Here’s what we talked about at Café Church last weekend.

Let me know what you think.

Mark

Call to worship

There is now no condemnation

for those of us who belong to Jesus Christ!

We no longer have to live under the threat of God’s judgment.

For through Jesus, we have been freed

from the tyranny of sin and death.

For Jesus did what the law could never do.

He personally took on the human condition,

entering into the disordered mess of struggling humanity

in order to set it right once and for all.

Through him we have been set free!

Thanks be to God!

The Lord’s Prayer

Our first hymn is It is Well With My Soul.

Quiz answers

	Cousin
	Singapore
	Absinthe
	Singh
	Sinologist
	Sinn Fein
	Sincerity
	Sink
	Single
	Sinus

Have you guessed what our theme is for today?

Not difficult is it. SIN.

I thought it was high time I preached a sermon on Hell-fire and damnation. You’ve all been having it far too easy in recent months! I thought about an hour and a half explaining just where you are all going wrong would fit the bill.

Well of course that’s not going to happen. One important reason why is that on Café Church Sunday it’s you that do most of the work – not me.

So I’ve got two things for you to look at.

The first one is this list of things from the Bible – the book of Leviticus. <CRIME handout>

What I’d like you to do in groups is to look at the list and write in the last column whether you think these things are sins or not. You can make your own minds up about what sin means. If you can explain why you’ve come to that decision write that down too. You can have up to 10 minutes on this.

FEEDBACK

Your second activity is this. <PUNISHMENT handout> This is another list of things that Leviticus says are wrong. This time can you decide what an appropriate penalty might be for doing these prohibited things. No looking at your Bibles! 5 minutes for that.

FEEDBACK

Let’s have a look at what the Bible says

Sin	Bible text	Appropriate punishment (if any)
Cursing your parents	Lev 20:9	Put to death
Adultery	Lev 20:10	Put to death
Having intercourse with a woman during her period	Lev 20:18	Driven out of the community
Murder	Lev 24:17	Put to death
Injuring someone – e.g. breaking a bone	Lev 24:19-20	Whatever you have done shall be done to you

Let’s listen to some music now. It’s not a hymn or a religious song at all – but I thought it fitted in well today. And it’s a really good song too.

We’ll have our Bible reading now

Acts 8:26-40

Philip and the Ethiopian Official

An angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get ready and go south to the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This road is not used nowadays.) So Philip got ready and went. Now an Ethiopian eunuch, who was an important official in charge of the treasury of the queen of Ethiopia, was on his way home. He had been to Jerusalem to worship God and was going back home in his carriage. As he rode along, he was reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah. The Holy Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to that carriage and stay close to it.” Philip ran over and heard him reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah. He asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

The official replied, “How can I understand unless someone explains it to me?” And he invited Philip to climb up and sit in the carriage with him. The passage of scripture which he was reading was this:

“He was like a sheep that is taken to be slaughtered,
    like a lamb that makes no sound when its wool is cut off.
    He did not say a word.
He was humiliated, and justice was denied him.
    No one will be able to tell about his descendants,
    because his life on earth has come to an end.”

The official asked Philip, “Tell me, of whom is the prophet saying this? Of himself or of someone else?” Then Philip began to speak; starting from this passage of scripture, he told him the Good News about Jesus. As they traveled down the road, they came to a place where there was some water, and the official said, “Here is some water. What is to keep me from being baptized?” 

The official ordered the carriage to stop, and both Philip and the official went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 

This is a passage fo scripture I’ve used a lot recently.

As I’ve been travelling around the country with my message about Hope and the need to do church differently this is the passage I’ve used.

I’ve asked people to identify things about the Ethiopian and then spoken about there significance in terms of how to do church. One of the key things is that Phillip didn’t just sit there in Jerusalem waiting for people to come to him but went out and met the Ethiopian where he already was.

But today I’m going to use the same passage for a different purpose.

There is one key fact about our Ethiopian is that he’s a eunuch. Does everyone know what a eunuch is?

The fact that he is a eunuch is very important in this story – it’s not just an incidental piece of information. I’ll try and explain why, and why it fits in with the rest of what we have been talking about this morning.

But the first thing to note is that the Ethiopian is Jewish. He’s not from Israel but he is clearly Jewish. For one thing he’s reading the Hebrew Bible – the book of Isaiah. And the passage also tells us that he had been to Jerusalem to worship God. Jerusalem is where the Temple is – where God lives to the Jews.

But this is where the eunuch thing becomes important.

