In case you missed it: Today's Breakfast Bite
Revd Gareth Higgs from Plymouth Methodist Central Hall joins Nathan to tell us how we can clear our debt.
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(upbeat music) - Well, it is once again time for today's breakfast bite and I have the privilege of welcoming Reverend Gareth Higgs. Hi Gareth. - Hi, Jacob. Morning, everybody. I hope everyone listening to this is doing well. - Indeed, yes. Great to see you again. And are you ready to bring us another breakfast bite this morning? - Yes, I am. - Excellent. Take it away. - So, I was reading a story last week from the New Testament and Jesus is having dinner with a very kind of respectable and wealthy person and all is going well. And suddenly the dinner is interrupted and a woman who's got a bit of a reputation she's well known in the area comes in and she kind of moves amongst the guests and she starts to kind of sort of pour out her love and affection for Jesus really. She's weeping and she's crying and she's anointing his feet with really expensive perfume and everyone's kind of uncomfortable with a show of affection. Feels a bit like some very reserved British families, maybe. Can you imagine everybody kind of giving the sideways glances? But of course, this woman recognizes something in Jesus that other people are much slower to recognize and she recognizes in him somebody who is full of compassion, grace and mercy. And in fact, when people are questioning some of the guests, even the host of the banquet are questioning what's going on and the appropriateness and the propriety of the proceedings. Jesus in essence, if you've been forgiven lots, you'll love lots, if you've been forgiven little, you'll love little. And just got me thinking about that whole kind of sense in that story, Jesus tells a little parable about people to whom you've been lent money and if you've been lent a lot of money and then the debts canceled, you will be even happier than somebody who's been lent a little bit of money and it's been canceled. And it reminded me of a story that the evangelist Jay John often tells and I've heard him tell it a few times and I can't think of the better illustration really. And it's imagining that each of our lives are a bit like a bank account and that we kind of start at zero but every kind of ungodly thought, every selfish action, every sinful behavior that we have ever committed throughout our lives is a debit on that account. And so we increasingly, increasingly go into debt. And the first thing to think about is that actually every single human being is indebted to God. We're tempted sometimes to kind of think of ourselves in comparison to other people or we're not as bad as that person or we're not as bad as that person or at least I'm not as bad as them. But actually kind of God draws a level playing field really. We're all exactly the same. We have one of the things we have in common as human beings is that we are all indebted to God but all in need of grace. So to go back to the illustration of our lives and the bank account, then for some of us, the debt that we rack up against God for most of us in fact will be huge. And if you've ever been in a position, maybe some people listening to this are in the position of being in debt to another human being or a bank. Actually paying off that debt can be a hugely troublesome and difficult thing to do because you often however hard you work and however noble your efforts, you only ever make either a very small dent in it or perhaps you even only just pay off the interest. So you never really, really ever make a contribution to the heart of the matter. And so it can feel a bit helpless and with our own indebtedness to God, we are actually indeed helpless. We can't sort it out amongst ourselves. We can't work it off ourselves however hard we try. But God in his wonderful love for us, in his grace and mercy has come to us in Jesus Christ and in Jesus' death and resurrection, he has cleared the debt of our sin. Every mistake, every misdeed, every inaction, every selfishly motivated thing we have done or not done that kind of racked up a debt between us and God has been cleared away by Jesus' death and resurrection. And once more we are put forever in credit with God. And it's a wonderful thing, the cross accomplishes that. But like all of us, we have to grasp hold of that ourselves and apply it. And in the story, I was telling from the New Testament with Jesus and the woman. Jesus ends the story by saying to the lady, your faith has saved you, go in peace. And I know that they're not very common anymore. Very few people still have them, but I want you to imagine that you've been given a check that covers the amount of your debt to God. It's signed in the blood of Jesus. Well, you've got choices to what you do with that. You could, I suppose you could rip it up, throw it away and reject it. You could file it away in your wallet or purse and kind of mean to do something about it in the future. Or actually you could take it to the bank, put it into your account and make sure that the debt is cleared and that you're in credit once again. Well, God has written a check for all of us, for the sin of our lives. And he invites us by faith to grasp hold of that. And apply it, live in it. And it is kind of by grasping hold of it in faith that it is credited to our account. So the work of Jesus is God's grace, which clears our debt. The act of faith is our taking hold of that, applying it to ourselves and living in all that Jesus has done. So we're always indebted to God, but God, all of us are indebted to God, but God by his wonderful, wonderful grace in Jesus Christ has done everything needful to clear the weight of our sin. And that's open to every person who puts their faith in Jesus Christ and is by faith that we apply that to ourselves and put ourselves in forever good standing, credited standing with God. - Absolutely fantastic. Thanks so much, Gareth. Love that analogy of the bank and the idea of this check, this idea, it really is a really, really useful analogy. Money helps us to understand this idea of debt, that we have a debt of sin that needs to be paid at some point. 'Cause as you say, all of us, we are all the same. We all have our indebted to God. We all make mistakes and therefore we all end up in debt in one way or another. But also an interesting point you've made, that some of us perhaps I guess could be in greater debt than others, you know, that woman obviously, they've forgiven of a great deal, a very bad lifestyle. And some of us maybe haven't lived quite such a bad lifestyle, you know, and maybe we think we actually sometimes, some of us think, well, we're not in debt because we haven't lived too badly. But we are all in debt 'cause we've all done something wrong. We've all got a bank balance that is below zero. - Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right. That's absolutely right. - Yeah, thanks so much, Gareth. And I look forward to hearing from you once again next week. - Cheers, thanks a lot. Take care. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Did you know, Pure 24/7 Radio has a shop? Well, we do. You can buy merchandise while supporting the work that we do here. Simply head over to www.pure247radio.org/shop. That's www.pure247radio.org/shop. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
