Be Still And Know

READ: Luke 15:4-5 'If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders.' This is such a beautiful story. You can picture the shepherd as he makes sure the 99 precious sheep are safe and warm, and then trudges out into the wilderness to look for the one that was lost. It’s a heart-warming story but it doesn’t make any sense. Economically why would you run the risk of endangering the 99 by leaving them all alone in the desert whilst you go out and search for just one sheep who constituted only 1% of your business? Surely the shepherd would have been better advised to protect 99% of his business and hope that the silly lost sheep would wander home. The only explanation for a shepherd acting in this way is love. He sets out to search for the lost sheep for the pure and simple reason that he has compassio

READ: Luke 13:18-19 Then Jesus said, “What is the Kingdom of God like? How can I illustrate it? It is like a tiny mustard seed that a man planted in a garden; it grows and becomes a tree, and the birds make nests in its branches.” A mustard seed is tiny – between one and two millimetres. You would hardly notice it because it so small but incredibly it can grow into a huge plant, commonly eight feet tall and sometimes even up to twelve feet. It’s understandable that Jesus described it as a tree. Inevitably, a mustard plant attracts huge attention from birds who love to feed on the little black seeds. Jesus’ point is clear. When we see God at work in the world it may not look impressive. It may be overlooked because it appears so small. But the Kingdom of God is always in the growth business and so even though it might seem tiny it will keep growing. In many parts of the world the church is small and struggling. I’ve visited many towns and even cities where there is only one Christian or just a small group. I’v

READ: Luke 12:21 NLT 'Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.' I love the fact that most of Jesus’ stories are told in very few words. Our verse today is the punch line to a very brief story that he told about a rich farmer who had had such a successful harvest that he realised that he needed to build more barns. He said to himself that he could now settle back and enjoy life. He could eat, drink and be merry. Jesus calls the man a fool, because he hadn’t taken into consideration the fact that his life might come to an end that very night. I don’t believe for a moment that Jesus wants us drag our way through life with long faces with the morbid realisation that any day might be our last. Far from it! He wants us to live our lives fully every day and to enjoy the wonders of his creation and the miracle of being alive. But he wants us to do so in the light of eternity. He wants us to invest in the things that last, and nothing is more enduring than o

READ: Luke 1:.41-42 NLT The Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.” Forgive me for a little pop psychology. It seems to me that some people are naturally activists. They are always up and doing. And then other people are naturally reflective. They want to stand back from life and consider everything carefully. In this beautiful little story from Jesus’ life we meet two sisters who are perfect examples of these different approaches to life. Martha is the activist. She knows that Jesus is having a very busy ministry and she has decided that he needs a good meal. Martha is sure she is right and is therefore appalled when she spots her sister skiving. Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet listening carefully to him and, meanwhile, Martha is fuming. She cannot believe it. Mary should be working as hard as she is, and so in a complete strop Martha goes to Jesus

READ: Luke 10.33-34 NLT 'Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him.' I love the parable of the Good Samaritan and not least because it would have come as such a complete surprise to Jesus’ hearers. Jesus is being challenged by an expert in the law who asks for the legal definition of the word neighbour. I have no doubt that he was expecting a sophisticated technical response – and instead Jesus tells him a story. To any Jew the parable was deeply shocking. The fact that a man had been ambushed on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho wasn’t surprising. The winding road that connected the two communities made it an ideal place to attack a traveller, all so different from the large straight highway that we see today. But what was shocking was that the priest and Levite did nothi

READ: Luke 9.51 NLT 'As the time drew near for him to ascend to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.' There’s a wonderful description of the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah 50.7 in which it says that he set his face like flint. That is to say he was absolutely fixed on heading in one definite direction in obedience to the Lord. That’s exactly what we see here in this verse in Luke’s gospel. Jesus knows exactly what’s going on. He knows that the Jewish leaders were determined to kill him and yet, even so, he heads to the city where his life would be under greatest threat. If anyone had done a risk assessment of the situation then Jesus would have been told to avoid the area and head back up north to Galilee. Jesus’ complete commitment to his father’s will is awesome. He could have chosen to avoid the dangers but his desire is to be obedient and so he heads down south to Jerusalem. He has no fear and takes a route that no Jewish person would ever have been advised to take. He walked through Samaria who

READ: Isaiah 53:5-6 NLT 'He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.' Isaiah was ministering amongst a people in Exile. They were living in Babylon (modern Iraq) far from home and everything seemed hopeless. They longed to be allowed to return to Jerusalem but as the years passed that seemed increasingly unlikely. In this bleak situation Isaiah boldly proclaims that God has not forgotten them and that he will send a servant who will bring them salvation. As we read these words we see them as a staggeringly powerful prophecy about Jesus, the Messiah. As we walk towards Easter we need to do so with a renewed amazement at God’s willingness to send his own son into the world. No other person could have done what Jesus did. He alone could take upon himself the sins of the world. Only because he was th

