Be Still And Know

Matthew 9.17 NLT Jesus said, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine is stored in new wineskins so that both are preserved.” Glass bottles did exist in Jesus’ day but it was usual for wine to be stored in skins. When new wine is stored, it is still fermenting and so it is essential that the skin has a degree of elasticity. However, as that skin gets older it becomes hard and brittle with the result that it becomes useless for new wine. Without any doubt the old skin would burst and the wine would be lost. The point that Jesus was making would have been very clear to his hearers. He was saying that it would be useless to try to put the Good News of the Kingdom that he came to bring, into the old laws and ceremonies of the Jewish faith. That could only result in disaster. What was needed was a complete change. The new wine of the Kingdom would need to be poured into brand new wineskins. All change meets resi

Matthew 9.12 NLT Jesus said, ”For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” Jesus’ ministry was a continual shock for the Pharisees. They were anxious to obey the Jewish law to the letter and this governed the whole of their lives. Tragically, many of them missed the whole point as they did so. They thought that they were right with God because of the way in which they stuck to the rules. They went to enormous lengths to ensure that they didn’t become unclean and were particularly careful to keep well away from unsavoury people. So when the Pharisees saw Jesus spending time with well known sinners they were apoplectic with shock. They saw this as definitive proof that Jesus couldn’t possibly have been sent by God. Jesus responded to the Pharisees by pointing out that people who were well didn’t need to go to a doctor, only those who were ill. His point was clear. If they were spiritually perfect then they wouldn’t need healing, but because they were

Matthew 9:9 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector’s booth.“Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him. There are moments in all our lives which act like hinges. In themselves they are  small but when we look back on life they are massive – they changed everything.  I think of the moment in Israel when I met a 19-year-old student in a hotel foyer. She is now my wife. I also think of that incredible moment some years later when my wife told me that she was pregnant for the first time. I couldn’t stop smiling. I think of the moment as a teenager when I was first asked to preach a sermon. The moments came and they went, but the whole of life has looked different ever since. This was clearly a hinge moment in Matthew’s life. One moment he was busily at work collecting taxes and the next he had left all of that behind him and was following Jesus. This encounter probably happened near Capernaum where we know that there was a cust

Matthew 9:2 Some people brought to him a paralysed man on a mat. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralysed man,“Be encouraged, my child! Your sins are forgiven.” On the face of it, the needs of this man were absolutely clear. He was paralysed and needed Jesus to heal him. But Jesus started somewhere else. He knew that the man’s first need was for forgiveness. He then turned his attention to the man’s paralysis and healed him, and the man jumped up and went home. Nothing has changed. Our first need is forgiveness because what matters before anything else is our relationship with God. Until we have been forgiven we cannot enjoy the blessings of life with him. However, it is very easy for us to be distracted by other issues. Jesus wasn’t for a moment suggesting that the man’s paralysis was unimportant. It just wasn’t the priority. When we meet people with financial, addiction, health or relationship difficulties it is very easy for all our attention to focus on that particular need. However, Jesus’ examp

Matthew 8.33-34 NLT 'The herdsmen fled to the nearby town, telling everyone what happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the entire town came out to meet Jesus, but they begged him to go away and leave them alone.' Jesus’ healing ministry triggered a complete range of reactions. Many people understandably responded with joy and relief, but here it was completely different. Jesus had just healed two demon-possessed men. So far so good. But the demons had entered a herd of pigs nearby who had then hurtled down the steep hillside into the lake and drowned. This was not good news so far as the herdsmen were concerned. In an instant, they had lost their livelihood, and so they and the townspeople begged Jesus to leave them alone. It is a matter of fact that Jesus always brings change, and that is something which is welcomed by some but never by all. The apostle Paul said that “anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun.” (2 Corinthians 5.17) When Jesus be

