WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.640 Well, thank you Derek for the opportunity to speak tonight. People kept asking me, are 00:00:09.640 --> 00:00:14.839 you preaching this evening? And the answer is I don't really know. It's supposed to be 00:00:14.839 --> 00:00:23.280 a kind of cross between a sermon, a church planting talk and an explanation of cornerstone. 00:00:23.280 --> 00:00:29.560 So we'll see how it goes. I do want to say thank you very much. I haven't worshipped 00:00:29.559 --> 00:00:34.759 St. Columbus for a long time, certainly not since before the pandemic. And just singing 00:00:34.759 --> 00:00:40.399 there with you guys tonight, I have so many great memories of God working in my life 00:00:40.399 --> 00:00:48.119 here. So quite moved to be back, Don and Derek and many of the rest of you who have been 00:00:48.119 --> 00:00:55.000 such good friends to me and to the cornerstone crew over the last decade almost. So we are 00:00:55.000 --> 00:01:01.480 indebted for your friendship, your prayers, your encouragement for sending us out, for 00:01:01.480 --> 00:01:07.640 cheering us on, cheering us up sometimes and looking after us. I've really struck that 00:01:07.640 --> 00:01:13.359 Derek was talking with the children earlier about God making something out of nothing. 00:01:13.359 --> 00:01:17.960 And Anna Lauren picked up the same phrase about cornerstone that really God made something 00:01:17.959 --> 00:01:27.280 out of nothing. And that is our story. It's a story of our own absolute frailty and weakness 00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:34.839 and just repeated stories of God's incredible kindness and generosity. There was about a 00:01:34.839 --> 00:01:43.000 12 of us who lived in EH 10 in Brunsfield in Morningside who got together, prayed together, 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:49.760 talked together, plotted together and started cornerstone. We met in our flat just beside 00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:54.960 Brunsfield links initially until there was about 30 of us meeting on a Sunday morning 00:01:54.960 --> 00:02:01.480 in the home and then the old Schoolhouse Christian Fellowship kindly gifted us an incredible 00:02:01.480 --> 00:02:08.479 building right opposite Waitrose, the most perfect Morningside location imaginable. And 00:02:08.479 --> 00:02:15.599 there we've been since we launched in 2014. Cornerstone now is a congregation probably 00:02:15.599 --> 00:02:25.359 of about 150 people roughly. It's hard to sort of know exactly. And one of the things 00:02:25.359 --> 00:02:30.399 that you learn as you start churches and lead churches is that you've no idea what you're 00:02:30.399 --> 00:02:37.959 doing but thankfully the Lord does. And one of the things we never anticipated was that 00:02:37.960 --> 00:02:44.120 one very lovely Colombian woman called Bernie who lives in Morningside started bringing along 00:02:44.120 --> 00:02:53.080 other Latino people to our church. And so Spanish ministry, Latino ministry, the Latino 00:02:53.080 --> 00:02:59.080 community has become a really big part of our mission at Cornerstone. And so once a 00:02:59.080 --> 00:03:04.840 month we have a bilingual service where we sing and speak in English and in Spanish. 00:03:04.840 --> 00:03:12.920 Once a month we have a service that's purely 100% all in Spanish. And that's just an incredible 00:03:12.920 --> 00:03:19.039 gift to us and we have a real indebtedness still to St. Columbus because Israel who's 00:03:19.039 --> 00:03:25.640 part of the St. Columbus church family helps lead that Latino ministry too. One of the things 00:03:25.640 --> 00:03:29.599 we wanted to do as we started Cornerstone was to be a church that planted churches and 00:03:29.599 --> 00:03:33.960 we're going to say more about that in a little while. But we've always picked up from St. 00:03:33.960 --> 00:03:39.520 Columbus a training ethos so we've sent off Allie and Haddington work to Cornerstone for 00:03:39.520 --> 00:03:45.480 a while before