Gen 11:9-12:1, Mt 5: The Means are the Ends

Presented to The Salvation Army Alberni Valley Ministries, 17 May 2026, 06 March 2022 and to 614 Toronto Warehouse Mission, July 2016 by Captain (Major) Michael Ramsay

This is the 2026 Version, to view the 2022 Version click here:

https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2016/07/genesis-119-121-matthew-5-means-are-end.html 

To view the 2016 Toronto Version, click here:

https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2022/03/gen-119-121-mt-5-means-are-ends.html 

We are on the move, as you know, to Burnaby. Now there are lots of challenges – both good and interesting – associated with that. One thing we have to be thankful for is that we are not going that far away. We are still relatively close to family and friends. 

In the books of Genesis and Exodus, when God moves people, He sends them quite far and, of course, they don’t have cars so they have to walk – or ferries, so God has to part the seas.

 

When God moves Terah in Chapter 11 of Genesis, Terah travels 950 km from Ur of the Chaldeans to Haran en route to Canaan (Ur to Haran is about the same distance as from the Valley here to Banff). Terah doesn’t exactly take the most direct route; if you look at a map you will notice that Haran really isn’t on a straight line to Canaan. And Terah never quite makes it to Canaan; Terah stops in Haran (present day Turkey).

 

Next, in Chapter 12, God calls Abram to continue his father’s journey to Canaan and God doesn’t take him on the most direct route either.[1] God takes Abram all the way from modern day Iraq, which is to the east of where he is going, through the land He promised to send him to, all the way to Egypt which is to the west of his new appointment, before he comes all the way back east to settle in Canaan, modern day Palestine. This journey is around 2000 km on foot (which is a little further than Moose Jaw where Don just got back from - It is probably actually about the same distance as walking to the community of Indian Head on the other side of Regina).

 

A couple of generations and a few chapters later, after God appoints Abraham to Canaan, God moves Jacob all the way from Canaan to Mesopotamia (Iraq, which is where his grandfather is from) and then moves him all the way to Egypt where Jacob dies.

 

Now, we know the book ‘Exodus’ and the story of Moses: when Moses receives his orders to move, he is supposed to take Jacob’s whole family (the Israelites) with him – and there are a lot of them! – and instead of walking straight from Egypt to Canaan, Moses and Jacob’s family, the Israelites, do laps around the desert. They even get right to the border of the new appointment, the land God promised to send them to, when God and Moses say to them, ‘no you can’t go in’; so they spend the next 40 years doing laps, wandering around the desert.

  

During this journey of many miles and more generations, God is with His people: Terah, Abram, Jacob, Moses and more. It is that time spent with God that we know about so much more than what their destinations looked like because the journey with God is what’s important. Some of these people never did reach their penultimate destination.

 

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. points out that life is not about the destination; it is about the journey.  In much of his writings there is a related point the reverend keeps coming back to that really resonates with me. His opponents accused him of being a communist. Of course, in the USA during the Cold War (where and when he is from) this was often an accusation rich people would make about civil rights activists because Americans were genuinely afraid of communism – every time they turned around it appeared one country after another was throwing off the yoke of imperialism; they were afraid a worldwide revolution might strike America.

 

Martin Luther King Jr. did come in contact with many people who were instrumental in liberating countries from capitalism. He fought for a lot of the communist-embraced values of which the USA of his day was opposed: equal rights for women, equality for ethnic minorities, sweeping economic reform... [3] When people pointed out to MLK that, as far as the USA was concerned, these were communist ideas; MLK would reply that he differs from the communists in one key way. “Lenin” [Vladimir, not John], he said, “believed that the end justified the means.” As a Christian I can never believe that the ends justify the means. God reminds us that the means are the end – your means, what you do reveal who you are in the end. Do the ends justify the means? That is not even possible: the means themselves are the end.

 

For example, if we want to end excessive incarceration and violent oppression by violently throwing off our oppressors and incarcerating them then– intentionally or not- we will naturally find ourselves becoming the violent oppressors.[4] Anyone who has ever seriously studied patterns in world history will note that this is true whenever a remnant survives. This is one reason why the Middle East is in tumult, and this is one reason why the US is in so much turmoil that countries even prior to Trump’s second term were officially warning their citizens not to travel to the USA.[5] Look at the word today. Violence breeds violence. The ends do not justify the means. As Gandhi, whom MLK loved to quote, said, ‘an eye for and eye makes the whole world blind.’ 

Do the ends justify the means? No, the means are the ends [5.5]. If we want the world to see the truth, then we need to help our adversary see! Not pluck out his eye! For if we pluck out his eye; as he is able, he will do the same to us, and then we will be left as a couple of blind bullies. Gandhi, like Tutu and Mandela after him, is a great example of helping our adversary to see. A society at peace with its former oppressors was created in South Africa in a way it never would have been through violence. The means of violence always brings the result of violence. The means of peace is what brings the result of peace. And Jesus is the Prince of Peace.

 

Do the ends justify the means? No, the means are the ends. Oswald Chamber says, ‘God is not working toward a particular finish - His purpose is the process itself.’[6] Returning to one of our examples from the Pentateuch: God was walking miles upon miles with people who never did reach their destination during the Exodus. The people whine and complain to God a lot about their travels. They want a different means to achieve their ends. They want the direct route. Sometimes they get so upset at the means by which God is leading them that they just want to abandon it altogether because His means, they think, are too difficult a way to achieve His ends.

Do we remember Numbers, in Chapter 14, the story of the Israelites on the precipice of the Promised Land: it was theirs for the taking?[7] God had provided the end. God just wanted them to join Him in the means. The Israelites refused the Lord’s means. God responded, therefore, Verse 30: ‘Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua...

 

There is more to this story too. After they reject God’s means to the end of this promised land, the Israelites attempt to obtain that very same end, by their own means, without God.  Numbers 14:41: But Moses said, “Why are you disobeying the LORD’s command? This will not succeed! Do not go up, because the LORD is not with you. You will be defeated by your enemies, for the Amalekites and Canaanites will face you there. Because you have turned away from the LORD, He will not be with you and you will fall by the sword.” And they did. 

