Join Berni Dymet in this powerful series – Breaking Free from the Power of Sin – as he takes a look at life from a different perspective. 

Join Berni Dymet in this powerful series – Breaking Free from the Power of Sin – as he takes a look at life from a different perspective. 

Join Berni Dymet in this powerful series – Breaking Free from the Power of Sin – as he takes a look at life from a different perspective. 

Join Berni Dymet in this powerful series – Breaking Free from the Power of Sin – as he takes a look at life from a different perspective. 

Join Berni Dymet in this powerful series – Breaking Free from the Power of Sin – as he takes a look at life from a different perspective.   

Join Berni Dymet in this powerful new series – Breaking Free from the Power of Sin – as he takes a look at life from a different perspective. 

Join Berni Dymet in this powerful new series – Breaking Free from the Power of Sin – as he takes a look at life from a different perspective. 

Join Berni Dymet in this powerful new series – Breaking Free from the Power of Sin – as he takes a look at life from a different perspective. 

Join Berni Dymet in this powerful new series – Breaking Free from the Power of Sin – as he takes a look at life from a different perspective. 

Join Berni Dymet in this powerful new series – Breaking Free from the Power of Sin – as he takes a look at life from a different perspective. 

Join Berni Dymet, this week on Christianityworks as he opens God’s Word to discover exactly that – how to lay hold of the abundant joy that God has ready and waiting for you. 

Join Berni Dymet, this week on Christianityworks as he opens God’s Word to discover exactly that – how to lay hold of the abundant joy that God has ready and waiting for you. 

Join Berni Dymet, this week on Christianityworks as he opens God’s Word to discover exactly that – how to lay hold of the abundant joy that God has ready and waiting for you. 

Join Berni Dymet, this week on Christianityworks as he opens God’s Word to discover the abundant joy that God has ready and waiting for you. 

We have all seen those movies that start with, you know, a message in a bottle. It comes bobbing across the ocean from some place on the other side of the world and it’s washed up on a beach somewhere and someone comes along and finds the bottle. And we are all sitting there on the edge of our seats wondering ‘Ok, what does the message say?’ And they play the music and the suspense grows ‘Come on, hurry up, open the bottle and tell us what it says.’

Now let me ask you something – if you were that person; the person who found the bottle, what would you do? Here are your choices: (a) you ignore the bottle ‘Ok there’s a message in the bottle – who cares?’, (b) you pick it up, you throw it back in the ocean – ‘Let someone else read the stupid message, (c) you take it home and you forget about it ‘Yea, I’ll get around to it one day’, or (d) you open the bottle and read the message ‘I wonder what it says?’ As Bart Simpson would say ‘Duh!’.

Obviously we would pounce on that bottle and open it. Who knows how long it’s been in the ocean or where it’s come from or who wrote the message or what it says. I mean how awesome – a message in a bottle! And what if you opened the bottle and discovered that it was a love letter; a love letter written in one sense, to anyone but in another sense, a love letter written specifically to you?

Now that would be amazing wouldn’t it? As long as people have had ink and paper, there have been love letters. I mean, love letters or cards or flowers, they are a really special way to say ‘I love you’. They say ‘I love you’ in a way that nothing else does. And anybody who has been through a courtship will probably have the odd love letter tucked away somewhere.

There’s one letter though; one love letter that’s more special than any other. It begins like this:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness He called ‘night’ and there was evening and there was morning on the first day. (That comes from Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 to 5)

It’s a love letter that begins with an account of where you and I came from. And as you read on, page after page, you are struck by the overwhelming intensity of the love of God that just overflows from every page into your heart.

Then a bit further on, somewhere in the middle, it says something like this:

God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but will have eternal life. For God didn’t send His Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through Him. (John chapter 3, verse 16 and 17)

And right towards the end, this is the note on which this love letter finishes:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. I saw a Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men and He will live with them and they will be his people and God himself with be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away.” (That comes from Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 to 3)

This is one awesome love letter and of course, you will probably recognise that they are little chunks out of a huge love letter that these days we call ‘The Bible’. ‘Oh no, not the Bible!’ Now I remember not that many years ago when people would say ‘the Bible’ and I would think ‘Oh no, not the Bible! I mean these old fashioned, fundamentalist, irrelevant Bible bashing – how can they ever begin to believe in that stuff? And imagine reading a stuffy old book like that? I mean – really!’

But when I read those little bits and a whole bunch more of the Bible, what I discovered was that it wasn’t a fundamentalist, religious treatise at all. Fundamentalism – some dogmatic expression of religion – was never God’s idea. It’s something that human beings have taken and twisted God’s love and truth into.

Now when you read the Bible, what you discover is the most awesome love letter; the most amazing plan that God has for your life and for my life, here and now and for eternity. It’s a huge story of God’s engagement of humanity and in it He reveals His love and His grace – a love and a grace that unfolds through the stories of ordinary, fallible people; people like you and me. A story of love and grace that we thought we understood and then all of a sudden we meet the person of Jesus Christ and realize that we understood nothing at all.

Now I definitely had negative images of the Bible – absolutely! I just couldn’t understand how anybody could begin to believe that stuff. Now, you might say ‘Berni, that’s heresy, I believe every word.’ Well, good for you, but there are lots of people who say they believe every word who have one of those thick books at home, somewhere on a shelf or in a cupboard, collecting dust.

Let me get right to the point here. Some people will say ‘Well, God seems to be a million miles away.’ But do you know what I find when I talk to people like that? These are the very same people who have their love letter from God sitting somewhere on a shelf or in a cupboard, collecting dust. And my answer is ‘He’s not, you have just put Him on the shelf.’

I want to shake you out of this attitude that ‘The Bible’ is some kind of, I don’t know, optional extra in our walk with God. The Bible is alive; it is God’s living Word. And when we read it, we need to open it up and say ‘Father, you know, I believe that this is You talking to me today. I believe this is Your will for my life. I believe that Your Holy Spirit wants to shine Your love and Your light and Your grace and Your wisdom into my heart today, through the words on this page.’

It’s alive! It is the living word of the living God – it’s that message in a bottle and it’s His chosen way of speaking with us. Not through some dry theological textbook – no not that at all. But through real life stories that engage our hearts and captivate us with His awesome love.

The Bible is an amazing book! You know, it was written over a fifteen hundred year period, starting around 1350BC and finishing towards the end of the first century AD. It was written originally in three different languages. Most of the Old Testament in Hebrew, most of the New Testament in Greek and a little bit in Aramaic, which was the language that Jesus spoke, smattered through both the Old and the New.

It has many different authors from many different cultures in different time periods and different backgrounds, with different things going on when these sixty-six different books of the Bible were written. It has been translated into hundreds of languages and it has been copied by hand because before Gutenberg’s printing press in the mid-1400s, there was no way of printing or replicating it. The only way to create copies of the Bible back then, was for people called ‘scribes’ to write the whole thing out by hand – over and over and over again. Can you believe that?

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Well, we are in the middle of a series that I’ve called ‘How to Get Close to God’. There are two parts to that, I guess, the theory and the practice. The theory of some of the things that we have to know about God – if you can call that theory and we looked at that a couple of weeks ago on the programme and the most important thing is: is that He has this amazing passion to be close to you and me – to be close to us.

We can have things not going so well and we slip into this thinking which is quite wrong – very wrong – that ‘God just wants to punish me. God could never be interested in me.’ God’s Word says this:

God yearns jealously for the Spirit that He has made to dwell in us. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Humble yourself before the Lord and He will exalt you. (You can read that in James chapter 4, verses 5 to 10)

I want to encourage you to remember that verse every time things are tough and out there in the cut and thrust of life, because that’s the reality – not some quiet super spiritual existence. We all have a life – I have one, you have one – and out there in this thing we call ‘life’, that’s where we forget about the heart of God and we revert back to this vague notion of some distant and disinterested God.

For most people these days, life is pretty hectic – family and work and mobile phones and email and taking the kids here and running them there and … somehow we just seem to be working longer and playing less. And while life can be filled with possibilities and opportunities, some days there are tensions and stresses – there just are.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, we get to wondering, ‘Well, where is God today? I wonder if He is going to show up.’ But it’s only a fleeting thought because we are so busy – running late at work again we wonder, ‘Will I make it home in time to get the kids off to football practice?’ Our minds are so focussed on this stuff that we are involved in, here and now, then you get to the end of the day and you feel drained and you wonder, ‘How come God didn’t show up today? What’s the matter with me, isn’t He interested? What do I have to do to get close to God?

Ever been there? I have, in fact, I used to be there almost every day and when that’s the reality of our lives, we can get to thinking, ‘Well, that’s just the way it’s going to be.’ We accept this distant, fleeting, every now and then kind of relationship with God, forgetting completely, the words that Jesus prayed for you and me, just before He was crucified. Words that tell us what lay behind His decision to take that road of crucifixion.

You can read this in John’s Gospel chapter 17, beginning at verse 20 – so grab a Bible if you have one. He says:

My prayer, Father isn’t for them alone, I pray for all those who will believe in me through their message, (In fact, Jesus is talking about you and me.) that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Father, I want those whom You have given me to be with me where I am, to see my glory – the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. (John 17:20-24)

You see that’s why Jesus went to the cross – so that He could be one with you and me – so that we could be with Him where He is. Can there be any greater love than that? Jesus has a passion for closeness and when we look at Jesus we see God – that’s what He said. You look at Him there in that garden, just before the cross and you know all about His heart. Look at this heart: “Father, I want those whom you have given to me to be with me where I am and to see my glory.”

But then there is just this hectic reality of life, isn’t there? And then there is that prayer that Jesus prayed for you and I in those dark hours seem such an incredibly long way off. Maybe you are a mother and you are changing dirty nappies or your child has nappy rash and she is teething and you haven’t had any sleep and you are wondering, ‘Whatever happened to being able to go to work? Whatever happened to intelligent adult conversation? Where’s God?’ and you feel like your world is falling apart.

Let me ask you something – is God in that place with you? Let me make it more personal than that – is Jesus … the same Jesus who prayed that prayer in that dark and lonely garden that night – is that Jesus there with you? Or maybe you are at work and you are going to go to a tough meeting and the politics is running rife and you are under threat and you are so tense you could cut the air with a knife, you are tired, you’re threatened, you are at risk. Let me ask you something – is Jesus in that place with you?

Whatever your place, whatever your circumstances, whatever your routine is today, tomorrow and the next day, do you believe that Jesus is God and that He is in that place with you?

See, this is a conundrum that everyone who sets their heart on Christ will face at some point. We can step out and believe in Jesus – we can decide that we are going to bow every part of our lives down to Him but then … then life just gets busy; very busy and we have an amazing propensity to focus on just the here and now; the things that we have to deal with today and all that Jesus stuff, well, that has to wait.

Somehow we separate our walk with Jesus from our walk through life. We westerners in particular, are very good at that – spirituality in one box, life in another – Jesus over there and life over here. And so we don’t experience that intimacy, that closeness with the One whom we call Lord. It frustrates the living daylights out of us and before we know it we are saying ‘Oh, it’s just all too hard’ and we acquiesce; we accept this poverty of relationship as being, well, somehow the normative Christian life.

What an utter tragedy! Put yourself in Jesus shoes for a moment. In that time leading up to His crucifixion – that dreadful, fearful, painful time – knowing what was about to happen and the ache in His heart and that heartfelt prayer: “Father I want those whom you have given to me to be with me where I am and to see my glory – the glory that you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”

And so He went to the cross for you and me. How can we make such a tragic mistake? What’s the answer? How do we solve this dilemma?

So how … how do we get close to someone we can’t see? It’s bazaar – why didn’t God make Himself visible? If God is God why is it that He has gone and hidden Himself? Well there’s a reason for that – it’s about giving us a free choice to love Him. Imagine if we could see God – imagine if who He is were completely visible to us, would anybody run away from Him? Would anyone turn their backs on this powerful, awesome, mighty, loving God? No, He has hidden Himself and sent us His Son and given us an invitation to believe in Him.

You see, without faith it’s impossible to please God because anyone who comes to Him has to believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. That’s what the Bible says in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 6.

Believe and seek – believe that he is here, believe that he will do what...

I just want to set the scene … we are in the second programme of a four programme series that I’ve called “How to Get Close to God”. And so many people have this desire to be close to God – they want it, but it’s been elusive. It’s hard to get close to God – we can’t see Him, we can’t touch Him, we can’t hear His voice – we want it, but how?

Interesting … a husband and a wife, they love each other, they want to be close and yet so often marriages fail because they just don’t know how to be close and how to love one another. And it can be the same thing with God. So often we drift away; we hear the promises of God but we just don’t know ‘How can I live them out? What do I do? How can I be close to God?’ And so we can’t believe the promises because we can’t experience them.

We began this important series last week on the programme when we looked at God’s promise that if we believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins, then we have already been brought close to Him. That promise is kind of like the marriage promise that a husband and a wife make at their wedding – it’s completely unconditional – it’s a promise for life. And from God’s perspective, there’s no divorce.

Let’s have another listen to that promise – it comes in two parts – the first part is about God’s desire; the desire of His heart. Have a listen – if you’ve got a Bible, grab it, open it at James chapter 4, beginning at verse 5. This is what it says:

God yearns jealously for the Spirit that He has made to dwell in us. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Humble yourself before the Lord and He will exalt you. (James 4:5)

And the second part is what God did to fulfil that desire; what He did comes in Ephesians chapter 2, beginning at verse 13:

Now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far away, have been brought near through the blood of Christ. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near, for through Him we both have access to the Father by the one Spirit. (Ephesians 2:13-18)

A desire and an action. Together He’s promised the intimacy for us … a promise He will never break; a promise that we can live our lives in with absolute certainty.

