Be Still And Know

Matthew 5:5 God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth. It’s impossible to exaggerate the revolutionary nature of Jesus’ words. He was introducing his disciples to a totally new upside-down kingdom. This Beatitude reminds me of the words of Mary’s song of praise when she was pregnant with Jesus. She sang: “His mighty arm has done tremendous things! He has scattered the proud and haughty ones. He has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble.” (Luke 1:51-52) The kingdom of God that Jesus ushered in was going to be shaped by obedience to God’s will, not by earthly power, prestige and influence. The key to God’s kingdom is humility. Martin Luther wrote: “Until a man is nothing, God can make nothing of him.” It is when we recognise our frailty and weakness that God is able to make something of us. Humility is a vital quality in every part of life. For example, the person who pretends that they know everything is unteachable. But the person who recognises that t

Matthew 5:4 God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted. If you listen to the news regularly you will be well aware that a lot of mourning goes on in our world. It always has. Today there will be people experiencing the agony of losing a loved one. Their world has suddenly been turned upside down. There are also millions of people mourning because they have been forced to leave their homeland. There are said to be nearly 300 million migrants across our world, forced to leave their homes because of war, famine or persecution. I cannot begin to imagine how horrifying it must be to live with such complete insecurity. This Beatitude does not claim that God will suddenly make all sadness disappear. But he is the God who meets with us and transforms all our experiences. Through the years I have visited many homes just after a terrible accident has happened or a relative has suddenly died. It’s very difficult to find words to say on such occasions, but I have always found incredible peace in being abl

Matthew 5:3 Jesus said: “God blesses those who are poor and realise their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” This is the first of Jesus’ famous sayings at the start of his Sermon on the Mount, popularly known as the Beatitudes. It takes us right to heart of Jesus’ Good News. It’s vital that we understand what Jesus was actually saying, and also what he was not saying. He was definitely not saying that poverty is a wonderful thing, because it isn’t. Poverty is a tragic state that limits life and opportunity and causes real suffering to those who experience it. Jesus was talking about people who realise that they are unable to cope without God. They recognise that they can only be helped by God reaching out to and blessing them. The truth is that God longs to bless everyone, but he is unable to do so until we realise our need. All the time we imagine that we can cope by ourselves, God cannot get close to us. The wonderful thing about this saying of Jesus is that he is not promising his ble

Deuteronomy 31:7-8 Moses said to Joshua: “Be strong and courageous!...Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you.” Forty years before Moses spoke these words, Joshua had been one of twelve spies who had been sent into the promised land. Moses had asked them to make an assessment of Canaan and ten of the spies brought back an overwhelmingly negative report. They drew attention to the great height of the people who lived in the land and the size of their walls which, they claimed, even reached up to the sky! The people were, not surprisingly, thoroughly demoralised and concluded that the best thing to do would be to race back to slavery in Egypt. Only two of the spies brought a positive report - Joshua and Caleb. As a result, the people were condemned to 40 years in the desert and only Joshua and Caleb were eventually allowed to enter the promised land. Although Joshua had 40 years to prepare for this moment, i

Deuteronomy 30:11-12, 14 Moses said: “This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you, and it is not beyond your reach. It is not kept in heaven, so distant that you must ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven and bring it down so we can hear it and obey?’ No, the message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it.” We are all sinners and are very conscious of our failings. So it is very easy for us to feel overwhelmed by the invitation to live for God. Just like Isaiah, we feel utterly unqualified for such a role. But here Moses encourages the people to believe that they could do it. It wasn’t too difficult for them. God’s commands were not out of reach. They wouldn’t need to make a special visit to heaven or cross the seas to discover it. It was immediately available to them. This is a really important message. So often, people put off the challenge to obey God today because they feel it’s too difficult to take on at the moment. They want to give it more t

Deuteronomy 14:22-23 Moses declared: “You must set aside a tithe of your crops—one-tenth of all the crops you harvest each year. Bring this tithe to the designated place of worship—the place the Lord your God chooses for his name to be honoured—and eat it there in his presence.” Giving one tenth of your income to the Lord was a principle established from the earliest days. In Genesis 14:20, Abram offers a tithe to Melchizedek, the king of Salem. Moses was concerned that this should now be the basis of the people of Israel’s life in the promised land. There are two main reasons why it was important. Firstly, it was a fundamental part of their worship. As they brought a tithe of their corn, wine, oil, cattle or sheep to God, they were recognising that everything had come from his hands in the first place. Secondly, the tithe was intensely practical. The Levites were not to be given land because their responsibilities were to serve the Lord. So they were completely dependent on the support of others, and the

Deuteronomy 13:1-3 Moses declared: “Suppose there are prophets among you or those who dream dreams about the future, and they promise you signs or miracles, and the predicted signs or miracles occur. If they then say, ‘Come, let us worship other gods’—gods you have not known before— do not listen to them.” As Moses prepared the people of Israel to enter the promised land, he was deeply concerned that they might be led astray from God. He knew their security and prosperity depended on them staying faithful to the God who had brought them out of Egypt and through the wilderness. But he also knew they would hear other voices. There would be people who would set themselves up as prophets and who would try to lure the people away to worship other gods. He wasn’t wrong! The Old Testament tells us about frequent occasions when the people were persuaded to follow other gods. They lurched from one god to another with sickening regularity. The situation wasn’t so very different in the New Testament. The gods might h

