Copernicus

It is easy to think that the sun goes around the earth as the Greek philosopher Ptolemy taught but the truth is, as the Polish astronomer Copernicus discovered that the earth goes round the sun. The sun in fact is at the centre of the solar system and we need a Copernican revolution in our lives and thinking so that we see that God is at the centre of everything. He is the one to whom all the glory should be given. 

Is God great?

In 2007, the late Christopher Hitchens published a book called God is not great in which he attempts to rubbish religion. In fact, God is great. I don't know if Hitchins was responding to Chris Tomlin's 2004 song. He put it like this

The splendour of a King, clothed in majesty, Let all the Earth rejoice. All the Earth rejoice,

He wraps himself in light And darkness tries to hide And trembles at His voice, Trembles at His voice

How great is our God, sing with me, How great is our God, and all will see How great, how great is our God

Or to quote an older hymn

O Lord my God When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works Thy hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy pow’r throughout The universe displayed!

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee;

How great Thou art, How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

Hitchens is wrong and Tomlin and Carl Boberg are right

The needle of faith

If you want to sew something you can push many different sorts of thread through cloth but they all have to have a needle at the end if they are going to go through. In the same way everything needs to be headed up with faith – all your prayers, all your actions, all you do. Without faith, you'll get nowhere.

Best when chilled

I was eating in a Pret A Manger restaurant recently and I had one of their bottled drinks. Their still water and juice blends and other drinks are best enjoyed chilled and so on their bottles there is a message emphasising this. Very neatly they say that these drinks are "best when chilled (as indeed we all are)". That is quite true. In James 1:19, 20 James says My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. There is a place for anger, of course (Ephesians 4:26) but the general rule is to chill.

'Dwi'n hoffi coffi

I met someone who told me he'd tried to learn Welsh using dualingo or something similar. Trouble was, he said, was that one of the first things he had learned was that "'Dwi'n hoffi coffi" means "I like coffee", which is correct. He thought it was all going to be that easy. No one had told him about mutations and how inflected Welsh can be. In a similar way, though it is easy to come to Christ - simply repent and believe - the Christian life itself can be very demanding. This is why in Luke 14 (28-32) Jesus emphasises the importance of counting the cost before beginning. We have to go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22).

Generous Pantomime Host

Some people find themselves incapable of giving you just one gift. They always have to give you more. I remember as a child seeing a pantomime in the theatre where they had a child on stage and they kept giving them gifts. You know, they say here's some crisps and then as the child is about to go they say "that will make you thirsty so here's some lemonade" and then they say "after the lemonade you'll probably want some chocolate", etc, etc. First they have a pile in their arms and then a carrier bag full and then a shopping trolley full and so on. (It's a good opportunity for a local sypermarket to get some free advertising, I guess). When God gives a gift he seems to work on this sort of basis. He never gives just one gift. If he simply forgave us our sins that would be amazing but he does so much more. We get some hints in Isaiah 55:12, 13 - joy and peace and gladness and rejoicing and heaven. When God converts a person he doesn't only save them. He forgives them and makes them his child and takes them to heaven and gives them all sorts of good things. That is what it is like when you put your faith in Christ. God does not just give one blessing.

There's an eye watching you

I read recently about an American called John M Henson. Back in the forties he was in a church that was having special meetings including some for kids. Some of the kids had been rather rowdy and so the leader was warning them one night that they needed to be careful as there was an all seeing eye watching them. Now the leader meant the local sheriff who he had spotted but it made Henson think higher – of Gods all seeing eye. Henson was very musical and a prolific song writer. It prompted his most famous hymn

All along on the road to the soul's true abode, There’s an Eye watching you;
Ev’ry step that you take this great Eye is awake, There’s an Eye watching you.
Watching you, watching you, Ev’ry day mind the course you pursue;
Watching you, watching you, There’s an all-seeing Eye watching you.

2 As you make life’s great fight, keep the pathway of right, There’s an Eye watching you;
God will warn not to go in the path of the foe, There’s an Eye watching you. ….

3 Fix your mind on the goal, that sweet home of the soul, There’s an Eye watching you;
Never turn from the way to the kingdom of day, There’s an Eye watching you.