The end in and of itself, even when it is God-ordained like it was here, is not the important part; what is important is the God-enabled means. Matthew 16:26: “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:26, Luke 9:25). Do the ends justify the means? No. The ends are the means.

 

Jesus tells us very much the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount. To transliterate through the lens of means and ends the pericope we read earlier, Jesus said,

You all know the goal, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But let me tell you about the means to that end: don’t even walk down that road; anyone who even gets angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.

And you all know that, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who even starts to explore those means by so much as looking at a woman lustfully might as well have already committed the end of adultery with her in his heart. 

 

You all know about ‘an eye for eye, and a tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. This is the means by which you will rid yourself of your enemy. If you act like an enemy, you are an enemy. If you act like a friend, you are a friend. The ends don’t justify the means. The means are the ends.

You all know the end, ‘Do not break your oath but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But the means here is the important part: you should not even need to swear an oath in the first place.  You should be honest in every part of your life so that whatever you say - whether you say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or anything else - it is just as good as an oath even on the Bible or on your mother's grave. Telling the truth makes you an honest person. You cannot lie your way to honesty. The white lie, the harmless lie, the permissible lie does not exist. Do the ends justify the means? No, the means are the ends.

 

If we walk along the path of sin hoping to reach holiness we will be sadly disappointed. Conversely if we never walk towards sin, we will never arrive at sin. Do the ends justify the means? No. The means are the end.  Oswald Chambers again: ‘God is not working toward a particular finish - His purpose is the process itself.’

He who walks in the darkness does not see the light and she who walks in the light does not get lost in the darkness. Do the means justify the ends? No. The means are the ends.

 

This is true in our daily lives with each other, and it is just as true with our relationship with God. Jesus and Salvation aren’t about a destination, an end of going to heaven when we die; Salvation is the means of how we live with God from today unto eternity. Salvation isn’t an end, a destination to arrive at; it is a means, a way of life. So, can we do evil as a way to try to enter heaven? No. Do the ends ever justify the means? No, the means are the end. The means, which are ultimately our very relationship with our neighbour and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, is all that matters. He is with us and He wants us to walk with Him and talk with Him both now and forever. And that is the means by which you and I can live the most blessed life both for now and forever.

 

Let us pray.

www.sheepspeak.com 

 

Matthew 21:1-11: Hosanna! The Triumphal entry into Holy Week

Presented to TSA Alberni Valley Ministries on Palm Sunday, 29 March, 2026, by Major Michael Ramsay 

Today  is Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday is when we commemorate the Sunday before Jesus’ death. Jerusalem was occupied then, like it is now; now it is occupied by the Israelis, then it was occupied by the Romans. The Judeans in the first century didn’t like being occupied then any more than the Palestinians like it today. The Romans were harsh, not nearly as brutal as modern Israel, but harsh enough that the first century had their version of … (Remember the suicide bombers of the ‘70s and ‘80s?) …suicide bombers: the Sicarii (zealots), Judean terrorists / revolutionaries would walk into crowds with daggers looking for Romans to kill –. One of Jesus’ followers, Simon, was arguably a Sicarii or zealot.

 

Passover is the commemoration of ancient Israel’s birth as a nation. The Angel of Death passed over Egypt and the nations of Isreal and Judah were created through the Exodus. Passover, in the Roman period, was a time when many people of Judean descent descended upon Jerusalem. I imagine it would be like Mecca during Ramadan, or if you remember Vancouver during the Olympics or Expo. The capital of Judea is Caesarea Maritima – but the historic capital is Jerusalem, so when all the people are coming to Jerusalem, the governor himself comes to town and brings all his extra security for crowd control. Jerusalem, a city of tens or even hundreds of thousands, swells to a population of more than a million potential hooligans or even revolutionaries during Passover. The Romans are there. They are ready. They are nervous.

 

Jesus is a celebrity preacher. He has been travelling the country speaking for the previous 1-3 years. Thousands of people regularly show up to hear him speak, just to catch a glimpse of him, or to see or experience some miracle that was part of his ministry. He had hundreds of disciples; 12 chief ones, that would be like his leadership team with different roles – Judas, for one example, was the treasurer.

 

So there are all these people in Jerusalem, many wanting independence from the Romans; the Roman and Jewish police are providing security. Jesus rides into the historic capital city and people run out to meet him. They line the streets as he rides in on the back of a donkey. People lay their coats before him, they wave palm branches, they shout, “hosanna”. The palm branches are a national symbol of Judah. It would be like if we in Canada would dare to speak about cancelling NAFTA, abandoning NORAD, leaving NATO, and then a celebrity rolled into Ottawa, and everyone started waving maple leaves. This is what Palm Sunday is…And more than that: “Hosanna” that they are shouting means “Save us”! The Romans (the Americans of their day) and their supporters are nervous.

 

A very popular celebrity is rolling into the historic capital of an occupied territory on a national holiday and the people are running out, waving national symbols and shouting, “save us!”, “save us!”, “hosanna”. “save us!” The Romans are nervous. They have extra security forces. The Jewish collaborators are nervous. They have a plan. They must stop this. This is Palm Sunday.

 

Where do you stand? Do you stand on the road, palm branch in hand, with Jesus saying. “set the captives free” (let the people out of jail); “you can’t serve God and money; so feed the hungry and clothe the naked” (end capitalism); “beat your swords into ploughshares” (disarmament), “give sight to the blind” (provide medical, dental and other care universally – to everyone!), “justice and mercy” (no more expensive lawyers) “love your neighbour as yourself”; “forgive your enemies” – no more war, no more hate, no more darkness. Or do you stand, without a branch, with those who want him killed and wanting retribution, revenge for wrongs, and money for fun for yourself instead of necessities for others. This is what Palm Sunday is! Jesus is riding into town. Are you with him or are you against him? Do you support the superpowers and elites of today or do you champion the downtrodden? Are you a child of the light or cowed by the hounds of hell? Where do you stand? Do you have a palm branch in hand?

 

I am going to take you through the next few days of Jesus’ life, his last before his execution. If today is Palm Sunday when he rides into town, he will go to the Temple (curse a fig tree enroute), look around, and come home to where he is staying.

