Welcome to our service - 5 February
This service sheet can be used individually or with households.
We would encourage you to say (or even sing) hymns and songs out loud.
Prayers, other liturgy or readings can be said out loud or silently, corporately or individually.
If you are able, we would also like invite you to join us for our main Sunday service, 10am, live on Zoom. Even if you have never been to St Gabriel’s before we would love you to join you. Please get in touch with the vicar Alistair (vicar@saintgs.co.uk) and he will send you the Zoom details.
Notices
Please don’t hesitate to ring Alistair (07769 213 581) if you have any questions or would like support.
SERVICE
Opening
The Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.
Let us rejoice and shout for joy,
giving God the glory.
Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and shall be for ever. Amen.
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuMh_ept-Js
Crown Him with many crowns,
the Lamb upon His throne;
Hark! how the heavenly anthem
drowns
all music but its own:
awake my soul, and sing
of Him who died for thee,
and hail Him as thy chosen King
through all eternity.
2 Crown Him the Son of God
before the worlds began;
and ye who tread where He hath trod,
crown Him the Son of Man,
who every grief hath known
that wrings the human breast,
and takes and bears them for His own
that all in Him may rest.
3 Crown Him the Lord of life,
who triumphed o'er the grave,
and rose victorious in the strife,
for those He came to save:
His glories now we sing,
who died and rose on high,
who died eternal life to bring,
and lives that death may die.
4 Crown Him the Lord of heaven,
enthroned in worlds above;
crown Him the King to whom is given
the wondrous name of love:
all hail, Redeemer, hail!
for Thou hast died for me;
Thy praise shall never, never fail
throughout eternity.
Matthew Bridges (1800-94) Godfrey Thring (1823-1903)
CONFESSION
Our Lord Jesus Christ said: The first commandment is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’
The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Amen. Lord, have mercy.
‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.’ We long for the fire of God’s cleansing to touch our unclean lips, for our guilt to be removed and our sin wiped out. So we meet Father, Son and Holy Spirit with repentance in our hearts.
We have not always worshipped God, our creator.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
We have not always followed Christ, our Saviour.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
We have not always trusted in the Spirit, our guide.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy
ABSOLUTION
May the Father of all mercies cleanse us from our sins,
and restore us in his image
to the praise and glory of his name,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
COLLECT
Almighty God,
give us reverence for all creation
and respect for every person,
that we may mirror your likeness
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTZnuPTGWS8
O LORD OUR GOD, how majestic is Your name,
The earth is filled with Your glory.
O Lord our God, You are robed in majesty,
You’ve set Your glory above the heavens.
We will magnify, we will magnify
The Lord enthroned in Zion.
We will magnify, we will magnify
The Lord enthroned in Zion.
O Lord our God, You have established a throne,
You reign in righteousness and splendour.
O Lord our God, the skies are ringing with Your praise,
Soon those on earth will come to worship.
We will magnify, we will magnify …
O Lord our God,
the world was made at Your command,
In You all things now hold together.
Now to Him who sits
on the throne and to the Lamb,
Be praise and glory and power forever.
We will magnify, we will magnify …
Phil Lawson Johnston.
Copyright © 1982 Thankyou Music.
READINGS
Deuteronomy 7.1-11
When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are about to enter and occupy, he will clear away many nations ahead of you: the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. These seven nations are greater and more numerous than you. When the LORD your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy. You must not intermarry with them. Do not let your daughters and sons marry their sons and daughters, for they will lead your children away from me to worship other gods. Then the anger of the LORD will burn against you, and he will quickly destroy you. This is what you must do. You must break down their pagan altars and shatter their sacred pillars. Cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols. For you are a holy people, who belong to the LORD your God. Of all the people on earth, the LORD your God has chosen you to be his own special treasure.
“The LORD did not set his heart on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other nations, for you were the smallest of all nations! Rather, it was simply that the LORD loves you, and he was keeping the oath he had sworn to your ancestors. That is why the LORD rescued you with such a strong hand from your slavery and from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Understand, therefore, that the LORD your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands. But he does not hesitate to punish and destroy those who reject him. Therefore, you must obey all these commands, decrees, and regulations I am giving you today.
John 5.16-30
So the Jewish leaders began harassing Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules. But Jesus replied, “My Father is always working, and so am I.” So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him. For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.
So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing. In fact, the Father will show him how to do even greater works than healing this man. Then you will truly be astonished. For just as the Father gives life to those he raises from the dead, so the Son gives life to anyone he wants. In addition, the Father judges no one. Instead, he has given the Son absolute authority to judge, so that everyone will honour the Son, just as they honour the Father. Anyone who does not honour the Son is certainly not honouring the Father who sent him.
