Be Still And Know

John 1:6-8 God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. John was determined to help people to see that Jesus, and only Jesus, is the Light of the World. John the Baptist had a really important part to play, but he wasn’t the light. He simply prepared people to meet with Jesus. John wanted his readers to make sure that they were only looking for life’s meaning and purpose in Jesus. There is a traditional story from the Middle East which I have always loved. It tells of a man hunting for something in the middle of a dusty road. A stranger approached him and asked what he was looking for. “I’m looking for my key,” replied the man. “Where did you lose it?” asked the stranger. “Oh,” the man replied: “I lost it in my house.” The stranger looked puzzled and asked: “So if you lost it in your house, why are you looking for it here in the middle of the road?” The m

John 1:4-5 The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. There has been darkness on every page of human history, but the last century saw darkness on a colossal scale. During the terrible dictatorships of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao, many tens of millions of people were killed, but we have also seen horrifying amounts of abuse even within the Church. Every day, we hear stories of darkness, and we feel the weight of pain that is borne by so many people, but there is good news amid this terrible darkness – however hard people may have tried, they have failed to extinguish the light of Christ. There have been determined efforts to destroy the Church over the past century, and there still are today. To those brothers and sisters in North Korea, Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan who live under the most oppressive regimes, we can declare that the light of Christ will never be put out. N

John 1:1 In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. Can I be honest? I listened to these words for years without really understanding them. They are often used at Christmas carol services, and they seemed very mysterious to me. John would have been saddened by my reaction because for him and his readers, it was obvious. Everyone knew what he meant by ‘the Word’ or the Logos. This was an expression often used in Greek philosophy which shaped the thinking of his day. He was saying that Jesus was nothing less than God himself, and that when God spoke to the world, he did so in the form of his Son Jesus, the Word. This reminds us of the very beginning of the Bible, where we learn that God created the world. When God spoke, something happened. On day one he said: “Let there be light,” and there was light. There isn’t a distinction between the word and the action. When God sent Jesus as the Word, we see him acting in the most powerful way to bring life to the world

Acts 2:44-45 All the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. The Holy Spirit transformed every part of the early Christians’ lives. Yes, they were committed to teaching, fellowship and prayer, but they also looked at their possessions with new eyes. They were eager to find opportunities to share their resources with one another according to people’s needs. This is revolutionary stuff. It is really important to ensure that a church’s teaching, fellowship and prayer life are strong, but if they don’t affect our material possessions, something has gone seriously wrong. I don’t believe that there is just one way of doing this. This very brief description of the early Church gives the impression of all the Christians living together in community. It sounds so simple and straightforward, but I don’t think anyone who has lived in community would describe it like that. I remember a well-known Christian lea

Acts 2:42 All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper) and to prayer. The early weeks of the Church must have been amazing. The pouring out of the Holy Spirit had totally transformed everything. From a small group of disappointed and frightened believers, there was now a large number of believers fired up with a determination to change the world. These verses in Acts give us the first clues of what the Church looked like, and this verse spells out three key aspects. Firstly, the believers needed teaching. The Christians in Jerusalem were probably all from a Jewish background, so they needed to be shown how Jesus was the fulfilment of their Scriptures. They also needed to be reminded of Jesus’ teaching, because they had all heard different parts of it. It was decades later that the Gospels were written, although people had almost certainly started to write down some of Jesus’ sayings. Secondly, the Christians got to

Acts 2:37-38 Peter’s words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter replied: “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” A sermon is worth nothing if it doesn’t lead to action. Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost powerfully described the reason for Jesus’ death. In words that would have shocked much of his audience, he pointed out that they had been responsible for it. It was their sin that had driven Jesus to the cross just five weeks before. Having heard this, the people were deeply challenged and knew that they needed to take action. Peter’s response is interesting because of the way it speaks of the covenant partnership that God wants with us. There was something that the people needed to do, and then a response that God would make. Firstly, they needed to repent. They needed to recognise that th

Acts 2:16-17 What you see was predicted long ago by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.’ When Peter spoke these words, he was addressing huge crowds of Jews who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the harvest festival known as Pentecost. On that day, the first fruits of the wheat harvest were offered to God. It was known as Pentecost because it occurred 50 days after the Sabbath that followed the Passover. It was one of three annual pilgrimage festivals, so Jerusalem would have been heaving with people. On that particular Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out on Jesus’ 120 followers. An enormous wind roared and flames appeared to settle on all the believers. Then, as the Spirit filled them, they started speaking in tongues, which meant that the pilgrims who had come from many neighbouring countries were all able to hear God being prais