he went and planted there Chris Davidson who's now in Inverness. And there 00:03:45.480 --> 00:03:49.680 are other people training up for ministry with us right now. Jeff is here tonight and 00:03:49.680 --> 00:03:56.760 Jeff is hopefully going to off to plant a church in Fife. You may think that's a redundant 00:03:56.760 --> 00:04:01.520 process in the most godly and wonderful part of the Scottish nation but anyway we are going 00:04:01.520 --> 00:04:07.920 to hopefully send Jeff to plant a church in Fife this summer. So our story is just of 00:04:07.920 --> 00:04:16.360 a God who's kept providing all along in every way and it's a story of God's mercy. So I 00:04:16.360 --> 00:04:19.879 thought I would just look at the story of the Good Samaritan as well because that's 00:04:19.879 --> 00:04:27.319 another story that's based around mercy. We're celebrating tonight God's mercy to us as a 00:04:27.319 --> 00:04:33.399 church at Cornerstone. Your mercy towards us in our needs. And we really want to acknowledge 00:04:33.399 --> 00:04:41.560 above everything else that God has been our help. This part of Luke's Gospel is about 00:04:41.560 --> 00:04:49.759 mission. God has sent his son Jesus into the world to seek and to save the lost. And now 00:04:49.759 --> 00:04:57.279 the son of God is sending his people into the world to bring the good news of the kingdom. 00:04:57.279 --> 00:05:04.959 And that's as true tonight for you and me as it was back then when Jesus sent out the 72 00:05:04.959 --> 00:05:14.519 earlier in Luke chapter 10. He's still ascending God, sending you and I out on mission to bring 00:05:14.519 --> 00:05:21.559 the good news of God to new people, to new generations, to new cultures. It's a great vision 00:05:21.559 --> 00:05:25.959 that God gave to Derrick and the leadership of St. Columbus. That they would be a church 00:05:25.959 --> 00:05:34.120 that sent people out into the city on mission for the sake of the kingdom. And St. Columbus 00:05:34.120 --> 00:05:40.839 now is a great story to tell of sending out people to start new churches. One of the guys 00:05:40.839 --> 00:05:46.959 who mentored me as I thought about church planting used to talk about different kinds 00:05:46.959 --> 00:05:54.519 of churches as lighthouses and streetlights. And he said a lighthouse is a larger church 00:05:54.519 --> 00:06:00.159 usually in the center of a city and it's got a big powerful light that it can sort of shine 00:06:00.159 --> 00:06:07.199 around the city bringing the light of the gospel. And streetlights are smaller. They're 00:06:07.199 --> 00:06:14.639 not as bright. They don't shine quite so widely. But we need lots of lighthouses and 00:06:14.639 --> 00:06:19.680 we need lots of little streetlights scattered through the city as well to light up the city 00:06:19.680 --> 00:06:25.160 for those who live there. And when I think about it St. Columbus is like a lighthouse 00:06:25.160 --> 00:06:31.079 in the center of the city. And what it's done in Cornerstone and with Haddington and 00:06:31.079 --> 00:06:36.600 S Valley and now Winchbury is it's planting streetlights across the city to light up the 00:06:36.600 --> 00:06:43.519 city with the good news of Jesus Christ. Part of what I do is work for the free church 00:06:43.519 --> 00:06:52.079 of Scotland as a denomination leading a project called 30 by 30 which is the cunningly inventive 00:06:52.079 --> 00:06:57.560 way of saying that we're going to plant 30 churches by 2030. And the St. Columbus and 00:06:57.560 --> 00:07:02.359 Cornerstone are part of that process. And again we just want to see the light of the 00:07:02.359 --> 00:07:10.959 gospel spreading out, lighting up right across our nation. Churches are good things. We did 00:07:10.959 --> 00:07:22.799 a survey about 2014, we did a survey of Scotland and 82% of Scots in 2014 thought that a church 00:07:22.799 --> 00:07:28.719 was a favorable thing for a community to have. Most of them didn't want to go to the church 00:07:28.719 --> 00:07:33.599 but they did think that church was a nice thing