“I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.
“And I assure you that the time is coming, indeed it’s here now, when the dead will hear my voice—the voice of the Son of God. And those who listen will live. The Father has life in himself, and he has granted that same life-giving power to his Son. And he has given him authority to judge everyone because he is the Son of Man. Don’t be so surprised! Indeed, the time is coming when all the dead in their graves will hear the voice of God’s Son, and they will rise again. Those who have done good will rise to experience eternal life, and those who have continued in evil will rise to experience judgement. I can do nothing on my own. I judge as God tells me. Therefore, my judgement is just, because I carry out the will of the one who sent me, not my own will.
TALK – taken from Chapter 5 of ‘e-booklet’: Deuteronomy: Wellness God’s Way from ‘Burning Heart’
Troubling commands
One of my favourite Bible stories as a child was the fall of Jericho. God told the Israelite army to march round and round the city walls of Jericho for a week. Then at the end of the seventh circuit on the seventh day the priests would blow on trumpets and the whole army would shout - and at that point the walls would come tumbling down. It’s quite a dramatic story – and of course everything happened exactly as God said it would.47
As an adult though, I’ve found the story of the fall of Jericho more troubling. The reason is that it was part of the Israelite conquest of Canaan, and the instructions that God gave the Israelites about the conquest are one of the bits of the Bible I struggle with most.
The key commands come in Deuteronomy 7, and they’re pretty stark and difficult to hear: “when the LORD your God has delivered [these nations] over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.”48
What are we supposed to make of that? How can we square it with what we know of God’s love? How can we even reconcile it with our own basic ideas of justice and goodness?
47 You can find the story in Joshua 7 48 Deuteronomy 7v2
Those are the questions we are going to grapple with in this chapter, as we explore how we can still trust in God’s goodness and in his love - even in the light of Deuteronomy 7. We need to struggle through how we can still hear his voice and meet with him – and even allow him to challenge us – as we read these difficult passages.
Loving foreigners
As we start to grapple with God’s commands to destroy the Canaanite nations, perhaps the first thing we need to realise is how jarring they are within the context of Deuteronomy.
In our interconnected world, things like immigration and work and the way we interact with foreigners and the rest of the world are all hot topics. We often assume that the ancient world was very different, and these issues weren’t really on the agenda.
Surprisingly though, Deuteronomy actually has lots to say about all this. There is a particular emphasis on how the Israelites were supposed to treat foreigners living among them. There are more than a dozen laws on this subject, with the main focus summed up in Deuteronomy 10v18.49 Moses tells them that God loves the foreigner residing among them, and that they too should love those them.
Elsewhere, as Moses re-tells Israel’s story at the start of the book, he emphasises how God explicitly forbade them to harass or provoke the people of Esau or of Moab as they passed through the wilderness.
For all his love and favour towards Israel, God is not against other nations. In fact, as we saw earlier in the series, his choice of Israel has a missionary purpose.51 As God told Abraham – “all nations will be blessed through you” - a promise ultimately fulfilled in Jesus, as through his death and resurrection he makes God’s blessings known and available to all people.
There seems to be something consciously and uniquely different about the nations mentioned in Deuteronomy 7. That impression is reinforced later in the book, in chapter 20, where a distinction is drawn between ‘normal war’ and these campaigns to drive out the Canaanite nations. There is something unexpected and unusual going on as God commands the Israelites to drive out the Canaanites.
We know God loves everyone who he has made – so why does he tell the Israelites to destroy the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites? Well, the text itself actually gives us two overlapping answers.
The wickedness of the Canaanites
The first answer Deuteronomy gives us here is that God commands the Israelites to drive out the Canaanite nations because of their wickedness. This is a sovereign act of God’s judgement on an evil and depraved culture.
This is a point that is made forcefully at the start of chapter 9, where Moses twice tells the Israelites: “it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you.”53
God doesn’t give us much detail of what these nations did that was so awful – in fact, the people were told not to inquire too much about it. The one example we do have is pretty shocking though – we’re told: “they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.”
These commands are often misrepresented as an arbitrary and unjust victimisation of otherwise innocent people, something to get them out of the way so that Israel can inhabit the land. But friends, God wouldn’t do that. God is a God of justice, slow to anger and rich in love. When he acts in judgement, he does so only when there is good reason to do so.
