make it to the top.

I've noticed in the prayer dome, this WhatsApp group that we've been using for the last month at church, I've noticed that a lot of the prayers tend to be about problems.

People often will pray about people with addiction, people who are going through genuine challenges in life, often in a general way, people have prayed about suffering.

Sometimes they pray about specific areas of suffering.

Life, it would seem, as you read our prayers, is often difficult, no matter what season of life you happen to be living through.

It might sound rather dramatic to call it the death zone, and I genuinely use that word with caution, but for some of us today, life is hard.

And our breathing, I think metaphorically and spiritually and physically, is short and shallow.

And we feel a sense, an overall sense of fatigue, fatigue and even disorientation.

We are in need of that elixir of life.

But in our world, in our lives, it's peace, it's joy, it's hope, it's fulfilment, it's contentment, it's love.

Many of us in this room know that there is truly one who is the oxygen of life, amen?

The one who is the source of life and peace, the breath of life itself, is Jesus.

And as I say that, I feel like it's from a stock footage reel of a very preachy preacher, saying, the answer to all of your problems is Jesus.

But I do believe that.

I believe that if you will seek what is in your heart and mind that points you to the truth, you will know that that is the case as well.

The deepest need that we have as human beings is to know Jesus Christ, God in human flesh who died and rose again.

This morning, we're in Mark's Gospel again.

The scene is set at a place that you can go and visit on the top left-hand side, so the northwest of the Sea of Galilee.

It's a verifiable location.

This is where the Synagogue of Capernaum was, and you can still go and visit the remains of this place.

It's a place where, back in the first century, Jewish people would go to receive teaching from different rabbis and also pray and connect with God.

And here we find Jesus in this story.

He's at the Synagogue in Capernaum, and he makes contact with a man who I would suggest is living in the death zone.

Another time, verse 1, Jesus went into the Synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there.

Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him, that is, the man with the shriveled hand, on the Sabbath.

Classic point to recognise the teachers of the law who are antagonistic towards Jesus.

They're expecting him to heal somebody.

Isn't that interesting?

They're not denying the fact that he's someone who heals, but they're wondering if he'll break the rules, if he'll heal someone on the wrong day.

As we just heard, read for us from Jess, Jesus all of a sudden addresses this man with a shriveled hand.

The whole passage, the whole six verses, tells us that he gets healed.

I looked up the Greek word for shriveled hand because I thought there might be some interesting truth behind the English word, and I discovered it means shriveled hand.

Sometimes you do discover and there's nothing else there, but it just means it's weak, curled up, unusable.

And I would suggest this couldn't be really a very good position to be in in the first century, to have a hand that is unusable, a distinct disadvantage.

And we're not told about any of his other problems, but we could imagine that he does have some other problems.

And Jesus goes on and he heals this man.

You might say the man stepped in, the man stepped in, stepped into a space where Jesus was, where God's power was in the synagogue at Capernaum.

He was asked to stand up and he did.

He stood up, reached out and received life.

Stepped in, stood up, reached out and received life.

He was healed and changed.

He was basically handed that oxygen mask, the elixir of life.

I don't think it's too much to imagine that this man was struggling in his life, short, shallow breathing, fatigued, a little disorientated.

Then all of a sudden he meets Jesus.

I think it's a great example of the go of faith, don't you think?

We're in a series this year, basically, a theme where we're calling it Go24.

Go24, which stands for the fact that we want to be cognizant of the fact that God might be leading us as a church and as individuals to stop some things to start others, to say no to some things so that we can say yes to others.

And that's what Go always involves.

To go, to step into what God has next for us, it involves saying no and yes.

The man with the shriveled hand stepped in.

He responded to the Go, stepped into the synagogue, he stood up upon request, he reached out his hand and was healed, and he received life.

And you might wonder, well, did he really receive life?

What's this concept of life?

Didn't he just get healed?

Well, I think if you actually read the full six verses, you realize this passage is about life and death.

There's a very significant healing that happens to his hand, but the passage, the short little passage is about life and death.

Verse 3, Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, stand up in front of everyone.

Then Jesus asked them, which is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill, but they remained silent.

This teaching moment with Jesus is specifically designed to demonstrate God is about life, not death.

Hallelujah.

He really is.

You might think that God is a judge in heaven, quick to condemn, quick to move towards even death.

But He's far more about life than He is death.

The context is the Sabbath, and we're doing different messages Sunday night and Sunday morning.

And so if you want to catch up on the last passage, you might need to check it out online.