for a community to have. And it's true, 00:07:33.600 --> 00:07:41.920 churches bring so many blessings into a community in the way that they serve, care, love and 00:07:41.920 --> 00:07:49.640 help people as well as in the good news proclamation that's at the heart of who we are. So what 00:07:49.640 --> 00:07:53.160 we really want to do in the life of the church of course is to share the light of Jesus with 00:07:53.160 --> 00:08:01.960 people who are really determined to live their life without God, who really see no need for 00:08:01.959 --> 00:08:07.839 God in their lives. And I was quite interested in the Good Samaritan because he's a man, 00:08:07.839 --> 00:08:12.319 or the story of the Good Samaritan is about a man who really doesn't think that he needs 00:08:12.319 --> 00:08:21.159 God in his life. He's religious but he doesn't have much time for God. He's an expert in 00:08:21.159 --> 00:08:26.959 the laws of Israel, the Mosaic Law and he stands up to teach, to test Jesus and he says, 00:08:26.959 --> 00:08:35.279 what must I do to inherit eternal life? And the clue is in the question, isn't it? What 00:08:35.279 --> 00:08:47.519 do I have to do to get eternal life? So he's a man who is religious, he's spiritual, he's 00:08:47.519 --> 00:08:55.360 interested in questions of eternity and life after death and he somehow thinks that that's 00:08:55.360 --> 00:09:02.519 got everything to do with him and not very much to do with God. He thinks that it's 00:09:02.519 --> 00:09:13.720 what he does that's going to make the difference. His life, his efforts, his actions, they're 00:09:13.720 --> 00:09:22.480 the things that will make sure that he gets himself the future that he wants. So he's 00:09:22.480 --> 00:09:30.560 got the irony with which you may be familiar of somebody who's at church a lot, is religious, 00:09:30.560 --> 00:09:39.440 but actually uses that to hide from their need of God. His approach to religion is one 00:09:39.440 --> 00:09:48.440 that avoids God rather than relies on God. Tell me, he says, Jesus, what I need to do 00:09:48.440 --> 00:09:56.520 to make all this happen? And so often, of course, you and I will approach God and approach 00:09:56.520 --> 00:10:04.320 religion the same way as if everything hangs on what we do and how we've lived and how 00:10:04.320 --> 00:10:11.440 we can balance out the bad with the good. Even those of us who would confess ourselves 00:10:11.440 --> 00:10:22.160 to be Christians tonight may often live without any real sense that we need God in our lives. 00:10:22.160 --> 00:10:29.880 No real felt dependence on Jesus Christ. And the way that Jesus responds to the man is 00:10:29.880 --> 00:10:38.960 to try and reveal to him that without God in his life, he has no hope. Jesus tells him 00:10:38.960 --> 00:10:42.800 this, he says, what's written in the law? And the man is chuffed because of course he's 00:10:42.800 --> 00:10:48.360 an expert in the law. Love the Lord your God, he says, with all your heart, soul, strength, 00:10:48.360 --> 00:10:54.000 and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. You've answered correctly, Jesus replied, do 00:10:54.000 --> 00:11:02.400 all that and you will live. And the man then says, well, who is my neighbor because he 00:11:02.400 --> 00:11:07.639 wants to justify himself? And again, the word justify is really important because it's 00:11:07.639 --> 00:11:17.279 about him trying to work out how he makes his life right with God, how he can ensure 00:11:17.279 --> 00:11:27.759 his acceptance with God. And he wants to do that by limiting the idea of neighbor. So 00:11:27.759 --> 00:11:34.639 love your neighbor, he tries to shrink down to a small group of people as he possibly 00:11:34.639 --> 00:11:42.319 will. And so Jesus tells him the story with which you may be familiar. It's quite a proverbial 00:11:42.319 --> 00:11:47.879 kind of story even in our culture, the story of the Good Samaritan, a man who's been beaten 00:11:47.879 --> 00:11:53.799 and robbed and is lying on the edge of the road. And a priest comes