Be Still And Know

Psalm 85.8 NLT 'I listen carefully to what God the Lord is saying, for he speaks peace to his faithful people.' Listening is crucial to every part of life. But that doesn’t mean that it is a simple process. It requires a huge amount of thought and care so it isn’t surprising that courses in listening are widely available these days. There are essentially five stages to the listening process – receiving, understanding, evaluating, remembering, and responding. I am sure that the psalmist would have totally agreed with this and seen it as a good description of what it meant to “listen carefully” to the Lord. It’s possible to hear someone speaking without taking on board anything that they have said. But, when you listen you deliberately receive what they are saying. However, even that isn’t enough because you need to understand the words that they are using. Without that their words are nothing more than sounds. Having understood the words they need to be evaluated. What exactly was the person trying to say

Psalm 84.10 NLT 'A single day in your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else! I would rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God than live the good life in the homes of the wicked.' I wonder if you’ve ever experienced home sickness. I certainly have. I loved the years I spent in India and my Indian friends couldn’t possibly have been more kind or welcoming. But there was still a deep longing to see my family and friends and, if I’m honest, to experience cold weather! At the time, the phone connection between India and the UK was very poor and in two years I only managed to make one call to my parents and it was incredibly expensive. The line was very crackly and it was very difficult to hear anything, but there were tears rolling down my cheeks as I succeeded in hearing the distant voices of my parents. I think the only significant information that we shared that could be clearly heard was them telling me that it was raining in Essex, and me informing me that it was hot in India!! The psalmist

Psalm 82.3-4 NLT 'Give justice to the poor and the orphan; uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute. Rescue the poor and helpless; deliver them from the grasp of evil people.' When I was in my 20s I lived in an Indian village for a year. I had the incredible privilege of living with a family of Dalits, who have generally been known as untouchables. Dalits form about a quarter of the Indian population and have always been regarded as the lowest of the low. My Indian family was a typical extended family with a granny, mum, dad, three children, and various aunts who would stay with us from time to time. They generously opened their home and their hearts to me and gave me the most amazing insight into their way of life. In doing so they opened my eyes to injustice on a scale I had never seen before. Every part of their life was defined by the fact that they were Dalits. Life was a daily struggle as they lived with the certainty that they would never receive fair treatment from society. It was dist

Luke 2.13-14 NLT "Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying, “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased." The shepherds received the news of Jesus’ birth from a single angel who was then joined by a vast crowd of angels to sing an amazing chorus of praise. The language used recalls Job 38.7 where when God created the world “the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy.” With the coming of Jesus into the world there is a new creation and so the whole population of heaven needed to join together in bringing a triumphant act of worship. I am sure that artists through the centuries have been right to depict the whole sky being alight as the angels sang their praises to the surprised shepherds. The message of the angelic host is interesting and it begs the question, “Who are the people with whom God is pleased?” It’s not an expression that we often find in the New Testament but it reminds

Luke 2.10-11 NLT The angel reassured the shepherds. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Saviour—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!” The angel’s message is fascinating because its content is both incredibly Jewish and yet embraces everyone. The angel makes it clear that the baby who has just been born is the Messiah, the one who came to fulfil the Old Testament scriptures. But, at the same time, the coming of Jesus was for the whole world. Although Jesus was to focus much of his ministry on his own people, the Jews, he consistently made it clear that he had come to bring salvation to the world. The responsibility of those of us who call ourselves Christians is to do everything in our power to make it clear that Jesus came for everyone. Sadly, churches can be extremely unfriendly and intimidating places, and people often get the impression that they are full of old people who do things in strange old-fas

Luke 2.8-9 NLT 'That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified.' It’s not very surprising that the shepherds were terrified. They were well used to facing dangers in the desert. They were constantly threatened by wolves and other wild animals but angels were a different matter! This was completely outside their experience. But more than that, as shepherds they would have had no expectation of receiving such important heavenly news. Shepherds were widely despised. They were considered to be unreliable and for that reason they were not allowed to give testimony in the law-courts. Although it is likely that they were caring for sheep that would be used for the temple sacrifices in Jerusalem, their way of life made it impossible for them to comply with the requirements of the law. They were outsiders. Time and again the gospels show us

Luke 2.6-7 NLT 'While they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. Mary gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.' When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, they found that it was heaving with people who had come for the census which the Romans had demanded. In the Jewish law, censuses were forbidden and so the holding of a census was a further reason for the people to resent the occupying power. However, Joseph was a law- abiding man and if required to go to his family’s ancestral home he was willing to comply. The fact that there were no lodgings available when they finally arrived in Bethlehem must have been a horrible surprise for the young couple, and especially for Mary. We are in fact told nothing about the location of Jesus’ birth, but it is most probable that it happened in a cave. All we know is that he was placed in an animal feeding trough, a manger, when he was born. That ma