Psalm 59:17 O my Strength, to you I sing praises, for you, O God, are my refuge, the God who shows me unfailing love. Is your life a struggle at the moment? I’m really sorry if so, but I want you to know you’re not alone. In this psalm, like many others, David pours out the detail of his struggles. He feels physically threatened and compares his opponents to vicious dogs, snarling as they prowl the streets. He also reflects on the curses and lies they keep hurling at him. There seems to be no limit to the challenges that he faces. Whether you are struggling or not, we should all listen to how David faces up to his situation with brutal honesty. When life is difficult, and we all experience that from time to time, it’s so important for us to be honest about it, especially with God. He already knows the whole story. He knows the kind of people we are and our history, so he is perfectly able to understand whatever we are up against. Like David, we need to make sure our prayers express exactly how we are. It’s

Psalm 57:8-9 Wake up, my heart! Wake up, O lyre and harp! I will wake the dawn with my song. I will thank you, Lord, among all the people. I will sing your praises among the nations. I have always loved singing and have sung with many choirs over the years. Many of you may have had a similar experience. You will know what a joy it is to contribute your little sound to the united voice of a choir. It isn’t surprising that singing has always played such a major role in worship. It takes our words to another level as we seek to express our love for God and our devotion to him. It is wonderful that God’s people have sung through thousands of years. Whether they have been experiencing poverty or wealth, war or peace, sickness or health, there have always been songs on their lips. Not everyone is able to sing. Some people are tone deaf and the noise that comes out of their mouth could never be described as pleasant. It feels very unfair that some people have the ability and others don’t. However, I believe that

Psalm 56:8 You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Everything seemed to be going wrong for David when he wrote this psalm. He was being attacked continually by the Philistines. They were constantly slandering and spying on him, looking for an opportunity to kill him. But amid it all, David affirmed his confidence in the Lord, knowing that with God on his side, he couldn’t lose. He had a deep conviction that his all-knowing God had not only kept track of all his woes, but had stored them up. We all experience times of difficulty and tragedy. Such times are woven into the fabric of life and there is no avoiding them. When we are in the dark valley of suffering, it is wonderful to know that God doesn’t merely know we are there and accompany us, but also takes our tears and anger seriously. He doesn’t try to jolly us along and urge us to sing a few uplifting songs of worship to get over it. He sits with us in our sadness and re

Psalm 56:1-3 O God, have mercy on me, for people are hounding me. My foes attack me all day long. I am constantly hounded by those who slander me, and many are boldly attacking me. But when I am afraid, I will put my trust in you. On a number of occasions, I have stayed in Benedictine monasteries in this country and in France. The monks’ way of life is very different from my own, but I have been incredibly blessed by the opportunity to worship with them. Honesty forces me to admit that I didn’t attend all eight of the daily services! What I found particularly impressive was that they read psalms at every service, and the whole book is read every week. There is huge value in reading all the psalms because they explore so many different themes. If you stick with your top five favourite psalms, you may come away feeling that they are all about praising and glorifying God, and you might overlook that many of them reflect times of agony, rejection and threat. The psalmists met God in every kind of situation. In

Psalm 52:8-9 But I am like an olive tree, thriving in the house of God. I will always trust in God’s unfailing love. I will praise you forever, O God, for what you have done. I will trust in your good name in the presence of your faithful people. This passage begins with a ‘but’ because David is contrasting himself with Doeg the Edomite, who had been seeking to stir up trouble for him with Saul. David has some harsh things to say about Doeg who had been bent on David’s destruction. He reflects that he had decided to live his own life very differently. His desire was to be like an olive tree, which was not only famous for surviving well in a demanding and hot climate but also for its longevity. Olive trees often survive for over 1,000 years. They only have a shallow root system, but their tap roots keep them supplied with moisture even in the harshest terrain. Like David, many of us will have met people like Doeg, who see it as their business to trip us up. It’s really tough when that happens. However, the

Jeremiah 29:4,5,7 This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce…And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.” God’s people refused to listen to Jeremiah. They continued in their sinful ways, and in 597 BC, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon invaded Jerusalem and took over 3,000 people into exile. This was total humiliation for the self-confident and godless people of Jerusalem. To be transported to a foreign country about 1,000 miles from home was a horrific form of punishment, but Jeremiah wanted the people to know that God still had good plans for them. In his letter, Jeremiah told the people to accept their new home. They needed to settle down and bring up their families there. As they did so, they were not to fight against their new homeland but to

Jeremiah 18:1-4 The Lord gave another message to Jeremiah. He said, “Go down to the potter’s shop, and I will speak to you there.” So I did as he told me and found the potter working at his wheel. But the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped, so he crushed it into a lump of clay again and started over. My own attempts at pottery were a miserable failure. When I saw my teacher doing it, it all looked so simple. He just threw the clay onto the revolving wheel and within moments he was shaping a beautiful pot. What could possibly go wrong? As soon as I had a go, the clay seemed to acquire a mind of its own and I never managed to get the hang of it. On a number of occasions, while I was sitting at the wheel with my hideous misshapen pot, he would put his hands round mine and, incredibly, a wonderful pot would emerge. How did he do it? The sight of a potter sitting at their wheel would have been a familiar one in Jeremiah’s day. God used this everyday experience to convey a very clear message to