by, he's probably 00:11:53.799 --> 00:11:59.639 been up in Jerusalem leading worship in the temple, sacrificing offerings to God. And now 00:11:59.639 --> 00:12:06.279 he's on his way back and he sees the injured man on the road and he swears to avoid him. 00:12:06.279 --> 00:12:11.679 And then comes a Levite, somebody from the tribe of Levite again, somebody with great 00:12:11.679 --> 00:12:18.919 religious tradition and heritage. And they see the injured man and they also avoid him 00:12:18.919 --> 00:12:26.960 and finally becomes, comes along the Samaritan. A suspicious figure, a despised figure even 00:12:26.960 --> 00:12:37.800 in that cultural setting. Somebody who is viewed as an antagonist, as an enemy, as a 00:12:37.800 --> 00:12:46.800 lesser kind of human in every way. And it's this Samaritan of course who goes and helps 00:12:46.800 --> 00:12:53.200 the man in need and shows them such incredible kindness. We read about the Samaritan, he 00:12:53.200 --> 00:12:59.920 sees the man and he takes pity on him, he has compassion. The word there, the languages 00:12:59.920 --> 00:13:07.360 of just been absolutely torn apart inside as he sees the suffering of the man on the 00:13:07.360 --> 00:13:14.240 road. He goes to him, he bandages his wounds, he's gentle and loving, he pours oil on him 00:13:14.240 --> 00:13:20.360 and wine. And then he puts the man on his own donkey, takes him to a place of safety 00:13:20.360 --> 00:13:28.159 and a place of recovery and an inn and pays generously for the man to stay there, saying, 00:13:28.159 --> 00:13:33.639 look after him and I'll come back and I'll pay you anything I owe when I return. Jesus 00:13:33.639 --> 00:13:39.800 says, which of the three was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? 00:13:39.800 --> 00:13:45.560 And the expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him and Jesus says, go and 00:13:45.559 --> 00:13:58.039 do light wise. So Jesus is showing the man, isn't he, the expert in the law that his sort 00:13:58.039 --> 00:14:09.439 of shallow grab at justifying his life before God isn't going to work. Because what the 00:14:09.440 --> 00:14:17.560 telling of the story does is it reveals that at the depths of our being, we can never live 00:14:17.560 --> 00:14:23.920 up to be the person that God has called us to be. We will never find a way in our own 00:14:23.920 --> 00:14:34.480 strength to love God as we should or to love our neighbour as we should. We'll never find 00:14:34.480 --> 00:14:45.120 it within ourselves to answer everything that God asks of us. And so Jesus is trying to 00:14:45.120 --> 00:14:53.560 say to the man, you can't justify yourself. You can't make your own life right before 00:14:53.560 --> 00:15:03.080 God. And that's the same thing that Jesus wants to say to us tonight. If you're relying 00:15:03.080 --> 00:15:08.879 on yourself to make your life right with God, you're always going to come short and you're 00:15:08.879 --> 00:15:12.720 going to crush yourself with the effort and you're probably going to crush everybody else 00:15:12.720 --> 00:15:24.560 around you. So if we can't make our own lives right with God, what hope do we have? Who 00:15:24.560 --> 00:15:32.000 will be the one who has mercy on us? Who's the one who's going to cross the road to find 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:41.399 us in our woundedness and gently heal our wounds and take us to a place where we are 00:15:41.399 --> 00:15:51.879 able to recover and be restored? And of course the answer to that is that Jesus is to us 00:15:51.879 --> 00:15:58.600 as the Samaritan was to the man on the road. Jesus sees us in our need, our brokenness and 00:15:58.600 --> 00:16:13.960 our lostness. And instead of turning away, He has moved. He has moved to weep for you, 00:16:13.960 --> 00:16:25.879 to cross over to you, to reach out for you and to heal you. To lift you up, to wash 00:16:25.879 --> 00:16:38.480 you clean and to make you whole again. Jesus is the perfect neighbour who'll never turn 00:16:38.480 --> 00:16:48.600 away from you in your need. And it's that experience of the mercy of Jesus. It's the 00:16:48.600 --> 00:16:57.399 way that Jesus is willing to neighbour us that makes us want to learn to be a better 00:16:57.399 --> 00:17:10.519 neighbour to others. It's experiencing the mercy of Jesus that forms mercy in our hearts. 