Sermon for 29th April 2012 at LIndsell and Stebbing

Readings; 1 John 3v16-the end and John 10, 11-18

The other night at Deanery Chapter we had a guest speaker called Tim Bull who shared with us about his Ph.D thesis on genetics. Doesn’t sound riveting I guess but it was a very lively and informative discussion – and particularly blessed because not once all evening did anyone mention a church roof or money!

In the course of that discussion we (naturally) ended up talking about Jesus as the perfect ‘second Adam’ who lived a life that was good in the sense that word is used in Genesis 1 – good as in perfect, functioning as it was intended to. We also concluded (or at least I did) that the death of Jesus is part of the perfection of his life. His brokenness is an integral part of his wholeness – as Tim Bull pointed out, the risen Christ didn’t have scars on his body from the cross, he still had open wounds. Clearly God’s idea of perfection and ours are sometimes different. The cross, including all the suffering, the blood and the torture, is part of the perfect life lived by Jesus. His body, though broken, still lived the perfect sinless life.

I mention this because I think we need to ensure we move away from 2 pervading current ideas. One, that the death of Jesus on the cross was in some way an accident that God had to redeem, to sort out or fix up, and two, that the death of Christ on the cross is in some weird sense the actions of a cruel and vicious God, deliberately and vindictively harming his son.

 In fact the cross was always part of the plan, and it was always an expression of love. That’s the heart of both our readings today, and it must be the heart of Easter, the heart of the gospel.

In his self-referential teaching on the Good Shepherd in John 10, Jesus sums it up nicely; ‘The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again’. Some people – even some Christians, will tell you that the cross as a sacrifice cannot be the action of a loving God, but here we have it in Scripture that the death as Resurrection of the Son are intimately linked to the love of the Father. No the vindictiveness of a cruel God.

John 10 verse 18 tells us that Jesus, though he was in anguish, proactively chose the path of the cross because that is what his heavenly Father asked him to do.

1John 3v16 echoes those words of Jesus “this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.”

Jesus speaks quite openly and candidly about his death; it is not an accident. God is in control the entire time – he simply chose not to indicate as such, until ‘it is finished’ and the empty tomb leave Satan defeated.

It has been very moving this week to read of the huge amount of money donated to the online fundraising page of Claire Squires since she collapsed and died approaching the end of the London marathon last weekend. When she started the race the total was round £400. Now it is nearly £1million. A clear understanding seems to have developed among the public that Claire sacrificed herself to the benefit of her chosen charity – the Samaritans, and so to mark respect for her, people have donated to them in her memory. In the end, her death, though tragic, will lead to an improvement in life for many.

But Claire’s death was accidental, unplanned, unexpected. She did not begin the marathon knowing she wouldn’t finish. It is however true that she willingly chose to do it. Willingly is an important word when it comes to this question of whether God the Father is cruel and heartless to sacrifice his son. If Christ were not willing, then the answer might well be yes, God is cruel and heartless to put his own Son through that ordeal. But Jesus was willing – just as so often he was willing to heal, deliver love and include people during his life, in his death he was willing because he knew all along that it was the ultimate act of love.

The ultimate, in the sense of the one that cannot be bettered. Claire Squires’ fundraising total continues to go up, the contributions brought on through the outpouring of grief and admiration have considerably bettered her initial fundraising efforts.

But it doesn’t matter how much we praise Jesus, how much we worship him, thank him, love him and serve him; what he achieved on the cross can’t get any better. It doesn’t need to, as it was a once for all sacrifice. It was an event in history that has eternal consequences.

Salvation from sin, and the opportunity therefore to be in the presence of God, to know intimately his love for us and his guidance and direction for our lives.

One thing we can learn from Claire Squires is the importance of self giving in the service of others. The money she aimed to raise was not for her it was for the Samaritans. As Christians who are engaging in the transformation, under the authority and in the power of God, of our community, we need to keep foremost in our minds the fact that this is not for us, it is for God. A man’s chief end is to glorify God, says the Westminster catechism. Our life as Christians is meant to point to God, just as Jesus’ life and death and resurrection did.