Jeremiah 17:21-23 This is what the LORD says: Listen to my warning! Stop carrying on your trade at Jerusalem’s gates on the Sabbath day. Do not do your work on the Sabbath, but make it a holy day. I gave this command to your ancestors, but they did not listen or obey. They stubbornly refused to pay attention or accept my discipline. We were reflecting yesterday on the importance of maintaining good spiritual rhythms. Today’s passage reminds us of the most important of them: the Sabbath, one day in seven set apart for God. God observed this in Creation. For six days he laboured, and then, on the seventh, the all-powerful God rested. From that time onwards, the pattern of a weekly day of rest was established, and God pointed out through Jeremiah that the people’s failure to observe the Sabbath was at the heart of their problems. It was a clear sign that they were only concerned with their own interests and had no time for God. The early Church soon moved their special day of rest from Saturday to Sunday to c

Jeremiah 17:7-8 Blessed are those who trust in the LORD and have made the LORD their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit. We’ve all got a choice: we can rely on human beings or on God. Jeremiah says that those who rely on mere humans are cursed. He compares them to stunted shrubs in the desert with no hope for the future (Jeremiah 17:6). They stand in marked contrast to those who put their roots down in God. The latter can look to the future with confidence knowing that they can withstand the hottest summer. They can be sure that whatever happens, they will keep producing fruit. We all want to think that we are like trees planted along a riverbank, and that we will be able to withstand the biggest pressures of life and keep being fruitful. However, that depends on us living lives that are deliber

Jeremiah 14:14 The LORD said: “These prophets are telling lies in my name. I did not send them or tell them to speak. I did not give them any messages. They prophesy of visions and revelations they have never seen or heard. They speak foolishness made up in their own lying hearts.” Jeremiah had some very harsh things to say. He needed everyone to know that if they didn’t change their ways, they would receive God’s judgement. This was not what the people wanted to hear. They wanted prophets who would tell them that everything was fine and they had nothing to worry about. They wanted to listen to prophets who told them that because they had the temple of the Lord, nothing could possibly go wrong. Jeremiah continually battled with these false prophets, whose comforting words were simply wrong. It is very easy for someone to make a statement adding the words “thus saith the Lord”, but did those words truly come from God? This has always been a challenge, and it was a particular problem in the early Church

Jeremiah 13:16 Give glory to the LORD your God before it is too late. Acknowledge him before he brings darkness upon you, causing you to stumble and fall on the darkening mountains. For then, when you look for light, you will find only terrible darkness and gloom. We are all good at putting things off. It might be filling in our tax returns, making things right with an aggrieved neighbour, buying Christmas presents or 1,001 other things. Jeremiah was desperately concerned that the people were putting off the most important thing of all: following the Lord. They were happy the way they were and had no intention of changing. The sad truth is that they never did change, and judgement fell upon them in the form of an invasion from Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar. The apostle Paul had exactly the same message for the church in Corinth. In 2 Corinthians 6:2, he declared: “Today is the day of salvation.” God calls us to follow him today and to live in the light of his salvation, and there will come a day wh

Jeremiah 10:12-13 The LORD made the earth by his power, and he preserves it by his wisdom. With his own understanding he stretched out the heavens. When he speaks in the thunder, the heavens roar with rain. He causes the clouds to rise over the earth. He sends the lightning with the rain and releases the wind from his storehouses. The fact that God created the world is the foundation of the Bible’s understanding of him. The first couple of chapters of Genesis tell us how God did this, and then the rest of the Bible points back to it. Here in Jeremiah, the prophet laughs at the uselessness of the idols that the people were worshipping. He highlights that, unlike the God of Israel, the idols have never created anything. They are a complete waste of time. We need to make sure that our thinking about God is continually shaped by remembering he is our creator. Creation should be the springboard for our daily worship, and its vast scale surely makes us want to burst out in praise and adoration. Let’s stand

Jeremiah 10:2 This is what the LORD says: “Do not act like the other nations, who try to read their future in the stars. Do not be afraid of their predictions, even though other nations are terrified by them.” If you’ve ever looked at a horoscope, you’ll probably have concluded that it is all a lot of nonsense. They may have told you that today is a good day to make friends, or to avoid puddles or to plan your holidays. However, horoscopes are nothing new. For more than 4,000 years, people have taken astrology very seriously and have developed sophisticated ways of reading the stars in order to guide their lives. In the time of Jeremiah, the Babylonians were particularly committed to this way of predicting the future, but the prophet was clear that this was no way to seek guidance. His confidence was in his God, and he refused to be swayed by astrology, however much others were influenced by it. We are all immensely interested in the future. Inevitably, we wonder what is going to happen, but just ima