 

Tomorrow he will ride back into town and go to the Temple that has just been rebuilt in or near his lifetime. He will see the people in the temple court taking people’s money and offerings and converting the different currencies into the temple shekel so that they can make the appropriate offerings. It would be very busy with everyone exchanging cash so they can make their offering, because it is Passover and so many people are in town. Jesus goes up to the booth where they provide this service, where they convert the money into the proper currency and he throws over the tables; he grabs the people working in the temple and he makes a whip and he starts to whip them right there, right in the temple of God. He calls them thieves and all kinds of stuff and then he leaves. He is not happy with the way they are making money in the temple of God.

 

Tuesday, the next day, he is back at the temple. He has a row with the people there; obviously after all that destruction and chaos he caused the day before. In his verbal exchange he says to the people working at the temple, the priests, the church people, he says, “’Blind guides!... For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness...Snakes! Sons of vipers! How will you escape the judgment of hell?" (Matthew 23:24-33)” This is what he says in the Temple.

 

Wednesday – not much. Thursday though. Thursday is the Last Supper! We will have an event here to commemorate Maudy Thursday; you don’t want to miss it! Thursday, Jesus had his last supper with his leadership team before he dies. A couple of important things happen at this dinner. He tells his followers to keep eating and drinking together in remembrance of him; he tells his followers to serve each other like by washing others’ feet, and he tells his disciples that one of them will betray him... Each of the disciples wonders about this. When they get a chance each borrows his ear, “Jesus, is it me? Will I betray you?” When Judas, the treasurer for the group, gets a chance to pull Jesus aside, he asks “is it me?” Jesus says “yes”; the devil enters him and he leaves to do what must be done. No one knows what is going on except Jesus, John, and maybe Judas.

 

After dinner Jesus and the rest of them – except for Judas who has gone off to do what has to be done – head to the garden of Gethsemane. Lots of stuff happens there and then Judas rejoins the disciples. When he does, he kisses Jesus, as is the custom, then soldiers or police, Romans or Jews, grab Jesus, attempt to arrest him. Peter grabs his sword. Swings it down at one of the soldier’s heads. The soldier moves or Peter misses or or or.. Peter chops off the soldier’s ear! Jesus stops him, stoops down, picks up the ear, and puts it back on the soldier’s head and the soldier is healed. Jesus goes peaceably with his arrestors.

 

They keep him in custody until 6am tomorrow, Friday morning, when they bring him to Governor Pontius Pilates’ place for trial and, they hope, execution. There is quite a scene there! We won’t go through it all today but Pilate’s wife had a vision and tells him to have nothing to do with this. Pilate can’t figure out what Roman law Jesus is supposed to have broken and wants to release him – but he is afraid. He is very afraid. Remember there are so many Jews everywhere, He is afraid they will overthrow the government, try to, or assassinate him, or revolt, or, or or… He still wants nothing to do with this but he compromises… and then he says it is Passover so I’ll tell you what, I will release one prisoner. You have a choice: there is this murderer, this terrorist here, Barabbas; I can release him or I can release Jesus. The people chose Barabbas. Pilate is annoyed probably even more than afraid now. He makes the Jews in his courtyard disavow God and then he hands Jesus over to them to be crucified. They go overboard with this. The young men guarding him get in on the act. They put a purple robe on him to mock him as a ‘king’. They put this crown on his head that they made of thorns. It hurts. Blood everywhere. The head bleeds. Then they start striking him and hitting him with rod. Who hit you, King of the Jews?.” Maybe Punching, hitting, kicking taunting.

 

They then take him out to be executed, along with others, on wooden frames in the shape of a cross and they make him carry his or part of his to the hill where they will assemble it and nail him to it. He stumbles and falls so they grab someone from the crowd and force them to carry Jesus’ cross the rest of the way. They then set it up beside other crosses and nail him to it. He isn’t the only one there. There are others nailed to crosses beside him for other reasons. They stab him in the side. Water comes pouring out. They go to break his legs to expediate his death but he is already dead. When he dies there is this massive eclipse, an earthquake and – by all accounts – the graves, the tombs open up and people who were dead come back to life just like Lazarus did a week or so ago. It is pretty scary, I am sure. This is Good Friday.

 

Sunday, Monday, He will raise from the grave. He will come back. ‘Vengeance is mine saith the Lord’ but the Lord is all about forgiveness. Jesus raises from the dead. Now we all can. And we all will. And when we do, if we serve Jesus instead of the leaders of this era we will spend eternity in His Kingdom of Love and forgiveness. If we don’t… if we choose capitalism, hate, vengeance instead, well then… that is what we choose isn’t it?

 

So today is Palm Sunday. Jesus is riding into town. Where do you stand? Do you stand, palm branch in hand, with Jesus saying. “set the captives free” (let the people out of jail); “you can’t serve God and money; so feed the hungry and clothe the naked” (end capitalism); “beat your swords into ploughshares” (disarm), “give sight to the blind” (provide medical, dental and other care to everyone), show “justice and mercy” (no more expensive lawyers) “love your neighbour as yourself”; “forgive your enemies” – no more war, no more hate, no more darkness. Or do you stand with those who kill Jesus, who want retribution, revenge for wrongs, money for fun for yourself instead of necessities for others.

 

This is what Palm Sunday is! Jesus is riding into town. Are you with him or are you against him? Do you support the superpowers and the elites of today or do you champion the downtrodden. Are you a child of the light or cowed by the hounds of hell?

 

Today is Palm Sunday. Where do you stand? The choice is yours. Are you against him or are you with him? If you are with him, I invite you to wave your palm branches and cry out with me ‘Hosanna’, ‘save us’ Jesus, our Lord and Saviour. ‘Hosanna in the Highest’

 Let us pray

www.sheepspeak.com

Matthew 1:1-11: Are You The One To Come Or Should We Expect Someone Else?