In closing let us return to the Good Shepherd, who told his disciples ‘ I have other sheep, I must bring them into the sheepfold’. Even as we focus on the fact that all this is for God, it is also for others, those who do not yet know him; the purpose of receiving God’s love is to share it.

Who will you share it with today, tomorrow, this week?

Sermon for Christmas Eve Communion at Stebbing

Well since last year’s Christmas Eve sermon arose from an American folk song I thought we should have something a little more English this year.

I first heard this song at the funeral of a friend of mine called Bill. He was a big fan of the Port Isaac fishermen, and his family chose the song because it fitted well his personality.

The thing is, if I’m honest, Bill had a bit of a downer on himself -  he liked to think that God considered him as something only slightly higher up the food chain than a worm, a bit of a no hoper. Though he was a successful businessman several times over and had a loving family, he was content to think that God didn’t think much of him, and indeed that he deserved it.

If you know me you’ll be able to tell straight away that Bill and I didn’t exactly see eye to eye on this one!

And I chose to share Bill’s funeral song with you tonight, not because I think you’re all a bunch of no hopers jokers and rogues, because clearly you’re not.

Christmas is a time of hope – a time of thanksgiving, but the thing is, there may well be some others like Bill here tonight who think they’re no good, who think that God wouldn’t be interested in blessing them.

If that’s you, I have news for you, even from a song about doubt and adventure.

St Paul writes to Titus, “for the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people”

To all people – salvation is on offer to everybody, not to some self-selecting elite or exclusive clique.

So if ever you have felt left out by the church, if ever we have seemed more interested in ourselves than in the wider life of this village, I must apologize to you and ask your forgiveness. Church is not a club for perfect people, in fact it would more accurately be described as a bunch of no hopers jokers and rogues – but ones who have experienced God’s grace, and who know that even with all their failings they have significance and value in the eyes of God.

We all do, you see. We all have that significance because God doesn’t only love the church; he loves the whole world.

And this love is not the same as human love – we have to decide to love, even our family relationships can be strained by difficult circumstances, but God’s love is eternal and unchanging. There is nothing we can do to make God love us more than he does, nor is there anything we can do actually to make God love us less than he does, because it is his very character to love – God is love.

So does it matter how we live then, if God loves us anyway? Last week the Prime Minister called for a return to traditional Christian values, as a way to fix the problems in our society. I guess I would cautiously welcome that statement, but would want to say that it is not Christian values in themselves that will fix anything. Paul writes to Titus that it is the grace of God that teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions. I understand that to mean that we need again and again to experience God’s grace, that our lives may be transformed into the likeness of Christ. We do not achieve this in our own strength by obeying rules, but by allowing God to shape our lives, our attitudes and our behaviour. Only then will society truly be changed. Jesus (and St Paul actually) were all about grace, not law. Trying to stick to the rules did not get God’s people very far before Jesus came, and actually it hasn’t got them very far in the time since his first coming either.

You see the thing is, though I’ve already said I don’t want you to think I am deliberately comparing this congregation to a bunch of no hopers, jokers and rogues, actually even the most upright of us has fallen short of the glory of God- the ideal standard set by God for what human life should be.

If you miss a target by 1 mm or 1 mile, you’ve still missed it. The Bible’s way of explaining this is that we have all sinned, we have all done things that are wrong, and so none of us really are in a position to judge others whose moral behaviour when you see it on the news or in the papers may seem to be worse than ours.

And it does matter how we live because sin cuts us off from God. Our imperfections cannot stand in the presence of his perfection. It does matter how we live, but it also matters who we get to help us live.

And don’t forget, God’s love for us is eternal and unconditional. Just as we still love our children when they are naughty, God still loves the human race even in our wrongdoing. The first Christmas was part of his plan to rescue humanity.

And this is what He did. The fact that Jesus lived and walked on this earth is historically undeniable. There is more evidence of the existence of Jesus than there is of Julius Caesar. He was born in Bethlehem, lived a perfect life never sinning once. He loved & healed people, taught them about God and was then falsely accused and crucified by the Romans outside Jerusalem. He did all this willingly because He loved you so much that He wanted to save you. None of us can save ourselves from moral downfall, no matter how much the Prime Minister encourages us. Only God can do that. That’s why Jesus came. That’s what the first Christmas was for.

