Vision in Troubled Times | Nicky Gumbel | HTB Live stream

0:15 Thank you, Archie and Sam. Pippa and I are so excited to be here today and particularly want to welcome all those of you who are joining us online. Wherever you are, we're thrilled to be with you. It's been, I think, the last two and a half years since Pippa and I handed over to Archie and Sam have brought us such joy. You know, just watching Archie and Sam pick up the baton and run with it in such an amazing way. And we get to hear the reports. We hear that, well, we can see the congregation is growing. The number of givers has gone up. The staff are much happier.

1:07 And even the carpets are cleaner. And of course, it's not just Archie and Sam. It's the whole staff team here and you, the best congregation in the world. but today we particularly want to just pay tribute to and thank and salute Archie and Sam Coates.

1:34 I want to talk to you today about vision. Sam had that wonderful picture of people's eyes being opened. I want to talk about vision in a troubled world. Vision is the key to life. Without vision, life really doesn't have any ultimate meaning or purpose. Helen Keller, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was born deaf and blind. And she said there's only one thing worse than being blind, and that's having sight but no vision. And God has a vision for each one of your lives. It doesn't have to be like, we live in a very individualistic society.

2:31 People feel it's gotta be their vision. But for me, it was about joining someone else's vision. It was about joining Sandy Miller's vision, who was the vicar here, getting behind that. And really, that's what Pippa and I have tried to do for the last, whatever it is, years of our lives. And we still meet with Sandy and Annette every Monday morning with a group where we pray with on Zoom. and they had an amazing vision for this church and we got behind it. Arch and Sam have an amazing vision for this church and there's nothing wrong with your vision being to get behind someone else's vision. That in itself is a vision. And of course, Jesus was the most amazing visionary of all and every one of us can join in Jesus's vision. and we see Jesus' vision expressed in the passage I want to read to you from Matthew 9 if you have a Bible with you or if you want to look at it on the screen it's from Matthew 9 verse 35 and this is the linchpin of Matthew's gospel. Matthew's gospel was very systematic.

3:45 What he does is he sets out in Matthew chapter 4, he says, look, Jesus came bringing good news. He went around all the towns and villages preaching the good news. If you're here today and you need good news, you're in the right place. Because Jesus came to bring good news. He went around everywhere bringing good news, preaching, and healing. Then Matthew sets out how he preached. Matthew chapter 5 to 7, the greatest sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount. Chapters 8 and 9, nine healing miracles. And then he's about to go on to chapter 10, verse 1, where Jesus says, now over to you. He sends the 12 out. He sends his disciples out to go and do the stuff he's been doing. And maybe today is a day when you pick up the mantle and you realize that Jesus's ministry is not just from here, it's here.

4:46 That you are the ministers. You're the ones he's equipping to bring good news, to heal the sick. And this is the linchpin. Matthew 9, verse 35 to 38. Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom. and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw, he saw vision. Idoin is the Greek word there, seeing. He saw not just with physical eyes, but with spiritual eyes. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

5:45 Here we see the vision of Jesus. First thing is this. You are needed. The need is urgent. He looked out and he saw the crowd. He saw the people. and he saw they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. What do those words mean? Harassed means, the Greek word there, skula means confused, exhausted by life, weary. If you're going to take a modern translation, I would take the title of Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation. He looked out and he saw people full of anxiety. and then they were harassed and and hopeless what is that word ripto it means depressed emptiness aimless without purpose without direction no vision throw is the word for fish thrown in the sea thrown away perhaps again the best modern way of putting it would be depressed he looked out and he saw people who were anxious and depressed, like sheep without a shepherd.

7:05 And as we look around at our world, our troubled world, there's all kinds of big trouble, isn't there? Wars, now these fires, but also individual. we see so many people who are harassed and helpless. I had the privilege of being on a Zoom call. Pippa and I were on a Zoom call with an amazing person called Ayan Hershey Ali. Ayan Hershey Ali was born in Mogadishu in Somalia in 1969 into a Muslim family where she was subject to FGM, a lot of violence, and she was about to be put into a forced marriage with someone she didn't want to marry. And she decided the only thing to do was to escape. So she escaped and she eventually got into the Netherlands. And there she became a refugee and later became a citizen, an academic, a politician, a government minister. But she wrote a film called Submission, just a 10-minute film with Theo Goff about the trauma, the kind of trauma that she'd gone through as a child and that so many people around the world are going through. And this film led to her being attacked. And Theo Goff was actually murdered. And on the dagger, right in the middle of the heart of Amsterdam, he was murdered. And on the dagger, it said, A.N. Hershey Alley, you're next. And she had to escape. She escaped to America. And there she married one of the world's leading historians, Sir Neil Ferguson. And they had two sons. And she became an ardent atheist. She wrote a book called Infidel, which became a bestseller.