So the first step that brings us close to God is the step that He takes through the cross, towards each one of us. It’s a step that He took – the cross is for you and for me – the cross opens the way to God for each one of us. In fact, the cross is the way. That’s why Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one shall come to the Father except through Me.” And the only response that He requires of us is simply to believe in Him, with all that we are – with our very lives – to put our faith in Jesus.

I don’t know about you but every time I rest in that wondrous truth my heart is fit to burst with a joy that words can’t describe. So often I have sat quietly on my own, just gazing with the eyes of my soul, at that wondrous cross and wept with joy at God’s incomprehensible plan to draw me close to Him. Those times without doubt, are the high points of my life. Even if all around there are dark storm clouds; even if all around people seem to be raging and arguing and there is conflict in the middle of that, I can sit quietly and experience the knowledge of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

Today I want to take a look at the next step to getting close to God. He took that first mighty step – we looked at that last week on the programme and we respond with a small stumble of faith and … there it is – the marriage promise; the marriage covenant; the eternal relationship between God and you, between God and me, has begun – an eternal marriage.

But what comes next? How do we experience the closeness, the intimacy of that relationship in the reality of our lives? Well, this week we are going to take this one step further, well, not just us, but God. And to understand what He’s about, we are going to use the language of marriage because it makes an awful lot of sense.

Weddings are wonderful but they don’t go on forever. They’re celebrations, when everybody gets dressed up and family and friends come along – this beautiful ceremony where a man and a woman decide in front of everybody, to make that promise; that declaration that they are going to spend the rest of their lives together. Then they have a ceremony, they sign the register, there are flower and photos and a feast and it’s fabulous.

And it’s exactly the same at the moment that we go to God and ask for His forgiveness and accept Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Lord. It’s an awesome, awesome thing! If it’s something you have never done I just want to encourage you that there is no time like right now, to pray just a simple prayer.

Now back to my wedding – I remember that time – when Jacqui and I were married; a few years ago now but it was just unreal. Being a typical male I said, ‘Well, why don’t we just go to church on Sunday morning and have the wedding as part of the Sunday service and we can have some coffee and some fairy bread afterwards.’ Well, not surprisingly, my lovely Jacqui did not quite see things that way. Instead we hired a marquee and put it up on the vacant block next to our church building and our friends and family came along. By the way, I still had the fairy bread served to her at the bridal table and I had the video with a priceless expression on her face when the plate arrived. Anyway, it was just a wonderful celebration of a man and a woman falling in love and deciding to spend the rest of their lives together as husband and wife.

But, you know the best part of that day for me was when, at the end of the celebration, the car came to pick us up and we left everybody else behind. I still remember that feeling when we hopped into the car to take us to the airport so that we could fly off on our honeymoon. I remember waving to the people and driving off thinking, “This is by far the best part of the wedding, leaving the people behind.’ It’s not so much that I didn’t enjoy the celebration, I did, it was great – but heading off together as husband and wife was awesome. And so began that process of becoming one; of making a life together and a home together, “The two shall become one flesh and cleave to one another.”

See, it’s exactly the same when we leave the rest of the world behind for Christ’s sake; when we except Jesus into our hearts; when we accept once and for all, His offer of eternal relationship through His sacrifice on the cross. We head off with Him. And strangely, in the Bible, God uses the same language as the language of marriage to describe what happens next. And we are going to have a look at what happens next, after that beautiful marriage promise, next.

We were taking a look earlier at how two people come to be one; to be intimate and close in marriage. The wedding is great but then they leave all the other people behind at the wedding and head off on their own, to become one – to set up home together – well that’s marriage.

But how does this closeness, this intimacy work in our relationship with God? As it turns out, exactly the same as in a marriage. We set up house together, we move in with one another – God moves into us and we move into Him – we live together with God, as one. That’s Jesus plan – take a look – He says to His disciples:

If you love me, you will obey what I command and I’ll ask the Father and He will give you another counsellor to be with you forever – the...

Intimacy in relationships is something that we all long for but we live in a world today where very few people really discover the intimacy that they are looking for. Why is that?” Well, let me just give you one example – pornography and the internet – they seem to be made for one another. Every year the internet pornography industry is measured in the hundreds of billions of US dollars. At any second well over fifty thousand people are viewing pornography on the internet and somewhere between 5 and 10 % of all websites are pornography related. Now those estimates are probably way under the reality.

And the research says that this is having a real impact on marriages – there is increased marital distress and there is a risk of separation and divorce through pornography. There is decreased marital intimacy and sexual satisfaction – there’s infidelity – there’s increased appetite for more graphic types of pornography and sexual activity associated with abusive legal or unsafe practices. Monogamy – that’s one husband, one wife – is being devalued. Marriage and child rearing are falling apart; there is an increasing number of people struggling with compulsive and addictive sexual behaviour.

See, pornography is something that the world says ‘Well, it’s just a lifestyle choice – instant gratification is fine’ but actually it’s a silent killer. When it comes to true intimacy, people are forsaking the one wondrous blessing of intimacy that God planned for them in marriage – the real thing – for a fake.

Do you see the irony of this? And it’s not just in pornography; you see it in business, you see people being overworked; you see tiredness – life is a whole bunch more transactional today than it ever was. It’s a ‘supermarket check-out’ kind of world instead of a ‘corner-store’ kind of world. So we’ve come to have pretty low expectations when it comes to relationships of real depth. We just expect the world to be more transactional and less relational; less intimate – we do!

And yet deep inside the heart of every man and woman and child is a deep yearning for intimacy. A huge part of that is a yearning to be close to God. Not everybody calls it that; not everyone sees it that way – you look across every culture and civilization though – advanced or so called ‘primitive’ – and you see a yearning for God. Whether we have never really encountered God or whether we have been walking with Him for a lifetime, there remain many people who want to be close to Him and yet they struggle to discover that sort of intimacy. It’s frustrating.

That’s why we are starting a new series today called “How to Get Close to God”. There are two parts to that: understanding the simple truths about what God has done to bring us close – God’s truth is always as simple as it is beautiful; and understanding how we can respond to that. So we are going to look at some simple, practical guidance as to how; that’s why I’ve called this series “How to Get Close to God” not some esoteric theory but discovering His truth with our lives.

I want to introduce you right now to something that God says in the New Testament – it’s in the Book of James:

God yearns jealously for the Spirit that He has made to dwell in us. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Humble yourself before the Lord and He will exalt you” (James 4: 5-10)

It’s a beautiful simple statement – God yearns and when we take a step or two; small and faltering though those steps may be – when we take those steps towards Him, the promise is that He will draw near to us, when we humble ourselves by doing that, He will exalt us.

This is something we are going to unpack on the programme this week and in the coming weeks – to bring this truth alive in our hearts; flowing through our veins – a truth that’s for living, not just a truth just for knowing in our heads, you know. This getting close to God is about knowing the truth but experiencing the truth and living God’s truth in our lives. Actually, living a life where we experience a ‘closeness’ to God. So it’s not just head knowledge – it’s a truth for living.

Now that I should be the one to speak with you about drawing close to God is such an incredible testimony to God’s outrageous grace. You see, for me it all began, this ‘Jesus’ thing, in a dark and dangerous hour – a time in my life when I seemed such a long way off from God – at least that’s how it seemed. I’d strayed so far and yet, it was in the middle of the darkest nights, on the stormiest oceans of life that His grace found me. His light shone for me. I will never forget the inky blackness that surrounded me in those days and I shall never forget how my Saviour reached out to me in that place.

And my prayer for you as we journey together for a time is that the things that we talk about from God’s Word today and over the next few weeks will be a signpost; a marker that points you Christ-ward. And as you come to grips with these beautiful and simple and profound truths, that the Spirit of God will write them on your heart so that you will never be alone again.

I look back on my life as a teenager – I had everything – a good home, a good school, great friends and later on in my high school life, I encountered Jesus – I believed in Him and I began a relationship with Him – in fact, I committed my life to Him. You know what that is like as teenagers, we have the luxury of, I don’t know, innocent idealism and we are not afraid to be dreamers.

And for me, as a teenager, somehow it was so much easier to believe in Jesus back then than it was when I grew up into adulthood – and grow up I did! I had the responsibility and the money and the mortgage and the career and the car – all the things that come with being an adult. And the plain reality of it all was that God was pushed into the back seat, I simply didn’t need Him.

Jesus just didn’t fit into the realities of my career and the money and the opportunity that presented themselves. Well, I guess I still kind of believed in Him, for a while, but little by little I headed off in my own direction. After all I had grown up; I had matured and when that happened it was natural for me to conclude that, ‘Well, I didn’t need that ‘Jesus’ stuff anymore.’

I just want to continue on with a little bit of my own story; a story of a life that just drifted away from God because my hunch is that in the mistakes that I made, well, some of them might just resonate a little bit with you. Because the reality is about where we are living at the moment; we see the world from where we sit. Our perception is our reality.

If we are walking every day with Jesus, praying and enjoying our relationship with Him then that relationship is real; it’s alive, but if we are focussing on all the things in the here and now – which is what I spent most of my life doing – if we allow all our senses to be filled and to be crowded with the sights and the sounds and the smells of creation alone, then all too quickly, the Creator fades from our view.

Now that’s not just a God thing, it happens in every relationship. A man and a woman come together in marriage – they love each other; they enjoy each other, but as time ticks on, they so often begin to focus on a whole bunch of other things that crowd out that relationship part of their marriage – work, careers, kids, money, buying, having, possessing and eventually, sadly, the two that were meant to be one, drift apart again to become two. Eventually that marriage will fall apart. You and I know t...

It’s a sobering thought isn’t it? The time that you and I have left on planet earth is finite. It will come to an end one day, no doubt at a time that we least expect it.

Now, I run a busy diary in my life – I use an electronic one, that’s available on my computer, my tablet and my smartphone so that no matter where I am, I can check my diary, add in tasks and appointments and move things around. In fact, I really don’t know how I managed my life, before I had this diary that replicates itself instantly and automatically across all my devices.

This week and next week are pretty much all taken. You certainly wouldn’t get a meeting with me this week, and a couple of slots are left next week maybe for emergencies, and even the week after next is starting to fill up.

And there are diary entries for speaking engagements and all sorts of things that reach out over the next eighteen months. All in my diary. All colour coded – board stuff, broadcasting stuff, admin stuff, meetings, personal stuff, even the odd holiday – put in my diary way ahead of time so I don’t book anything else. All good stuff.

But think about this: the Lord could demand my life of me today, or maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow morning. I mean, I don’t know. I’m planning and working as though I have a long time left on planet earth. I feel like I have … but really, none of us knows. I don’t know and you don’t know.

I remember once a few years back, with an equally busy diary, I fell quite ill and ended up in hospital, I was really very sick. Do you have any idea how irrelevant that diary became to me as I was lying there in that hospital with tubes sticking out of me?

All the things I thought were important became unimportant. All the things I thought I had to get done this week, next week, the week after, they were left undone as I recovered. And I know this is going to shock you – NO, the world didn’t come to an end, and there wasn’t a rupture in the space-time continuum because Berni didn’t get done the things he planned to do.

And I imagine that one day the Lord will take me home, and that diary with all its appointments and tasks that were oh, so important – well, they’ll just get deleted off the computer, off the tablet, off the mobile phone, out of the cloud. And that … will be that.

And it’s going to be exactly the same for you. All the things that you thought were so important … won’t get done, will be no more and will be forgotten.

So now I want you to think about … what really is important? In the time that you have left, what is your purpose for being here on this earth? What is your principal purpose?

Because it’s that purpose that will start to guide the things that you put into your diary. It’s your purpose that’ll tell you which tasks and meetings are important, and which ones really aren’t. It’s your purpose that will decide how exactly you spend your years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds … between now … and when you breathe your last.

Now it seems to me, if our purpose is just to get stuff done here and now that we need to get done, to make money, to put food on the table and enjoy life, then … well, that’s a pretty myopic, short-sighted view and it’s a recipe for a short-term life, a life that stops dead, when your heart stops.

When Jesus was asked, which of the commandments (all 613 of them in the Old Testament) was the most important, this is what He said. Mark chapter 12, verses 29 to 31:

The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second one is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.

Now let’s imagine for a moment that you were to take that to heart. Let’s imagine that you decided, if you haven’t already, that with every breath that you take between now and then, you decide to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, with every fibre of your being. And similarly to love others as you love yourself.

Might I ask you, if that were true, if that became your purpose for living, how would it change the things that you put in your diary? How would it change your priorities? How would it change what you spend your time on?

What I’ve always found in my life, and I’m pretty sure it’s true in your life as well, is that nothing changes in what I say or do, until something changes in my heart. The reason I know it to be true is not just that it’s true in my experience, but because it’s precisely what Jesus said. Luke chapter 6, verse 45:

The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

There are many people today whose life isn’t going in the right direction. Often we don’t know why, we just know it’s not right. There’s a lack of joy, there’s a lack of fulfilment. Or perhaps there’s the pain of regret. And often we don’t know what the right direction even looks like.

And if perhaps you sense that that’s what’s going on in your life today, and you’re looking for a fresh start in this new year, then I want to encourage you with all that I am, I want to implore you … to have a change of heart, to establish YOUR purpose based on what Jesus said was the most important thing. And that is:

…to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and to love your neighbour as yourself.

Because if that truly becomes your purpose in living, then God will set a new life before you. A life that, whilst hard some days, you’ll know is heading in the right direction.