Presented to Nipawin and Tisdale Corps on December 16, 2007. Presented to the Swift Current Corps on July 11, 2010 & Jan 25/15. Presented to Alberni Valley Ministries on December 22, 2019 and December 14, 2025 By Major (Captain) Michael Ramsay

 

This is the 2025 version – to view the earlier versions, click here:

https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2007/12/are-you-one-to-come-or-should-we-expect.html

 

The original presentation began with a quiz: the congregations were shown pictures of famous people that are readily recognisable and asked to identify them and at the end they were also shown a decades old picture of myself: the latter they weren’t able to successfully identify.

 

I remember - about the time these pictures were taken – I was a janitor; I worked nights for a big janitorial company. They have many buildings all over the city and I worked for this company since before I ever went to university so when I did go back to school, they were kind enough to work around my schedule.

 

They made me a ‘floater’: now a floater is a very important position because we are given the keys and alarm codes to banks and other businesses all over the city and our shifts often end late at night or early in the morning so one doesn’t want just anybody walking around some of these buildings (for security reasons) in the middle of the night.

 

I remember one night. I’m on ‘floater’ duty. I have four buildings to clean. The first one, I have a staff working with me and I am given the unpleasant job of letting one of them go and that doesn’t go over so well. My second building takes me twice as long to clean as it should and when I get to my third building, it is well passed midnight and I have never been in this building before and I can’t find the light switch anywhere. As a result, I am late turning off the alarm and it goes off: it is loud. So while it is still ringing and the place is still dark I run and trip over a desk trying to turn it off and then the phone rings (the alarm company always calls to see why an alarm is going off) so I’m off and running again and this time it is in the other direction -still in the dark - to find the phone before I miss the call and the alarm company phones the police. I get to the phone just in time but not before crashing into another desk in the pitch black and yelling out some words that – don’t worry – I won’t repeat here.

 

I finally get this alarm mess sorted out but by now my leg that I have hurt twice is killing me as I am limping around the whole building still looking for the light switch in the pitch black. I am very lost in a maze of cubicles and I really can’t see anything and I am not feeling too happy at all when I hear something.

 

I hear something growl. I hear something growl and bark loudly. This is not good. So what do I do? I yell. I yell quite loudly as I hit the floor. Peering up I can see a couple of police dogs and a police officer staring down at me. I can tell you – I don’t know if you have ever encountered an angry police dog but that was one of the scariest moments of my life.

 

What happened was when I spoke with the security company on the phone – remember I was just a spare, not the regular cleaner – my name wasn’t on the list of people who were approved to be in the building and instead of calling the company I worked for, like they are supposed to do, they called the police and so I almost got seriously hurt by a police dog.

 

Even though I told them my name they didn’t really know who I was.

 

This is not entirely unlike our story here today. Look at Matthew 11:2-3: “When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’”

 

John knows Jesus - just like the alarm company knew my name from our phone conversation – John knows Jesus, just like we know who many of those people whose pictures flashed on the screen at the beginning of the sermon are but here, it seems, John, like the alarm company with me and like many of us with those famous people, John is not entirely certain who exactly Jesus is.

 

Now I don’t know if you remember, John is Jesus’ cousin. Not only that. Jesus’ mom and John’s mom are fairly close. Remember from Luke chapter one, that when Mary finds out she is going to have a baby; she gets ready and hurries to meet Elisabeth and when Elisabeth hears that Mary is going to have a baby –the baby in her stomach – John the Baptist – leaps, it says. John and Jesus are family but still in the passage before us today John asks, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”

 

And not only that, John is actually the one who baptises Jesus. These two know each other in this way but still John asks, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”

 

Not only do they know each other. Do you remember the interchange between the two of them when Jesus comes to be baptised? John says, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? (Matt 3:14).” John obviously knows Jesus and he obviously knows something about Jesus, even before and right at the beginning of Jesus ministry but now, now for some reason, John asks of him, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”

 

But there is even more: remember the heavens open up and God declares, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased (Matt 3:16)” and still John, who is there at the time asks, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”

 

Well this is interesting then – if John knows Jesus so well, who, other than the Messiah, the expectant King, could John be expecting?

 

Could John be expecting that Jesus is Elijah?[1] Some theorists have posited that John may have thought Jesus was Elijah; certainly other people did (cf. Matt 17:10-12; Mark 6:15, 8:28; Luke 9:19). After all – even though Jesus claimed that John was Elijah later in this very chapter we are looking at here today, in 11:14 (cf. also 9:11-13; Luke 1:17), John himself at one point denies that very claim (John 1:21). So if here John does not realise that he himself is fulfilling the role of Elijah and if he does not realise that Jesus is the Christ, he could have thought Jesus was Elijah – maybe.

 

Maybe John was just asking this questions for others and he really knew the answer all along. This was a popular view of the Reformers evidently– an unlikely view given the context of the passage, I would think– but maybe?[2]

 

He could be a prophet (Jeremiah; cf. Matt. 16:14)– much like John himself– only greater. If John saw the dove at Jesus’ baptism he may even recognise that, yes, Jesus is God’s son but maybe he just doesn’t know what that means? After all aren’t we all the children of God? Weren’t angels in the Genesis account sometimes referred to as ‘sons of God’ (Gen 6:2-4)? So then what does it mean to be the ‘Son of God’ and who, who is Jesus? Is he the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?

 

This is an important question for us today then too: Who is Jesus? The most educated, religious people of Jesus day, the Pharisees and Sadducees did not accept him as the Messiah, the Christ, the King to come, and in our story today John the Baptist, someone who knows Jesus even before he is born, someone who is his cousin, someone who baptises him, someone who teaches the same message of ‘repent for the Kingdom is near’ (cf. Matthew 3-4), someone as close to Jesus as John asks the question, are you the one to come, or should we expect someone else? Well, is Jesus the one to come or should we expect someone else; who do we say Jesus is?

 

A good man? - I have heard people say that. An imaginary figure? - I have heard that too –this one is rather silly though since we have much better evidence for Jesus as Christ than we do for Julius Caesar as Roman Emperor or the even the very existence of Socrates.

 

Was Jesus just a prophet as some suggest? Was he a mere man? Was he only a voice calling from the wilderness? Much of the world today would say that he was some kind of the prophet.

