Knowing the truth is only half the battle.

Knowing the truth is important but it's only half the battle. A medical expert may know all there is to know about a certain disease but it is of no use if he misapplies his knowledge. If he treats you with all his expertise but you have some other disease not his speciality, it will do you no good. Rather, it may do you harm. So it's not enough to know that God is just, we need to know how that justice is worked out – and we have to say that it's not always as straightforward as we may expect. We must believe God is just – it is a core biblical doctrine. However, it will not always be obvious that God is being just in the way that he acts towards individuals.

A theological argument against worrying - God's omniscience

Luke 12:30 ends and your Father knows that you need them (food, clothes, etc). What a powerful argument that is. If only we could remember that whatever we are worrying about, God knows exactly what the need is, how he will meet it and every other circumstance. God is omniscient – he knows everything. To worry about things really makes no sense at all. It is like a young child in the UK lying awake at night worrying about whether his parents will remember to give him breakfast or whether they will remember to put clothes on him. Of course they will! (Certainly in nearly all the cases we know anything about). In a similar way, we need not fear that God will ignore us or neglect us. He will do everything that needs to be done.

The Sovereignty of God and boldness

John Knox is rather forgotten in Scotland today but he was the Great Reformer who transformed the country. All we read about him reveals him to be a prophetic figure who was not afraid to speak in the boldest terms to the Scottish Queen, Mary Queen of Scots. Mary could not believe his audacity. He was once asked how he could defy the queen and oppose her views in the way that he did, even though she was Queen. He famously replied, "When you have just spent time on your knees before the King of Kings, you do not find the Queen of Scotland to be so frightening." With David (Psalm 56:11) he could say in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?

If you are aware of the sovereignty of God, especially as it brings us to our knees in prayer, then you will be bold for him. This is a desperate need of our times.

The Sovereignty of God

In Isaiah 6 Isaiah does not argue with the Lord. He does not think that he knows better. He is willing to humbly and trustingly obey whatever the Lord says. If it is God's will to ruin and depopulate cities, to leave houses ... deserted … fields ruined and ravaged and send the people into exile and more – Isaiah will still go in obedience to his Lord and Master.

This is the spirit seen in some of the finest missionaries the church has known. Henry Martyn, the brilliant Cambridge student from Cornwall, is rightly famous as the young man who in the 19th century went out to India and Persia with the gospel and died before doing half that he intended. He is said to have seen only one convert. But he believed in the sovereignty of God. He once wrote home in a letter “If we labour to the end of our days without seeing one convert, it shall not be worse for us in time, and our reward is the same in eternity. The cause in which we are engaged is the cause of mercy and truth, and therefore in spite of seeming impossibilities it must eventually prevail.”

Lord Ion Keith Falconer is another lesser known missionary, who lived a little later than Martyn and worked in Aden in the Yemen. Another gifted young man, brilliant in Arabic, he went out preaching the gospel but seemingly with little or no success. Yet some years later another missionary in Aden could write

“During the years since the mission was started there have been very few converts, but there have been some. Work among Muslims is very hard, ... but the work goes on, and the endeavour is made to win the people for Christ. All this work is directly due to the self-sacrificing labour of Ion Keith-Falconer, who is still remembered by some of the older people, who when they were boys were accustomed to receive sweets from him. His name is commemorated in the title of the mission, which is called the Keith-Falconer Mission and in that of the United Free Church at Steamer Point called the Keith-Falconer Memorial Church. … (and here speaks a man who clearly believes in the sovereignty of God) … One happy day, Mohammad's Crescent will yield and disappear before Christ's Cross; and, when this day dawns, the young scholar, whose torch seemed to be stifled and extinguished far too speedily among the Arabian sands, will be counted among those who have brought about the glad consummation.”

Preliminary Sketches

You know that when a painter is going to paint a masterpiece he will often make several preliminary sketches before he starts on the piece itself. We can think of it like that. Before the masterpiece which is the incarnation, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, there are preliminary sketches like the one in Joshua 5:13-15 or the other Old Testament theophanies. A close examination of this piece then will help us to understand better the masterpiece that is Jesus Christ.