Back when I was in the Army, we used to use a 7.62mm SLR – now, that’s not a camera, it’s a rifle. A fairly large 7.62mm standard NATO round, in a self-loading rifle, which means you didn’t have to cock it each time you fired it. When you fired it, it had a mechanism in it that would harness the power of the gas in the muzzle as the bullet was flying out, as a back-force to automatically re-cock the rifle, putting the next round in the chamber, ready to fire it again.

Pretty clever stuff. We spent hours, and hours and hours in the hot sun out on the firing range, practicing hitting the target. Now the target was pretty big – it was one metre square, with obviously concentric circles and a bullseye in the centre. At the 25 metre mound, you couldn’t help but hit it dead centre. That became a bit harder at 50 metres and then 100 metres.

But let me tell you, once you got back to the 300 metre mound, it was the easiest thing in the world, to completely miss the square metre altogether. Just the slightest movement and you’d miss, which is not at all good, since you’re practicing to take out the other guy who, in a war situation, would be shooting back at you.

We didn’t have telescopic sights back then. So you practiced your breathing, you practiced shifting your focus from the target to the front-sight to the back-sight and back again, and then squeezing – not jerking – squeezing off the round. Mind you, when you squeezed the trigger, the percussion of the bullet firing would fair rip your shoulder off. A lot of that was to do with the physics around a large bullet, these days most armies use a smaller 5.56mm round so it’s n...

It’s true, isn’t it? The world is full of options for us. I mean, I look at the career options that kids seem to have before them today. There are so many more of them. It just didn’t seem that way when I was making those decisions forty years ago. Look at the entertainment options that we have: The whole smartphone and tablet/computer revolution, the way the Internet has put everything in the palm of our hands.

So often when I’m out, say at a café, I see parents with young children. Now back in my day, keeping the kids entertained and quiet was a challenge. These days though, these tiny tots are sitting there playing their favourite game on Mum and Dad’s phone or tablet. There are travel options; options about where we live, how we live; where we work, how we work.

I’m trying to think of my grandfather, who was born in Romania back in 1889. He lived in a house that didn’t have glass in the windows but animal-skins, and I think back to his grandfather, who was born in the late 1700s, not long after Australia was first colonised.

I don’t know, but I’m imagining that they had far fewer options than we do today. They had far fewer choices to make than we have to make today, so here you and I are with all these options and choices and our primary measure, our primary assessment tool is, “What’s in it for me? Which one of these is best for me? Will we go to the movies this Saturday afternoon or will we go out for dinner, or both? Or would you rather stay at home and watch something on Netflix on the 55-inch, high-definition television in the living-room?” We don’t think about it, but that’s what’s going on day after day. Right?

In your life, in my life. And the more choices we’re given, the more focused we become on deciding which one is best for me, and so without even thinking about it, we’re on our way down a slippery slope. Matthew 7:13-14:

You can enter true life only through the narrow gate. The gate to hell is very wide, and there’s plenty of room on the road that leads there. Many people go that way, but the gate that opens the way to true life is narrow, and the road that leads there is hard to follow; only a few people find it.

It’s a wide road – it’s an apparently easy road – this road to self-gratification, and there are so many today who unwittingly find themselves on that road. The problem is that it leads to pain along the way, and destruction in the end. 1 Timothy 6:9-10:

People who want to be rich bring temptations to themselves. They’re caught in a trap. They begin to want many foolish things that’ll hurt them. These things ruin and destroy people. The love of money causes all kinds of evil; some people turn away from what they believe because they want to get more and more money, but they have caused themselves a lot of pain and sorrow.

It’s true. It ends up in a lot of pain and sorrow, and as we’ve stepped over this threshold of this new year, there are all too many people living in that pain and sorrow. Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe someone close to you is one of them. The question is, what’s the answer? What’s the solution? How do we get a fresh start this year, and get our lives heading in the right direction? And one of the answers to those questions is to do a hundred and eighty-degree turn from being inward-focused to being outward-focused; so instead of asking, “Which option is going to be best for me?” We’re asking, “Which is the option that God wants me to choose?”

The Israelites found themselves in this very position: Something we read about in the last book of the Old Testament. Malachi 3:6-9:

I am the LORD, and I don’t change. You are Jacob’s people, and you have not been completely destroyed, but you never obeyed My laws; even your ancestors stopped following Me. Come back to Me, and I’ll come back to you. This is what the LORD, the all-powerful One, said: ‘You say, “How can we come back?” People should not steal things from God, but you stole things from Me. You say, “What did we steal from You?” You should have given Me one-tenth of your things. You should have given Me special gifts. In this way, your whole nation has stolen things from Me, so bad things are happening to you.’ This is what the LORD all-powerful said.

In other words, they’d stopped honouring God with their firstfruits; with the offering the LORD commanded them to make; their tithe; one-tenth of their income, and the other special offerings under the Law. Now you and I, we’re no longer under that Law, but nevertheless, God still calls us to give to Him first – of our best; of our very best: Not just our money, but of all that we have and all that we are.

Here God’s people had strayed away from putting Him first, and they were putting themselves first, and things weren’t going well for them. That’s what the whole book of Malachi is all about. Malachi 1:6:

The LORD, the all-powerful One, said: ‘Children honour their fathers; servants honour their masters. I am your Father, so why don’t you honour Me? I am your Master, so why don’t you respect Me? You priests don’t respect My name, but you say, “What have we done that shows that we don’t respect Your name?

So God is pouring out the truth to them: The truth that they’ve headed down that wide, easy road that leads to destruction. That’s why things aren’t going well for them. That’s why they’ve brought so much pain and sorrow on themselves. I wonder how much you relate to their story in your life right now.

So what was God’s answer? How did God provide a way back for them? Malachi 3:10-12:

The LORD, the all-powerful One, says: ‘Try this test. Bring one-tenth of your things to Me. Put them in the treasury; bring food to My house; test Me. If you do these things, I will surely bless you. Good things will come to you, like rain falling from the sky. You’ll have more than enough of everything. I won’t let pests destroy your crops; all your grapevines will produce grapes.’ This is what the LORD, the all-powerful One, said: ‘People from other nations will be good to you. You will have a wonderful country.’ This is what the LORD, the all-powerful One, said.

So He gave them a way back into His blessing by giving them a tangible way in which to put Him first in their lives: By going back to tithing their incomes, which is what was required under the Old Testament Law – a Law, by the way, that you and I are no longer under.

But let’s get back to your life: Are you looking for a fresh start in this new year? Are you looking to get rid of some of the pain and the sorrow that you’ve brought upon yourself by wandering down that wide road of, “What’s in it for me?” Then decide to put God first in your life.

Maybe you’ve made some lifestyle choices that you know don’t honour God. Perhaps you’re not married and you’re sleeping with someone. Perhaps you’ve buried yourself in your career and earning money and all that stuff, and there’s no room left for God. Perhaps you’re so busy juggling work and family, and running the kids here and running them there for this and for that, you’ve simply stopped praying and reading God’s Word. Perhaps you’ve taken some big decisions in life, maybe even small decisions, without involving God and asking Him what He wants for you. 2 Corinthians 9:7-8:

Each one of you should give what you have decided to give in your hearts. You should not give if it makes you unhappy or if you feel forced to ...

Last week on the program, we were talking about the amazing fact that the moment you and I believe in Jesus, we become a completely new creation. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17:

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; and see, everything has become new!

A new identity, a new start. And what an appropriate thing to be talking about as we set out on a new year in our lives. So many people, because of their failures, their losses, perhaps because of the abuse that’s been inflicted on them one way or another in the past, have come to the conclusion that they’re worthless.

And yet what the death of Jesus on the Cross tells me, is that God was prepared to pay the highest price possible – highest price in the universe – to give you and me a fresh start, the price of His Son’s life, Jesus. So no matter how you see yourself, you are worth so much, that’s the evidence. Look at what God was prepared to pay, to sacrifice to give you a new identity and a new life.

Jesus put it a little differently, He talked about being born again. He was chatting with one of the religious leaders, Nicodemus, who came to Him in secret one night. Let’s tune into that conversation, John chapter 3, verses 5 to 9:

Jesus said, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into their mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no-one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.

What is born of flesh is flesh, and what is born of Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I say to you, ‘You must be born again.’ For the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not see where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’

No wonder Nicodemus was confused. It’s a very strange concept to be born again, but that’s exactly what God wants to do – He wants to give you a new life. And the only way that can happen, is when the Holy Spirit enters you. After all, that’s how the first man was given life. Genesis chapter 2, verse 7:

The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

There are a few words used in the Old Testament for ‘breath’ – but they are generally synonymous, with Spirit. So the idea here is that God breathed His Spirit, the Holy Spirit into this man. That’s where life comes from. Matter itself can’t produce that. Energy itself can’t produce that. Only God can, by His Spirit.

The problem is for you and me that we have all gone astray and fallen short of God’s glory. We have all rebelled. And so although we were made in the image of God, male and female, we now have a problem. Our rebellion has corrupted us deep inside somewhere, and that’s why we need to be born again, as Jesus put it. We need a new life, a new start and, as things turn out, a fresh breath of the Spirit.

What an amazing thing to be talking about as we head into this new year, a fresh life, a fresh start and a fresh breath of the Spirit and that’s exactly what God promised us. Have a listen to this, Ezekiel chapter 11, verse 19:

I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel chapter 18, verse 31:

Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.

Ezekiel chapter 26, verses 25 to 27:

I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.

Three times God promises to deal with our hearts hardened through our rebellion by breathing new life into us – a new spirit, the very essence of God dwelling in you. That is mind–blowing. A new heart, a soft, tender heart of flesh, and a new spirit – the Spirit of God, whom Jesus also promised in John chapter 14, verses 15 to 17:

Jesus said to His disciples: If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask my Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

All He’s asking us to do here is to turn away from the things we know are wrong, to turn our lives back to Him and His Spirit will fill us full to overflowing. With new life, with a new identity, new power, the ability to live our lives for God rather than to continue in the old ways that hardened our hearts.

If anyone wants a fresh start this year, here it is:

Lord God please forgive me, please, I want Jesus. I want to put all of my faith and all of my trust in Him and I want to be filled with His new Spirit, to have the joy and the peace and the power to live for you. So today I want to accept Jesus into my heart, I know that’ll mean changes, I know that it’ll be hard, I know some people may laugh at me but from this day forward, I belong to you, through what Jesus did for me, and I know that right now, this moment you have filled me with your Holy Spirit. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. In Jesus name. Amen.

And that’s the truth. If you prayed that prayer with me you are forgiven, you belong to Jesus and you have received His Spirit.

And seriously, that right there is the beginning of your fresh new start for this year. I want to encourage you to go on being filled with the Spirit, which is exactly what Paul the Apostle encourages us to do. Ephesians chapter 5, verses 18 to 20:

Do not get drunk with wine, because that is debauchery; instead be filled with the Holy Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There’s a clear choice here about how we live. We can keep in our old ways, keep rebelling, or we can be filled with the Spirit (and the tense of the verb that Paul uses there means literally: to go on being filled with the Spirit) as we live the life that God wants us to live – worshipping Jesus and living our lives for Him.

I don’t know how last year played out for you, but I’m certain that you’re looking forward to something better this year, something more, something that fills that hole inside of you that nothing else and nobody else seems to be able to fill.

If that’s where you’re at right now then with all my heart, I believe that this is what you have been look...

Have you ever been at a New Year’s eve party, and everybody’s celebrating and yahooing and carrying on, and then there’s the countdown: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, Happy New Year! And there’s lots of kissing and hugging and all that stuff, and yet the last thing you feel like doing is celebrating. What is there to celebrate? Last year was somewhere between a real shocker and nothing out of the ordinary. This year, well … It looks a bit … well, you know … and so you look around at all these other people smiling and laughing and slapping each other on the back, and inside you feel just a bit empty.

If that’s a bit how the beginning of this year feels for you, well, you wouldn’t be alone, seriously. So many people have nothing much to celebrate really, or so it seems, and for many, there’s a sense that the business of last year isn’t finished yet. A lot of that has to do with the regrets of the past; the hurts of the past; the losses or the abuse or the rejection of the past, and the biggest one of all, the failures of the past.

So many people feel as though they’ve failed at their job, at their marriage, at bringing up their kids, at loving God, and the problem with those failures is that it’s often somewhere between very difficult and absolutely impossible to set things right. I suspect each one of us, if we’re a bit honest with ourselves today, we have some regrets from last year that are still hanging over us, and often, those regrets have a lot to do with our failures.

So we set off into this New Year with a sense of failure, and the sense that we’re a failure. I am a failure, and if we’re not careful, that sense of failure, that sense of doom and gloom, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The next year turns out just the same as the last one. If you’re anywhere near to being in that space at the moment (come on, be honest with yourself), then I have some great, great news for you today. Our God is a God of new beginnings and His mercies are new today, tomorrow, the next day – indeed every day and every morning.

As the writer of the book of Lamentations looked around at the terrible destruction of Jerusalem, after the Babylonians came as an instrument of God’s judgment and raised it to the ground, taking the Israelites captive as slaves into exile, he was devastated, but then somewhere inside, the Holy Spirit moved him to say and to write these words. Lamentations 3:19-26:

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall. My soul continuously thinks of it and is bowed down within me, but this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: For the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. The LORD is my portion, says my soul; therefore I will hope in Him. The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him, and it is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

That is such an incredibly poignant passage of Scripture. This man who is devastated not just for himself, but for his homeland, for his people, for the destruction of God’s temple even and the loss of His presence, this guy is stirred and moved deep inside somewhere to declare that the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases! His mercies never come to an end, for they are new every morning.