 

Could he just have been a religious teacher from a minor Roman province who developed a cult following that continued to grow for well – thousands of years now – there are more Christians in the world than ever before and, of course, the Bible is the world’s best-selling book. But all that aside, could he be just a dead teacher?

 

These are all answers with which people today answer the question, ‘Who is Jesus?’ Is he the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?

 

I think this is important because it changes everything doesn’t it? If Jesus is our Lord; if he is our king and his kingdom is at hand; if he is our wonderful counsellor, mighty God, everlasting father and prince of peace (Isa 9:6) – then we need to submit to his authority don’t we? So who is this Jesus?

 

Matthew answers this question right in our text today. He does it in a couple of different ways. First, he does actually call him the Christ / Messiah (same word, different language) in Verse 2 and even more than that, look at how Matthew records Jesus’ response to the question, ‘are you the one to come?’

 

He says, verses 4-6, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.” Jesus is drawing John’s attention to the glory of the Kingdom of the Messiah mentioned in Isaiah 35:5-6 and 42:18.

 

Here, listen to part of Isaiah 35, where the Christ’s Kingdom is described:

 

The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendour of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendour of our God.

 

And more, look at verse 5, HERE IT IS. It says that in the Messianic Kingdom to come, “… the eyes of the blind be opened (just like it says is happening now in our passage in Matthew) and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. - And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness.

 

Isn’t this great?! And Isaiah 42 is much the same: this is what Jesus is answering to John’s question. John asks, are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else? And Jesus answer gives John tangible evidence that indeed this Kingdom of God is at hand. The Kingdom of the Christ, the Messiah is being established now; it is here. Just like John and Jesus proclaim – it is now at hand.

 

Who is Jesus? He is this Messiah. He is this Christ. This kingdom is being established and the wondrous aspects of it are available now. This is what Jesus lets John know and he reveals it in His own way in His own time. It reminds me of a story I read once in the Expository Times.[3]

 

James V, the King of Scotland used to go around the country dressed like everyone else: a common person. That is because he wanted to meet the everyday people of the country not just the rich and powerful. He wanted to see how the normal people lived.

 

One day he was dressed in very old clothes and was going by a place known as Cramond Brig, when he is attacked by robbers who don’t know who he is. There is a fierce struggle and he is nearly overcome when, at just the right moment, a poor farm worker - Jock Howieson - hears the commotion comes to the disguised king’s aid.

 

Now Jock, the poor labourer, who works on this portion of the King’s land, known as Cramond Brig, now Jock unawares takes the undercover king home and gives him a dinner of broth and Jock - as the king is recouping – naturally asks the man who he is.

 

The King responds, ‘I’m a good man of Edinburgh.’

 

‘And where do you live in that city and where do you work?’

 

‘Well,’ says James, ‘I live at the palace and I work there too.’

 

‘The palace, is it? I’d like to see the palace; if I could see the King, I’d tell him a thing or two…’

 

‘About what?’ asks the man.

 

‘I’d tell him that I should own this land that I am on. I work it every day and he never comes here & gets his hands dirty working this land’

 

‘You’re right enough’, says the man. You come tomorrow to the palace at Holy Rood and I’ll show you around. Come at two.’

 

So the next day at two o’clock, Jock Howieson, is washed, dressed and at the palace to meet his new friend at the back door. The good man, whom Jock had saved the day before, shows him around the kitchen, the dining room, the bedrooms – the whole place. Then, at last, the two of them come to the great rooms of the State.

 

‘Do you want to see the King?’ the man asks Jock.

 

‘Oh yes indeed’, says Jock, ‘I do. I do want to see the King.’

 

So they enter the great hall and as they come in, men bow and ladies curtsey. It is really quite a thing to see.

 

So Jock whispers to his friend, ‘How will I know who the king is?’

 

‘He’s the only one who keeps his hat on’

 

Jock says, ‘But… there’s only us two with our hats…’ and Jock immediately takes off his hat as he realises that James is indeed the King of Scotland.

 

And so it is with us today. Jesus is King. He is walking around with each of us showing us his domain here on earth and just waiting for us to take off our hats as we realise that indeed Jesus is the one to come and he has arrived (and he’s coming back too, soon!)

 

Appeal: If there are any of us here today who have not taken off our hats and lain them before the Lord, I invite you to come up front here to the mercy seat and do just that – acknowledge the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord.

 

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http://www.sheepspeak.com/

[1] Cf. The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Matthew/Exposition of Matthew/IV. Book Version: 4.0.2. re: Schweitzer.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Margaret Forrester. The Expository Times. Vol. 119 Number I Pages 47-48.

 

Isaiah 53:5, Matthew 9:10-12, Micah 6:8, 1 Corinthians 12:8-10: HMCS Merciful: Stone Catcher Cruise.

 Presented to TSA Alberni Valley, 30 August 2025 by Major Michel Ramsay

 

 My parents took Susan, our kids and I on an Alaska cruise to celebrate their 60^th anniversary. It was great. We were able to see wonderful scenery in Glacier National Park and elsewhere. We were able to see whales – so many whales – and other wildlife. It was good celebrating with family. It was fun to do the activities on ship and explore Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan. The girls and I really enjoyed the trivia – especially music trivia - nights. We even won two of the contests and received plastic tulips as a prize! Heather and I were able to be part of a show in Skagway where they invited us up on stage. We also met some very interesting people – One lunch I sat with a lady from Japan who studied at Regent College in Vancouver and is currently working on her PHD on Malachi – she spent 10 years translating Bibles in Uzbekistan. It was certainly providential to have her sitting next to me at lunch one day. She told me how one of the Bible translators working with her, an Uzbek, was not a Christian. They weren’t allowed to proselytize; however, during their time immersing themselves in the Bible; he gave his life to the Lord.

 

Many things from this trip could be possible sermons. The beauty of nature and creation is always a good theme. And launching from the testimony of the Bible translator, one could easily speak about Doctrine One of The Salvation Army (We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God, and that they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice) or Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes..."