Judgement delayed
In this case, we’re actually told elsewhere that God deliberately delayed giving the Israelites the promised land and allowed them to struggle and suffer in Egypt as a result. In Genesis 15v16, we read that God told Abraham that the reason for this delay was that “the sin of the Ammorites has not yet reached its full measure.” God would not drive out the other nations until their wickedness warranted it.
Generations later, as Moses finally points the people towards the promised land, that has now changed. The sin of the Ammorites had reached its full measure, and so God uses Israel to put an end to this wickedness, and to bring his righteous judgement on the nations of Canaan.
It’s really important for us to realise that this isn’t just some general licence to Israel to permit them to behave as they want against their enemies, or an arbitrary clear out of otherwise innocent people. This isn’t even a framework by which Israel can judge other nations. It is a unique and sovereign act of God’s judgement on a wicked and depraved people.
The unique calling of Israel
The second overlapping reason that Deuteronomy gives us for why the nations in the land needed to be driven out was to protect Israel’s relationship with God.
In chapter 7v4, Moses explains that the Canaanites must be destroyed because: “they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.”
Tragically, we know all too well how prescient that prediction was. As the Old Testament continues, we see the people of Israel compromising their faith with the worship of the gods of the nations around them. The result was disaster – what we call ‘the Exile’, as God’s people were conquered and driven from the land for 70 years. It is a tragic and depressing tale, but one that should have been no surprise to them. It is exactly what we see prophesied in Deuteronomy centuries beforehand.
Deuteronomy actually devotes far far more time to warning the people of Israel of the possibility of God’s judgement on them than it gives over to talking about God’s judgement on the Canaanites. Throughout the book there are scattered warnings, until at the end whole chapters are filled with prophecies of the Exile. No-one who has ever actually read the book of Deuteronomy could ever accuse it of bias against the Canaanite nations, because it uses exactly the same standards to judge Israel as it does them.
Why though?
Judgement brought forward
In the history of God’s dealings with the world, both the destruction of the Canaanite nations and the exile for Israel are unusual. They are an exception. There have been myriad other nations and societies that have done equally horrible and wicked things, but who God did not stop and judge.
The Bible is clear that that will one day change. There is a final judgement, at which all people will answer for their lives. In some senses, therefore, all that is happening in these two examples is that God’s righteous judgement on Israel and the Canaanites is brought forward into time. But why?
The answer Deuteronomy gives comes in chapter 7v6: “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God.” If Israel had been just another nation, then maybe God would have left the Canaanites, and then later the Israelites, simply to face judgement at the end of time with all the rest of us.
But Israel was not just another nation, they were a people ‘holy to the LORD.’ They were set apart to be in a relationship with God, so that through them he might ultimately save the world in Jesus. God could not let Israel simply descend into sin and idolatry, and their relationship with him dissipate into nothing. If he did, he would allow his purposes for the blessing and salvation of the world to be derailed.
God acts, because he will not allow his plans for the good and salvation of the world to be stopped. He intervenes within history, and brings his final judgement forward, in order to protect his relationship with Israel.
This is a message that isn’t just found in chapter 7, but is repeated again and again throughout Deuteronomy. For instance, in chapter 29v18 Moses tells the people: “make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison.”
In one sense you could say that an answer to the question ‘why did God judge the Canaanite nations?’, is ‘because he loves you.’ Without this moment of judgement, the whole history of Israel, and God’s salvation plan for the world would have been derailed.
Working out the problem
I think that we do have answers to why God judges and drives out the Canaanite nations - but most of us still don’t like them. We still struggle with this.
This is where we both need to dig a little deeper and allow God to challenge us. I think that intellectually probably most of us can accept the logic of the two answers that I have given above to this question. Emotionally though most of us aren’t quite there. In our hearts we are still troubled – we still don’t ‘get’ why this is all necessary.
Because of that, I think that there’s a temptation to try and explain away the judgement on the Canaanites, to try to make it more palatable. If you explore some of the texts and ancient background to these commands, there is some justification for doing so. Many scholars think that it was actually just the cities and strongholds that fell under this command. Possibly, even then, it was only when the ruler and city in question had refused to surrender and submit to Israel. That all makes this much more limited than at first appears.
Even if that is all true though, the basic problem still remains. We see a whole people, even now in a smaller group, facing God’s judgement.
I think our issue here is actually less about the Canaanites, and more about God’s judgement more generally. We tend to be OK with the idea of God’s judgement when it comes to particularly awful individuals – such as Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot. Indeed, many of us would demand it.