Let me take that and personalise it for you. God’s steadfast love towards you never ceases. His mercies for you are fresh and new for you each and every morning. Now if you’re at all human, you’re thinking to yourself, “Oh, Berni, that’s all fine, but if you knew how badly I blew things last year, how badly I behaved, how badly I failed other people and God, you’d know how hard it is for me to accept that.”

We often think we’re the only person thinking like that, when in fact this sense of guilt that flows out of failure is one of the most common things that people experience. It’s a natural response-mechanism that God’s put in each one of us to get us to realise that our only answer, our only refuge, our only future, our only hope, is in Him.

Do you remember the story of Moses going up to the top of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God? And God writes those commandments on two tablets of stone, but whilst Moses and God are up there doing business on the mountain, God’s people have cast an idol for themselves. Led by Moses’ brother Aaron the high priest, they melt down all their gold and cast a golden calf that they bow down and worship.

Moses comes down the mountain; he’s so angry, so incensed at these faithless people that he smashes the stone tablets with the commandments on them. You’d think (wouldn’t you) at this point, it’d be over. It probably would have been, had you or I been God, but you see, God’s mercies are new every morning, so Exodus 34 starts off this way (verses 1 and 2):

The LORD said to Moses, “Cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets which you broke. Be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself there to me, on-top of the mountain”.

And so he did. He went up to the mountain again and God gave him the commandments again. Why? Well, God explains Himself a few verses later. Exodus 34:6:

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”.

That’s who God is. God is mercy; God is love, and that mercy and that love are for you, here and now, at the beginning of this year. If only you’ll turn your regrets and your failures over to God, what a fresh start this New Year could be for you.

Even the strongest among us find ourselves feeling tired and weak sometimes. It’s not that you’re a loser, and it’s certainly not that you’re the only person on the planet that feels that way, but the daily grind has a way of … well … grinding you down, doesn’t it? Add to that the stresses and strains that life brings, especially if last year wasn’t all you wanted it to be, especially if last year had some hurts or some failures or some losses that you weren’t anticipating and you’re struggling to get over them.

You see, it’s easy to start the new year off feeling drained; not ready to face the challenges that lie ahead. We’re kicking this year off with a series of messages that I’ve called ‘New Year, Fresh Start’ because God is a God of new beginnings, and one of the things that He wants to do for you is to renew your strength.

Now, renew is a word that I love. It’s an amazing word, two parts: Re and new. We all know what the new means. Something that’s new is brand-new: A new experience, a new mercy, a new love, a new hope, a new life … Newness is fresh! It’s exciting! It’s a new start! But that re part of renew is about doing something new again. Most of the time in the English language, when a word starts with the syllable re it means again: Repeat, review, re-enter, reactivate, reaffirm and on it goes, so humour me, and think about this word renew for just a moment.

It means to do that new thing again. It means to enter into newness a second time, a third time, a fourth time, a thousandth time, and that’s the sense with which I’m asking you to understand this amazing passage of Scripture. Isaiah 40:27-41:1:

Why do you say, o Jacob, and speak...

There’s a bunch of guys in the Bible who I envy. Now I know what you’re thinking, the tenth Commandment:

You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife or male or female slave or ox or donkey or anything else that belongs to your neighbour. (Exodus 20:17)

Yeah, we’re not supposed to envy or covet anything because it leads to some really bad behaviour. I get that. But hear me out.

If there was anyone I could have been with in the Bible, it would have to be those shepherds who were out there watching their flocks by night. We don’t quite know what night it was. But you have to gather by what the angel said to them that Jesus had already been born so I prefer to think of it as Christmas night. Only to them, sitting there in the field watching their sheep, it wasn’t Christmas night at all. It was just another night at the office doing what shepherds did. It was a mundane part of their lives. They may have been enjoying the evening. They may not have been enjoying the evening. It doesn’t matter. They were doing what shepherds did out there on the side of a hill somewhere just outside Bethlehem.

The sun had gone down like it goes down every night. And tomorrow morning the sun was going to come up again, like it did every morning and nothing much changed in between. Maybe the moon was out, maybe not. And in the absence of the bright light and the pollution you and I have to put up with these days, the Milky Way was spread across the firmament in all its glory and all was well with the world.

That’s the picture, that’s what was going on. But on that particular night God had a plan to break into this world in the most amazing and spectacular way.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night and then an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified but the angel said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid for see I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people. To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is the Messiah, the Lord.’

‘This will be a sign for you, you will find a child wrapped in bands of clothing and lying in a manger’. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favours.’

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let’s go down to Bethlehem and see this thing that’s taken place which the Lord has made known to us’. So they went with haste and they found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in a manger.

When they saw this they made known what had been told to them about this child and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them but Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all that they’d heard and seen as it had been told to them. (Luke 2: 8-20)

I often wonder how I would have reacted had I been with those guys on that starry starry night. I wonder how I would react if that happened to me tonight at home or on the way back from work or whatever mundane thing I happened to be doing tonight. Because for me, the idea of a cosmic light show and angels filling the sky and all that jazz, well for me, it’s pretty easy to believe because it happened at a nice safe distance of two thousand or so years ago. Because you and I have watched the kids Christmas pantomimes so many times and sung the Christmas carols so many times, it’s become part of our psyche that this thing with the shepherds actually happened. We accept it pretty much without thinking.

But bring it back to reality and how would we cope if it happened to us here and now or if we’d been back there with the shepherds’ back then sitting in that field on that night. I think I would be petrified like they were to start with. It would be so unexpected, so out of this world, so impossible and yet there they were and it was happening to them and God broke into their world in this startling ‘in your face’ kind of way.

You know something? I believe that that’s what God wants to do today in your world and mine. I believe God wants to shake us out of our comfortable little Christmas ritual, our “business as usual” approach to Christmas and get right in our faces and say, “Don’t you realise what this Christmas thing is all about? Today, I’m bringing you good news for unto you a Saviour has been born for you”. And the reaction He’s looking for out of you and me is the reaction that the shepherds had.

Because when the angels had left them and gone into heaven the shepherds said to one another, “Well, what are we going to do? Why don’t we go down to Bethlehem and see what has taken place that which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste, they didn’t dawdle; they went with haste. They found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told to them about this child and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.

God wants us to come to Jesus for ourselves – to worship Jesus for ourselves, to tell the world what we’ve seen. Imagine His frustration, His great frustration when He sees people, like you and me, just going through the motions at Christmas time. Imagine how that makes Him feel when on that first Christmas, He gave to you and He gave to me the single most precious gift that has ever been given in all of human history.

So how about it? Will you grab onto this Christmas present with both hands? Will you come to Jesus and worship Him? Will you rejoice at what you’ve seen? Will you tell people what you’ve seen? Will you let Christmas impact your heart in the most miraculous way? Well, will you or are you just going to do the same old Christmas ritual this year like you’ve done for the past umpteen years?

Because here’s the thing, one day Jesus is coming back. One day, Jesus will return to this earth and when that happens it will make the cosmic light show that the shepherds experienced look like a little sideshow, I’m telling you. When Jesus ascended back into heaven this is what happened:

So when they’d come together they asked him, ‘Lord is this the time when you’ll restore the Kingdom of Israel?’ And he replied, ‘It’s not for you to know the times or the periods that the Father has set by his own authority but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and then you’ll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria and even to the ends of the earth’.

When he had said that as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up towards the heaven suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards the heaven? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come again in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. (Acts 1: 6-11)

See, that’s going to happen one day, just as unexpectedly as the angels appeared before those shepherds, just as unexpectedly as Jes...

Well, if you’re in that place, where events beyond your control have taken over your life, you’re not the only one.

There are times in our lives when it feels as though circumstances or events outside of our control have completely taken over our lives. We’ve all been there and some people I know are there right now.

Perhaps you were looking forward to a family Christmas and your marriage or somebody else’s marriage in your family is starting to fall apart. Or perhaps, you find yourself completely alone or maybe sickness has struck and you’re wondering how to get through it. And at this point, the whole idea even of celebrating Christmas seems completely irrelevant, off this planet.

Despite what all the happy Christmas ads on television would have us believe, Christmas is not a happy time for many people. It’s sad but true. Now, that’s not to say that we’re all going to have a lousy Christmas, no. But when we scratch the glitzy veneer of what Christmas has become in the twenty-first century, when you go below the surface, most people have something going on in their lives that takes the shine off what should be (according to what everybody else is telling us) the celebration of Christmas.

Season’s greetings, peace on earth, merrrryyyyy Christmas, ho ho ho. Yeah, right. Somehow the umpteenth re-enactment of the Christmas pantomime at Church and that nativity scene in the store window (if you can even find one anywhere these days) just doesn’t seem to connect with life’s realities when we’ve been swamped by a wave of whatever it is in our life, in your life, this year.

I’ve had many a Christmas like that over the years. Truly, I have. Life can be tough sometimes. And when you’re involved in ministry in any way, shape or form, you’ll know that it’s even tougher because the devil is on your case. You run into opposition and attacks sometimes seemingly from every direction and on those Christmases the pantomime version of Christmas simply isn’t enough. You with me?

But let’s wind the clock back to the old, old story, to the days leading up to the birth of Jesus, the Christ. Because when I go back to that story, there’s nothing safe, there’s nothing comfortable, there’s nothing pantomimey at all about it. The road to that very first Christmas was a hard road and it’s on that road that we discover a God who’s prepared to get on the journey with us.

Think about the circumstances that had overtaken Joseph and Mary’s lives to that point. Firstly, they’d fallen in love. Hey, that’s a good thing, that’s a great thing, that’s a special thing. But then Mary falls pregnant to the Holy Spirit, out of wedlock in a day and age where that was a scandal. You can imagine how Joseph felt, right? – robbed, betrayed, dismayed, hurt, alone, disappointed, angry, the full gamut of emotions. Events had overtaken his life.

This one painful event which was completely outside of his control. It hurt so much but being the good guy that he was, he planned to cut off the engagement and to dismiss Mary quietly so as not to make a big thing of it in public. Events, circumstances, things out there that were going to rob him, unbeknown to him at the time, of the very first Christmas.

You see if you’re in that boat, you’re not the first one. This old, old story has a modern twist in its tail, does it not? The truth of that first Christmas (even though it happened two thousand years away) is here and now when you get behind the pantomime version and you check out what really happened.

So there’s young Jo about to be robbed of that first Christmas and then God. Whenever circumstances are about to roll over the top of us, it’s always, always a case of ‘then God’ because this God who loves you beyond any measure that you would care to apply to His love, He always shows up. He showed up back then for Joseph. Let’s have a listen:

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph but before they lived together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man, unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

But just when he had resolved to do this an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.”

All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the Prophet, ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel which means God is with us’. When Joseph awoke from his sleep he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, he took her as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son and he named him, Jesus. (Matthew 1: 18-25)

I wonder how many times you and I have skimmed over that old, old story with the attitude, “Oh yeah, I know that one. Yeah sure, it’s fine,” without ever really thinking about what it meant for Mary and poor old Joseph. The stress it put on their relationship, the glances and the whispers of scandal that happened in their tight-knit little community.

And just when Joseph was about to do what he thought was the decent thing out of his pain – God showed up. God showed up in a mighty way to speak truth and comfort and love and destiny into Joseph’s heart.

I don’t know how real that dream felt to him at the time, probably it was a really powerful dream if it was from God. But when he woke up it was still only a dream but it was enough for Joseph to act upon. He didn’t have the Gospel accounts of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John to rely on back then, like you and I do have now, he didn’t know how it was all going to turn out. But when he heard the voice of God he acted on it.

Christmas is about difficult circumstances. Christmas is all about God breaking into this world in an exquisite blend of love and power and humility. Christmas is about God and it’s about you.

Now I know that this is not going to come as any great surprise to you but I have never been pregnant. Something (by the way) that I’ve often given thanks for because I’m your typical male – the idea of going through childbirth is something I can’t comprehend. Which is why, I guess, God didn’t leave it up to men to be mother’s – wise move God, wise move.

Anyway, back to Christmas, I’m trying to imagine what it was like for Mary who was pretty much full term to travel from Nazareth the Bethlehem for the census. We don’t think too much about it because these days the drive from A to B would take, umm, two to three hours I’m guessing; maybe four, if you took it slowly and you had a break for lunch along the way. You’d probably do it in a comfortable air conditioned car although even then, let’s say a three to four-hour car ride wouldn’t be particularly the most delightful experience for a woman who was close to full term, would it now? But back then it was a one to two-week journey.

Tradition has it … if you believe all the paintings and drawings that Mary rode on the back of a donkey, of course, there’s no Biblical evidence for that, we’re not told how she got from Nazareth to Bethlehem. But for her sake, I’m hoping she was on a back of a donkey or riding in the back of a cart somewhere rather than walking the whole way because one thing’s for certain she wasn’t riding ...

Yeah, absolutely, on the surface of things, Christmas is a crazy idea. I mean stand back and think about it … God’s God, He created the whole universe. Okay, He’s Father and Son and Holy Spirit, three persons in one, something that’s not that easy to wrap your mind around. But let’s just leave that to one side for the moment.

God is God. God creates everything. We read about it in the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis. It’s pretty straightforward description of what He did and it was amazing. And the crowning glory of all His creation is humanity – you and me, male and female. And the very last thing that He does before He rests to enjoy His handiwork of creation is that He hands the whole thing over to us. God said:

Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind, cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind and it was so and God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind, everything that creeps along the ground of every kind and God saw that it was good.”

Then God said, ‘Let us make humanity in our image according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’

So God created humanity in His image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue the earth and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth.’

God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit, you shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to every thing that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life I have given every green plant for food’ and so it was.