READ: Isaiah 46:4 NLT 'I will be your God throughout your lifetime— until your hair is white with age. I made you, and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you.' I have huge respect for many people but at the top of my list come carers. I am constantly amazed by the way in which so many people pour out their lives to support other people. They give up their own convenience and opportunities in order to give their love to others. It is impossible to know the exact number of carers but we are told that it might exceed 8 million people in the UK, and so I am absolutely sure that this describes many of you. Today’s verse focuses attention on the supreme carer – God himself. He is the pre-eminent carer because he never sleeps and there is no limit to his wisdom and strength. And, amazingly, he is the carer for all of us. Whatever our needs he is able to reach out to us and give us the support we need, from the time when we were born to the time when we have white hair. That is now a fitting descrip

READ: Isaiah 44:8-9 NLT 'You are my witnesses—is there any other God? No! There is no other Rock—not one! How foolish are those who manufacture idols. These prized objects are really worthless. The people who worship idols don’t know this, so they are all put to shame.' Isaiah has a great deal to say about idols. He laughs at the sheer stupidity of those who spent their time carving idols out of blocks of wood. Some of the wood would be used for burning in order to keep everyone warm and to bake bread or cook a meal, and another part of the wood is then carefully shaped into an idol that can be worshipped. Could anything be more foolish? Isaiah reminds his hearers that they have one true God who is a Rock and who alone is worthy of worship. Worshipping anyone or anything else is a complete waste of time. Our society is full of idols. They are not often carved out of wood, but they are just as real because an idol is anything that is put in the place that is rightfully God’s. A car, house, career, family, spor

READ: Isaiah 43:18-19 NLT 'I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.' In recent years I have talked to lots of churches about their vision. It’s really important for any organisation to be inspired by a clear and captivating vision for the future. The vision keeps us going when life is dull and hard work, and it keeps us heading together in a definite direction. But time and again I have sensed that the vision that churches often have is for getting back to how things used to be. A church I once worked with had memories of the time when all 1,200 seats would be filled for the evening service. By the time I met them they had shrunk to a small community of about 50 people at the Sunday services and they longed to put the clock back to the good old days. In many ways this is very understandable, but Isaiah tells us that God doesn’t want to take us backwards. His vision is for us to head on

READ: Isaiah 43:2 When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. If you’ve got the impression that following God will give you the smoothest journey through life then you obviously haven’t read the Bible! From first to last in the Old Testament we discover that following God often involves suffering and rejection. And in the New Testament we meet Jesus who although fully man and fully God saw suffering at its worst even to the point of death on the Cross. And, as he promised, his disciples were hated just as he had been and most of them suffered terribly for their faith. In our verse today God says it how it is. He recognises honestly that his hearers would suffer in all sorts of ways. They would be confronted by deep and threatening waters and even have to face fire, but through it all God would be with them. The threats of life

READ: Isaiah 42:1 NLT Look at my servant, whom I strengthen. He is my chosen one, who pleases me. I have put my Spirit upon him. He will bring justice to the nations. I became absolutely fascinated by the law when I was in my teens. I often visited our local magistrates’ and crown courts in Southend and was completely gripped by the whole process. On a few occasions I went up to the Old Bailey in London where they tried the most amazing cases. My mind was well and truly opened up to the darker side of our society and I was given a good crash course in justice. It became clear to me that the difficult work that these courts were doing was vital to the stability of society. But when we read about justice in Isaiah the subject is much wider than merely what happens in courts of law, vital as that obviously is. It refers to God’s desire that everything should be done fairly throughout society. Relationships need to be healthy and strong and the way people treat one another needs to be considerate and loving. Our

READ: Isaiah 40:28-29 NLT Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. It was Samuel Butler the 19th Century author who observed, “Life is one long process of getting tired.” However young and fit you may be the time comes when you need to rest. Our bodies demand it! Isaiah points out that God is completely different and is able to work continually without any rest. He never grows weak or weary. What an encouragement this is! It means that God can be completely relied upon at all times. We are more than aware that our work level changes with our moods and the time of day. If we are tired or it is getting towards the end of the day our work rate is very different from what it is when we are feeling refreshed and alert. How wonderful that God is not subject to these variations because it means that we know t