You see in the book of Deuteronomy it says this

No man who has been castrated … may be included among the Lord’s people.

That of course is what a eunuch is. He’s been castrated. According to the law in Deuteronomy he can’t therefore be one of God’s people. Other translations make it clear that he wouldn’t have been allowed into the Temple at all.

According to the old law he’s excluded. An outsider.

So what does Phillip do? Phillip is of course a Jew as well, as was Jesus. Having explained the Bible passage to him and introduced him to Jesus does Phillip  say well that’s all well and good but you can’t be part of the church because Deuteronomy says so?

No. When the Ethiopian says what is to keep me from being baptized the answer clearly is – Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. The old law isn’t important. Phillip ignores it. And we shouldn’t be surprised by that because he’s learned from Jesus who went out of his way to appeal to outsiders.

The broader message we can get from this passage, and from what we were discussing earlier is this – there’s no need to remain hung up about the long list of old laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  Things change, our understanding of God changes.

We were right to identify that some of the crimes and some of the punishments that we looked at earlier are no longer relevant to the world we live in today.

There’s no problem eating prawns.

It’s OK to trim your beard

You’re not in trouble with God if your dog is a mongrel.

You shouldn’t get put to death for abusing your parents.

More importantly it’s not OK to discriminate against or exclude people just because of what’s said in the Old Testament. We need to look at things through new eyes in the light of Jesus. That’s what Phillip did.

Our final hymn is certainly one we can sing along to – Come on and Celebrate

The grace

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

and the love of God,

and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit

be with us all now

and for evermore.

Amen.

Call to worship

There is now no condemnation

for those of us who belong to Jesus Christ!

We no longer have to live under the threat of God’s judgment.

For through Jesus, we have been freed

from the tyranny of sin and death.

For Jesus did what the law could never do.

He personally took on the human condition,

entering into the disordered mess of struggling humanity

in order to set it right once and for all.

Through him we have been set free!

Thanks be to God!

The Lord’s Prayer

Our first hymn is It is Well.

Here’s the traditional Cafe Church quiz. The answers are at the end. Each answer has three consecutive letters in common.

1.    The son or daughter of your aunt or uncle 2.    Island nation in Asia 3.    A green, aniseed flavoured spirit. 4.    A common name among Sikhs, it means lion 5.    A person who studies China 6.    Irish political party 7.    Another word for truthfulness 8.    What a ship will do if it hits an iceberg 9.    A name for one run in cricket 10. An air filled cavity in the bones of the skull

Have you guessed what our theme is for today?

Not difficult is it. SIN.

I thought it was high time I preached a sermon on Hell-fire and damnation. You’ve all been having it far too easy in recent months! I thought about an hour and a half explaining just where you are all going wrong would fit the bill.

Well of course that’s not going to happen. One important reason why is that on Café Church Sunday it’s you that do most of the work – not me.

So I’ve got two things for you to look at.

The first one is this list of things from the Bible – the book of Leviticus.

Rule	Bible text	Is it a sin? Why, or why not?
You may eat any kind of fish that has fins and scales, but anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales must not be eaten.	Lev 11:9-10
When a woman has her monthly period, she remains unclean for seven days. Anyone who touches her is unclean until evening.	Lev 15:19
No man or woman is to have sexual relations with an animal	Lev 18:23
Be honest and just when you make decisions in legal cases; do not show favouritism to the poor or fear the rich. (Is it a sin if you’re not)	Lev 19:15
Do not crossbreed domestic animals.	Lev 19:19
Do not cut the hair on the sides of your head or trim your beard or tattoo yourselves	Lev 19:27-28

What I’d like you to do is to look at the list and write in the last column whether you think these things are sins or not. You can make your own minds up about what sin means. If you can explain why you’ve come to that decision write that down too. You can have up to 10 minutes on tis.

Some of these things don’t feel like sins to me.

Your second activity is this. This is another list of things that Leviticus says are wrong. This time can you decide what an appropriate penalty might be for doing these prohibited things. No looking at your Bibles! 5 minutes for that.

Sin	Bible text	Appropriate punishment (if any)
Cursing your parents	Lev 20:9
Adultery	Lev 20:10
Having intercourse with a woman during her period	Lev 20:18
Murder	Lev 24:17
Injuring someone – e.g. breaking a bone	Lev 24:19-20

FEEDBACK

Let’s have a look at what the Bible says about punishments

Sin	Bible text	Appropriate punishment (if any)
Cursing your parents	Lev 20:9	Put to death
Adultery	Lev 20:10	Put to death
Having intercourse with a woman during her period	Lev 20:18	Driven out of the community
Murder	Lev 24:17	Put to death
Injuring someone – e.g. breaking a bone	Lev 24:19-20	Whatever you have done shall be done to you

Do we think the Bible punishments are appropriate? I don’t.