God saw everything that He’d made and indeed it was very good and there was evening and there was morning of the sixth day. (Genesis 1: 26-31)

So far, so good. Adam and Eve go and enjoy all of this amazing creation but God does one thing, just one thing that is so crazy, inexplicable.

The Lord commanded the man, ‘you may freely eat of every tree of the garden but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall die. (Genesis 2:16)

Well, you know the rest. They couldn’t help themselves, Adam and Eve, they just had to try to be like God. They ate from that one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the rest as they say is history.

Sin entered the world, sickness entered the world and just as God had promised them death entered the world. Life became hard. That’s something you and I can attest to – life is hard and all because God had to forbid them that one tree and they just had to try it anyway. Could it be all of your misery and mine hangs on just that one crummy apple? For Pete’s sake, that’s nuts!

And then as humanity spirals ever downward, as we become ever more debauched and depraved, after that moment God mounts a rescue mission – He sends Jesus to save us. What’s that about? Why didn’t He just give them access to every last tree? Why did He have to hold that one tree back from them and why did they have to blow it for the rest of us and after all that, why did God mount that rescue mission and send Jesus?

It defies human logic until you realise that love and logic have nothing more in common than their first two letters. Love isn’t logical. Have a listen to this:

But the free gift is not like the trespass for if the many died through one man’s trespass, Adams, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift and the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the effect of that one man’s sin for the judgement following the one trespass brought condemnation but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.

If because of the one man’s sin death has exercised dominion through that one much more surely will those who receive the abundance of the grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore just as one man’s trespasses lead to condemnation for all so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.

For just as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. But the law came in with the result that the trespass multiplied but when sin increased grace abounded all the more. So just as sin exercised dominion in death so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. (Romans 5: 12 – 21)

There you have it. There you have the reason that God did what He did. If you love someone you give them free will, right? He gave Adam a free will by excluding that one tree and Adam chose against God and so sin, with all its consequences, entered the world for you and me.

Now, before you think to yourself, “I am going to punch Adam in the nose when I see him in heaven.” Ask yourself, if nobody in all of history before you had sin and ultimately you were living in that garden, would you have resisted the temptation?

So sin entered the world through one man and forgiveness came though one man as well, Jesus. God sent Him into this world as that little babe we remember each year around this time so that we could be forgiven. And notice how that ‘grace‘ word comes in. Forgiven by the free, unmerited favour of God so that we could know what? God’s love.

What greater expression of love is there than to forgive someone who doesn’t deserve it? I guess only one, to do it and to take his or her punishment on their behalf, to give your life to suffer in order to purchase their forgiveness and their freedom. To step out of heaven into this hurly-burly of a sinful world and be punished even though you’d never done anything wrong.

And this is not as some Plan B because Plan A didn’t work. This was always Gods Plan A. God always knew Adam would blow it. He always knew that you and I would blow it. None of that was ever a surprise to Him and yet out of His great love, He gave us a free will to accept or reject Him. And out of His great love, He came to purchase us back from death by offering up His Son as His sense of justice demanded – to take all the fall for you and for me, to pay the price, to die the death.

Now, I know you have a lot going on in these days leading up to Christmas – those last-minute presents to buy, the things to clear off your desk perhaps before you have a few days off, the turkey to buy, the decoration to get up, all that stuff.

Now I know that you may not have a lot of time to think about this Christmas stuff but at the heart of Christmas lies a Father’s love. At the heart of Christmas – in the most unhygienic, feed trough called a manger, in that even more unhygienic stable filled with animals, right where that child was born and lay and crie...

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought of this but Christmas is a real problem for guys like me, preachers I mean. Year after year, we have to crank out yet another Christmas series. And for the first few years, that’s pretty easy but then after a while you start thinking to yourself, “Well, how am I going to put a new twist on Christmas this year?”

Last year, I approached it from this perspective, the year before from that perspective, the year before that from … well, you get the picture. There are only so many different perspectives on Christmas. Well, we’ve all been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Yeah, so it’s Christmas again, so what?

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere it’s an excuse for a few days off.

If you live in the Southern Hemisphere as I do, it’s probably the summer holidays that you’re looking forward to more than Christmas itself. A chance for a decent break, a bit of a much-needed R and R and sure Christmas is part of that but the Christmas bit can be a bit of a hassle. Buying presents, figuring out who has Christmas lunch with whom and then perhaps scooting off to Christmas dinner with another part of your family. Kids, uncles, aunts, grandparents – it all gets complicated. And then there’s the fact not everybody in the family gets on. You know Christmas day is one of the peak times of the year for domestic violence.

Even if it doesn’t get that bad you know there are going to be clashes or you’re going to have to smile sweetly at someone that you don’t really like or you just know that so and so is going to have too much to drink again this year.

Those are the burdens that many people carry into Christmas, it’s just the reality of life. So as things turn out, Christmas isn’t just a problem for preachers like me who have to dream up something fresh and new each year, it’s a problem for many, many people. I heard someone say once, a Bible believing Christian she was, “I hate Christmas, I wish we could just skip over it.” It’s pretty sad but it’s the reality for many people even those who actually believe in Jesus. So Christmas gets something of a bad rap, I wonder how many people who are out there who would just love to skip Christmas. I wonder?

Well, as you look ahead to the next ten days or so in the run up to Christmas, I wonder how you’re feeling about it all, exhausted, frustrated, anxious, stressed. What are the emotions that generally accompany this thing we call Christmas in your heart in your life? What are you feeling? Is Christmas a problem for you?

Can I be honest here? I struggle with the kids pantomime version of Christmas. I struggle with the whole Carols by Candlelight phenomenon around Christmas where people get together in parks and sing Christmas carols as though they believe them, when most of the entertainers up on the stage and on our television screens don’t have the remotest faith that Jesus is actually the Son of God.

It’s like we wrap this whole Christmas in tinsel and lights and tie a neat bow around it. And we make it out to be this happy time, when the truth is, for many people, well, they struggle with Christmas. Now I don’t mean to be a Christmas Grinch here. Personally, I love singing Christmas carols because they mean something to me but what I really want to know is why don’t we sing Christmas carols all year round? Why don’t we celebrate the coming of Jesus all year round?

I remember hosting a Christmas in July service at our Church some years back. It’s a bit of a phenomenon down under as many restaurants put on Christmas dinners in the middle of winter when it’s cold and at the service we actually sung Christmas carols. I can’t tell you the number of people who came up to me afterwards and told me how weird it was singing Silent Night in the middle of July.

Yeah, we wrap a whole bunch of rituals up in a nice neat package in December and we call it Christmas. And it’s all supposed to be sweetness and light and yet how much of it really, really, really speaks into our hearts about the wonder of what God did on that first Christmas?

What I want to do today is to unsettle you, to drag you out of your Christmas ritual comfort zone and ask you, “Why do you do what you do at Christmas time? Why are you racing around buying presents for people who don’t really need anything? Why do you put tinsel and Christmas decorations around your house and maybe even a Christmas wreath on your front door? What are the candles and the Christmas tree and presents and all that food really about? What do you do it for?”

If you stripped away all that packaging and paraphernalia what would Christmas actually be for you? Luke 2: 8-14:

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified but the angel said to them, “don’t be afraid, for see I am bringing good news of great joy for all people. For to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

“This will be a sign for you, you’ll find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger” and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, “glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favours.”

So if you took the packaging and the paraphernalia and the ritual and the racing around away, is that what Christmas would mean to you? Would you in your heart shout out, “Glory to God in the highest heaven. Glory, glory, glory. Hallelujah?” Because if not, don’t you think you just might be wasting your time with all this Christmas nonsense that you go through each year?

All this pressure you put yourself under, all these presents you buy and the money you spend and the decorations you put up and the food that you stuff yourself with – is that what Christmas is all about?

Or in your heart, is it about the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God to be the Saviour of this world? The biggest Christmas gift of all history – the Son of God given to all humanity, given to you and given to me.

So let me ask you, what is your Christmas all about?

I guess when it comes to this whole Christmas thing; we see it from where we sit. And for most of us, our perspective (our take on Christmas) comes through the ritual that surrounds it – a ritual that we’ve acted out year after year for as long as we can remember.

Sure, it’s changed a bit. When we were kids it was all about the excitement of presents. But you know the deal, you know all the things that you do in the weeks leading up to Christmas, you know how Christmas Day is going to pan out. You know the carols you’re going to sing and the food that you’re going to eat and the people you’re going to celebrate Christmas with. If it’s at all possible, this exciting celebration of Christmas has become something of a routine for you. A bit of a contradiction but it’s true for most of us, life is full of contradictions right?

When it comes to Christmas we kind of narrow our view, we lower our gaze and focus on the well-worn familiar path of the Christmas ritual. Whatever that looks like for each one of us, we narrow our perspective and like Pavlov’s dogs we get on with that part of life and in many respects, that’s how it was on that very first Christmas two thousand odd years ago. Although it wasn’t called Christmas back then. In fact, the ...

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but when a seed falls to the ground and dies, ultimately it sprouts and takes root.

And if it was the seed of a plum tree – we can be pretty certain that the thing that’s growing there is going to one day produce – not apricots, not apples, not pears…..we all know, it’s going to produce plums.

Because it’s a plum tree that’s taken root. In fact, the root produces the fruit.

It’s just one of those basic facts of life that actually we don’t have to think about. The root determines the fruit.

And it’s a bit like that in our hearts. IF our hearts take root in goodness then we’ll produce good fruit. In bad things and we’ll produce bad fruit.

In sweet things and we’ll produce sweet fruit. In bitter things – and we’ll produce bitter things.

This is not rocket science – right?

This week on the program….Want to take a look at the phenomenon of anger in our society and in our lives.

Anger is a real phenomenon in the hearts of so many people. Pressure building up in life – people explode.

Like a pressure cooker – vent the steam otherwise it blows up. It’s the same with people – so many people venting their anger – epidemic proportions.

• Road rage
• Supermarket rage
• Call centre rage

In fact, this weeks program is prompted by a real-life experience.

Stan the painter. He was doing some work at our little terrace house. Painting a few walls – at the same time, he was doing a big job in one of the wealthiest streets in the country.

Huge mansion – special paint $1,000 a tin – unbelievable – houses in the street worth $15-$25 million – mega wealthy. Lots of people having building work done in that street – narrow street – yet great views, massive mansions…unbelievable

Been working there for a few weeks now – and he was telling me – “You wouldn’t believe the strife between the neighbours – house I’m working on – 70 year old woman – hasn’t talked with her neighbour for 20 years. Argument over some building work.

All the neighbours are fighting… the woman I’m working for – done some work before – but now she’s so mean and nasty and swears.”

Stand back from that – unbelievable… these people have everything in life – nothing they can’t buy or have or own really… everything their heart desires

Yet there’s – well a spirit of anger and bitterness and dissension…

Makes you wonder – what’s going on here. We, like Stan and his brother Douk – two Greek painters, lovely people do a great job. Honest as the day is long – wonderful men.

How can this woman be so nasty to them?

Anger and bitterness has taken root in her heart. That’s why. You let things get to you and get angry with people over and over and over again – like bitterness takes root in your heart. The root produces the fruit.

God actually talks a lot about anger – you know it’s a word that pops up 375 times in the Bible – makes it one of the leading subjects.

Anger is something that we all have to deal with – and it springs up, out of a root of bitterness.

The writer of the book of Hebrews in the NT – puts it like this:

Hebrews 12:14-15.

Pursue peace with everyone – and holiness – because without them you won’t get so much as a glimpse of God. Make sure that no one misses out on the grace of God, so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble – because through it, so many will be contaminated

See – there it is – the root produces the fruit.

The root of bitterness takes hold in our hearts… it springs up and causes trouble and contaminates everyone around us.

We all have a problem with anger some days – some more than others… the longer we let it go on, the more it takes hold and produces bitterness – and a bitter root produces bitter fruit.

A root – is something we cultivate and if we don’t want it to keep growing – have to stop feeding it.

Be angry but do not sin – do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not make room for the devil. (Ephesians 4:26)

We all get angry from time to time – that’s not the sin – the sin is letting the sun go down on your anger – keeping it in your heart, brooding, planning revenge, going over it and over it and over it and over it…

The right way of handling it is just – get over it. Forgive and move on. Then, then we won’t be cultivating the root of bitterness which – sure as God made little green apples – will produce fruit of bitterness.

Not something we can do on our own though – I believe we need an antidote to this venom… something that heals and cleanses and just gives us a fresh perspective – let’s go back to that earlier quote….

Pursue peace with everyone – and holiness – because without them you won’t get so much as a glimpse of God. Make sure that no one misses out on the grace of God, so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble – because through it, so many will be contaminated.

Let’s get down to practicalities… dealing with anger, dealing with that rising temper. When someone provokes us – you know they do something and you can feel your blood boiling and you go all red in the face… right at that moment, it’s so easy to spit out something venomous – words that we can’t take back. Words that damage a relationship. People even throw something – do something…

Sometimes, when we’re provoked, we can be a bit quick on the draw when it comes to responding. Let me share a story with you:

I remember once as a consultant – some years back now – used to run an IT consulting group

I was being mucked around by a large and important client of a particular ethnic heritage…..dealing with them for months to try to kick off a project – meant a lot of money – large, global organisation. After months of investing time and effort with the management… they pulled the plug on the project.

Received an e-mail from one of the consultants working with me – info about the client – explaining that the organisation had decided not to go ahead. I blew my stack – sitting in my office reading the e-mail – couldn’t believe that they’d wasted so much of our time and resources – not fair – losing so much revenue.