God's Monopoly

If I want petrol for my car I can go to lots of different places – BP, Shell, one of the supermarkets, etc. If I was living in the early days of the motor car and in the USA, it would be quite different. Pretty much all the petrol was sold by John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. They had a monopoly. If you wanted petrol you had to go to them. Now it is a little bit like that with eternal life. There is only one supplier. There is only one person you can go to – to God himself.

Look to God then. Don't be proud and think you have some right to eternal life. Humble yourself before him. Seek his face and ask him to have mercy.

Sin and Death

Have you ever played word association (what a friend of mine calls word association football)? You know eg Dog Cat, Cat Fur, Fur Coat, Coat Hat, Hat Head, Head Hair, Hare Rabbit, Rabbit Pie, Pi Maths, etc. It is used by psychiatrists to learn things about people but it can be fun too. Now what about the word sin? Do you associate the word death with it? You ought to – sin – death: the wages of sin is death. Sin leads to death. It is inevitably connected with decay and with death, with darkness and with hell. We need to connect not only the general idea of sin with death but individual sins too.

You know how children are not born with an innate sense of danger. They do not instinctively know that the road can be dangerous or that they can fall downstairs or that they can burn themselves on the oven – no, they have to be taught. They need to learn that stepping out into the road without looking is likely to lead to injury. Coming down the stairs backwards is a better way than forwards when they are little. They have to learn that hot ovens can burn. So we need to teach ourselves to connect sin with death. The wages of sin is death.

Wages

Most people today get paid through the bank and often month by month but some still get weekly wages in cash. I grew up in a working class community where most people would get their pay in cash every Thursday. This is why it was on a Thursday evening or a Friday everybody would be busy at the shops or paying bills with the money they had earned over the previous week. My dad would often bring us chocolate because he had been paid. Wages were what people were paid for their week's work. If you didn't work you would not get paid.

I remember working ina factory one summer. On Thursdays the wages trolley would come round with the pay packets. You were given a brown envelope with holes in so that you could see exactly how much was in there before you opened it, in case of any discrepancy.

Sin and Death and Danger

If we know that there is the danger of death if you drink bleach or electrocute yourself or if you catch a certain disease, then you will do all you can to avoid it. It is the only sensible thing to do. Given that the Bible connects sin and death so closely, as it does in Romans 6:23, we must turn from it. Are you turning from sin? Are you making a daily conscious effort to turn from all known sin? That must be the way you live.

Mayor of Casterbridge

Now the Three Mariners was the inn chosen by Henchard as the place for closing his long term of dramless years. He had so timed his entry as to be well established in the large room by the time the forty church-goers entered to their customary cups. The flush upon his face proclaimed at once that the vow of twenty-one years had lapsed, and the era of recklessness begun anew. He was seated on a small table, drawn up to the side of the massive oak board reserved for the churchmen, a few of whom nodded to him as they took their places and said, "How be ye, Mr. Henchard? Quite a stranger here."

Henchard did not take the trouble to reply for a few moments, and his eyes rested on his stretched-out legs and boots. "Yes," he said at length; "that's true. I've been down in spirit for weeks; some of ye know the cause. I am better now, but not quite serene. I want you fellows of the choir to strike up a tune; and what with that and this brew of Stannidge's, I am in hopes of getting altogether out of my minor key."

"With all my heart," said the first fiddle. "We've let back our strings, that's true, but we can soon pull 'em up again. Sound A, neighbours, and give the man a stave."

"I don't care a curse what the words be," said Henchard. "Hymns, ballets, or rantipole rubbish; the Rogue's March or the cherubim's warble--'tis all the same to me if 'tis good harmony, and well put out."

"Well--heh, heh--it may be we can do that, and not a man among us that have sat in the gallery less than twenty year," said the leader of the band. "As 'tis Sunday, neighbours, suppose we raise the Fourth Psa'am, to Samuel Wakely's tune, as improved by me?"