Luke 2.4-5 NLT 'Because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He travelled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. He took with him Mary, to whom he was engaged, who was now expecting a child.' If you travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem these days it is a relatively easy journey. The roads are good and you should get there by car in about two and half hours. Mary and Joseph’s experience would have been completely different. On foot the 90 mile journey would have been arduous and dangerous. They would probably have gone down the Jordan Valley which, at the time, was heavily wooded and was home to wolves, lions and wild boar. They posed a significant threat to the young couple but, in addition, they had to face the ever- present threat from robbers. The journey would normally take walkers about five days but because Mary was in the last stages of her pregnancy they may well have taken a few days longer than that. The weather would also have bee

Matthew 1.22-23 NLT All of this occurred to fulfil the Lord’s message through his prophet: “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’” Loneliness is one of the greatest problems of our society and it is on the increase. This matters because loneliness is incredibly dangerous. It increases the risk of death by 26 percent, is more damaging to health than obesity, and increases the risk of high blood pressure. Loneliness, living alone and poor social connections are as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day (Holt-Lunstad 2010). But the person who knows Jesus personally need never experience loneliness, because he is Immanuel “God with us” and, when we live with him day by day, we are instantly connected to a worldwide family of his people. The difference between our relationship with God and with other people is that God never leaves us. He is always by our side. We may have the warmest of relationships wit

Matthew 1.21 NLT “And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Giving a name to a child is a huge moment for parents. If you have ever had that privilege. I am sure you will remember the conversations about the various possibilities. You will probably have thought about names that have been particularly important in your family together with names that you have always liked. But as you make the decision you know that the child will have to carry that name for life, in one form or another, and so you will want to be extremely careful. We have three children and I well remember the long discussions about the various names that we could use. Our third child is called Bethany for the simple reason that that is where my wife and I first met. I was leading a student group around Israel and my future wife was one of the students and we were staying in a cheap hotel on the West Bank very near Bethany. Many have asked us since then what we might have called

Matthew 1.20 NLT As Joseph considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit.” This account is so familiar to us that we need to take a moment to try to imagine what the experience must have been like for Joseph. In all probability he would have been in his 20s and Mary may well have been a teenager. He was clearly a good man and he took his Jewish faith very seriously. His decision to end the relationship quietly was understandable but he must have been experiencing a riot of emotions. He was thinking of Mary, himself, his family’s name and reputation and his desire to do what God wanted. As he turned over these things in his mind he had a dream in which he was addressed with his family title. He was Joseph, belonging to the line of the great King David. In the dream he was told not to be fearful but to take Mary as his wife because the baby was a

Matthew 1.19 NLT "Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly." At the centre of the account of Jesus’ birth is a man about whom we know very little. Joseph was the legal father of Jesus and Matthew’s gospel begins with Jesus’ family line through Joseph. But after the birth of Jesus we meet Joseph on only one occasion. That was when the family went for a Passover visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was 12 years old. We get the distinct impression that Mary was a widow by the time Jesus’ public ministry began. One verse in the New Testament tells us that Joseph was an artisan (Matthew 13.55) and it has been generally assumed that he was a carpenter but we can’t even be sure of that. He could have been a worker with iron or stone. Although we know so very little about this extremely important man, we know about his character. He was described as a “righteous man”, which means that he was concerned to be obedient to t

Matthew 1.16-17 NLT "Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah. All those listed above include fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah." Matthew shows here how the Old Testament has prepared the way for the coming of Jesus. He points out that there were 14 generations from the time of Abraham, the father of the nation, up to the reign of King David. This was undoubtedly the high-water mark in the Old Testament. David was the one who established Jerusalem as the city of God and who prepared the way for the building of the magnificent Temple. After that everything went catastrophically downhill in the next fourteen generations ending with the people being taken off into exile in Babylon. The following 14 generations were ones in which the prophetic voice was almost entirely silent. There is a four hundred year gap between the final book of the Old Testament and the coming of Christ. However, thro

Matthew 1.1 & 16 NLT "This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham ... Joseph was the husband of Mary. Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah." If you were writing a book about someone famous I suspect you wouldn’t start like this. But Matthew was writing his gospel for people from a Jewish background and so it was vital that he started with an account of Jesus’ ancestors. It was crucial that they could clearly see where Jesus fitted in the history of the people of Israel. Matthew points out that there were three groups of 14 generations. The first ran from Abraham to David; the second went up to the exile in Babylon: and the third concluded with the arrival of Jesus, whose legal father was Joseph. This firmly placed Jesus in the family line of David, and so he could be properly called the Son of David. The list of people in this chapter doesn’t seem to make great reading, but if you look at the individuals mentioned it is absolutely gripping. T