I had a few choice sentiments that I almost expressed in reply to that e-mail to my fellow consultant – even typed an angry e-mail… just about to send it I thought better of it and sent a benign e-mail instead.

Just as well, I hit the “Reply to All” button and the e-mail ended up with the client as well as my colleague!!! Gulp.

Can you imagine – my thoughts of anger included some pretty vitriolic stuff about their ethnicity too.

Berni – why are you sharing this with us? Simple – we all go through this sort of thing – day by day. People, organisations, circumstances drive us insane and we want to explode.

There used to be a game show on television called Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where they asked you a whole bunch of questions and if you got them all right you would end up winning a million dollars. Well not surprisingly not all that many people won the million.

One of the rules of the game was that you had three lifelines when you ran into a difficult question, you could ask the audience, you could do a 50/50 where the computer removed two wrong answers out of the four multiple choice items or you could phone a friend.

The ‘phone a friend’ always intrigued me. The contestant would run into a difficult question and choose to phone a friend, they would give them a thirty-second call with a friend of their choosing. Sometimes the friend was able to help with the question, other times not.

I wonder when you run into a difficult question in life where do you turn? What option do you take, ask the audience, 50/50 or phone a friend? It seems that often what we do is we try to build ourselves an insurance policy in life to provide a safety net for those difficult times.

Some people try and get a financial buffer by earning lots of money, some people try to build a social relationship safety net so that they have friends and family in place when the difficult times hit. That’s not a bad thing. Other people invest in their career and their reputation as though that somehow is going to make a difference when the tempest hits.

Whatever your safety net is it’s something you’ve had to work hard to build, it’s been an investment. Now there’s nothing wrong with a bit of sound planning, it’s good to have a network of family and friends, it’s good if you can to have some savings to fall back on and if there’s still such a thing a secure job and a career path. Nothing wrong with any of those things until we put all our trust in them as though they’re going to be able to save us when a tsunami sweeps across our lives.

Over the last few weeks on the program we’ve been talking about idolatry. My favourite definition of an idol is anything that we place above God in our lives. We have a innate desire to worship something, that’s how we’ve been made and the crazy thing is that often we worship the wrong things and in so doing we miss out on the very best that God has ready and waiting for us, that God has ready and waiting for you.

Idols are always imposters. Idols can never deliver what we hope they can deliver. So in your life what are the safety nets that you’ve been investing in and building that you put your trust in?

One of the things we can so easily do is to work hard and save hard for a home of our own and when we finally get that we start behaving as though this home is a ‘forever’ thing, that it’s safe and permanent and inviolable. I happen to own a small apartment only several hundred metres from the ocean. We literally live at sea level and as safe and secure as this home feels, hey should a tsunami hit we’re done for.

Why is it that we behave as though the things of this world have the power to withstand the tsunamis of life? When we do that it’s called idolatry because we end up worshipping those things with our lives, we end up placing our trust in them and when you stand back from that behaviour and you evaluate it objectively it’s just nuts and not surprisingly that’s exactly what God says in His Word, lets take a look, Isaiah chapter 44 verses 9 to 20:

All who make idols are nothing and the things they delight in do not profit, their witnesses neither see nor know and so they were put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? Look all its devotee’s will be put to shame, the artisans too are merely human, let them all assemble, let them stand up, they shall be terrified, they shall all be put to shame.

The ironsmith fashions it and works it over the coals, shaping it with hammers and forging it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry and his strength fails, he drinks no water and he’s faint. The carpenter stretches a line and marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes and marks it with a compass. He makes it in human form with human beauty to be set up in a shrine.

He cuts down cedars or chooses a Holm tree or an oak tree and lets it grow strong among the trees in the forest. He plants a seed and the rain nourishes it then he can use it as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes some bread, then he makes a god and worships it and makes it a carved image and bows down before it.

Half of it he burns in the fire, over that half he roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied, he also warms himself and says ‘ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire’ but with the rest of it he turns it into a god, his idol and bows down to it and worships it, he prays to it and says, ‘Save me for you are my God’.

They don’t know, they don’t comprehend, their eyes are shut so they can’t see and their minds as well so they cannot understand. No one considers nor is there knowledge or discernment to say ‘half of it I burned in the fire, I also baked bread on its coals, I roasted me and I’ve eaten, now shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood? He feeds on the ashes, a deluded mind has led him astray and he cannot save himself or say ‘is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?

Hmm, isn’t that great? There was Isaiah talking about physical idols, statues but they’re no different to the idol we set up in our lives today, the physical things that we build to worship and place our trust in. I love how he unmasks the stupidity of idols. That’s exactly what we do with the physical things that we turn into idols.

One half of them we consume and enjoy like money or a nice house or friends or our careers, whatever it is that we’ve set up above God in our lives. And with the other half we sacrifice to it and we trust in it as though somehow it has the power to save us like some god.

Even our relationships, good as many of them are, have you ever been in a difficult spot and used the ‘phone a friend’ option and found there’s nothing your friend can say or do to help you? Of course you have. Have you ever asked the audience, gone out there for help and found that there was no help that could withstand the tsunami? Of course you have.

Right at the end of that passage that we just read from Isaiah, the prophet leads us to the right question to ask, the question we should be asking of the idols in our lives, ‘Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?’

And the right answer to that question, the only answer to that question is ‘of course it is, dummy’. When earthquakes and tsunami’s hit your life who’s going to save you? When you come to that final barrier in this life, your physical death and you’re staring down the barrel of eternity let me ask you, who can save you?

Do you see how ridiculous it is for us to set up idols in our lives and to worship them and to sacrifice our lives to them and to put our trust in them? The more we invest in them, the more we trust them, the more deluded we become imagining they have the power to save us. They don’t have that power, listen to me, idols are frauds, they’re imposters and at the very best they’re nothing but second best.

When something or someone who you trust leaves yo...

Over the last week we’ve been chatting about laying hold of God’s very best for our lives because there are so many imposters out there that claim to be able to give us what we’re looking for, that they lead us astray. An imposter is never as good as the real thing.

I remember once I was travelling in South Africa and I wanted to bring home a special gift for my daughter. I was shopping in a mall in Pretoria and I wandered into a handbag store. I spotted a Louis Vuitton handbag and I thought she would really, really like that. Yeah it was pricey but I thought no she would really like it so I bought it for her.

I was right, she loved it but about eighteen months later the catch that keeps the bag closed came apart. Well not a problem, I thought, this is a Louis Vuitton handbag. So I looked it up on the internet and found the authorised Louis Vuitton repairer here at home and took the handbag into them.

The lady behind the counter took one look at it and she informed me that it was a fake, a knock off and as much as she’d like to help me she was unable to do so. Well I was pretty angry I have to tell you, not with her but with the person who sold the bag to me because I quizzed them over and over again to make sure it was the real thing. And that’s the thing with fakes, they look real, they pretend to be real but they simply can’t deliver what you’re looking for.

I remember when I was studying at Bible College, a good many years ago, one of our lecturers, Dr Barry Chant, gave a class on the things that lead ministers astray, that get them caught up in sin that ends up tearing their ministry apart. And he said something along these lines.

It comes down basically to three things; girls or in the case of women guys, gold and glory. Those are the top three things that lead men and women of God who are called to ministry, astray. That’s always stuck with me – girls, gold and glory. Pretty simple really and when you think about it, it applies not just to people in ministry, it applies to all of Gods people because those three things, girls or guys, gold and glory are pretty much the three main categories of idolatry today.

In this day and age most of us don’t think much about idols. In western countries we don’t see many physical idols and in eastern countries where there are so many religions that use idols routinely, you get to the point of being oblivious to them. I know when I first started travelling to India regularly the number of idols I saw hit me in the face but now I almost don’t notice them.

An idol is an imposter, it’s anything that we set up as an alternative to the one true God, the One who sent Jesus, His Son, to die for you and me. And we take these imposters and we worship them as though they’re real, they’re not of course but we treat them as though they are and we worship them and we sacrifice our lives to them.

So let’s start off by talking about this whole ‘girls and guy’s’ thing. It’s one of the most natural things on the planet, girl meets boy, they fall in love and they want to spend the rest of their lives together. And if you’ve been through that you’ll know how compelling and intoxicating romance is. It plays to our emotional desires and to our physical desires and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. Until we start imagining that this is it, this is what I’ve always been looking for and we start expecting our mate to make us happy.

We start expecting this one relationship to give us all the contentment and joy and fulfilment that we’ve been looking for for all our lives. And then all of a sudden we’re heaping expectations on this girl or guy that they simply can never meet up to. The truth of it is my wife, as wonderful as she is, simply cannot fill the void in me that only God can fill. And if she looks at me to do that for her she too is going to be sadly disappointed.

Remember the first Commandment in the Ten Commandments, Exodus chapter 20 verses 2 and 3:

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, you shall have no other gods before me.

The moment we take something, even something as sublime and as wonderful as this pinnacle of human relationships, the exclusive relationship of one man and one woman in the lifelong relationship of marriage and we elevate that above God then we’re committing idolatry and that goes straight to the second Commandment, Exodus chapter 20 verses 4 and 5:

You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them and worship them for I am the Lord your God and I am a jealous God.

Of course some people take this one step further, they decide to focus on the physical side of this boy/ girl thing or into same sex relationships and end up turning sex into their idol as though somehow sexual gratification will give them what they’re looking for, that too becomes idolatry, Colossians chapter 3 verses 5 and 6:

Put to death therefore whatever in you is earthly. Fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed which is idolatry. On account of these things the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient.

Listen up, it is good for a man and a woman to fall in love and to give themselves completely to one another for the rest of their lives, that’s certainly God’s plan but when we take this good thing and we elevate it and place it above God or when we pervert this good plan and sleep around hoping to find gratification, it’s just like that fake Louis Vuitton hand bag I was telling you about earlier. Eventually it will break and we’re left with nothing because there’s a hole inside you and a hole inside me that only God can fill, it’s just the way we’ve been made.

In the long run idols, imposters, as attractive as they may seem can never deliver what we’re looking for, as attractive as they may appear.

Gold is a symbol of wealth and it’s one of the main things that draws us away from God. Think about it God/ gold, only one letter of difference between those two words and how easy is it for us to substitute one for the other. Even more so because in this world we’re told wealth equals success.

Who among us haven’t dreamed of striking it rich, of being able to live in a big house, a mansion with all the comforts and pleasures that money can buy. A great view, lots of rooms, lavishly furnished, a few high and luxury cars in the multi car garage, flying around the world first class of course or even in your own jet with everyone kowtowing to you because you’re such an important person.

That’s a dream, a fantasy that many people churn over inside themselves over and over again. It’s so seductive that many people are intoxicated by it and they can’t let it go. So here’s what they do, here’s what I did for much of my early adult life, they sacrifice their lives to it. They throw themselves into the pursuit of earning as much money as they can.

I’ve seen some of the houses that people build for themselves, not far from where I live, live some of the wealthiest people in Australia, houses that sell for upwards of thirty million dollars, one recently just went for fifty million dollars. Hey that’s a ridiculous amount of money and these mansions are so big, so ridiculously huge they must be cavernous.

As I said I want to introduce you to a couple of Bible characters from the Old Testament Book of Judges who in a single chapter, Judges chapter 17, show us how easily we can fall into idolatry. Now these aren’t any of the A list players like Abraham or Moses or Isaiah, these are just two people who only appear this one time whose story in the context and in the whole sweep of Israel’s story told across the Old Testament is frankly pretty insignificant.

And yet God chooses to have their story included in the Bible in a Book that frankly not many of us go to all that often, in fact when I shared a message about these two people at our Church recently my Pastor came up to me afterwards and commented ‘that’s great, it’s good for us to go to Books in the Bible that we don’t go to all too often’.

Well there is a reason I’ve gone to this chapter. We’re told in the New Testament:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness so that everybody who belongs to God maybe proficient, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16)

Now this particular one is one of those sorts of Scriptures. It’s the story about a woman, we don’t find out her name and her son Micah. Now this is not the Micah who wrote the Old Testament Book of Micah, different guy altogether. So let’s dive in and have a bit of a look at their story. We’re going to Judges chapter 17 beginning at verse 1.

There was a man in the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah. He said to his mother, ‘The eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you about which you uttered a curse and even spoke it in my hearing, that silver is in my possession, I took it but now I will return it to you,’ and his mother said, ‘May my son be blessed by the Lord’.

Then he returned the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother and his mother said, ‘I consecrate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son to make an idol of cast metal.’ So when he returned the money to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver and gave it to the silversmith who made it into an idol of cast metal and it was in the house of Micah.

This man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and a teraphim and installed one of his sons who became his priest. In those days there was no king in Israel, all the people did what’s right in their own eyes.

Now it starts off as quite a bizarre story, mum has lost eleven hundred pieces of silver, that was a huge amount of money for them back then, no doubt this was her life savings. There were, of course, no banks with high interest accounts or even with safety deposit boxes for her to secure her fortune in. So she did what everyone else did back then had to do, she hid it.

Nevertheless, it was stolen. Imagine having your life savings stolen, all of your financial security, any sense of a happy retirement is gone. And then all of a sudden it emerges that her son, young Micah, was the thief, her own flesh and blood. He nicked all her money and now, obviously, his conscience gets the better of him and he returns the money.

Now mum should have been outraged, she should have been angry at this terrible act of theft and deceit. Instead she says ‘may my son be blessed by the Lord’. Well of course it’s good to forgive someone quickly but only Freud would have a field day with that one.