Matthew 8.26 NLT Jesus responded, “Why are you afraid? You have so little faith!” Then he got up and rebuked the wind and waves, and suddenly there was a great calm. The Sea of Galilee is not large. It is about 13 miles from north to south and only about 8 miles at its widest point from east to west. Its location in the Jordan Rift Valley means that winds can quickly build up, and there are many accounts of violent storms on the lake. One might have thought that Jesus’ disciples, many of whom were experienced fishermen, would have taken such a storm in their stride but no, on this particular occasion they were terrified. They thought they might die and in their terror they cried out to Jesus to save them. Jesus was fast asleep but woke up to respond to their cries. He was appalled by their lack of faith, but duly rebuked the wind and the waves. The disciples were amazed by Jesus. They clearly still had a lot to learn about the kind of authority that he had. It isn’t only on the Sea of Galilee that violent

Matthew 8.19-20 NLT Then one of the teachers of religious law said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” But Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place even to lay his head.” I’ve heard some speakers talk about the Christian life as if it was a life of peace and happiness characterised by sunshine and blue skies. Jesus never spoke about it in that way. If anything, he went to exactly the opposite extreme. He spoke about the huge costs and demands of being one of his followers. In this encounter, he is particularly blunt. You might have thought that Jesus would have responded to this teacher by saying how delighted he was that he was so committed to following him. But no, he launched into a description of his own vulnerability. Even though he was the Son of Man he had no secure home. Later on, when a man asked if he could bury his father before following Jesus, he was told to leave the dead to bury their dead. It was all very blunt lang

Matthew 8.8 NLT The officer said, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come into my home. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed.” The officer in question was a Roman Centurion. He was a powerful person in the military forces that were occupying Israel at the time and was, therefore, much hated by the population who longed to be set free. However, it’s difficult not to warm towards this particular soldier. He approached Jesus because of his concern for his young servant. This in itself was remarkable because servants were viewed as property and had no legal rights of their own. The fact that the Centurion was concerned about his servant and was going out of his way to seek his healing is impressive. But, more than that, we note his huge respect for Jesus. He didn’t believe that he was worthy to have Jesus visit his home but, in any case, he had such great faith in Jesus’ healing ability he didn’t consider that such a visit would even be necessary. He was sure that all that was n

Exodus 18.24-25 NLT 'Moses listened to his father-in-law’s advice and followed his suggestions. He chose capable men from all over Israel and appointed them as leaders over the people. He put them in charge of groups of one thousand, one hundred, fifty, and ten.' Moses’ father in law, Jethro, paid him a visit in the desert and was thrilled to hear about the amazing way in which God had brought the Israelites out of Egypt. But he was not so thrilled when he saw the way in which Moses handled disputes. From morning till evening Moses would listen to the people’s problems and give them a ruling from God. It was all very impressive, but Jethro could see that it was unsustainable. He suggested that Moses was going to wear himself out, and the people too! He needed to change, and Jethro encouraged him to recruit other people to consider the simpler cases and to retain for himself only the more difficult ones. It was a straightforward recommendation and Moses was happy to take his father in law’s advice. Every l

Exodus 16.29 NLT  'They must realize that the Sabbath is the Lord’s gift to you. That is why he gives you a two-day supply on the sixth day, so there will be enough for two days. On the Sabbath day you must each stay in your place. Do not go out to pick up food on the seventh day.' It was vital that the weekly rhythm of life was maintained in the desert. On the face of it, this was going to be difficult to achieve with God’s miraculous provision of daily food in the morning and evening. But God knew this and so provided the people with twice the normal supplies of food on a Friday in order to allow the Sabbath to be a day of rest. True to form, some of the people went out on the Sabbath to look for food and sure enough there was nothing there. The principle of a day of rest was foundational to their life together. A day of rest continues to be of crucial importance to us today. Sundays have got progressively busier in recent years. The days when most of the people travelling on a Sunday were going to chur