"Hang Samuel Wakely's tune, as improved by thee!" said Henchard. "Chuck across one of your psalters--old Wiltshire is the only tune worth singing--the psalm-tune that would make my blood ebb and flow like the sea when I was a steady chap. I'll find some words to fit en." He took one of the psalters and began turning over the leaves.

Chancing to look out of the window at that moment he saw a flock of people passing by, and perceived them to be the congregation of the upper church, now just dismissed, their sermon having been a longer one than that the lower parish was favoured with. Among the rest of the leading inhabitants walked Mr. Councillor Farfrae with Lucetta upon his arm, the observed and imitated of all the smaller tradesmen's womankind. Henchard's mouth changed a little, and he continued to turn over the leaves.

"Now then," he said, "Psalm the Hundred-and-Ninth, to the tune of Wiltshire: verses ten to fifteen. I gi'e ye the words:

"His seed shall orphans be, his wife

A widow plunged in grief;

His vagrant children beg their bread

Where none can give relief.

His ill-got riches shall be made

To usurers a prey;

The fruit of all his toil shall be

By strangers borne away.

None shall be found that to his wants

Their mercy will extend,

Or to his helpless orphan seed

The least assistance lend.

A swift destruction soon shall seize

On his unhappy race;

And the next age his hated name

Shall utterly deface."*

"I know the Psa'am--I know the Psa'am!" said the leader hastily; "but I would as lief not sing it. 'Twasn't made for singing. We chose it once when the gipsy stole the pa'son's mare, thinking to please him, but pa'son were quite upset. Whatever Servant David were thinking about when he made a Psalm that nobody can sing without disgracing himself, I can't fathom! Now then, the Fourth Psalm, to Samuel Wakely's tune, as improved by me."

"'Od seize your sauce--I tell ye to sing the Hundred-and-Ninth to Wiltshire, and sing it you shall!" roared Henchard. "Not a single one of all the droning crew of ye goes out of this room till that Psalm is sung!" He slipped off the table, seized the poker, and going to the door placed his back against it. "Now then, go ahead, if you don't wish to have your cust pates broke!"

"Don't 'ee, don't 'ee take on so!--As 'tis the Sabbath-day, and 'tis Servant David's words and not ours, perhaps we don't mind for once, hey?" said one of the terrified choir, looking round upon the rest. So the instruments were tuned and the comminatory verses sung.

* Psalm 109:9-13 Tate and Brady new version

The Importance of Remembering

We have a rather high opinion of ourselves in certain areas and one of those areas is our memories. We imagine that we will always remember God's great acts. We will never forget that God created the world, that he brought his people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, that Christ died on the cross, that we have been converted.

Sadly, all the evidence is that we are quick to forget and forgetfulness is one of the greatest enemies of faith. This is something politicians rely on. If you are in power then you do the unpopular things early on and the popular things later, if you can. One writer says that it is like in marriage where often the biggest danger is not infidelity but forgetting why you married in the first place.

A sinking boat and salvation

Philippians 3:8 I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage.

This is one thing that is so difficult for some to understand. It is automatic for us to put our trust where we shouldn't – in our prayers, in our knowledge, in our good deeds. Such confidence will save no-one. Who cares if you were on the cradle roll or if you went to Sunday School or Christian school or camps or conferences if you you don't trust in Jesus Christ? What good is there in being a Baptist but not a Christian, Reformed but not converted, a person who does his quiet time every day but has not come to faith? Or for that matter, being the prime minister or a king or queen, winning a Nobel prize or captaining England?

They are absolutely worthless when it comes to saving anyone. It is not that we despise such things and nothing more but we despise them as far as their being a means of salvation is concerned. Think of a man in a sinking boat. Paul himself was in one on more than one occasion. In Acts 27 we read of how they jettisoned the cargo first and then even the ship's tackle (the mechanisms for raising and lowering the sails), as important as that would normally be, in an effort to lighten the ship. When you are in a sinking boat you are willing to sacrifice everything, as long as you can get safely to shore. Everything gets thrown overboard. That is how it is if we want to be saved.