And last Sunday night, we looked particularly at the Sabbath and had some teaching on the importance of the Sabbath, certainly keeping the Sabbath, which is observed for a Jew from sundown Friday night until the first three stars appear in the sky Saturday night.

It's a full 24 hours, and it's a really big deal for the people of Israel.

It was a time, the Sabbath is a time to cease work, to rest, to delight in the Lord, and to contemplate His goodness.

To cease Sabbath or Shabbat means to cease, to stop, to rest, to delight, and to contemplate.

And it's a very significant command.

You find it in the Ten Commandments.

It's given the most space in the Ten Commandments, which we find in Exodus.

But there's also a challenging part, that we read in Exodus 31, 14, where the Lord says, Observe the Sabbath because it is holy to you.

Anyone who desecrates it is to be put to death.

Those who do any work on that day must be cut off from their people.

So that's a pretty full-on law about the Sabbath, isn't it?

Put them to death.

So there is a focus here on death.

But as we studied last Sunday night, from the portion of Scripture just preceding this, Jesus said the Sabbath was not made for man as though man has to serve God by ticking the box of observing the Sabbath to avoid being killed.

But Jesus says, no, no, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

And the whole point is because Israel, they were given this command at the foot of Mount Sinai after they had been rescued from the people of Egypt.

Now, they were slaves in Egypt for 400 years.

And if you read the beginning of Exodus, it's not too much to imagine that they have literally worked, the people of Israel have worked for 400 years without a day off.

They were driven as slaves.

They were treated harshly by the Egyptians.

So these are human doings, not human beings.

They have lost some of their identity as people create in the image of God.

And God comes along and gives them a gift of rest.

The Sabbath is a gift of life, not death.

This juxtaposition between life and death is something you find.

All throughout the Bible, John 10.10 puts them together.

Death and life.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

The thief is the devil.

Jesus says, I have come that they might have life and have it to the full.

The devil is all about death.

Jesus, who is God, is about life and life more abundant.

Here, the teachers of the law, who are meant to be teaching about who God is, the God of life, hypocritically, and you could say hypercritically, have become focused on the judgment of God rather than the grace of God.

Can you see that?

They have focused in on the death part when God is about life.

Verse 5, Jesus looked around at them in anger and deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, stretch out your hand.

He stretched it out and his hand was completely restored.

Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

The focus on death more than life makes Jesus angry.

Isn't that a good point to just remember and see?

The focus on death more than life makes him angry.

It says he's deeply distressed, but the Greek word means to team, to swell, not a sudden outburst, but rather a fixed, controlled, passionate feeling against sin, a settled indignation.

The devil comes to kill, steal and destroy.

Jesus came to give life.

I wonder if you ever watched that show, I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

Anyone ever watch that?

It's not one person in the thing.

I didn't watch it either.

I've got a drink of water, thank you.

Thanks, Eve.

Thanks.

Yeah, I'll move on now.

No, but there was this show, terrible show, terrible show.

I saw it some years ago when Shane Warne was on it.

And Shane Warne, they do terrible things to these Celebrities.

And one of the challenges, I think, if my memory serves me correctly, that Shane Warne had to do was he was put in this pit, which was dark, and they covered it over us somewhat like a coffin, a little bit bigger than that, and it was filled with snakes.

It was...

I'm seeing nods now.

Some of you know this.

It was called the viper pit.

And he had to go into it and see how long he could survive.

And I see Jesus with these Pharisees and teachers of the law surrounding him, and I think it's like he's in the viper pit.

The devil was a snake, a serpent from the beginning.

He's surrounded by these vipers who are looking to catch him.

And at the end, in verse 6, they start to collude together.

Unlikely people, the Herodians are sort of quite liberal, and they support Herod Antipas.

They're not very spiritual or holy at all, but the Pharisees, they really want to be holy.

So the two of them start getting together in verse 6, and it culminates in chapter 15, verse 1, where they plot and succeed to kill Jesus.

The vipers are surrounding him, and the vipers are all about death.

But Jesus is the Giver of Life.

I love the fact that King Jesus is so frequently, so lacking anxiety in the midst of the viper pit, don't you?

The whole point of putting the celebrity in the viper pit is that they have to control their fear, their anxiety, their abject terror.

But Jesus, in the context of these vipers, he is the perfect example of a non-anxious presence.

Because he is life.

Amen.

He is in the midst of those who want death.

But he is life.

The word Pneuma is the Greek word for spirit, breath and wind.

It is Jesus who breathes oxygen into those who give him their heart.

He breathes life.