And then to celebrate she does what? She goes and makes an idol cast of metal using two hundred pieces of silver which in itself was a huge amount of money. And she consecrates the silver idol to the Lord our God, have you heard of anything as crazy as that? I mean the first of the Ten Commandments:

You shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3)

The second of the Ten Commandments:

You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them and worship them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God punishing children for the inequity of their parents to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me. (Exodus 20:4)

How could they have taken something good, the silver and turn into something bad, the idol? The answer comes in the last verse of the passage that we read earlier: Because in those days there was no king of Israel, all the people did what was right in their own eyes.

And that right there is exactly what we do, we reject authority, we reject the authority of Gods Word and we do what’s right in our eyes. I had an elder in a Church tell me recently that he doesn’t read the Bible because he finds in boring. Really? That same elder has come to the conclusion that he thinks that sex outside marriage is fine.

Well of course he would because he’s rejected Gods Word and that’s exactly what we do when we take something good and we turn it into an object of sacrifice and worship which displaces our worship of God and the rule of God’s Word in our lives. It removes Jesus as the Lord of our lives. We ignore Gods Word and replace it with what seems to be right in our own eyes.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, idols are imposters. They rob us of Gods best. If Micah’s mother had truly wanted to bless God to celebrate the return of her life savings there’s a whole bunch of other things she could have done with two hundred pieces of silver. She could have given it to the poor, she could have taken it to the Levite’s to use in the service of God, hey she could have even thrown a party in honour of God and his goodness.

The one thing she couldn’t do to honour God was to build an idol which by the way then took up residence in Micah’s house to further lead him astray. And just as easy as it was for Micah and his mother to pervert the Word of God, that’s how easy it is for you and me when we reject His Word because we think we’re smarter, we think we’re wiser, we think that our ways are better than His ways.

I see it happen in people’s lives time and time again and I have to guard against it in my own life over and over again. Idolatry is singularly one of the most natural sins that we can commit and we do it at our peril.

Before the break, we met Micah and his mother who took something really good and turned it into something really bad. They took what was, in effect, a blessing from God and turned it into a curse. Something that you and I, if the truth be known, are incredibly adept at doing. Let’s just remind ourselves of their story:

There was a man in the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah. He said to his mother, ‘the eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you about which you uttered a curse and even spoke it in my hearing, that silver is in my possession, I took it but now I’m going to return it to you’. And his mother said, ‘May my son be blessed by the Lord.’

Then he returned the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother and his mother said, ‘I consecrate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son to make an idol of cast metal’. So when he returned the money to his mother his mother too...

After more than five decades living on planet Earth I’ve experienced here in Australia where I live, quite a few elections, after all Australia is a democracy and so we have regular elections. Every three years for our federal parliament, every four years for our state parliament and every few years for local government. So I have countless times heard politicians promising the Earth in order to get elected.

Aspiring Prime Ministers, aspiring State Premiers, aspiring local councillors adamantly proclaiming that this is what they will do and this is what they won’t do if only we’ll elect them. And each time I want to believe them, I do believe them, maybe the best way to put it is I put my hope and trust in them to lead our country, our state or our city in the right direction.

But no sooner do we elect them then all those rock solid promises seem to go out the window. Now there are often very good reasons for that, circumstances change, the economic outlook changes and so on but if I had a dollar for every time I felt deflated and disappointed through the breaking of the promises I heard before election day I think I’d be a pretty wealthy guy.

I know that it’s tough being a leader and a politician and I really feel for those people and respect them and all that but you get my drift. And yet it’s not just politicians and governments that so often disappoint us, let’s not pick on those mostly hard working, mostly decent and honest people who step forward to lead in our society, so many other things disappoint as well even though they had promised so much.

I wonder in your life what have you been disappointed in. What was it that promised so much and then you tried it and it left you so terribly deflated when it failed to live up to the promise, hmm? Perhaps it was a relationship, a marriage perhaps. The courtship was so wonderful then ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years down the track – nothing.

Perhaps it was a child whom you brought into this world in great love and sacrificed for for so many years only for that son or daughter to go completely off the rails and desert you and reject you and the value’s you tried so hard to distil in them. Perhaps it was a job or a career choice; perhaps it was something that you’d saved hard for and bought only to discover that the sacrifice just wasn’t worth it.

I remember once, many years ago when I was earning lots of money, jetting around the globe, business class of course as a high-priced IT consultant, I bought myself a really expensive car, beautiful thing it was. Smooth curves, deep burgundy paint work, gorgeous soft creamy colour leather seats, that wonderful new car smell that you get, every electronic gadget you can imagine, four-wheel steering so you could turn the thing around on a pin head, really an amazing piece of luxury engineering.

I was so delighted when I picked it up from the showroom. It cost a huge amount of money and I went into debt to buy it because I just had to have it. And just a few years later I was on an overseas business trip and left it at the airport. When I came back I discovered that there had been a really big hailstorm. That beautiful sleek, shiny, deep burgundy skin had so many craters in it from where the hail had hit it that it looked a bit like, I imagine, the surface of the moon would look like.

I had it repaired of course but ever after that it had a leak in one of the rear passenger doors they could never find and fix so that when it rained I’d get a little swimming pool on the floor behind the driver’s seat that I had to empty with a cup. I ended up selling that car for a tiny fraction of what I paid for it.

Are you getting my drift here? So many things in this world disappoint and yet we chase after them with all that we are. We sacrifice our money, our energies, our time, our emotional strength to them over and over again trying to get them to work, trying to squeeze out of them that satisfaction that we’ve been looking for but over and over again they slap us in the face.

And when that happens to me I think to myself, ‘You dummy, haven’t you figured it out yet?’ Please don’t get me wrong, there are many good things in this world for us to enjoy and God does want us to enjoy them. Marriages are a good thing, a gift from God. Children, well yeah, they’re a good thing too, an amazing blessing from God and the things we can buy and do, they’re all great but when we get to sacrificing our money, our energies, our very lives on their altars that right there is wrong.

I want to share with you today what is probably a very familiar passage from Gods Word, the First and Second Commandments from Exodus chapter 20, verses 1 to 6, have a listen.

Then God spoke all of these words. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery and you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water or under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God punishing children for the inequity of their parents to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and who keep my commandments.

Today we’re kicking off a new series of messages that I’ve called God’s Very Best For You. It’s a really important series because this idolatry thing is something that you and I want to do over and over again. We want to take the good things of this world many of them perfectly good things and then place them above God in our lives.

And as we’ll see we often do that by rationalising that these are after all blessings from God. He wants me to be happy, He wants me to enjoy the good things of this world and of course He does but do you notice that there are two parts to this transgression of, if I can call it this, idolatry.

There is the making of the false image, “You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in the heaven above, that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.”

And then there’s the worshipping of it, “You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God punishing the children for the inequity of their parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

Now this is something that we’re going to chat quite a bit about over the next few weeks on the program but right now let me ask you, what is it in your life that has become a false image? That idol, that thing that you’ve made for yourself be it a career, a reputation, a relationship, a possession, whatever it is that you have placed above God by worshipping it.

By sacrificing your life and your resources in order to have it by pouring all your energies and all your time into it to try and squeeze that satisfaction out of it that it’s meant to give you that the world promised you it should give you. What is it in your life? Come on what is it?

Do you see how easily you’ve rationalised that behaviour away by telling yourself that it is after all God’s blessing and God does, after all, want you to be happy and to enjoy your life. Yeah, I know this is confronting. I know it’s uncomfortable but here’s the thing, God loves ...

I’ve met people in this world and all they do, all the time, is worry. It’s part of our human nature, I guess, when confronted with something beyond us; something that appears to be overwhelming; something that could well have negative consequences in our lives and here’s what we do: we turn it over and over and over in our heads. We imagine each of those negative consequences that could arise over and over and over. And can I tell you, that sort of thinking just drives you into the ground. It’s like ‘around and around and around we go’ and from experience, I can tell you, it’s just exhausting. You probably know the feeling because no doubt, you have been there too.

Well, over the last few weeks we have been talking about entering into God’s rest – actually finding a deep rest instead of carrying the weight of the world round on our shoulders. But when we are worrying – around and around – there can be no rest because worrying robs us of God’s rest. That’s why we need to deal with that once and for all. My hunch is there are a few people today – perhaps me included – who need to hear what God has to say on worrying.

Remember last week, if you were with us on the programme, we talked about the fact that God loves us and because He loves us, He wants us to have rest. Have another listen. Psalm 127, beginning at verse 2:

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to those whom he loves.

Anxiousness is about worrying, isn‘t it? And whatever the one big thing is that each of us is worrying about in our lives, right at the moment, it’s a bit like a dark cloud that hangs over us that never goes away. Jesus knew that! That’s why He had this to say about worrying – this habit that we have fallen into; this worrying that we do that robs us of the rest and the peace that God wants us to have.

Have a listen – I love the way He calls a spade a spade and tells it the way it is. And look, if you need a wakeup call; if you need some healing from this habit of worrying, please listen closely. Perhaps it’s a familiar passage but may … maybe; just maybe, it’s something we need to hear afresh and anew because when God speaks into our lives through His Spirit and His Word, He can bring healing in an instant into something that has been troubling us for a life time. Here we go – Matthew chapter 6, beginning at verse 25:

“Therefore I tell you,” said Jesus, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothing? I mean, consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither spin nor toil, yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of those. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?”

“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But instead, first strive for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be given to you as well, “So do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will have enough worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 6:25-34)

You know the bit I really like, that hits me between the eyes in this, is Matthew chapter 6, verse 27, it says, “And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” I mean, it’s blindingly, glimpsingly obvious, isn’t it? Worrying about something has a zero positive effect on the outcome; worrying isn’t going to produce a good outcome. If there are retrenchments going around in the company where we work, worrying about whether we’re going to be next, simply isn’t going to change the outcome. In fact, worrying actually has a negative effect because it immobilises us – it stops us from using our imagination; our creativity, to find solutions; it stops us from doing the things that we can do to fix the problem.

Here’s a classic: ‘Oh, I’m worried about the debt I’ve racked up on my credit card – how am I … how am I going to pay it off? What am I going to do? I know I’ll go and buy something to make me feel better!’ Right? I mean, that’s what people do! Not only is worrying never, ever, ever going to have a positive impact on a problem, it more often than not, robs us of the solution.

God knows. He knows what we need. He knows we need a job and income and food and somewhere to live … He knows those things. And He also knows when our body is going to fail us. He knows the precise instant when we will leave our bodies behind and go and stand before Him. He knows that! Man, worry is useless and above all, it robs us of God’s rest.

I truly believe that God wants you and me to understand that today and I truly believe that His Word is going to have a powerful and a mighty impact on both of us today. The Lord’s advice is simple: just give it up! Stop worrying and replace that worrying with something else – focus your mind and your energies and your heart on something else.

First strive for the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all those other things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33)

And so that’s what I choose to do when the devil sows seeds of doubt and worry in my mind. My friend, the devil wants us to worry – he knows that it robs us of the rest of God, the peace of God, the joy of God, the power of God. And today is a day for us to decide to leave that behind – to focus our lives on seeking after God and His Kingdom and His goodness; on living our lives out for Him, first and foremost and then all these other things that we need will be given to us as well. That’s the promise! He loves us, He’s our Dad; He will give us what we need. He will let us travel through whatever He chooses and one day … one day, when we stand before Him, none of those things will matter anymore.

So listen, do yourself a favour, don’t worry about tomorrow; just don’t! It’s not my idea, it’s His!

You know something, I think we would worry a whole bunch less if we truly came to grips with the fact that God … God isn’t just the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, He’s also our helper. Now, a close friend of mind, Graham, turned seventy just recently. He was a Colonel in the Army when I was a Captain serving under him and then we formed an I.T. consulting firm together with a third guy and we did that way back in 1988. Graham was a year younger then than I am now. And as I was writing his birthday card just recently, I stopped to think back on what incredibly hard work it had been starting off that consulting firm.

The three of us left the Army – none of us really had ever run a business or worked in the private sector before. And those first five to seven years we had to cast something new out of that coalface. We had to develop experience and develop a client base and develop a company from scratch....

I remember once, way back, when I was a teenager. You know how difficult teenagers can be when they are growing up. And there’s a reason for that, being a teenager is about moving from childhood to adulthood and that means establishing yourself as someone who is independent of your parents. And because it’s a learning time, okay, we all make lots of mistakes as teenagers, that’s why God put us in families with parents who have both the love and the maturity to cope with our mistakes and to guide us through that growing up process.

Anyhow, I must have been pushing the boundaries quite a bit and my father said to me, he said this, ‘Son, I love you very much but as long as you live in my house, under my roof, eat the food I provide and wear the clothes that I buy for you; you’ll do as I say. If you don’t like it, then there’s the front door. Go and live on the other side of it.’ Well … well, I was so offended. How dare he say that to me? How dare he?

Now, my dad passed away a few years ago now and I am no longer a teenager – I’m in my fifties – I have some grey hair and hopefully, just a bit more wisdom and maturity in life than I did back then. And what I realise now is that all that my parents provided me with in those growing up years, was a privilege and a blessing and because they were the providers, it came on their terms, not on mine.

Now this week on the programme we are continuing in a teaching series that I’ve called “Oh God, I Need a Rest” and today’s programme is about ‘how’ … how to enter God’s rest.

I know that this is a subject that kind of hits the spot with many, many people – quite simply because so many people are tired. Tired of the grind, tired of the stress, tired of the problems, tired because they work so hard, tired because … well, there are so many things that can make us tired … so many!

This week we are going to look at how to enter God’s rest – how – rubber hits the road! And the first part of the ‘how’ comes back to the story that I shared with you about my teenage years and that tough lesson of love that my father had to teach me when I was being precocious and self-centred as teenagers sometimes are. What was the lesson? Simply this: that the blessings that my parents heaped upon me came on their terms, not on mine.