Assurance

When I was a boy I remember sitting in the church where I grew up and hearing the minister giving a children's talk. There was a boy there a little bit younger than me called Michael, Michael Derosaire. The minister asked if the children expected to go to heaven. Michael was a good little boy and so he said that he hoped to go to heaven - which I thought was a pretty good answer. You don't want to sound too confident. But the minister wasn't happy with that. He wanted the children to know they were going to heaven.

I once heard Sinclair Ferguson talking about Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) Pope Clement VIII’s personal theologian and one of the most able figures in the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation movement in the sixteenth-century. On one occasion, Bellarmine wrote:

“The greatest of all Protestant heresies is _______ .” As Ferguson puts it "Complete, explain, and discuss Bellarmine’s statement. How would you answer? What is the greatest of all Protestant heresies? Perhaps justification by faith? Perhaps Scripture alone, or one of the other Reformation watchwords? Those answers make logical sense. But none of them completes Bellarmine’s sentence. What he wrote was: “The greatest of all Protestant heresies is assurance.”

Bellarmine absolutely hated the fact Protestants wanted people to know they were going to heaven. I think the fear is that if people know they are going to heaven they will become complacent and self-satisfied. And yet God wants us to assured of salvation. He want us to know it will all turn out well in the end.

Losing the dressing room

It is important that people retain confidence in their leaders. There is an expression in football "to lose the dressing room". This is used when a manager of a football team loses the confidence of his players and they stop listening to him and so things go from bad to worse. There is no football at the moment (June 2020) but back in January the Independent was saying that Norwegian Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United was

"losing the dressing room, with a number of squad members "irritated" by his drills and what is more, his wider tactical approach.

It's stated that while the players like him - and there's no denying Solskjaer is a very likeable character - they do not think he should have been appointed in the first place."

God was determined that Joshua would not "lose the dressing room" but would be exalted in Israel's eyes. Joshua, of course, points us to Jesus Christ our Leader and it is important that we see that in all that God the Father does he is determined to exalt Jesus Christ. We can expect to see that happening and should be on the look out for it.

Who is the leader?

Pop groups were very popular in the 1960s and there were lots of different ones - The Beatles, The Move, The Who, The Kinks. As child I always liked to know who was the most important person in the group. Sometimes it was difficult to know. In The Dave Clark Five, Dave Clark was the man on the drums not the singer. Or take Fleetwood Mac - that name is from the drummer Mick Fleetwood and the bass player John McVie not the singer or guitarist. In the group Manfred Mann, Manfred Mann was not the singer but the man on the keyboards. With the Spencer Davis Group, on the other hand, it was Steve Winwood who you needed to know about rather than Spencer Davis himself.

At this point in Israel's history (Joshua 3) it was important for them to know who was most important in this situation. God was the one they should be looking to not themselves or Joshua or even the priests. Thus the emphasis on looking to the ark and on consecrating themselves to God for Joshua tells them tomorrow the LORD will do amazing things among you.

This brings us to the matter of having the right attitude and preparing ourselves as we should. One reason why gatherings for worship or our own time with our Bibles is less than rewarding is because we have the wrong attitude and are not prepared. We need to come to worship focussed on God and prepared to meet with him. $ You know the expression priming the pump. Some water pumps will only work once you get the air out of them - usually done by putting water into them. Priming simply means preparing. Sometimes we need to prime the spiritual pump if we are to know blessing.

Two Roads

In the new Kenneth Branagh film Belfast there is a preacher. He is a bit of a caricature but he is based on ones that Branagh heard as a child. Perhaps they were rather austere those preachers then but what the preacher actually says in the film is essentially true.

And where will YOU go? When you shuffle off this pestilential mortal coil. WHERE? ... I will tell you where. Picture the scene. A fork in the road. In one direction, a straight and narrow highway. In the other, a long and winding road which stretches down and away, into an unknowable distance. One will take you to the bosom of the Lord’s grace for ever and a day and caress you with beatific love, and the other will spew you into an eternal pit of sulphurous, suffering, pustulating pain, from which you will never, ever, through the seven circles of hell, escape. And I ask you here and now, which road will you take?

There is a broad road that leads to destruction. Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned.

