Like in Exodus, Jesus’ death is the place where his people can be saved, knowing that One is sacrificed in their place. Like in Amos, Jesus’ death is where God’s judgement is centred; our sins are poured out on Jesus instead of us. God is the same God in the Old Testament and the New. A God who saves his people who don’t deserve it, and who requires all sin to be paid for.

A series of very strange things happened around the time of the death of Jesus on the cross. While he was hanging on the cross, it became dark like night-time in the middle of the day, from around midday to 3 p.m. (Matt 27:45). That would be incredibly creepy. At the time when the light was usually the brightest, it was darkness instead.
Many have approached this event by trying to work out the way that it could have happened. Maybe it was an eclipse? Well, no. This happened at Passover time, which meant a full moon, so an eclipse was impossible. In any case, a solar eclipse doesn’t lead to darkness for three hours. We’re not told the mechanism that God used to do this. Obviously this doesn’t usually happen and cannot easily be explained, yet we believe that God controls all things and can most certainly do something like this.
The real question to ask is what it means. Why would God do something so odd? Matthew doesn’t stop to explain it; he only reports it. As readers of the gospel, we should be asking if there is anywhere in the Old Testament that might help us understand this. And there is; in fact, with this event, there are two important places to look.

The ninth plague in Egypt.

When God was about to save his people from slavery in Egypt, he sent a series of ten plagues on the Egyptians.
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We have brothers and sisters who worship in churches with different labels above the door. They might differ from our church in how they think about baptism, church government, or worship. They might have different emphases to how we go about things. This is also good for us to reflect on. The way our local church does it is not the only way it can be done. God is working in many different types of churches.

For most of us, being part of a local church is the key place we experience the Christian community. As it should be! It is with the people that we see regularly and we know well that we live out what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We learn to bear with one another, to forgive one another, to use our gifts to build one another up, and to share our lives in lots of different ways. All believers should be a part of a local church.
Yet it is also important to know that our local church is part of something bigger. Jesus did not only die for the people in your local church. He died to make a people for himself from every tribe, people and language. It is very helpful for us to understand that we have brothers and sisters all around the world that also love Jesus.
This can take a range of forms, of course. Perhaps your church is part of a denomination. In recent weeks, I have had the privilege of speaking at a sister church in my city as part of a scheduled pulpit swap. I also spoke at a sister church in another state as an invited guest, being privileged to open God’s word and get to know brothers and sisters I had never met before. These experiences drove home to me that God is doing good things in other places. God’s work is far more extensive than anything I can see in my own local church.
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We are weak like Peter, hopeless like Elijah, and intentionally sinful like David. If we were to be excluded for our many mistakes, there would be no-one left. The good news is that Jesus died in the place of people who don’t only make mistakes but who could be counted as enemies of God. In order to be saved, we need to realise that we are people who don’t deserve it and God in His grace has saved us anyway.

In our culture, if you make a mistake, you’re out. One wrong tweet can mean that people boycott your books. One thoughtless soundbite in a press conference and you might not be up for re-election. It does not take much for the online mob to call for your blood. For a society which likes to pride itself on tolerance, anyone who speaks against the accepted truth can end up excluded forever.
God is not like that. What a wonderful thing! We worship a God of second chances.
The apostle Peter denied Jesus on the night Jesus was arrested. And not only once, not just a minor mistake, but three categorical denials that he even knew Jesus! Only a few hours earlier, Peter had promised that he would never abandon Jesus and would even die for him. It was right for Peter to weep bitterly as he realised what he had done. This was no minor infraction; at the first opportunity, Peter showed his weakness and cowardice.
Yet that was not the end for Peter. He was restored by Jesus at the end of John’s gospel. And he went on to become one of the leaders in the early church, facing much persecution for his faith and teaching. God gave him a second chance.
And this is not an isolated thing for God, either. You can find God acting in this way so often in the Bible.
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When you see the culture degrading and moving farther from the true God, don’t think that faithful living is impossible. There were many who remained faithful in the time of King Ahab and there are faithful believers in much more difficult situations around the world right now. God’s promises remain true. We can continue to the end. Not because we are so clever, but because Jesus is so good.