00:17:10.519 --> 00:17:20.879 And it's that mercy that makes us look across the city and see the people in need and grieve 00:17:20.879 --> 00:17:32.480 for them and weep for them and pray for them and cross the road for them to tell them that 00:17:32.480 --> 00:17:40.720 there's good news not in us but in the Saviour who loved us and gave himself for us. And 00:17:40.720 --> 00:17:46.400 that's all that church planting is really about, is saying we want our neighbours to 00:17:46.400 --> 00:17:56.000 know all about Jesus Christ. We want to love them well. We want to show them the goodness 00:17:56.000 --> 00:18:00.839 of Christ. As we think about the story of the Good Samaritan, I want to say to myself 00:18:00.839 --> 00:18:13.039 and to you, God is calling us to a life of mercy. Mercy brings courage, brings gentleness, 00:18:13.039 --> 00:18:18.319 it brings generosity. I think we see that in the Good Samaritan, don't we? The other 00:18:18.319 --> 00:18:25.359 two guys were probably afraid that whoever kicked a life out of the guy in the road that 00:18:25.359 --> 00:18:31.000 if they stopped to help they would get the same kind of doing. And so it takes courage 00:18:31.000 --> 00:18:39.199 to stop and see the people in trouble and give them time. He's incredibly gentle with 00:18:39.199 --> 00:18:47.799 a man, isn't he? So, so careful with him. And he's also amazingly generous. And to show 00:18:47.799 --> 00:18:55.319 the mercy of Jesus in our culture does take courage to stand out, to be different, to 00:18:55.319 --> 00:19:03.960 take personal risks and make personal sacrifices. And if you're going to be involved in church 00:19:03.960 --> 00:19:09.439 planting and Christian mission locally or anywhere else in the world, you're going to 00:19:09.439 --> 00:19:16.599 have to give up stuff and have courage to do things differently. But you're also going 00:19:16.599 --> 00:19:29.039 to need to be like Jesus, full of mercy and compassion and gentleness and generosity. 00:19:29.039 --> 00:19:34.759 And one of the things that we really want to happen as we plant churches is for God 00:19:34.759 --> 00:19:43.799 to bring all different kinds of people together and unify them through the gospel. You know, 00:19:43.799 --> 00:19:50.720 at the heart of the story of the Good Samaritan is the story of ethnic and religious and racial 00:19:50.720 --> 00:20:01.279 dislike or hatred, deep seated contempt across cultures. And Jesus is showing how love bridges 00:20:01.279 --> 00:20:08.279 those differences and divisions. And we live in a culture that is deeply divided and where 00:20:08.279 --> 00:20:18.200 differences is exaggerated to create conflict. And the gospel gives us a way to cross differences 00:20:18.200 --> 00:20:24.240 and create unity. Derek was sort of talking at the beginning about a little bit of Pentecostalism. 00:20:24.240 --> 00:20:29.000 And we love when we, when at Cornerstone, we sing in different languages together, we 00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:36.599 love it. Because it's such a beautiful expression of what the gospel does to heal differences, 00:20:36.599 --> 00:20:45.119 heal division and create a new humanity, one people out of the life of Jesus Christ. And 00:20:45.119 --> 00:20:51.359 so as we go out, we're going to meet lots of different kinds of people. And we want to 00:20:51.359 --> 00:20:56.839 bring all these different kinds of people together and help them find new life in new 00:20:56.839 --> 00:21:03.799 community through the gospel. And if the story of the Good Samaritan is teaching us something, 00:21:03.799 --> 00:21:08.519 it's teaching us we depend utterly on God and all of this. The work of the gospel, the 00:21:08.519 --> 00:21:18.240 