On the other hand, there is a narrow road that leads to heaven. The LORD will rescue his servants and bring them safely there.

Take refuge in Christ, therefore, and escape condemnation.

Taste and See

In Psalm 34:8 David calls on us to Taste and see that the LORD is good; and he assures us blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. So here is the invitation. Taste and see that the LORD is good.

There's a lot of advertising at the moment for MacDonald's new vegan burger, McPlant. I am not a vegan (or a vegetarian) but I thought I'd like to try one and see if they taste as good as they claim. So yesterday I went along and bought one for my lunch. I can assure you, it's very tasty. I've tasted it and so I can say it is good.

Now David urges us here to give ourselves wholeheartedly to the Lord and then we will know by experience how very good he is. A person who takes refuge in the Lord will be blessed indeed. David can say that because he's experienced it and I can say it too to some extent for the same reason. You'll never regret turning to Christ for refuge.

There is a Scottish expression - Better felt than telt. It is not easy to describe how good God is, how wonderful all his ways, but when you experience it - then you'll know.

False Readings

You may remember how a few years ago they found that if these laser speed guns the police used to use are not set up properly, then they can give utterly false readings. When they investigated, the gun was saying things like this parked car is travelling at 22mph, this wall is supposedly going 44mph and this bicycle passing at walking pace registers at 66mph. It's so easy to get a false reading. Rather, we need all the facts at our finger tips and one of them is that the Word was made flesh and pitched his tent among us here on earth in the first century of this common era.

Original sin - Rejected by Paul McCartney

I was reading something by Paul McCartney this week. (His two volume Lyrics). He was expressing his distaste for the Roman Catholic doctrine of original sin - the doctrine taught by Augustine and that is in the Bible - that we are all born sinful. For him it is too depressing a thought. He likes to think that we are not sinners (although throughout his book his bad language and his questionable ethics show he is). That is a massive misunderstanding. Yes it is a heavy truth that we are all born in sin but the great news is that God's grace can overcome it. As Paul puts it in Romans 5:20 where sin increased, grace increased all the more.

The Face of Christ

Sometimes people find themselves in a long distance relationship. They may not see each other for many months. Sometimes such relationships don't last but where there is a true bond of love the couple are able to overcome all the difficulties and stay true to each other until they can be together.

We who believe are in a similar situation but we have this amazing and unparalleled extra. As John puts it here so powerfully No one has ever seen God but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (John 1:18) Yes, we cannot see God the Father. We cannot see the Holy Spirit. There is a sense in which we cannot see the Word of God, the one described here as the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father. However, because The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us and We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth then we have seen something more than Jacob or Moses or Isaiah ever saw, as amazing as their visions were. We have been given, in the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:6, the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ.

Don't look at the sun - You cannot look on God

I had a lovely book on astronomy for Christmas which I have very much enjoyed. It's a Dorling Kindersley book designed really with children in mind and so every few pages, there are warnings "Remember: never, ever look directly at the Sun - it is so bright it will damage your eyes." In a similar way we have warnings in Scripture such as when God tells Moses (Exodus 33) You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live. This explains the amazement of Jacob in Genesis 32:30 when he says I saw God face to face yet was spared and the fear of Isaiah (Isaiah 6:5) when he says Woe to me! ... I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty. As 1 Timothy 6:16 makes clear God is the only immortal one and he lives in unapproachable light, and so no one has seen or can see him. He is hidden from our eyes - and that for our good. How could we bear his look even for a moment?

Is this it? This is it!

I remember reading how in the sixties many young people in America tried to dodge going to fight in Vietnam by pretending to be crazy. They had various ways of showing that but one man would simply go round picking up any piece of paper he saw and saying "Is this it?". He certainly seemed crazy. "Is this it?" "Is this it?" "Is this it?" he kept saying. Eventually they gave him his release papers and he said "This is it!".

You know people try all sort of things to get right with God. "Is this it?" "Is this it?" they say. But when you come to know Jesus for yourself you say "This is it!". He is the one who is full of grace and truth and who alone can save a person. Trust in him tonight.