It is easy to become defeatist about being a Christian in this world. We can see how difficult it is to resist temptation. We can see the prominent people on Instagram speaking about how they deconstructed their faith and are feeling so much happier with life apart from church. We see laws being passed or proposed that make life more complicated for Christians. How can we continue on like this? How is it possible to be faithful when we are so weak and our culture is so strong?
To answer that, let’s consider the time period covered by the Old Testament books of 1 and 2 Kings. People in every age assume that they are the first ones to live in difficult times; it is not true. The books of Kings cover a time period from roughly 950 to 600 BC. If you were a believer in the true God back then, life was generally very oppressive. The political leaders often actively hunted those who believed in the true God. The religious situation was a disaster, with people worshipping other gods like Baal, degrading to child sacrifice and adoption of Syrian gods later in 2 Kings. The overall flow of the story is a tragedy with Israel destroyed and Judah off in exile in Babylon. If there was a time to feel a little defeatist as a believer, it was to live in those days.
Yet if we walk away from the books of Kings just feeling defeated and wondering why anyone would bother trying to be faithful, we have missed the point.
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It is not for us to know why we face what we face. The ‘why’ question often leads nowhere. Yes, there were times in 1 and 2 Kings when a famine or event happened directly due to God’s judgement. Most of the time we won’t know why our lives are how they are. Perhaps we have issues due to our own sinful decisions; maybe it is part of a bigger plan of God we have not been told about. Seeking to know why is not the main focus of what we should be thinking and doing.

In some circles, Christians are directly taught that if they are faithful to God, they will be blessed with an abundant, happy and healthy life. It is a compelling message. We’d love it to be true. A neat life where faithfulness directly leads to an easy life right now sounds fantastic!
And this is not only an issue for Christians who have been taught this kind of prosperity theology. All of us will, at times, think along these lines. We will wonder if the problems we are currently facing are some sort of judgement from God. We will be upset if our plans don’t come about, assuming that God should give us what we want.
Yet the ease of your life is a bad indicator of your faith in God. Even a cursory look at the Bible will demonstrate that. The men who wrote Psalms 37 and 73 both noted that those who care nothing for God often seem to have happy, successful lives while believers struggle. Evil kings like Ahab and Manasseh reigned for a long time. The prophets and apostles all had difficult lives facing all kinds of problems. Life is not as simple as the faithful getting blessed now and the wicked facing immediate judgement.
Looking through the many kings described in 1 and 2 Kings, both good and bad, is instructive for us here. The vast majority of them faced major problems in their lives. The difference between the good kings and the wicked kings was not the circumstances they lived through; it was how they reacted to those circumstances.
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Local churches are made up of sinners. There are those whose lifestyles do not match your standards. You will see obvious sin and hypocrisy in the lives of others. Yet, as has been often said, church is a hospital for sinners rather than a museum for saints. We are all sinner with deep problems. We need Jesus, we need the Spirit to change us over time, and we need the help of other imperfect believers as we get there.

All of us have different experiences of church. We can get frustrated with other people or tired from our service. We can feel as if no-one speaks to us or overwhelmed that there are too many people to speak to. We can notice all the problems with our local church on some days and rejoice at God’s goodness to our local church on others. As many people consider the big issues in their lives during January, make sure you are thinking rightly about church this year.
Do you love Jesus, but not the church? It’s a popular view. It sounds so logical and modern and enlightened. After all, most of us have had poor experiences with the local church at some stage in our lives. The problem is that the local church is central to God’s work in the world. When people came to know Jesus in Acts, they immediately started meeting together. When Paul spends three chapters in Ephesians 1-3 explaining what Jesus has accomplished for believers, he emphasizes that we are united together (Eph 1:10, 22-23, 2:19-22). So many instructions for Christians make no sense if done by ourselves (such as to “be completely humble and gentle”, Eph 4:2). There are many commands for Christians to do things to one another (love, bear with etc). If you are a Christian, you should be active in a local church, despite the challenges and difficulties that come with that.
Are you disappointed with the other people at church? If not, you will be! Local churches are made up of sinners. There are those whose lifestyles do not match your standards. You will see obvious sin and hypocrisy in the lives of others. Yet, as has been often said, church is a hospital for sinners rather than a museum for saints. We are all sinner with deep problems. We need Jesus, we need the Spirit to change us over time, and we need the help of other imperfect believers as we get there.
In our assessment of other believers, we are usually failing to see our own sin. We don’t want to become judgmental and only picking on the problems we see in the lives of others.
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When I reflect on my past year, some of the things I prayed for and planned for did come about. Yet many things were unexpected. One of my co-pastors became very unwell. Many people joined the church and some people left. Many things, both large and small, happened that I could never have known in advance. It makes me humble knowing that I have far less control over my life than I often think I do.