He is life, the way, the truth and the life.

He is heading for the death zone.

But he is available to give life to all who feel like they are in that place too.

How are you travelling in this season of your life?

It's true that you live in seasons, isn't it?

Some of us have mental health challenges, and I imagine you can sort of go from a higher place to a lower sense of how things are going.

Maybe a bit quicker than some of us, but I think all of us have to manage what's happening inside our heads and our hearts.

We can be going OK in life, maybe even great, fully oxygenated as it were, and then all of a sudden things do change, and we feel like we are 26,000 feet up on Everest, and our breathing is a little short and shallow.

For some of us, we are living in what is sometimes referred to as a liminal space.

Are you familiar with that term, liminal space?

Someone's listening, the world is listening, Syria is listening.

Liminal space is the threshold between what was and what's next.

Liminal space.

What was and what's next?

What do you think it feels like to be in a liminal space?

It can be a wilderness experience, liminal space.

It's nearly always a space for learning and growth, sometimes a bit scary in a liminal space between what was and what's next.

The man with the withered hand stepped into a liminal space when he went to that synagogue on that day.

He stepped into the liminal space, and then Jesus rocked his world.

He was asked to stand up, to reach out, and to receive healing.

What's interesting is that he doesn't ask to be healed, which is a contrast to a few chapters back when Jesus is traveling around the local villages, around the Sea of Galilee, and a man comes up to him yelling out, unclean, unclean, because he's a leper.

He has to do that when he comes into human gatherings.

But this man comes up to him and begs Jesus on his knees, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

He runs into the liminal space.

He knows it's there and he jumps into it.

Jesus was again, indignant.

Mark chapter 1 verse 41 says, he reached out his hand and touched the man.

He said, I am willing, be clean.

Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.

Both can happen, can't they?

Sometimes we find ourselves in this liminal space.

We find the power of God on the go by accident almost.

And other times we intentionally step in.

As Ben suggested last week in his sermon in the morning, there is a past and there is a future, but we only get to live in the now.

The kingdom of God is now and not yet, but we really need to focus on what is now.

We are gathered together in the presence of God.

You left home today for some reason and you gather here in this space.

And I would put it to you that this here and downstairs and upstairs, this is a liminal space.

Amen.

This is a space between what was and what's next.

And God can do something in our hearts that changes us for good in this liminal space.

Or church could be similar to what it's been a hundred times for you.

It's odd, I think.

Sometimes church can even be boring, but it's also filled with the most unbelievable potential because God's presence is here and where the people are praising him there, you find his presence.

And we're coming under his word, and we've asked in our prayers throughout the week, a hundred per day for the last three weeks, that God would turn up and do something amazing in our midst.

John 3.16 says, For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world.

He is not primarily about death, but to save the world through Him.

Isn't that good news?

Jesus came to save us, to deal with the problem of sin, our sin, so that we could get to know God.

To know God, Jesus didn't come to condemn, but to save.

Jesus came to save you.

He really did.

And me, He came to save us, to give us life, not to condemn us, not to send us towards death, but to stop us from going to death and save us and give us eternal life.

If you're in that zone above 26,000 feet, that zone where you can honestly confess, I do feel disorientated, I feel fatigued, and both physically, spiritually and metaphorically, my breathing is short and shallow.

Can I encourage you to receive the invitation Jesus gave in the first century, and he still does today?

Come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest.

Come to me, and I will give you oxygen.

I will give you peace.

I will give you rest for your souls.

Because I can.

I can.

I solved the problem of sin.

I died, and I rose again.

Can Jesus, this is a very important question, I think, in a church service.

Can Jesus change you in a moment?

He can, certainly biblical.

There is such a thing, I think, as transacted grace, like a transaction.

You come with trust and faith, and God grants you grace, power, the miraculous change.

In a moment, transaction, a transacted grace, and yet, there is also in the liminal space, protracted grace, isn't there?

It takes a long time to completely receive and appropriate the transformation that God wants to do in us.

But I think both are true.

There is an opportunity for something significant to happen in a moment, a moment of response and faith.

A moment of faith.

Should we respond to God's call to step in, stand up, reach out and believe, receive?

I think if God says to, it's not a bad idea to, is it?

You know, it's pretty encouraging when you think most of these climbers that took the oxygen, they make it to the summit.

And that's the promise we have when we find Jesus who is life and life to the full.

We do make it to the highest summit that you can get to in life.

We make it to eternal life and a life that is more and more abundant in this life.

Amen?

You get there.

It's through Jesus.

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