 

One thing that is a natural analogy is the nature of cruises in general. There are so many people on the trip from all over the world. I met people from Germany, Japan, Columbia, Philippines, South Africa, the UK, the US and elsewhere. People were from different walks of life and different ages. This reminded me of the Kingdom of Heaven and how, Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

 

I was also reminded that as is pointed out in Ecclesiastes 9:2-3: 

 “All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.

As it is with the good,

so with the sinful;

as it is with those who take oaths,

so with those who are afraid to take them.

This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun:

The same destiny overtakes all.”

 

It doesn’t matter what people do on the cruise – there were more activities than one could possibly do even if they wanted to do them all. Some people could have spent the whole time in their rooms; some people could have gone on every shore excursion - dog sleds, helicopters, hikes – or visited every museum or saw every show. Some people could have eaten and drank so much that they couldn’t move whereas others could have spent their time doing abs workouts and Tai Chi. I could easily make the point that this is what life is like. We all board the cruise ship of our life and we are all going to get off – the revivalist would then ask us this question, when your temporal cruise ends, what will your eternal destination be? This is important. I myself am drawn to holiness / social justice themes these days; concentrating on what you do while you are on the cruise of life rather than where you will exit the ship because I truly believe that Salvation is a relationship (with God) rather than merely a final destination.

 

About that: I have shared with you this summer many books I have been reading: about Truth and Reconciliation, and prison reform and other social justice issues. If I have gone overboard (pun acknowledged) I do apologize. I do believe that we are called to live holy lives serving God, showing love, mercy to our neighbour. One book I have been reading is ‘Just Mercy’ by Bryan Stevenson, a death row lawyer who helps people who can’t afford lawyers in the USA. He shared a number of stories about his clients: some guilty, some innocent; Some who were spared execution; some who weren’t. I read stories of children who lived 40 years in prison to finally have their sentence overturned and be released. There is one amazing story of Walter, who was wrongfully committed and was almost executed but they were able to save him. There were also hair-raising stories of people who could prove they were innocent but were still executed. There was one story of a man who never matured beyond the equivalent of a young child who was convicted of murder and spent most of his years in prison in solitary confinement and who truly believed that when/if he was released, he would go to live with his lawyer. One execution, that of Mr. Dill, hit the author, his lawyer, quite hard… (288-289)

On the phone with Mr. Dill, I thought about all of his struggles and all the terrible things he’d gone through and how his disabilities had broken him. There was no excuse for him to have shot someone, but it didn’t make sense to kill him. I began to get angry about it. Why do we want to kill all the broken people? What is wrong with us, that we think a thing like that can be right? I tried not to let Mr. Dill hear me crying. I tried not to show him that he was breaking my heart. He finally got his words out. “Mr. Bryan, I just want to thank you for fighting for me. I thank you for caring about me. I love y’all for trying to save me.”

 

This next part really resonates with me in my role as a Salvation Army Officer. I truly feel sometimes as the Mr. Stevenson writes:

When I hung up the phone that night I had a wet face and a broken heart. The lack of compassion I witnessed every day had finally exhausted me. I looked around my crowded office, at the stacks of records and papers, each pile filled with tragic stories, and I suddenly didn’t want to be surrounded by all this anguish and misery. As I sat there, I thought myself a fool for having tried to fix situations that were so fatally broken. It’s time to stop. I can’t do this anymore.

For the first time I realized that my life was just full of brokenness. I worked in a broken system of justice. My clients were broken by mental illness, poverty, and racism. They were torn apart by disease, drugs and alcohol, pride, fear, and anger. I thought of Joe Sullivan and of Trina, Antonio, Ian, and dozens of other broken children we worked with, struggling to survive in prison. I thought of people broken by war, like Herbert Richardson; people broken by poverty, like Marsha Colbey; people broken by disability, like Avery Jenkins. In their broken state, they were judged and condemned by people whose commitment to fairness had been broken by cynicism, hopelessness, and prejudice.

I looked at my computer and at the calendar on the wall. I looked again around my office at the stacks of files. I saw the list of our staff.... And before I knew it, I was talking to myself aloud: “I can just leave. Why am I doing this?”

It took me a while to sort it out, but I realized something sitting there while Jimmy Dill was being killed at Holman prison. After working for more than twenty-five years, I understood that I don’t do what I do because it’s required or necessary or important. I don’t do it because I have no choice. I do what I do because I’m broken, too.

My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it.

We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us.

… We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.

I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible.

But simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.

 

Like me, Mr. Stevenson says:

I frequently had difficult conversations with clients who were struggling and despairing over their situations—over the things they’d done, or had been done to them, that had led them to painful moments. Whenever things got really bad, and they were questioning the value of their lives, I would remind them that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. I told them that if someone tells a lie, that person is not just a liar. If you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you are not just a thief. Even if you kill someone, you’re not just a killer. I told myself that evening what I had been telling my clients for years. I am more than broken. In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.

All of sudden, I felt stronger. I began thinking about what would happen if we all just acknowledged our brokenness, if we owned up to our weaknesses, our deficits, our biases, our fears. Maybe if we did, we wouldn’t want to kill the broken among us who have killed others. Maybe we would look harder for solutions to caring for the disabled, the abused, the neglected, and the traumatized. I had a notion that if we acknowledged our brokenness, we could no longer take pride in mass incarceration, in executing people, in our deliberate indifference to the most vulnerable.

 

My friends, I almost wept as I read all of this; because this is what my life as a Salvation Army Officer often feels like. I see so many people broken, needing mercy, and it makes me cry when we as a society, or I, as a person, don’t offer it.

 

I read one part in this book where Mr. Stevenson’s client was being released after many years of wrongful imprisonment and he said he should have felt happy – but he felt angry that Walter, his client, had to suffer for many years and even though he was released, his years can never be returned to him. My heart was in my throat. I have felt that anger on behalf of our friends here and at the Bread of Life as they receive justice delayed, knowing many will not even experience that. I have like Mr. Stevenson felt I wanted to quit some days.

