iii. I am the Good Shepherd

Preacher: Alan Cameron

Verses: John 10:11

I am the Good Shepherd

Alan Cameron

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Of all the ‘I am’ sayings of Jesus, ‘I Am the Good Shepherd’ is perhaps the most loved of all.  More often than not we use the word good in an offhand manner – ‘he is a good person’, ‘we had good time’.  I’m reminded of the film ‘As Good As It Gets’ when a far from good cranky script writer played by Jack Nicholson pays a long suffering waitress the ultimate compliment, “You make me want to be a better man”. 

Unlike English, Greek has two words for good.  The first speaks of moral goodness.  But as someone has observed, it is possible to be ‘morally repulsive’.  Some people are so upright and uptight that others are repelled rather than attracted by their ‘goodness’.  The second refers to authenticity – beautiful, winsome, lovely, attractive.  Jesus is the Good Shepherd in both senses of the word, not simply a good shepherd, one of many in a similar class, but the good shepherd unique, one and only.  Compared to Jesus we who are shepherds in a lesser sense, under shepherds if you will, scarcely seem to be that at all.  Who of us could call ourselves a good shepherd, let alone the good shepherd?  Yet intuitively we know Jesus to be both and we love him for it.

ii. I am the Light of the World

Preacher: Alan Cameron

Verses: John 8:12

I am the Light of the World

Alan Cameron

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Late September 1991 the fishing boat Andrea Gail sailed from Gloucester, Massachusetts some 600kms into the Atlantic Ocean.  A cold front moving down from Canada combined with a large pressure system from the west together with the aftermath of hurricane Grace in the south east created the perfect storm.  Ferocious winds and huge waves reduced the boat to matchwood and the six crew members were lost at sea.  No doubt there had been prior perfect storms, but this was made famous by the book and film of the same title. 

Two thousand years ago Jesus faced his own perfect storm as various pressures from a human perspective converged on Jerusalem of his day.  The westerly gale was the new superpower Rome.  Julius Caesar had centralized power.  After his assassination he was divinised and his successors declared son of God and assumed the role of pontifex maximus (high priest).  Augustus Caesar ruled from 31BC to AD14.  After his death he too was declared divine and his successor Tiberius took the same titles.  The job of the Roman governor in Palestine was to keep the peace, administer justice, collect taxes and supress unrest.  This was the westerly gale, the first element in the perfect storm confronting Jesus.

The Dangers of the Idle

Preacher: Lincon Hardouin

Verses: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15

The Dangers of the Idle

Lincon Hardouin

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When we think of the idea or the concept of being “idle”, as Paul warns against, what is the first thought that comes to mind? For many of us, simply put, it is a sense of laziness, one’s ability to sit and do nothing for an extended period of time, to put off work, to shun and shy away from one’s responsibilities, to procrastinate not for the sake of making an informed decision, but simply because “we don’t feel like doing it”.

 How often do we encounter problems or get into situations where we look at what’s going on and we say, “Well, someone else will deal with that, I’m too tired, or I don’t have the time to do this, or I simply don’t have the energy.” I know that I am guilty of this. For example, I have noticed that there are times where the street lights in my road are not working. Instead of me picking up the phone and calling the relevant people to report the issue, I often think to myself, well someone else will probably report the problem so why should I bother. We become so dependent on other people, leaving it up to them because we don’t feel like doing it, or we feel like it’s not our problem. And this is not simply a present reality problem, a problem that we only face within our day to day routines. We at times take this to the extreme, even within our Christianity and our faith. Does this sound familiar, “Well God is sovereign over all things, He is in control, therefore, I am going to sit back and let Him deal with it. He will bring me exactly what I need, exactly when I need it and I don’t have to do a single thing”?

i. I am the Bread of Life

Preacher: Alan Cameron

Verses: John 6:35

I am the Bread of Life

Alan Cameron

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Jesus never wrote a book.  Yet no other person in history has had more books written about them.  The closest we come to biography are the Gospel accounts.  Perhaps the closest we come to auto-biography are the seven “I am” statements of Jesus in John’s gospel which raised the ire of the religious leaders.  They regarded Jesus committing blasphemy, laying claim to the revelation of God’s great name “I am who I am” given to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14,15). 

Scholars have spent the last five thousand years trying to understand the meaning of “I am who I am” and there is still no consensus.  No doubt Moses spent the rest of his life trying to figure out exactly what it meant.  By asking God to reveal his name, Moses was seeking to understand the essence of God’s character, his quintessential being.  God’s name was more than a name.  It represented his very being, his entire character and attributes.  The mystery of an eternal, unchangeable God who does not owe his existence to anyone else, eternally present embracing the past and the future is beyond human comprehension.