Deuteronomy 14:2 Moses declared: “You have been set apart as holy to the Lord your God, and he has chosen you from all the nations of the earth to be his own special treasure.” The word ‘holy’ means something that is special. Moses wanted the people of Israel to know they were so special to God that they needed to live a life that was distinct from the people around them. They were to ensure that all that they did was pleasing to him. They followed strict dietary rules and ensured that they did everything possible to avoid getting mixed up in other religions. They belonged to the God of Israel and only to him. They were his own special treasure. When Peter wrote his first letter, he used very similar language to describe the Church. In 1 Peter 2:9, he wrote: “You are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.” The Church has not been called to offer t

Deuteronomy 11:26 Moses declared, “Look, today I am giving you the choice between a blessing and a curse!” The book of Deuteronomy gives us the sermon that Moses preached as the people gazed at the promised land. God had told Moses that he would not enter into Canaan and, so, he stood on Mount Nebo looking at the land which God had promised to give to his people. He knew God well enough to know he longed to bless them. He wanted this new chapter in the life of the people of Israel to be full of blessing and happiness, but he also knew it was down to the choices they would make. They had the power to choose a blessing or a curse. This is a stark message, and it is precisely the one that we face today. We can choose God’s blessing, but we are not forced to. We have free will. If we choose to go our own way, that’s up to us. It might seem as if we are not making any particular decisions sometimes. However, stand back from your life for a moment. Everything you do, from the moment you wake up, is guided by

Deuteronomy 10:18-19 “God ensures that orphans and widows receive justice. He shows love to the foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing. So you, too, must show love to foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. You must fear the Lord your God and worship him and cling to him.” I’ve never been a widow or an orphan but, for two years, I was a foreigner, living in India. It was the most amazing experience. Everything felt different. The language, constantly warm weather and hot curries were just the start of it. Indian customs and attitudes to life were totally unfamiliar. I was surrounded by the love and generosity of the Indian family I lived with, but there was no disguising the fact that I was a foreigner. I belonged to another country. And I can easily understand how foreigners can feel vulnerable and threatened. Moses reminded the people of Israel that they had once been foreigners themselves. They lived in Egypt for 400 years and, although that was an

Deuteronomy 8:10-11 “When you have eaten your fill, be sure to praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. But that is the time to be careful! Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the Lord your God and disobey his commands, regulations, and decrees that I am giving you today.” Moses preached this sermon just before the people of Israel crossed into the promised land. An exciting new life awaited them, but it was going to be different from anything they had ever known. For a generation they had been wandering in the wilderness, and so their new settled life in Canaan would present lots of entirely new challenges. Firstly, it would be easy for them to forget about the Lord. They would be so busy setting up home, establishing their farms and bringing up their families that they would simply neglect the God who had brought them to the promised land. And in forgetting about the Lord, they would then neglect to obey all the loving regulations that he had given them to ensure their happi

Deuteronomy 8:10-11 Moses preached this sermon just before the people of Israel crossed into the promised land. An exciting new life awaited them, but it was going to be different from anything they had ever known. For a generation they had been wandering in the wilderness, and so their new settled life in Canaan would present lots of entirely new challenges. Firstly, it would be easy for them to forget about the Lord. They would be so busy setting up home, establishing their farms and bringing up their families that they would simply neglect the God who had brought them to the promised land. And in forgetting about the Lord, they would then neglect to obey all the loving regulations that he had given them to ensure their happiness, peace and security. It’s no different today. It is incredibly easy to forget about the Lord, not through any deliberate intention to do so, but simply because life gets busy. Perhaps we get a new job, move to a different area, have an illness or take up a new hobby and, su

Deuteronomy 7:7 The people of Israel were very special to God. But it is only natural to ask the question: “Why?” Why should God favour one particular nation over all the rest? In his sermon, Moses considers this question and concludes that the only possible explanation was love. The Israelites were not powerful and strong. Far from it, they formed a little nation that had spent much of its life in slavery. But God decided to show them his love. The verb that Moses used in Hebrew is really interesting, because it’s not a typical religious word. It literally means ‘to hang on to’ someone. God decided to hang on to the people of Israel through thick and thin. He had made a commitment to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and he wasn’t going to let them down. Love is always a miraculous gift. You can’t buy love or force it to happen. That’s true of all our human relationships and supremely true of God’s relationship with us. God loves you and me and there is nothing we can do to change that fact. He is determined