So what? You might be saying. God loves me, that’s fine thank you. Thing is, you have to make a decision. To benefit from the consequences of Christmas – and of Easter – we all need to choose the life God offers us. He is saying “Come”, but this is not the road to nowhere, it is the highway to heaven, and to truly find hope and purpose in life we must all declare our intention to take this journey with Jesus. A journey that leads not up a ladder to the stars, but to a new life in Christ, that lasts for eternity.

My friend Bill was able to accept the challenge to journey with Jesus before he died, but I don’t recommend waiting until the last minute.

There is a strange ambiguity in the line from that song “everybody knows that this reality’s not real”. For our lives today are as real as they can be – with all our struggles, joys and sorrows. I wouldn’t want to deny you the reality of what we live. Yet at the same time this world is not all there is. There is more to life, there is hope, a future, salvation, freedom and forgiveness – in the Kingdom of God, an alternate reality brought in by the coming of Jesus, which will be fully present when he returns.

So, in summary, the Christmas message is

God loves us all

We have all sinned

Jesus was born and died to save us from separation from God

And the question is, what will we do about it? Where will we get our hope from?

Stebbing Carol Service Sermon 2011

So, what do you want for Christmas?

Let me start by saying that other department stores are available – borrowing their idea does not imply endorsement of that particular one.

Gifts you can’t wait to give.

All I really want to say tonight is that like that little boy, God has a gift for you that he can’t wait to give, that he longs to be able to share with you.

And in spite of appearances sometimes, like that little boy, God is more interested in giving to you than receiving from you or from me or from any of us.

It probably isn’t a gift you’ve asked for, though if you’ve heard about the Alpha course we ran this autumn you may have it on your list.

It isn’t anything you’ll need to unwrap, nor is there is a danger that you’ll want to take it back to the shop and exchange it for something else.

It isn’t embarrassing like those socks or that scarf or that hideous tie, and it won’t break after a week. Its batteries don’t run out – indeed it has its own eternal power source.

Money can’t buy this gift, as the Beatles sang many years ago, but as Michael Ball sang not quite so long ago, it does change everything.

That little lad in the John Lewis ad had been waiting impatiently for a few weeks to give his gift, but God has been waiting for the entire history of the universe to give you – yes you – a gift.

That little lad kept his gift a secret, hiding it away in the cupboard, but God made plain his gift to everyone, a long time ago.

The reason we give gifts at Christmas is to remind ourselves of the gift God gave us that first Christmas – the gift of his love, expressed in the coming to earth of his son born as a poor baby in a small village in the Middle East; Jesus, the Christ.

Money can’t buy love, but as we shall see, love changes everything.

The coming of Jesus was an amazing act of love – that the eternal God should stoop to become a mere human being. Yet the most amazing gift was yet to come, when Jesus died on the cross.

The cross, and the empty tomb of the resurrection are God’s way of saying “I have a gift for you”. In a way then, this gift has been on clear display under a metaphorical Christmas tree for 2000 years, waiting for us to notice it, and claim it as our own.

And many people have done just that. 2.3 billion people, that’s 33% of the population of the world are Christians today. And tomorrow there will be 80,000 more Christians, as across the world 80,000 people accept the gift that God longs to give, the gift of his love in Jesus Christ.

The compelling thing about that little lad in the advert is that we are set up by the music and pictures to think that he is waiting impatiently to receive gifts, not give them. 

What makes it so moving – or creepy depending on which YouTube channel you watch, is that he confounds our expectations and walks past the gifts piled up for him to fetch and give a single special gift to his loved ones.

And some people here I am sure are thinking that God only wants to take from us, just wants to receive our worship, our money our time and so on. Yet as I have already said, God is more interested in giving than receiving, and that’s true all the time, not just at Christmas.

We give of those things willingly if we have received the gift God gives – the gift of his love, the gift of new life in Jesus Christ.

And how do we receive this gift, how do we get this eternal life, you may be inwardly asking.

It is by invitation only. That is, you have to invite the giver into your heart.

When we come before God and ask forgiveness for the things we have done wrong, and invite Jesus to enter our lives, to become a part of who we are, he comes willingly and gives freely of his love.