Exodus 16.19-20 NLT Then Moses told them, “Do not keep any of it until morning.” But some of them didn’t listen and kept some of it until morning. But by then it was full of maggots and had a terrible smell. Moses was very angry with them. The rule couldn’t have been simpler. The bread or manna that God gave to his people every morning would sustain them for the day ahead, but it couldn’t be kept overnight. Formed by the secretion of insects, if it was left it would soon become mouldy and inedible. All the people needed to do was to obey this very simple rule and then all would be well. But people will be people, and some decided that it was a silly rule and that they would try to hang on to the food. Moses was understandably angry with them. Why is it that human beings find it so hard to obey? The story of humanity from the Garden of Eden onwards is one of recurrent disobedience. This is tragic because all the blessings of this life are on offer to those who will obey, and disobedience invariably leads t

Exodus 16.17-18 NLT 'So the people of Israel did as they were told. Some gathered a lot, some only a little. But when they measured it out, everyone had just enough.' God’s miraculous provision of food for the people of Israel throughout their 40 years in the wilderness is breath-taking. I particularly love these verses because of this wonderful detail that, although the families had very different needs, everyone had just enough. Enough is a precious word and we should long that our world would come to love it. Sadly, although there is plenty of food for everyone in the world, there are millions of people who go to bed hungry at night. At the same time food wastage is on a colossal scale and it is reckoned that on average people in the UK waste more than £350 worth of food every year. It is impossible to know the exact number but it is said that about nine million people in the world die of starvation every year. It is a distressing statistic that a child dies of hunger every 10 seconds. If this were an

Exodus 16.11-12 NLT Then the Lord said to Moses, “I have heard the Israelites’ complaints. Now tell them, ‘In the evening you will have meat to eat, and in the morning you will have all the bread you want. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.’” We cannot be sure how many Israelites left Egypt, but it was certainly many thousands. Feeding such a group of people would have been a massive logistical exercise in any location, but to do so in a desert would seem an impossible task. But God had an answer and, miraculously, throughout their 40 years of wilderness wanderings, the people were fed. In the evening they fed on quails, which are migratory birds belonging to the partridge family. On their long flights quails would often become exhausted in the evening and large flocks of them would land on the desert floor and be easy to catch. In the morning the people were supplied with bread which was called manna, a word which literally means “What’s that?” because that’s what the people said when they f

Exodus 15.23-24 NLT When they came to the oasis of Marah, the water was too bitter to drink. So they called the place Marah (which means “bitter”). Then the people complained and turned against Moses. “What are we going to drink?” they demanded. Pressure. Every leader knows what it is to face discontented people. I hasten to add that I haven’t faced a huge number, but then I’ve never taken tens of thousands of people on a walk through a desert! It’s easy to understand why they were complaining. Life in a desert is hard enough work even when there is a good supply of water, so arriving at an oasis and finding its water to be too bitter to drink must have been a shattering experience for everyone. So the question is, what is Moses the great leader going to do about it? He could have done many things. He could have apologised or tried to put a positive gloss on the experience by saying that everything had gone all right until now, or he could have joined the people in complaining. The choice he made was a go

Exodus 15.2 NLT The Lord is my strength and my song; he has given me victory. This is my God, and I will praise him— my father’s God, and I will exalt him! This is part of a wonderful song that Moses sang after the people of Israel had crossed the Red Sea. After 400 years they had finally left Egypt. 400 years is a very long time and the people could easily have stayed there for ever. But there was a deep longing to be free from the persecution and slavery that they had experienced in Egypt. Moses’ song of victory beautifully expressed a national sigh of relief that the suffering was now at an end. At last they were free. The people’s exodus from Egypt was a defining moment in the nation’s story because it told them so much about their God. They learnt that God is, by his very nature, a God who loves to set people free. He’s a God of salvation. It’s not surprising that throughout the Bible there are frequent references back to the crossing of the Red Sea. If God was able to overcome an obstacle as great a