 

He tells another story. This one is about a lady he encountered in a courtroom. The first time she was ever in court was after her young grandson, whom she loved more than anything else, was murdered. Mrs. Macmillan prayed to the Lord repeatedly. She sat through the whole trial of the three young men convicted of killing her son. When they were sentenced to die in prison, she cried. A lady came to comfort her asking which one of the convicted boys she was related to – none, the victim. They sat together for two hours in silence. Mrs. Macmillan then began coming regularly to court. She said,

          “It has been wonderful, Bryan. When I first came, I’d look for people who had lost someone to murder or some violent crime. Then it got to the point where some of the ones grieving the most were the ones whose children or parents were on trial, so I just started letting anybody lean on me who needed it. All these young children being sent to prison forever, all this grief and violence. Those judges throwing people away like they’re not even human, people shooting each other, hurting each other like they don’t care. I don’t know, it’s a lot of pain. I decided that I was supposed to be here to catch some of the stones people cast at each other.”

 

She is referencing the woman caught in adultery and how the Lord required that they let the woman go. Mr. Stevenson said to a congregation once, “But today, our self-righteousness, our fear, and our anger have caused even the Christians to hurl stones at the people who fall down, even when we know we should forgive or show compassion…we can’t simply watch that happen…. we have to be stone-catchers.” Mrs. Macmillan doesn’t have the power of the Lord or the judges to release people but she can catch the stones we throw at each other. We can all do that. We are all called to do that.

 

Mr. Stevenson recalls again the night his friend was killed:

 

On the drive home, I turned on the car radio, seeking news about Mr. Dill’s execution. I found a station airing a news report. It was a local religious station, but in their news broadcast there was no mention of the execution. I left the station on, and before long a preacher began a sermon. She started with scripture (1 Corinthians 12:8-10).

 

Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, “My grace is sufficient. My power is made perfect in your weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may work through me. Since I know it is all for Christ’s good, I am quite content with my weaknesses and with insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

 

I turned off the radio station, and as I slowly made my way home, I understood that even as we are caught in a web of hurt and brokenness, we’re also in a web of healing and mercy. I thought of the little boy who hugged me outside of church, creating reconciliation and love. I didn’t deserve reconciliation or love in that moment, but that’s how mercy works. The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent—strong enough to break the cycle of victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration.

 

Today, I confess to you that this is a burden on my heart. I feel for all our employees who are struggling with addiction, mental illness, and trauma; my friends who steal from our Thrift Store to feed their addiction. Our folk at the Bread of Life and The Salvation Army shelter who have left us to go to prison, the hospital or the funeral home. My heart breaks for the many people struggling whom I know personally and who we live and work alongside everyday. I just hope that I will always remember to extend the mercy that I know that I don’t even deserve to everyone I meet. After all, we are called to be stone-catchers. It is my prayer that we will all do just that and show just mercy.

 

Let us pray.

4 Categories and 12 Steps to Holiness.

Presented to TSA Alberni Valley Ministries, 27 July 2025 by Major M Ramsay

 

The previous few weeks I have been camping with Susan and Heather – and coming back here to work: some weeks I was more with them such as last week and some weeks I was more at work here such the week previous.

 

The themes I have been preaching on lately are what I have been reading about the past few weeks: forgiveness and the Kingdom of God. I have been reading a few books and articles by and about Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He shares some examples about the power one has when they forgive. You can even be free of awful hurts – pain from murder, torture, racism, etc. – by forgiving people who harmed you. Forgiveness can save your mental, emotional and spiritual health.

 

Last week was also one of my favourite recent sermons; I was reading a lot of liberation theologians so I shared some of my ideas of the Kingdom of God – where there are no more wars, no more prisons; where countries take the resources we currently spend on killing other people’s children and use them to save our own and other children instead.

 

This week I have been reading a lot about Alcoholic Anonymous’ 12 steps so I will speak about that. I have often left AA meetings realizing how good a vehicle they are for the gospel and have often quoted them in various sermons.

 

This week I noticed that I could arrange the 12 steps of AA into 4 categories of Salvation; so I will share these and  the12 steps as they relate to Holiness, as I understand them:

 

Category 1 - Steps 1-3: the Sovereignty of God (Jonah 1)

1.     We admitted we were powerless over [sin] — that our lives had become unmanageable.

2.     We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us…

3.     We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

 

I want to share a bit of a miracle related to Category 1, the sovereignty of God – my phone stopped charging on Monday (I need it for work, for a lot); I was camping last week ¾ of an hour west of Langford, past Sooke. I drove a long way to lot of places to see if I could get a tech to help me. I couldn’t. I needed my phone at least for an alarm clock as I had to get up at 3 or 4am Wednesday morning to get here for work. When God placed preaching about  ‘His sovereignty’ on my mind, I prayed for the sovereign God to charge my phone so at least I would have an alarm on Wednesday – and He did! And then it stopped charging again. God does all kinds of big, little and other miracles for His Kingdom and His purposes. (He also used others here to fix my phone on Wednesday too. God is good.)

 

When I think of the sovereignty of God I think of Jonah. We know the story of Jonah. Jonah knows that God can save people from destruction; God asks Jonah to tell Jonah’s enemies how to be saved from destruction – Jonah says ‘no’. Not only that. Jonah says, ‘I am outta here’. God tells Jonah to go to an inland city like Saskatoon or Red Dear and tell them how they can be saved; so, Jonah hops the first boat to Japan. The actual city is Ninevah, in modern day Iraq, and Jonah heads to the Mediterranean Sea, but you get the point. Jonah knows God is sovereign, but Jonah made the mistake of thinking he could thwart that somehow.

 

God then proves He is in charge, of course. When Jonah hops on a boat to run away, God sends a storm and all the people on the boat believe they are going to die; they ask their gods and each other why this is happening; they find out that it is Jonah’s fault; they ask Jonah what to do so that the storm will end; Jonah says ‘kill me’ – really!?! Jonah would rather die that do what God wants him to do. Eventually they do throw him overboard, the storm stops and the other people on the boat are saved; everyone worships God.

 

But of course, God didn’t let Jonah off the hook by letting him die. Much to Jonah’s dismay God sent a big fish to swallow Jonah, keep him from the storm for three days. The fish then vomits him on shore and God says [more or less], ‘Jonah now go and do what I told you to do in the first place’. God is sovereign.