work of salvation is His work. And so as we plant churches, we depend completely and utterly 00:21:18.240 --> 00:21:23.639 on the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no way that I can create a community of light. There's 00:21:23.639 --> 00:21:30.000 no way that you can create a community of light. But God is the one who creates communities 00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:37.119 of light, who makes light shine in the darkness. So think about how you can be involved in 00:21:37.119 --> 00:21:44.279 the mission of God, in your neighborhood, in your family, in your community and in church 00:21:44.279 --> 00:21:51.119 planting. It's very nice to see. I was about to say the next batch of victims, but the 00:21:51.119 --> 00:21:56.200 winch for a people, how do I describe you? The next guinea pigs, the next storm troopers, 00:21:56.200 --> 00:21:59.160 whatever you're going to be. But it's great to have some of the winch for people here 00:21:59.160 --> 00:22:04.360 because that church gets started. At Cornerstone, we're thinking and praying and trying to figure 00:22:04.360 --> 00:22:10.960 out about a church plant in Gilmerton in the south of Edinburgh. We want to see, and part 00:22:10.960 --> 00:22:17.519 of the 30 by 30 plan is another 10 congregations in Edinburgh before 2030. So it's quite a 00:22:17.519 --> 00:22:24.800 lot to do. We've got a couple on one underway in Winchborough, one in my head about Gilmerton, 00:22:24.799 --> 00:22:36.519 and beyond that, nothing. And I can't be seen to fail in this plan. So it's very important. 00:22:36.519 --> 00:22:41.200 I think this is the great thing when we started off there. We all knew if God doesn't do this, 00:22:41.200 --> 00:22:45.639 it doesn't happen. And it's always good to be standing in a place looking forward, thinking 00:22:45.639 --> 00:22:50.639 if God doesn't do this, it won't happen. And certainly as we look forward to planting 00:22:50.640 --> 00:22:58.240 another 10 churches in the city, if God doesn't do it, it won't happen. But what can we do? 00:22:58.240 --> 00:23:01.880 Well, we can certainly be praying and do keep praying about this because we need a work of 00:23:01.880 --> 00:23:08.320 the Spirit. We can give money. It costs money to plant in Winchborough or Gilmerton or wherever 00:23:08.320 --> 00:23:15.480 else. So keep giving. And I know that many of you give extremely generously. And keep 00:23:15.480 --> 00:23:20.759 going. Sorry, Derek, but I might encourage some of your people to go out and plant a church 00:23:20.759 --> 00:23:26.079 somewhere else. But yeah, going. As you think about your life and where God might put you, 00:23:26.079 --> 00:23:31.680 then we have to be ready to go where God will use us for His glory. So that's a kind of half 00:23:31.680 --> 00:23:39.799 sermon, half memoir, half church planting talk. So it's 1.5 of a talk and I'll finish. 00:23:39.799 --> 00:23:45.680 Right. We are just I'll say a short prayer and then we'll sing our last song and that's 00:23:45.680 --> 00:23:52.559 it. Father, we want to say thank you for the mercy of the gospel. We have no hope without 00:23:52.559 --> 00:24:01.639 it for ourselves or for our city or for the world we live in. But thank you that you saw 00:24:01.639 --> 00:24:08.399 us in our need and you had compassion and you came to us and you rescued us. And please, 00:24:08.400 --> 00:24:14.640 Father in heaven, put that same heart of mercy in us this evening that we will have compassion 00:24:14.640 --> 00:24:20.680 in our city, that we will weep for it and that we will long for its salvation and that 00:24:20.680 --> 00:24:26.960 we will do all we can to bring the good news of Jesus Christ. Thank you for this church, 00:24:26.960 --> 00:24:34.960 for Derek and the other leaders, for the eldership, for all who've led with such vision and generosity 00:24:34.960 --> 00:24:40.200 to spread the gospel. And we pray that we would see so much more good coming from this 00:24:40.200 --> 00:25:05.680 church in the future. In Jesus' name, amen.