Now don’t get me wrong, God’s love is always there for everyone, but to really know that love we need to ask Jesus to give it to us. We can also ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus. What a gift that may turn out to be for some of you tonight.

One final thing though. That advert has a pleading refrain – “please please please let me get what I want …”

As much as God longs to give you that gift, he won’t badger you or beg or plead. Look at this picture – its called “The Light of the World” by Holman Hunt.

 It depicts Jesus standing by a door, waiting to enter. The painter explained that this represents our hearts, our lives that Jesus longs to be part of. His critics said “but there is no handle on the door, how will he get in?” Hunt replied, “ the handle is on the inside.”

The handle is on the inside – Jesus can only enter our hearts if we open the door and let him in.

I started by asking you what you want for Christmas. I know what God wants – a relationship with you. And if that’s what you want too, your wish can come true tonight.

At the end of the service our trained prayer ministry team will be glad to help you ask for and receive the gift that God longs to give you, but for now, let us pray …

I-dolatry?  A sermon involving Steve Jobs

This sermon was preached at St Mary's Stebbing on 9th October 2011
The readings were Exodus 32, 1-14 and Matthew 22 1-14.

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computers, who died this week, said in 2005 “You’ve got to find what you love”. He meant in terms of career choice, but I’m stealing his wisdom for us today as we look at what our priorities should be as Christians. This is not a re run of our “your church needs you” thing from last month, though if you hesitated then you might not today!

You’ve got to find what you love. You’ve got to find things in life that will nourish strengthen stimulate and grow you to be the person God made you to be. You need to work it out. That sounds as if I’ve gone all heretical and forgotten about grace, but our working out of course will involve God, or at least it should.

When we read the narrative of the golden calf, once again we are going to be likely to identify ourselves with Moses, who remained faithful and who intervened on behalf of Israel so that the Lord relented. Yet I am convinced that every church today and down the ages has its Golden Calf. We have a golden calf and we need to allow God to break it down and burn it up as Moses did with the original.

What is our Golden Calf? It could be many things, but I think watching this video might help us see what we need to do to root it out - by the way, ignore the captions, they are a bit distracting.

So what’s more important to us – rules, or love? For 5 years I’ve been working towards a situation here where our church is seen as inclusive and welcoming of all people of all ages and all social groups, and I know I am not alone in rejoicing at the fact that there has been a sea change. You only have to look at our Alpha course to see that the village community does not see itself as so separate from the church community any more. At last more and more people are beginning to trust us, beginning to realize we are not that weird and that we are committed to the transformation of this community.  But there are still more steps on this journey.

The thing is when the Israelites made the golden calf they did it with the co-operation and direction of their acting leader Aaron. He was trying to keep the community focused on God – after the calf and its altar are made he says “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord” – in his mind this is still Yahweh worship, not idolatry. That’s a hugely important lesson for leaders – or potential leaders, in the importance of authority and of faithfulness to the truth, to God, to his Spirit and his Word. If we lose that, we don’t just lose direction for ourselves, but for the people we lead.

Now, I’m not going to compare myself to Moses and I could point you to some Aaronesque leadership mistakes I have made in the distant and recent past, but preachers I feel work best when they include themselves in the teaching – we, rather than you …

The consequences of the idolatry of the Golden Calf was a reduction in numbers of the people of Israel by about 3000, after Moses commanded the Levites to effectively cull the people. Our golden calves, our over adherence to the way we do things, to the expectations we have of what church is for, even our reliance on technology, all have the potential to destroy this fellowship if we let them get in the way of the task that God is calling us to – to reach out to the people of this community with the good news of the love of God. We are not a stiff necked, stubborn people, are we?

Now Alpha is the most significant way in which that has been done during my time here, but I am convinced there is more to do. Alpha is not for everyone – in fact church was we do it today is not for everyone.

We are unlikely in the short term to be setting up a skate park or a rock venue, but at least we are trying to express church differently – in Feast and Soul Space, in YouthConnect and Scamps. If you don’t get what is going on in those contexts don’t panic cos to be honest it probably means they are not designed for you. There is an argument that says fresh expressions of church can be spoiled if too many established Christians go to them1 Perhaps we should be encouraging people to come with us if we do go – as happened on Sunday at Feast.