9:16 Introduction by Christopher Hitchens. She's travelled with Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, A.C. Grayling, all the leading atheists. She became one of the leading atheists, speaking on platforms with them all around the place, speaking swimming in the sea anti-religion.

9:40 And yet she said, here she was, she had someone who had a happy marriage, two healthy sons, but she found herself suffering from anxiety and a sense of worthlessness. She was harassed and helpless. And she went to the doctors. They thought she was suffering from PTSD as a result of Theo Goff's murder, but she found medication didn't help. She turned to alcohol. These are her own words. And she didn't want to live anymore. And then she went to see this therapist. She said, I didn't know if she was a Christian or not. She described her as an Italian-American Catholic Buddhist.

10:27 And this woman said to her, I don't think your problem is alcohol. I think you are spiritually bankrupt. And she said to her, if there was a God, what kind of God would you like to believe in and she described the qualities of the God that she would like to believe in and the woman said to her I think what you're describing is the Christian God you're describing Jesus and she's this again is her her own words she begged God to let her live and to take the void, the spiritual emptiness away. And she started talking to Jesus as if he was in front of her. She started going to church. She surrendered to God's unconditional love. She said, I choose to believe. The results were what medication could not do. Since January 2023, three, she's had no alcohol, no medicine. She says every day she feels reconnected with her family, God, the world. She's gone from hopelessness to a zest for life. She feels so strong and so peaceful.

11:37 She says, my life is transformed. Now, instead of going around on platforms speaking with Richard Dawkins, she goes on platforms and debates against Richard Dawkins. And she says, atheism is marketed as clever, but actually it's impoverished. They don't understand the human condition. Atheism is foolish. You just say there is no God because there's no evidence. That's a statement, not a worldview. It fails to answer the simple question, what is the meaning and purpose of life? And she says, Western civilization has a legacy, but they're about to throw it out. And all they'll be left with is a prescription pack. And she said, all the therapy, but she read all these therapy books. Now she's read the Bible. She says, the therapy books are pure plagiarism. It's all in the Bible. It's cheaper to go to church.

12:36 and she told me this but I didn't say it publicly until three weeks ago her husband put it out there on x that on September the 1st four months ago she was baptized her children were baptized and her husband Sir Neil Ferguson was baptized and is now a churchgoer Thank you. And there are so many people like Ayan out there who are harassed, helpless, anxious, depressed, like sheep without a shepherd. And you're needed because you know them.

13:31 They work with you. They may be your friends or your family. And you're needed. secondly you're loved you are loved the motive is love Jesus looked out at the crowds he looked out at people and maybe you're in that category today yourself you're anxious or depressed and how does he look at how does Jesus look at you with compassion the word they're used comes from a Greek word which the derivative is it comes from the word splankna. Splankna is the word for your guts. It's for your entrails. It's for your inner being. It's where it's the seat of your emotion where you feel things most deeply. And it's a word only used by Jesus or of Jesus in the New Testament. and Jesus looks at the people, looks at us and he loves us.

14:37 This is what changed my life. I was 18, I was an atheist, I read the New Testament. I had an encounter with Jesus and I realized that the Son of God, Jesus, died on a cross for me. That's how much Jesus loves you. If you had been the only person in the world, Jesus would have died for you. That's how much he loves you. If you're watching this online right now, Jesus loves you so much that he died for you. St. Paul wrote, But what's even more amazing than that is he wants you not just to know it here, but to experience it. That's what I experienced as an 18-year-old.

15:39 I experienced God's love myself. The love of God, St. Paul writes, is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. In other words, we experience that we are loved by God. This is the greatest need that we could ever have, to know that we're loved, to know that we're really loved by God. And if you're like me, I find that really hard to believe, that God really loves me. Because I know stuff about myself that you don't know. and therefore I think, God, could you really love me? But the amazing thing is that God loves imperfect people. We all love imperfect people. We know our children are not perfect, but we love them. We know our parents are not perfect.