As you reflect on 2023, how did your year turn out? How do you judge if it is a good year or a bad year? One measure is financial: did you meet your budget or your goals? Another is by achievement: did you get everything done that you hoped to? These are the kinds of things that are easily measured. We know when we have met these goals.
Yet, if we are honest with ourselves, many of the things that happened in the past year we didn’t plan or expect. We probably were unwell at some stage. We might have lost a job or had an unexpected job offer. Any number of things might have happened that we could never have known in advance.
It is like James reminded his readers of when it came to planning:
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”– 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
(Jas. 4:13-16 ESV)
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Christians who are trying to serve King Jesus do not need to fear that they will be found to have not done enough on the Last Day. We should work hard in response to the grace we have been shown, to be sure. But we are saved by Jesus and what He has done for us; what we do is only evidence that we know how great a gift we have been given.

The famous parable of the talents in Matthew 25 sounds a lot like it is teaching some kind of salvation by works. After all, three servants are given money to use. When the master returned, the two who used that money well were rewarded and welcomed into the master’s happiness. The one who did not use the money well was cast outside into the outer darkness. That sounds like those who serve God well enough get in while those who do not fail to make the cut.
That is what it seems to teach at a quick glance, but that’s not understanding the whole parable well.
All of the servants in the parable of the talents were servants to start with. Their status was not something that was earned by what they did. And they were given an incredible amount of wealth to manage right at the start. The starting point for everyone is the blessing of God; that is not something that we did something to deserve.
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If we know the real owner of all we have, it makes a massive difference to how we approach life….God has blessed all of his children so richly. Let’s use what we have been entrusted with well and enthusiastically for His glory!

Have you ever borrowed someone’s car or looked after their house while they have been on holidays? While it is a blessing to have use of a car or house that you don’t usually have, we feel the responsibility of it. We are nervous that something might go wrong with this important and expensive thing we have been entrusted with.
And we are not free to alter the house or car the way that we might personally like. We cannot paint them a different colour or carry out renovations on the house. After all, they don’t belong to us. We are only looking after them for someone else.
That is a good analogy for what our possessions and abilities are really like. All that we have is a gift from God. We see this in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. Each servant was given a massive amount to look after by their master. Everyone involved in this knew who the real owner of the money was. When the master returned, the first two servants gave the money back with any return they had made through their work. All they had, and all they achieved, was returned to the master in the end.
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God chooses whether our lives will be full of troubles or ease; this is not a reflection of how faithful we happen to be. Good King Hezekiah had to rule through a siege of Jerusalem, while evil King Manasseh lived a long and peaceful life, dying at a good old age. All of us will face trouble of some kind sooner or later. Living a faithful and good life means to trust God whatever happens.

There are so many different concepts of what a good life looks like. Many would define it as being able to do whatever you want. Others would say that it is having enough money to buy a standard of living that brings comfort and safety. Still others would say living for your family and knowing that they are well regarded and well looked after.
In certain Christian circles, people are taught that a good life is one free from troubles including sickness and poverty. If you are faithful to God, God will bless you with a good life, a life of ease and comfort and blessing.
The Biblical answer is rather different to all of these. A life assessed by God to be a good life, one that is good and right in the eyes of the Lord, is a faithful life. We see this in the books of 1 and 2 Kings. So many people in the books of Kings are assessed as evil in God’s sight, including kings who were timid and did what their fathers did as well as domineering kings who pushed the nation away from the true God. Yet some are counted as right in God’s sight.
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