Worship can sometimes be a golden calf – as in the kind of church we like to go to. That tends to function more on an individual basis, but it is true that we can make an idol out of worship itself – as addressed in the song “the heart of worship” by Matt Redman. As I will never tire of saying, worship is not primarily supposed to entertain us, it is supposed to bless God, and  in so doing we are also uplifted and nourished then that’s great, but the primary focus of our worship must be God, and not the quality of our playing or singing, the snazziness of the visuals or the sound system or the lights.

Worship is not a consumer product to be bought and sold on iTunes, it comes from our hearts and goes to the heart of God. It may come as a surprise to you but God does not have a favourite form of worship. He just longs for us to share in the celebration of his Kingdom.

And to bring our two readings together, the presence of a golden calf, an idol, disrupting the spiritual life of a person or a church, is likely to be a reason why that person, that church, end up being cast in the role of the invited guests, who miss out on the wedding banquet because their priorities are wrong and they put themselves first, not God, not the Kingdom.

And those who are on the edge of church – who get married here, who come to a funeral here, who bring their children for baptism, who are on Alpha, or who come to Soul Space, to Scamps or even some of the families who come to Feast, in my mind these are the ones – both good and bad please note – that the servants of the king go out and invite to the banquet.

The sad thing is in the long view, many of us started off there, as seekers, as people who were invited to church, to socials to Christmas services and so on. We came to faith through the witness of the Christian community, but somehow we have become infected by what has been called churchianity, where the church – what we stand for, how we think people should behave, how we want things to stay, all that has become the rules that we live by, replacing or strangling the relationship we should be living by – a relationship with God in Christ, a saving relationship.

Now to my mind the way to shake the burden of that idol off our shoulders is to look outside the church – no one could fail to be moved by the stuff Becky shared with us about Uganda, or the stuff we hear from Ukraine, Romania and India – but just as we are blessed to hear the testimony of those who come to faith, let us resolve to keep our faith as fresh and new as those people we hear about.

By engaging with those who do not yet know Jesus, we gain an understanding – or in my case a reminder, of what it is like to live like that. Moses had to plead with God for the Israelites, and I’ve spent a fait bit of time recently pleading with God for the people of this Christian community and those whom he has chosen who are currently beyond it.

God is at work out there, and as we have been saying a fair amount recently, we need to look for what the Spirit is doing, and join in. If that means we have to take risks then that’s fine, in fact I’d say its more likely that we will coincide with the work of the kingdom if we are taking risks, and if it means we fail then that’s also OK as long as we get back up and keep going – let’s not forget Apple sacked Steve Jobs in 1980.

In the same speech in which Jobs said you have to find what you love – which reminds me by the way, we should do that because that’s what God did, that is the message of the parable of the lost sheep -  in that same speech to Stanford University graduating class in 2005, Jobs gave 2 other pieces of advice which are relevant to our situation. He said, “Stay hungry, and stay foolish”.

If we let our spiritual hunger, our desire to know God more intimately, to get deeper into his word and to walk in step with his Spirit, if we let that subside, we risk the creation of a golden calf, the idol of static faith that thinks it has got there, thinks it has arrived and got everything sorted. That’s when relationship with Jesus turns into relationship with rules.

And if we never want to appear foolish, if we are always going to play safe and keep ourselves to ourselves, we won’t be able to take the risks necessary to reach out from our comfort zone into the world we don’t know any more.

You’ve got to find what you love

Stay hungry

Stay foolish

For many are invited, but few are chosen.

Jesus loves Osama - now that's got your attention!

Now that Lent is over I am back to using a script (just so that I can meet the challenge to deviate from it when prompted) I can post here the sermon from this morning. It will soon also be available in audio format at the St Mary's Stebbing website.

The readings were Acts 2, 36-41 and  Luke 24 13-35

Luke 24 verse 14 & 15


“They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.”

Well this week there has certainly been a lot of stuff for us to talk about in the news, nationally and internationally. From the Royal Wedding to the death of Bin Laden to the elections on Thursday, opinions continue to be divided in homes, shops, pubs, newspapers and across the world via the internet.

“As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them.”