READ: Isaiah 40:25-26 NLT “To whom will you compare me? Who is my equal?” asks the Holy One. “Look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out like an army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of his great power and incomparable strength, not a single one is missing.” I have never studied astronomy but I find the scale of the universe totally mind boggling. Light travels at 186,282 miles per second. That’s fast! But to go on any significant journey into space we will need to travel at that speed. So let’s get going. In one minute we will have travelled over 11 million miles and by the end of the day we will have covered 16,000 million miles. You would probably be ready for a cup of tea by that point but we must keep going. After a year we will have travelled nearly 6 million, million miles. That’s good going but we mustn’t take a break because we have more than three more years to go before we reach the nearest stars. No doubt we would feel a great sense of achievement

READ: Isaiah 40:3-5 NLT Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting, “Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord! Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God! Fill in the valleys, and level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves, and smooth out the rough places. Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together”. I’m no lover of airports, but I do love flying. Having flown to many parts of the world, I have always been amazed at the huge expanse of mountainous areas and was not surprised to discover that mountains form nearly a quarter of the earth’s land surface. Very often I have flown over them for hours on end and as I peer out of the window I imagine the way of life for the people who live there. Mountains are beautiful but they must make travel incredibly complicated for the people who have them as their home. In today’s dramatic reading we hear that our mighty God can flatten the mountains and fill in the valleys. What Isaiah is telling us is t

READ: Isaiah 40:1-2 NLT Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and her sins are pardoned. We all make mistakes but some have far greater impact than others. Many mistakes are of minor importance and are soon forgotten about. They leave no trace. But others can change the whole direction of life from that moment. The people of Jerusalem and Judah had made a long succession of disastrous decisions but now God tells them that it’s all going to change because he will forgive them. Their sad days are gone. When we make mistakes and especially when they have long term implications it is easy to imagine that that is the end. There is no hope. But God is always in the business of restoration. He is always looking for ways of bringing salvation and renewal. This is truly a message of comfort and one which our world desperately needs to hear. I have spent many, many hours of my life with people who have tried to persuade me that they were beyond God’s

READ: Psalm 47:1-2 Come, everyone! Clap your hands! Shout to God with joyful praise! For the Lord Most High is awesome. He is the great King of all the earth. Clapping is extremely eloquent. It uses no words but it conveys very powerful messages. There is all the difference in the world between clapping that is dutiful and polite, and clapping that is enthusiastic and noisy. They convey completely different messages. I am glad that the Bible encourages us to clap precisely because it takes us beyond words. However well-chosen and eloquent our speech it can never fully express how great, majestic and awesome our God is. I was not brought up to make much use of my body in worship. Standing up, sitting down and shutting my eyes were the sum total of my bodily worship! I had an aunt who was high church and she did a lot of kneeling. Lifting hands or dancing in worship were well outside my experience until I was in my 20s. What mattered were the words. Of course the words do matter and we will always want to use t

READ: Psalm 46:1-2 NLT God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea. When disaster strikes it’s often without warning. A death, a car accident, a serious illness or a fall. In those moments of shaking it’s so important to know that we can look to God and know that he is our refuge and strength and always ready to help us. As a minister I’ve often visited the homes of people at times of traumatic change. I remember once visiting an old lady who knew that she had terminal cancer and that she only had a short while to live. She lived in a dark cottage in a village and when I visited her it was late in the afternoon and there was very little light in the room where we met. But I will never forget her glowing smile in the fading light. She knew the Lord well and had every confidence that her life was in his hands. She knew without a doubt that God was her refuge and strength. The next day I visited anothe

READ: Psalm 42:11 NLT Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again—my Saviour and my God! We all face times of discouragement when nothing seems to be going right. That’s an inevitable part of the ups and downs of life. But sometimes those times of discouragement can dominate all our thinking, and that is clearly how it was for the psalmist. He reflects that his tears have been his food day and night and people were taunting him all day long with the words, “Where is your God?” He thinks back on those happy days when he would lead the worship procession up to the Temple, but that’s all a distant memory now. He paints a very sad picture. But his feelings of despair don’t have the last word, because amidst the grief he knows that God will not let him down. He puts his hope in God knowing that there will come a time when he will be able to praise God again. We are told that depression is extremely common and that about 50% of people will experience it at some t

READ: Psalm 42:1-2 NLT As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I go and stand before him? Having spent a couple of years in India I am very familiar with the challenges of living with intense heat. One lesson I learnt very swiftly is that you need to carry a drink with you at all times. But, inevitably, you sometimes forget – or at least I did! I can remember occasions when I was craving a drink and I was happy to drink anything to slake my thirst. Deer are just the same. They can only bound around the countryside for so long before they need to search for a stream of cool, refreshing water. King David uses thirsty deer as an illustration of his longing for the living God. He was desperate to meet God. This psalm suggests that David was feeling depressed. Nothing seemed to be going right. It was a time of struggle and confusion but he knew that God could satisfy him in a way that nothing else could. Many things give us satisfaction for a sho