16:31 We love them. We know our friends are not perfect, but we love them. There are only two people who've ever been born without original sin, Jesus and Pippa Gumbel. But apart from them, we all have things that are wrong with us. But the fact is that Jesus loves us even though we're like that. And do you know how much he loves us? Sometimes I think, I cannot believe that anybody can love more than I love Pippa. But God loves me more than that. Think of the person that you love most in all the world. And God loves you far more than that.

17:28 And he wants you to know that love. He wants you to know that you are loved. And that's where our love comes from. Jesus didn't just repeat the Old Testament, love your neighbour as yourself. He raised it. He said, love one another as I have loved you. with that supreme love. He said that the love that the Father has for me, the love that God the Father has for Jesus will be in you. That's how much love is in our hearts, how much compassion we have. You're loved and that's why we love. We love because he first loved us. You are needed. you're loved and next you're heard.

18:24 The trigger is prayer. He says, ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send workers into the harvest field. Pray. Prayer is right at the heart of this church. You've just heard about that. Every week, hundreds of people coming together to pray. so in the last two two and a half years I've had to like adapt my routine and now we're living in Clapton what's the same about my routine is that I always start the day reading reading the Bible I don't do it because I feel I have to I do it because I love this book I love this book because when I wake up in the morning, I'm hungry.

19:19 I'm hungry for two things. I'm physically hungry. I want breakfast. But I also have a spiritual hunger that can only be satisfied. Jesus said, people can't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And I wanted to say, Jesus, what are you saying to me today? And it satisfies that hunger each day as I hear, what is Jesus saying to me? Then I have breakfast, and then I bike up to Hyde Park because I loved Hyde Park. I lived here for, yeah, all my life pretty much. So I'd bike for 25 minutes and then I swim in the Serpentine. And I swim there every day and it's beautiful. Yesterday, because it was iced over, there was only quite a small area that we could swim in. But it was lovely, it's so warm. It was very warm in the water compared to outside yesterday. Even though it was freezing in the water, it was minus four outside. But anyway, I don't want to be a cold water bore. I swim in cold water, yeah.

20:14 but so anyway I do that and then I do a prayer walk around Hyde Park and my prayers are pathetic somebody said to me the other day they said oh your prayer walk they said I'd love to be just on your shoulder listening to your prayers and I thought no you would not my prayers are so stammering, weak, pathetic. I would be so embarrassed for anybody to hear. I don't even know how much I connect with God in that whole journey around the round pond and around the whole of the serpentine. How much do I actually connect? I don't know. My prayers are not, they're pathetic. But I'm comforted by these words from an Anglican bishop, great Anglican bishop from the 19th century, Bishop J.C. Ryle. He was the bishop of Liverpool.

21:07 And he said this, fear not because your prayer is stammering, your words feeble and your language poor. Jesus can understand you. And those words are a huge comfort to me. My prayers are weak, but Jesus hears. When you pray, Jesus hears you. so you're needed you're loved you're heard and finally you have great potential the potential is vast Jesus says ask the Lord of the harvest therefore to send workers and actually the word for ask there is is an unusual word for prayer it's it's kind of like Beg.

22:02 Beg the Lord. Plead with God to send out workers. There's such need out there, and there's so few people who are meeting that need. It's a bit like, as Pip said, it's a bit like the National Health Service at the moment. There's so much need out there, but the workers are few. And there's so much need out there. So many people are harassed and helpless, but the workers are few. What does the word worker there mean? I mean, people who do things.

22:33 And as I said, this is a great congregation because you do things. And every one of you who does something is involved in this vision. You're workers. Every one of you who joins those prayer meetings on a Tuesday morning, you are a worker. Prayer is part of kingdom work. Every one of you has a standing order. and I know now hundreds, maybe thousands of you have standing orders. You are giving to the church. You're giving, you're investing in the kingdom, you're doing something. You're a worker. Every one of you who serves.

23:16 Every one of you, there's so many people serving today. Everyone who serves. Martin Luther King said, everyone can become great because everyone can serve. you're all involved. And it's such fun, isn't it, being involved in the kingdom, being involved in bringing good news to people. I love it. It's such a joy to see the change in people's lives. And you're needed. You're loved. You're heard. You have great potential. And as we do this together, then we can see, God willing, we can play our part in the re-evangelization of this nation, the revitalization of the church, and the transformation of society.