Deuteronomy 6:20-21 One of the greatest blessings of my life has been that, for much of the time, I have lived with small children – and one of the joys that children bring is in their questioning. I have noticed this is particularly intense around the age of four or five. Their theological questioning leaves learned professors standing! They want to know who made God, where heaven is, why God stopped making dinosaurs and why he allows suffering. And all before eight o’clock in the morning! You may well have had a similar experience. Moses anticipated that children would ask questions. He knew they may ask why God had given his people so many laws. And Moses was keen that the children shouldn’t be fobbed off with slick answers. They needed to be told about the turbulent history of the people of Israel. They needed to know how God had saved their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. Although it happened a long time ago, they needed to understand the great things that God could do. He was the God who saved

Deuteronomy 6:4-6 These words stand right at the heart of the Jewish faith. In Jewish worship, they are repeated in both morning and evening prayers. They are a continual reminder of the fundamental truth that there is only one God, and he deserves total devotion. These words are known as the Shema and the people of Israel were commanded to keep repeating them to their children. They were so fundamental that Moses told them to: “talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up” (Deuteronomy 6:7). They were also told to write the words on tiny fragments of paper and put them in leather pouches called phylacteries, which were tied around their hands and foreheads. The words were also placed on the doorposts of their homes. They did everything possible to ensure these words were not forgotten. Repetition is often a characteristic of a loving relationship. I regularly tell my wife and children that I love them. I don’t do this because

Deuteronomy 4:9 In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses was preparing the people of Israel for their entry into the promised land. What they were about to experience was something entirely different from the many years they had spent in the wilderness. They would be able to settle down and enjoy food and drink. It would be a land truly flowing with milk and honey. But they would also face enormous obstacles. The people who lived in Canaan were not going to welcome them with open arms. Moses sought to equip them for this experience and, at the heart of his message, was their need to remember their history. They had incredible experiences of God’s provision in the 40 years since they left Egypt, and they needed to keep reminding themselves of all that he had done. More than that, they needed to tell their children and grandchildren about it, too. It’s interesting how often the Bible addresses the issue of forgetting. It clearly isn’t a new problem! Moses could foresee that people would quickly get involved in

Deuteronomy 1:30-31 In the opening chapter of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the people of their history. The journey from the Nile river to the promised land of Canaan took less than two weeks. When they arrived in Kadesh-barnea, just south of the border with Canaan, Moses encouraged them to enter the land that God had promised to give them. But the people were cautious. They suggested spies should be sent in, to find out whether it was safe to proceed. When the 12 spies returned, most focused on the problems. They reported that the inhabitants of the promised land were taller and more powerful than they were, and their towns and walls were enormous. They even said they had seen giants. This was enough to scare the Israelites, who suggested it would be better to head back to slavery in Egypt. The fact that two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, gave a very positive report did nothing to calm their nerves. God responded angrily. The spies’ report was based on 40 days in the promised land, and so God punishe

Deuteronomy 1:12-13 Moses was a great man. He had been appointed by God to lead the people out of Egypt, but there was no way in which he could do this by himself. He needed lots of help, particularly from wise people who could help to resolve all the difficult issues that arose. From all the very honest accounts we have of those 40 wilderness years, we know the people were often in a bad mood. They frequently complained about the harsh conditions and often wished they could turn the clock back and return to slavery in Egypt. But what we read about was probably just the tip of the iceberg. Grumbles were part of daily life, and it simply wasn’t possible for one person to handle them all. The appointment of well-respected people from each tribe was a wise way forward. Although it is sad to hear that there were so many problems during those wilderness years, this story should offer us a degree of reassurance. We shouldn’t be surprised when we face problems and bickering. It’s sad, but it’s often a fact of

Deuteronomy 1:12-13 Moses was a great man. He had been appointed by God to lead the people out of Egypt, but there was no way in which he could do this by himself. He needed lots of help, particularly from wise people who could help to resolve all the difficult issues that arose. From all the very honest accounts we have of those 40 wilderness years, we know the people were often in a bad mood. They frequently complained about the harsh conditions and often wished they could turn the clock back and return to slavery in Egypt. But what we read about was probably just the tip of the iceberg. Grumbles were part of daily life, and it simply wasn’t possible for one person to handle them all. The appointment of well-respected people from each tribe was a wise way forward. Although it is sad to hear that there were so many problems during those wilderness years, this story should offer us a degree of reassurance. We shouldn’t be surprised when we face problems and bickering. It’s sad, but it’s often a fact o

Psalm 5:3 Let’s be clear that God loves to hear from us at any time. Morning, noon or night he loves to hear our prayers. But there is something very important about us coming to God in the morning when the day is still new. It’s a fresh page and so far we have done nothing to mess it up! It may well be that you find it better to have a quiet reflective time with God later in the day and that’s fine. But I urge you not to miss the opportunity to start the day with the Lord, even if it is very brief. What could be better than for us to thank him for the gift of a new day and to ask him to strengthen and lead us through it? Whatever is happening in the day ahead there are bound to be requests that we want to make. We want God to bless our activities and the people we will meet. I was talking with a friend only a few days ago who showed me a well-thumbed notebook in which he had written the names of people he had prayed for over the last few years. Against most of the names was a tick which he sensed tha