Exodus 14.13-14 NLT Moses told the people, “Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again. The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.” This is a crunch moment in the history of the people of Israel. After the long succession of plagues, they are finally heading out of Egypt and it is said that they did so with fists raised in defiance. Surely Pharoah would at last be glad to see them go! But no, he changed his mind yet again and sent out his army to stop them. It must have been a truly terrifying moment. We are told that Pharaoh sent six hundred of his best chariots after the people and that must have been an incredibly intimidating sight for them. The people immediately panicked and who wouldn’t? They lashed out at Moses, blaming him for bringing them out into the desert to die. They argued that it would have been much better to have continued as slaves in Egypt than to be corpses in the wilderness. It’s never easy fo

Exodus 4.21 NLT And the Lord told Moses, “When you arrive back in Egypt, go to Pharaoh and perform all the miracles I have empowered you to do. But I will harden his heart so he will refuse to let the people go.” God sometimes asks people to do some extraordinarily difficult jobs. But this must be one of the toughest. Moses who, as we know, was feeling very inadequate and ill-equipped for the task, is now told that when he went to plead with Pharoah to let the people of Israel leave Egypt, he would fail. Time and again, Moses would go to Pharaoh and beg him to release the enslaved people and time and again Pharaoh would say no. God sent one plague after another and even though, at times, Pharaoh seemed to be weakening, he continually refused to let the people go. Even after the tenth plague, in which the first-born sons and livestock were killed throughout Egypt, Pharaoh withdrew his permission to the people of Israel to leave the land. What amazes me about this period in the history of the people of

Exodus 4.16 NLT “Aaron will be your spokesman to the people. He will be your mouthpiece, and you will stand in the place of God for him, telling him what to say.” Moses felt sure that his speech difficulties disqualified him from serving God. How could someone who was tongue-tied possibly lead the people of Israel and negotiate with Pharaoh? The answer was simple. His brother Aaron could do that part of the role, and Moses could be the person who kept close to God and listened to his voice. In an ideal world, Moses would have been a perfect communicator and would have been able to do to the job himself, but in the real world he needed help. We don’t live in an ideal world! This means that we need to be continually light on our feet and ready to adapt to new circumstances. The pandemic has forced us to operate in all sorts of different ways. In an ideal world pandemics wouldn’t exist, but in the real world they do and, in the life of the church, we have had to look at everything we do with new eyes. Meetin

Exodus 4.13 NLT But Moses again pleaded, “Lord, please! Send someone else.” I wonder if you can identify with Moses. I certainly can. Time and again God has clearly asked me to do something and, like Moses, I have pleaded with him to find someone else. Moses would quickly have recognised that going back to Egypt was going to be hard enough, let alone to become the leader of his people and negotiating with the mighty Pharaoh. Anyone would have shaken at the knees to have taken on such a role. The reasons that people use for objecting to God’s call are many. Some people, like Moses, are overwhelmed by the challenge and feel that their lack of skills makes them a poor choice. Others object to God’s call because they feel that the job they have been offered is beneath them. God calls them to be involved in youth work when they would much rather be in the worship band; or God calls them to do cleaning in the church when they would rather become a leader. What Moses had to learn was that God knew what he wa

Exodus 4.10 NLT But Moses pleaded with the Lord, “O Lord, I’m not very good with words. I never have been, and I’m not now, even though you have spoken to me. I get tongue-tied, and my words get tangled.” I feel a bit sorry for Moses. I have often heard people suggesting that Moses was just looking for excuses to turn down God’s job offer. However, Moses’ reply to God sounds to me a perfectly reasonable objection. He clearly had significant problems with speaking and this would, it seems to me, make him a far from ideal candidate for a job which would be all about effective communication. But God was having none of it. He had decided that Moses was the man for the job and no objections, however substantial, were going to cause him to change his mind. The point is this, and it’s one that we meet on many occasions throughout the Bible. When God chooses someone to work for him, he equips them with the ability to do it. In the New Testament we are introduced to Peter who, throughout Jesus’ ministry, consisten