Instinctively though we assume that most people, ordinary people like us, are OK. Surely we don’t deserve judgement? Do we?
That means that when we think of an entire nation facing God’s judgement we struggle. However OK we may be with the idea of a particular wicked leader facing judgement, we struggle with the idea that the ordinary people might also be deserving of it.
I think that this is the root of our struggle with the driving out of the Canaanites. Were they all guilty? Do ordinary people really deserve judgement?
Can a whole nation be guilty?
This whole issue of God’s judgement is one that I have explored in much more detail in my film series Struggling with Judgement, and you may want to check it out.55
I do want to briefly explore the specific issue of whether a whole nation or group can be guilty here though. To help me do that, I want us to think back to a tragedy from a few years back. In 2013 the world was rocked by news that a garment factory in Bangladesh had collapsed, killing more than 1,000 workers.56
As news of the tragedy came out, it became clear that the safety and welfare of the workers had been severely compromised over the years. The reason was that every effort had been made to cut costs. That was a process driven ultimately by the desires of western consumers – like me – for more clothes for less money.
At the time, most of us in the West were horrified by what we learned, and by the growing realisation that our comfort, our wealth, our fashion, had led (even indirectly) to such a tragedy. At the time we could at least comfort ourselves with the thought that we just didn’t know what was going on.
Yet years have passed since then. How many of us have changed our shopping habits? How many of us have taken the time to research the issue? How many of us have done anything at all?
Now obviously not all clothing brands and fashion business are at fault - but lots are, and the issues still remain. One campaigning organisation, The labour behind the label sums up the situation today: “human rights abuses are systemic throughout the industry...It is an industry built on exploitation and...lack of transparency.”
My part in all that may be small – but it is real. I am part of a culture that is wrong – that in this area is wicked. However uncomfortable it may make me feel, the reality is that I am guilty.
That is just one example – we could also talk about climate change, or racial injustice, or many other issues. This is just one example. I have chosen it though because it is an example where my part feels quantifiable, and so it helps me to get my head around how a whole nation can be guilty of sin.
The Bible tells us that that was the case with the Canaanites - but on a grander scale. I may be guilty for the part my selfish thoughtlessness has played in the global fashion industry, but child sacrifice takes things to a whole new level.
This is still a message I find hard though, and I think for me that will always be the case with judgement. Yet however reluctantly I get there, I have come to realise both intellectually and emotionally that God’s judgement on the Canaanites was just and fair. For all my struggles, I know God is still good.
Rediscovering grace
Even as we struggle with this judgement though, Deuteronomy casts our minds forward not just to God’s goodness, but also to his grace. While the wickedness of the Canaanites may have been particularly awful, the Bible tells us that actually all of us are guilty. As the Psalmist says: “All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
We find ourselves in the strange situation that each of us is both victim and culprit – we suffer the consequences of a broken world, but in our own sinfulness we also contribute to its brokenness. As a result, we need God’s grace. We need his grace to put things right, so there is no longer inequality and injustice, violence and exploitation. But also, we need God’s grace to rescue us from the consequences of what we do – to forgive us.
As we’ll explore in more detail in our final chapter, Deuteronomy gives us glimpses of the promise of that grace. It reminds us that God uses Israel, and then through Israel, Jesus, to bring that about. Uncomfortable as it may be to say so though, God’s judgement on the Canaanites is part of that grace to all the rest of us. This moment of judgement safeguards God’s relationship with Israel, and through it our hope of salvation.
An unexpected glimpse of grace
Yet that brings me to my final point - which is the final issue that I think many of us have with the commands to destroy the Canaanites. There seems to be no hope of redemption. This grace doesn’t seem to be offered to them. But I think that actually it is.
If you read these texts about driving out the Canaanites closely, the focus seems to be less about the destruction of individuals, and more about the destruction of a wicked nation and culture. That seems to me to hint at the possibility that if individuals or groups were to turn away from their culture and its wickedness and look instead to God, there might be a chance of grace.
As the rest of the OT rolls on there are scattered examples of exactly that happening.59 I want to finish with my favourite – taking us back to Jericho, where we began this film, and the story of one woman’s faith.
Our heroine is Rahab. Rahab was someone you might think was an unlikely candidate for Biblical stardom – she was a prostitute, and a Canaanite. Despite all of that though, she’s one of the great heroines of the book of Joshua.