Psalm 81.10-11 NLT ”For it was I, the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it with good things. But no, my people wouldn’t listen. Israel did not want me around.” We probably all know the feeling when someone doesn’t want us around. It’s painful. For some reason they don’t come out with it plainly and clearly, but we get the clear impression that we are not welcome. But how much more tragic it is when people decide that they don’t want God around, and that’s how the psalmist described Israel. He was the God who had led them out of slavery in Egypt. He was the God of salvation, but time and again they rejected him and refused to listen to him. But we are not just talking about ancient history. We are describing our society today. The majority of people totally ignore God. They don’t want him around because they think that he will spoil their fun. They are concerned that they will lose their freedom. However, we need to take every opportunity to inform

Psalm 80.19 NLT "Turn us again to yourself, O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved." We all know that look, when someone looks at us with their full attention and warmth. The look tells us everything that we need to know – that we are welcome and that they are on our side. On three occasions in this psalm, Asaph expresses his longing that God’s face would shine upon the people. This psalm was probably written at the time of the fall of Samaria to the Assyrians in the 8th century BC. The destruction of the ten northern tribes left little Judah terribly exposed and the people feared for their lives. In their despair they turned to God and longed that he would turn his face to them and give them his blessing. The fact is that God longed to give his people his blessing. That is what any loving father longs to do, and the Old Testament makes clear to us that it was consistently God’s desire. Today’s verse reminds us of the Aaronic Blessing which we find in Numb

Psalm 78.2-4 NLT "I will teach you hidden lessons from our past — stories we have heard and known, stories our ancestors handed down to us. We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, about his power and his mighty wonders." In a speech in the House of Commons in 1948, Winston Churchill paraphrased Santayana when he said “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” This was precisely the concern of Asaph in this particular psalm. In this long psalm he reflected on five centuries of the life of the people of God. Time and again they had disobeyed God, but he had consistently responded with love and forgiveness. Asaph was concerned that future generations should be reminded of their history, and of the gracious way in which God had provided for his people. Teaching the next generation about God always needs to be a priority for the church. I often find that the approach to children’s and youth work is incredibly pa

Matthew 14.29-30 NLT So Peter went over the side of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw the strong wind and the waves, he was terrified and began to sink. “Save me, Lord!” he shouted. It was about three o’clock in the morning when this took place. The disciples were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee and had been battling with a major storm. Then suddenly a stranger appeared to them walking on the water and they shouted out in terror, “It’s a ghost!” Jesus then revealed that it was him and that they had no need to be afraid. It was typical of Peter that he should be the first to respond and he suggested that Jesus should invite him to come to him, walking on the water. Jesus duly invited him and Peter attempted to walk on the water, but with disastrous results. Within seconds he was crying out to the Lord to save him. In one way Peter’s attempt to walk on the lake was really impressive. Although his faith was clearly not as strong as it needed to be, he did at least make the attemp

Matthew 14.23 NLT "After sending them home, he went up into the hills by himself to pray. Night fell while he was there alone." Finally, at the end of an exhausting day, which had seen 5000 people miraculously fed, Jesus had time to be alone with his Father. There’s no doubt that he had planned for this to have happened some hours earlier but now, at last, the time has come. It’s interesting to see how important such times were for Jesus. Because he was the perfect Son of God one might have thought that he didn’t need such times, but clearly these moments of intimacy were crucial for him and we find him at prayer on a number of occasions. If Jesus needed to spend time alone with his Father, clearly we do as well. It’s good to be busy doing God’s work, and enriching to spend time in fellowship with his people, but we all need to have time when we are alone with God. That relationship will only develop if we spend time with him. It’s a principle which is true of all relationships. There is no way in which a

Matthew 14.17 NLT “But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish!” the disciples answered. Jesus had just ordered his disciples to feed the vast crowd. They were understandably overwhelmed by the challenge. How on earth were they going to do it? They pointed out the absurdity of the situation by informing Jesus that they only had five loaves and two fish. It was a complete joke! Anyone could see that they couldn’t possibly feed the thousands of hungry people with such meagre resources. The problem with the disciples was they hadn’t counted on Jesus. They looked at the little packed lunch that they had available to them and had concluded that the situation was completely hopeless. We all know the end of the story. Jesus blessed the loaves and fishes and there was not only enough food to feed the crowd, but plenty left over. What the disciples had to learn was that however little their resources they needed to put them into Jesus’ hands for him to bless. I am quite sure that, in later life, they often