I always find it interesting that of the Ten Commandments, the first four are about our relationship with God – how we should honour Him. And the very next one, the Fifth one, is about us and our parents. Have a listen to it because the lesson we need to learn is reflected right here in the Fifth Commandment of the Ten. Exodus chapter 20, verse 12 says:

Honour your father and your mother so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

See, the blessing of long days is attached to obedience. God blesses us when we honour our parents and get this … this Commandment comes ahead of: “You shall not murder”, which is number six; “You shall not commit adultery”, which is number seven and “You shall not steal”, which is number eight, and so on. So God considers it of first importance after our relationship with Him and that … that is the first thing that we need to know and to learn about blessing. It comes on the terms of the giver, not on the terms of the receiver.

And it’s exactly the same with blessings that God gives us – peace and rest. Those come on God’s terms and that’s something that I’ve had to get through my thick skull. It’s taken a while, and you know, to be honest, it’s still a work in progress.

See, spiritually, when it comes to obeying God, I think we want to be teenagers – we want the blessing on our terms, as though somehow we deserve it. Well, let’s get a revelation together today you and me: we just don’t deserve it! God’s blessing is an act of grace that comes to us through the death of His Son who paid for all our sin.

In a nutshell, here it is, Adam and Eve had a perfect existence in the Garden until they disobeyed God. Genesis chapter 3, verse 11: God said to Adam:

Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?

And so they lost their perfect existence. We’ve done that too in rebelling against God and we read through the whole of the Old Testament and we see how incapable humanity is of honouring God and so God sends His Son to pay for my sin and for yours to open the door again so that we can have a relationship with Him. But have a listen to what the New Testament says about God’s peace and rest and how we get it – how it becomes available to us. Hebrews chapter 4, beginning at verse 9. Grab a Bible if you have it and join with me. It says this:

So then, a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God. For those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labours just as God did from his. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest so that no one may fall through disobedience. (Hebrew 4:9-10)

The one thing that takes God’s Sabbath rest away from us is what? – disobedience! And actually that’s something that I’ve learned in my walk with God. It’s something I know in my experience. See, when I have decided on occasions to go my way; to do things my way – just like the old Frank Sinatra song – against God’s will, you know what happens? There’s no rest; there’s no peace – life all of a sudden, starts getting complicated. If we harbour anger in our hearts, if we fail to forgive people, if we steal or lie or grumble or commit sexual immorality, against God’s will – and all those things are against God’s will – we lose any sense of peace. And without the peace there’s no rest.

On the other hand, when we obey God, well, have a listen. First John chapter 5, verse 3:

For the love of God is this: that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world – our faith

When we obey God we have victory. And what does victory bring? Well, when there’s a war and finally, one side wins in victory, what comes next is peace – what comes after that is rest. When Israel entered the Promised Land they fought battle after battle after battle to take the Promised Land from those who were living in it. And they obeyed God and what happened? Joshua chapter 21, verse 44:

And the Lord, listen to this, And the Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their ancestors.

My friend, the rest of God, His peace, come on His terms and not on ours and the sooner we get that, the sooner we will enter God’s rest.

Peace, rest, satisfaction, contentment … I don’t know one person on this planet who doesn’t want those things in their lives. Do you? But I know lots who are the way I used to be – troubled, stressed, torn on the inside; people who chase after what this world has to offer; what the advertising industry holds out as being THE holiday, or THE car, or THE house, or THE clothes, or THE watch – whatever it is that’s going to deliver us rest.

The problem is, none of those things can because rest is something that comes when we are at peace inside and there’s only one place – only one – where I’ve found that. You see, for us to have rest the battles have to cease. Israel … Israel was entering into the Promised Land, they had to fight battle after battle to take the land that Go...

Last week on the programme we kicked off a new series of messages called, “O God I Need a Rest,” because this is what so many, many people need – a rest. So many people are tired, too tired, to have quality time with their friends or their family; too tired to be truly part of a faith community; too tired to enjoy life; too tired, well, just too tired. And here’s the funny thing: we just keep on keeping on – same commute, same pressures at work, come home at night exhausted, up the next morning, Friday – weekend, collapse, back on Monday again.

We just keep going – we know something is wrong – we know life shouldn’t be like this but it is and that’s it and there’s nothing I can do about it, so I just have to keep on going. I’m trapped on this treadmill that I can’t get off. And you don’t hear too many people talking about this problem either – we know we are all tired, just get on with it. Now I have absolutely nothing against hard work, but where’s the balance; where’s the joy; what’s the point?

Today I’d like to share with you that this exhaustion; this tiredness is not God’s plan for our lives. As we saw last week, it says in Psalm 127:

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for God gives sleep to those whom he loves.

In other words, God wants us to have a rest. That’s why we are talking about rest – a simple straight forward ‘how to’; how to enter into God’s rest – how to live smack, bang in the centre of God’s peace. Last week on the programme we saw that God, after His mighty act of creation, rested and that He thought that, that day of rest was so important that He commanded His people to keep a Sabbath day, set apart for Him.

Now He didn’t rest because He was exhausted; He rested to sit back and enjoy His creation. So for God, right up front there, is a simple pattern of work and rest. You and I we need both and actually that wonderful creation; that sense of work and then enjoying this world, that’s something He’s also gifted to us – humanity.

See sometimes, we imagine that God’s blessing and His goodness and His whole rest and peace thing can’t possibly be for us. But come and have a look with me at what He did with all He created – let this rock your sock off! Genesis chapter 1, beginning at verse 26:

Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’.

God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.’

And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And so it was.

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning on the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude.

And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. (Genesis 2:2-3)

There it is! God creates this stunning universe, hands it over for the man and the woman, for you and for me, to enjoy that creation. ‘Here, here, it’s yours, subdue it, till it or farm it, be fruitful, multiply and enjoy.’ See God only rests once He’s created everything and given it away to the people; to the man and the woman – both of them made in His image. That’s the joy He has in His creation. And then in Genesis chapter 2, verse 15:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and to keep it.

And He gives the man a woman to be his wife, his partner and they enjoy this life in the Garden, safe, at rest, working, resting in relationship with God. That was God’s original plan for His people – that He would be their God and that they would be His people – safe and at rest. Now we know that Adam and Eve ruined that and we will look at that later on in the programme but for now let’s just stick with God’s original plan.

It was never His plan for us to be out of close relationship and fellowship with Him or with each other. It was never His plan for us to be amid strife and conflict. It was never His plan for us to be carrying around heavy burdens. It was never His plan to see you and me groaning under the burden of a weight that was crushing us. Those things were never, ever His first and His best plan for us.

What’s befallen us has done so because Adam and Eve and then you and me, in our turn; we all in our own way, in our own time, have turned our backs on God. As I said, that’s for later. But if you are somehow imagining that God couldn’t possibly bring you peace and rest into your life, then it’s time to think again. Look at what He did – He created the whole universe, handed it over to Adam and Eve; to us, to humanity, to enjoy – both to work and to rest, just as God Himself had done.

This is the point I believe God wants us to get today; that right from the very, very, very beginning, His plan was a good one. And here’s the thing: there’s a reason why they call Jesus ‘The Saviour.’ A lot of people wonder to themselves, ‘What could He possibly save me from? I’m not lost, I’m not in trouble,’ and so they conclude they don’t need Jesus. And sadly, let me say, all too often, these are the very same people who are carrying around those heavy burdens. These are the very same people who are being crushed under the yoke of slavery to their sin. That’s why Jesus came; that’s why Jesus said – Matthew chapter 11, beginning at verse 29 – He said:

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:29-30)

God has heard the cry of His people and He has come to do something about it – that’s His plan for you and for me.

Every now and then I get to thinking, ‘God, why am I so tired? Why do I have to work so hard?’ I’m sure that’s a thought that’s gone through your mind just once or twice as well. And when we are in the middle of this tiredness and exhaustion, we keep going and we keep going and through our blurry eyes, it seems we see things just from a human perspective – a purely physical and emotional perspective. The fact that sometimes life is just hard work and we are tired – ‘Well, that’s how it is! What alternative do I have? I’ll just keep on going till I drop.’ Right?

But tiredness and exhaustion; they’re not just human; they’re not just physical and emotional. There’s a deep spiritual dimension to hard work and exhaustion – a dimension that starts almost at t...

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but some people seem so tired – exhausted. As though there’s a plague quietly creeping over humanity. Now I’m sure this varies somewhat from country to country and from culture to culture. I’m sure that there are some people somewhere living idyllic life, you know plenty of rest, relaxation but to tell you the honest truth most of us don’t know any.

People seem to be working harder, competing more, clamouring more to buy the things and have the things that we’re told that we should buy and have. Some people are struggling just to survive, just to get enough food on the table, many in fact. Others are drowning in debt.

Yet others still aspire to a career and then discover that this thing they idolised, this career has in fact turned them into indentured slaves. Long hours, long commute, the traffic, the train and you know, you don’t have to be working like a mad man to be tired.

There are many people who don’t work, people who are lonely who are tired. See I think that tiredness comes not just from working too hard. It comes from carrying around heavy burdens. And so that’s why I’m asking, why is it that everyone is so tired? What’s going on here? What can we, you and I, do about it?

That’s what we’re going to be looking at over the coming few weeks on the program – exhaustion and tiredness.

And just in case you should think that this is something new. Just in case that you should think that this plague of tiredness and exhaustion is something that’s exclusively related to the excesses of western materialism. Have a listen to this, this is Jesus 2000 years ago. You can read it in Matthew’s Gospel chapter 11, verses 28 to 30. Jesus said:

Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart and you’ll find rest for your soul. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

 So these weren’t people burnt out by an industrial age that He was talking to. We’re pretty much talking rural agrarian subsistence economy here back in the 1st century land of Israel. So carrying heavy burdens is nothing new. I mean we all carry heavy burdens from time to time.

It’s funny that the Greek mythology came up with Atlas. You’ve seen this picture of this man stooped over carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. And I guess that’s how many people feel. These heavy burdens that Jesus was talking about, these heavy burdens come in so many different shapes and sizes. I’ve carried a few of them around in my day and I’m sure that you have too.

Sometimes we’re just plain working too hard and we need a rest. Or there are pressures at work and maybe pressures at home and it feels like we’re living in a pressure cooker. And my hunch is that that’s not how we’re meant to live.

Sometimes it’s relationships, a particular person who is hurting us or who’s betrayed us or who’s ignoring us or who’s fighting with us or who’s trying to squeeze us into some mould into which we don’t fit. Sometimes it’s because we’re trying to do things or to be things we were never meant to do or be.

I remember when I started out as a consultant in the IT industry many years ago. I used to think that I had to pretend to my clients that I could do everything. I can tell you that’s a pretty stressful way of living. Sometimes the burdens about our self-esteem or self-worth. We compare ourselves with other people and we come up with a conclusion that we just don’t match up.

Or others have expectations of us, we have expectations of ourselves that, well, we’re just struggling to meet. Or sometimes it’s money problems, ‘I’ve lost my job, I don’t have a job’. And for many people listening today they can’t even put food on their table for their kids. Those are real burdens. Sometimes it’s loneliness, like a padded prison cell where we scream and no-one can hear us.

Do you see how this list goes on and on? And you know, sometimes it’s just this sense that something’s not quite right, something’s wrong, we just can’t put our finger on it. Other times we know what’s causing our stress, we know what’s causing our tiredness because we’re running away from God, we know that we’re rebelling.

And as much as we try and convince ourselves that we can do it our way, it’s so exhausting pulling in the opposite direction to God. Exhaustion, tiredness, man sometimes we need a rest, a holiday, a day off, a break away from the grind.

But can I tell you something? I’ve had holidays in the past where I didn’t get any rest either because while you can perhaps get away from work or even home and the day-to-day routine, many of those burdens and pressures I’ve been talking about just don’t go away because you’re on holidays, do they? You can be sitting on a sandy beach with waves rolling in and yet still carrying the heavy burden of a failing marriage or financial debt or the fear of what’s going to happen when you get back to work.

Here’s the thing, burdens come in many different shapes and sizes, they do, and over the coming weeks on the program we’re going to look at a lot of these different burdens – the things that we carry around, the weight of the world on our shoulders. The things that, try as we may, we can’t seem to put down even though we want to rest, even though we want to get rid of them out of our lives.

That’s the thing, so often these burdens are so hard to get away from and to put down and to rest from and I’ve come to the conclusion as a self-reliant individual as I am, I just can’t do that on my own. Here’s the thing, I believe, I truly believe with every fibre of my being that God wants to give us rest. I believe that God hears the cries of His people and that He has the answers.

Do you remember when God’s chosen people, the nation of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, they were in slavery in captivity in Egypt? Do you remember what God said to Moses? Exodus chapter 3, verses 7 and 8:

The Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry on account of their task masters. Indeed I know their sufferings and I’ve come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey’.

See we so often dig ourselves into a hole. So often we’re living out consequences of our own rebellion against God. So often we look at life and kick ourselves and think, ‘Oh man, if only I hadn’t, you know, whatever it is’. And that sense of regret makes things worse.

And sometimes we’re just carrying burdens that aren’t our fault. Being oppressed by other people or by circumstances completely out of our control. Well here’s the thing, I believe that God wants to set us free. I believe that God wants to give us rest and peace and well-being. In fact I don’t just believe it, I know it because Jesus said:

Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for you souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

That’s what we are going to be exploring together over these coming weeks on the programme – God’s peace and God’s rest because He means it for my life and He means it for yours too.

You know there...