Rahab hid and helped Israelite spies sent to scout out her city of Jericho, and she did it because she believed that the Lord was, in her words, “God in heaven above and on the earth below.”62 Dangerous as it was for her, she chose to put her trust totally in God, turning her back on the walls and armies and beliefs of Jericho, and believing instead in the LORD.
When God brought the walls of Jericho crashing down, he saved Rahab and all her family. Not only did he rescue her from destruction, but he fully redeemed her life. She went on to marry Salmon, one of the leaders of the tribe of Judah. As a result, she became one of the ancestors first of King David, and ultimately of Jesus.63 It’s a story of hope and salvation, even in the midst of wickedness and judgement.
Prayer
Rather than suggesting a prayer for this chapter, I would like to encourage you to simply come to God with whatever struggles you still have with these passages, but also the ways he’s challenged you. Pray Come Holy Spirit, and ask him to work in your heart.
Come Holy Spirit, Amen.
THE APOSTLES’ CREED
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth
I believe in Jesus Christ,
his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand
of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen
O LORD, HEAR MY PRAYER,
O Lord, hear my prayer:
When I call answer me.
O Lord, hear my prayer,
O Lord, hear my prayer:
Come and listen to me.
Jacques Berthier/Taizé.
Copyright © 1982 Ateliers et Presses de Taize (France).
PRAYERS - written by Jo Chamberlain
Our prayers today are inspired by the pictures we shared last week in church showing the places where people in the congregation are during the week. So we’re going to start praying for each ourselves and then take it wider.
Heavenly Father, thank you that you love us, that you have chosen us, and we are your treasure. Thank you that we can bring our cares and our prayers before you now.
Pray for yourself. Pray for God’s blessing on you this week. Ask God to walk with you whatever is coming this week.
Lord in your mercy
Hear our prayer
Now think about where you live. Pray for you neighbour on your left and on your right, and if anyone else lives in your house, pray for them too. If you live on the end of the street, pray for another neighbour. Pray for God’s blessing on those households, and for God to walk with them whatever is coming this week. And if you don’t know their names, maybe make time to find out.
Lord in your mercy
Hear our prayer
Think about the places you will go this week, or the places represented by people who might come to your house. You know what the stresses are for those places – lay them before God. Pray for the people you will meet, pray for the decisions that will be made, pray for God’s blessing.
Lord in your mercy
Hear our prayer
Now think about the stories from the news that you’ve heard this week that have broken your heart, and lay them before God. Maybe it was the bomb in Peshawar, or news that child refugees have been abducted from a hotel in London, or likely there is something else that always lies heavily on your heart. Pray about it now, for God to be at work, bringing about peace, love, reconciliation.
Lord in your mercy
Hear our prayer
Heavenly Father
Sometimes we don’t know how to pray, but we know the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. Thank you that you have heard our groanings.
Amen.
Sovereign Over Us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx37FRpcIw
There is strength within the sorrow
There is beauty in our tears
And You meet us in our mourning
With a love that casts out fear
You are working in our waiting
Sanctifying us
When beyond our understanding
You're teaching us to trust
Your plans are still to prosper
You've not forgotten us
You're with us in the fire and the flood
Faithful forever perfect in love
You are sov'reign over us
You are wisdom unimagined
Who could understand Your ways
Reigning high above the heavens
Reaching down in endless grace
You're the lifter of the lowly
Compassionate and kind
You surround and You uphold me
And Your promises are my delight
Even what the enemy means for evil
You turn it for our good
You turn it for our good
And for Your glory
Even in the valley You are faithful
You're working for our good
You're working for our good
And for Your glory
OFFERTORY - Take a moment to consider how you are going to continue to give to the life of the church and support other aid agencies and mission organisations.
Yours, Lord, is the greatness, the power,
the glory, the splendour, and the majesty;
for everything in heaven and on earth is yours.
All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ph-t8P2r_I
BREATHE ON ME, BREATH OF GOD,
Fill me with life anew;
That I may love what Thou dost love
And do what Thou wouldst do.
Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Until my heart is pure;
Until my will is one with Thine
To do and to endure.
Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Till I am wholly Thine;
Until this earthly part of me
Glows with Thy fire divine.
Breathe on me, Breath of God,
So shall I never die,
But live with Thee the perfect life
Of Thine eternity.
Edwin Hatch (1835–89)
FINAL BLESSING:
May the Father
from whom every family in earth and heaven receives its name
strengthen you with his Spirit in your inner being,
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, and that, knowing his love,
broad and long, deep and high beyond our knowledge,
you may be filled with all the fullness of God;
and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,
be upon you and remain with you always.
Amen