I wonder, would our discussions of world and local events differ, if we remembered more frequently that Jesus is walking with us, and wanting to inform how we think and act in response to what we hear.

That’s exactly what he was doing on the road to Emmaus, bringing clarity and understanding, restoring hope and faith and ultimately revealing himself in the breaking of bread.

At Easter I usually teach on counter arguments to objections to the resurrection, and this year was no exception. It was therefore a slightly strange experience this week to be reading of a death, and the non-appearance of a body, leading to claims that the person wasn’t really dead.

Christian voices around the world are saying quite a variety of things about the death of Osama Bin Laden. Almost as soon as it was announced, the internet news media were flooded with various versions of a quotation from a 1963 work by Martin Luther King, who said,

• "Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness:

only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

He of course was speaking of how the life and ministry of Jesus inspired his own life and ministry, yet those words cut to the heart the uber-patriotism of the chanting crowds at Ground Zero.

And since then both Bishop Tom Wright and Archbishop Rowan Williams have expressed disquiet about the raid on Abbottabad. I am sure they both did that prayerfully and after serious reflection. In other words, they allowed their relationship with Jesus to shape their thoughts. The Emmaus road experience, of having Christ at our side to make sense of things, can be a useful one these days, and not just for Archbishops!

So how do we tune in? How do we access that experience that Cleopas and his companion were blessed with?

Well there are three things we can say about Emmaus.

The first is, “they were talking” – the sharing of thoughts, emotions, worries hopes and disappointments in fellowship with our brothers and sisters, is a way we can learn how God works, how we are the body of Christ. It’s a big reason why Christianity is not am individual but a corporate faith. So an Emmaus principle is “talk to someone about it, and listen to others”

Related to that is “we had hoped” – the two were unafraid (because they didn’t know it was him) to tell Jesus all the things they had hoped for – even as they thought they had lost them. I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again, that we are the walking wounded, not a triumphant conquering force. The way of the cross is a way of suffering, not of human power and authority. So let us be unafraid to express our struggles, our doubts, our difficulties, for in so doing we may grow in faith and confidence – even if only because we realize “it’s not just me then”.

The second is “in all the Scriptures”. If we want to know how Jesus’ mindset was formed, we need only read the Old Testament. We need Jesus to guide us thought it too, we need New Testament coloured glasses to read the stories of genocide and invasion, otherwise we are liable to fall into the trap of those Ground Zero chanters again.

Jesus explained to Cleopas and his companion how God’s plan was laid out in the Hebrew Scriptures; they shared a knowledge of those scriptures but Jesus gave them new meaning. How often do we share things we have learnt or read in our Bible study with our friends or family? One of the legs upon which our fellowship stands is the Bible. Let us then be accountable to each other in reading it and sharing that experience.

Another of those legs is our tradition. “Then their eyes were opened”. This is the third resource that Emmaus gives us.

The Emmaus story is one of the reasons that I am such a sacramental person. Cleopas and his friend and family had their eyes opened to Jesus when he broke the bread. Now, we don’t see Jesus like that in communion, but I see here a strong encouragement from Christ to his church to break bread together, that we may continue to grow in faith, to tap again into the Emmaus road experience – a knowledge of Christ’s presence with us along the way.



And that final thought brings us to the Acts reading, about which I could go on at great length, but that’ll have to wait for another day. Suffice it to say that here also faith is expressed in what we now refer to as the sacrament of baptism – repent and be baptised. A key verse, which will bring us back to where we started, is verse 39 “the promise is for you and your children and all who are far off”.

I have 2 things to say about this as I conclude.

First, the promise is for you and your children. I don’t think that means “your children when they grow up” it means the children standing next to you now. That’s why I remain an advocate of the baptism of infants, and of the admission of believing children to communion, as well being committed to an all-age church.



Second, “all who are far off”. This is ambiguous to a degree – I’m sure there are missionaries who read this and were called “far off”, but it most powerfully speaks to me of the people who are far off from the gospel, from a knowledge of the love and saving power of God. It is easy to forget, to quote a church poster displayed across Australia in 2006, that Jesus Love Osama.



So let us allow the Emmaus experience to build our faith and our fellowship, that all who are far off may hear and respond to the message we declare.