 

Step 2: Restoration - Jonah begrudgingly does it, God restores the whole city of Ninevah – nothing is impossible for God

 

Step 3: Turning our will over to God – Jonah never really reaches this stage- Jonah winds up whining and complaining under a branch the Lord gave him; the Lord then took the branch away – and Jonah complained all the more.

 

Better examples of turning our will over to God, repentance, is Terah and Abraham’s family. Terah is Abraham’s dad. They are called by God, in turn, to move to Canaan from Babbel. We remember that story. The people of the earth think they are better than God or at least equal to Him – they don’t even have the understanding of the sovereignty of God that Jonah does. God had told the people to disperse, go and fill the whole earth in Genesis 1 but they decide that they would rather challenge God, stay and build this tower to the heavens and make a name for themselves instead of following God’s direction… God then says, (I’m paraphrasing) challenge accepted. He knows that they cause all these problems working together because they are speaking the same language; so, He confuses their languages – He makes them speak a whole bunch of different languages and since they can’t understand each other the people go to the different areas of the earth like they were told too. Abraham’s family was called to Canaan. Terah, his dad, looks like he started that journey and then gave up. But Abraham repented, turned His will over to God and continued.

 

An even better example is Saul in the NT. He persecuted God’s people: Christians and Greeks (Gentiles). God then strikes him blind while travelling the road to Damascus and God winds up using him as one of the main Christian ministers to the Greeks (Gentiles); as a result of his turning his will over to God, in history we remember him by the Greek version of his name, ‘Paul’, rather than the Hebrew version of his name ‘Saul’

 

Category 2 - Steps 4-7: Confess Our Shortcomings (Galatians 5:19-21)

4.     We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5.     Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6.     Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7.     Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

 

About a month ago of so we preached a number of sermons on Galatians 5 and the fruit of the Spirit vs. the fruit of ourselves, the flesh. During one of those sermons, I told Gerry Fostaty’s story from As You Were: The Tragedy at Valcartier. I will summarize it here:

 

Gerry was a cadet leader at camp. As part of the camp, the young children he led learned how to use weapons properly and how to take care of the weapons and how the weapons worked and all kinds of things like that.

          In one class, the adult instructor was handing out dummy grenades for the children to examine. The dummy grenades are different from the real grenades: the dummies are brightly coloured - orange, pink, blue – not the military green of combat weaponry. The cadets, these children were encouraged to take apart these dummy grenades, put them back together, examine how they work, etc., etc., etc.…

Apparently and disastrously in with the orange, pink, and blue-coloured grenades was at least one live green grenade. The children were passing this live green grenade – along with the toy grenades – along the line of cadets in the class. They were taking the pin out and placing it back in and they were holding (I don’t know what the term is but…) the safety and disabling and reassembling it along with the coloured grenades and then… one little boy pulled the pin on the live grenade and holding it out too long…

One deadly green grenade had mixed in with the harmless coloured grenades and this one green grenade brought death and destruction with it. The result of this green grenade in the room full of children is essentially the same result as hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, envy, and other defects of character wind up in our lives.

 

Therefore, we need to make a moral inventory – we need to find those and other green grenades in our life. We need to point them out to God and someone else. God knows but He likes us to tell Him when we figure things out – because He loves us. We need to realize that we can’t actually get rid of all of these green grenades by ourselves – if we try, they may blow up in any of a myriad of ways. We need to ask God to get rid of the grenades because He really is the only one who can safely do that.

 

Category 3 - Steps 8-11: Keep us Blameless (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

 

Who here has never hurt people? Who here has never made anyone mad at you? I could at this point hand out papers and pens or pencils and ask you to make a list of all the people you have hurt – but we probably don’t have enough time. I probably couldn’t get past Grade 2 by the time our time is up today. (Romans 3:23: for we all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God)

 

Step 9. Make amends where we can – this is important: if you stole 1 million dollars, if you have some way to pay it back, do it. If you don’t’, you can’t. Also, it is suggested that you don’t throw anyone else under the bus. If you robbed a bank or stole from work, you might or might not want to rat out your accomplices and the security guard who was asleep at the desk – but that may cause more harm than good. You would have to figure that out. Adultery is often mentioned here in the literature – if you slept with a married person’s spouse – and it is still unknown years later; you probably don’t want to surprise the spouse and ruin a reconciled marriage just so you can feel good. That would be selfish. Basic rule of thumb: don’t let fear be an excuse to not make amends – always stand up to your fears. But some people get such a high out of confession that they wind up outing other people in the process – this is bad. Don’t make other people’s lives worse so you can feel good.

 

Steps 10 and 11: keep it up! Make a moral inventory (step 4) and keep on making moral inventories. See where those green grenades are. We will each probably make mistakes in the future too. Let us be aware of that and let us confess our sins -mistakes, shortcomings – as they happen. John Wesley did this daily. We should do the same: set up times of prayer, meditation and reflection and confess our mistakes to others, ourselves, and God. Personal devotional time, connecting with God is so important. It is the only way we can ever fully have peace in our lives.

 

Category 4 - Step 12: Evangelize (Matthew 28:18-20)

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to [others], and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

 

That is our final step and the last category – Evangelize. I will teach you some Greek. εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion) evangelism is the Greek word for ‘Good News’. Evangelism means ‘good news’: When you share good news with some one you are evangelizing them. This is what the word means and that is what it is meant to be. We can be saved from so much here and now and forever: that’s what salvation is; we can share that good news with others: that’s what evangelism is.

 

So today we went through the 12 AA steps, applied them to holiness and organized them into four categories of Salvation. The categories are:

 

Step One: Let us acknowledge the sovereignty of God

Two: Confess our shortcomings

Three: Let God keep us blameless

Four: Evangelise, share the Good News

 

That is my hope. That we will all experience this Holiness, this peace with God as we live out our Salvation both now and forever – and then that we will share the Good News of that possibility and that reality with others so that they can experience the love, joy, hope, and peace of Christ that can get us all through all of the struggles of this life and keep us holy unto eternal life.

 

Let us pray.

 

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