Let’s listen to some music now. It’s not a hymn or a religious song at all – but I thought it fitted in well today. And it’s a really good song too.

We’ll have our Bible reading now

Acts 8:26-40

Philip and the Ethiopian Official

An angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get ready and go south to the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This road is not used nowadays.) So Philip got ready and went. Now an Ethiopian eunuch, who was an important official in charge of the treasury of the queen of Ethiopia, was on his way home. He had been to Jerusalem to worship God and was going back home in his carriage. As he rode along, he was reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah. The Holy Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to that carriage and stay close to it.” Philip ran over and heard him reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah. He asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

The official replied, “How can I understand unless someone explains it to me?” And he invited Philip to climb up and sit in the carriage with him. The passage of scripture which he was reading was this:

“He was like a sheep that is taken to be slaughtered,
    like a lamb that makes no sound when its wool is cut off.
    He did not say a word.
He was humiliated, and justice was denied him.
    No one will be able to tell about his descendants,
    because his life on earth has come to an end.”

The official asked Philip, “Tell me, of whom is the prophet saying this? Of himself or of someone else?” Then Philip began to speak; starting from this passage of scripture, he told him the Good News about Jesus. As they traveled down the road, they came to a place where there was some water, and the official said, “Here is some water. What is to keep me from being baptized?” 

The official ordered the carriage to stop, and both Philip and the official went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 

This is a passage of scripture I’ve used a lot recently.

As I’ve been travelling around the country with my message about Hope and the need to do church differently this is the passage I’ve used.

I’ve asked people to identify things about the Ethiopian and then spoken about there significance in terms of how to do church. One of the key things is that Phillip didn’t just sit there in Jerusalem waiting for people to come to him but went out and met the Ethiopian where he already was.

But today I’m going to use the same passage for a different purpose.

There is one key fact about our Ethiopian is that he’s a eunuch. Does everyone know what a eunuch is?

The fact that he is a eunuch is very important in this story – it’s not just an incidental piece of information. I’ll try and explain why, and why it fits in with the rest of what we have been talking about this morning.

But the first thing to note is that the Ethiopian is Jewish. He’s not from Israel but he is clearly Jewish. For one thing he’s reading the Hebrew Bible – the book of Isaiah. And the passage also tells us that he had been to Jerusalem to worship God. Jerusalem is where the Temple is – where God lives to the Jews.

But this is where the eunuch thing becomes important.

You see in the book of Deuteronomy it says this

No man who has been castrated … may be included among the Lord’s people.

That of course is what a eunuch is. He’s been castrated. According to the law in Deuteronomy he can’t therefore be one of God’s people. Other translations make it clear that he wouldn’t have been allowed into the Temple at all.

According to the old law he’s excluded. An outsider.

So what does Phillip do? Phillip is of course a Jew as well, as was Jesus. Having explained the Bible passage to him and introduced him to Jesus does Phillip  say ‘well that’s all well and good but you can’t be part of the church because Deuteronomy says so?’

No. When the Ethiopian says ‘what is to keep me from being baptized’ the answer clearly is – Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. The old law isn’t important. Phillip ignores it. And we shouldn’t be surprised by that because he’s learned from Jesus who went out of his way to appeal to outsiders.

The broader message we can get from this passage, and from what we were discussing earlier is this – there’s no need to remain hung up about the long list of old laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  Things change, our understanding of God changes.

We were right to identify that some of the crimes and some of the punishments that we looked at earlier are no longer relevant to the world we live in today.

There’s no problem eating prawns.

It’s OK to trim your beard

You’re not in trouble with God if your dog is a mongrel.

You shouldn’t get put to death for abusing your parents.

More importantly it’s not OK to discriminate against or exclude people just because of what’s said in the Old Testament. We need to look at things through new eyes in the light of Jesus. That’s what Phillip did.

Our final hymn is certainly one we can sing along to – Come on and Celebrate

The grace

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

and the love of God,

and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit

be with us all now

and for evermore.

Amen.

Quiz answers

	Cousin
	Singapore
	Absinthe
	Singh
	Sinologist
	Sinn Fein
	Sincerity
	Sink
	Single
	Sinus