Pride and humility

My son Dewi wanted to put up some shelves one night and the screws we had weren't very good so we tried some others. I said to Dewi I think they are a bit proud, meaning the heads were sticking out rather. He hadn't heard the word used like that. I learned it from my dad. Pride is sticking your head out, I guess. If we want to maintain unity as Christians, we need to learn to keep low. Are you humble? It's a tough one. If you say “yes” you are probably not. Somebody once said that humility is something you should always pray for but that you can never give thanks for having received!

How vast the love of God

In Ephesians 3 Paul wants the Ephesians ot have the power to be able to comprehend or to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. Again Paul does not pray in the way that we tend to. He is looking much higher. He has in mind the love of God, which is vast. He imagines its dimensions. It has great width and length and height and depth. It is broader than the 17 lane M61 in Manchester, broader than a vast continent; it is longer than War and Peace by Tolstoy, longer than the Amazon and the Nile combined; it is higher than the Empire State Building, higher than Mount Everest or the highest clouds, it is deeper than the Mponeng gold mine, deeper than the Mariana Trench in the Atlantic Ocean, 7 miles down. Practically, it is broad enough to encompass Jew and Gentile, long enough to take us into eternity, deep enough to reach to the worst sinner and high enough to go on taking up our thoughts and praise forever. Paul's prayer is that somehow these believers may have power to grasp this love.

He wants them to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that they may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. This love is beyond knowledge in fact, of course. We used to sing with the children that God's love is so high you can't get over it, so low you can't het under it, so wide you can't get round it. It is a little like paddling in the ocean when we get even a little idea of it. It does surpass knowledge but Paul wants them to know it and so to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. The phrase is not immediately clear. Does he pray that they may know all that God has to offer or does he pray, even more boldly, that we may be brought up to the standard of perfection that is found in God? Whichever way we take it, Paul has an eye on the heavenly perfection that comes to every believer in Christ. He is praying for an increasing and Godlike perfection in every believer. What a thing to pray!

Seeking God

Have you heard of an almost incurable disease called “men's eyes”? It is also known as male pattern blindness. It's a well known phenomenon that males, unlike females, can't see things even when they are right in front of them. There are various theories as to why this should be so. One suggests that men's brains searching are like the search function on a computer. They only see the first few results, then give up and just ask someone else to find it for them.

It is generally accepted that the key to finding things is focus. Too often when it comes to seeking God we are simply not focussed and so it does not get the priority it should. Rather, we should be like King Jehoshaphat and seek God. (2 Chronicles 17:4)

Our weakness

I saw an article once on interview technique and how to deal with the question “What is your greatest weakness?” They suggest saying something like “I'm a perfectionist and some people don't cope” or suggesting something that won't affect the job “I was never any good at sport”. What you mustn't do is admit a weakness. Well, may be in an interview it isn't a good idea to be too specific (I suggest saying you have too many to specify one) but we must recognise our weakness and our need for God to strengthen us. We must see that others are the same and need our prayers too.

Solzhenitsyn's Ivan Denisovich on prayer

There’s a wonderful line in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s famous novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, set in the horror of a Soviet prison camp. One day Ivan is praying silently with his eyes closed when a fellow prisoner notices him and says, ‘Prayers won't help you get out of here any faster.’ Opening his eyes, Ivan answers, 'I do not pray to get out of prison, I pray to do the will of God.’ That is how we should be praying.

The Christian God's workmanship

The Christian is God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works

Paul likens the Christian to a work of art, an article of furniture or a machine. For we are God's workmanship he says created in Christ Jesus. All that has gone before would fit with that. The Christian is no self-made man. We do not turn ourselves into Christians. No, God does it. It is by his grace we are saved and even the faith we express is a gift from him. Now when God created this machine, this work of art, he created it with a purpose. And what was that purpose? To do good works! That's the reason why God makes Christians. He doesn't create them simply to make them happy or let them do as they wish. No, he fashions and creates them so that they may do good works! One writer says rightly “The primary object was not to bring us to heaven. It was that we should be 'holy'.” There are people who say they are Christians yet they seem to have no interest in good works. They seem to think that because we are not saved by good works then good works are somehow unimportant and it doesn't matter whether you do them or not. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, if you say you are a Christian and there are no good works, something has gone wrong somewhere. Either, you are not a Christian or you have completely misunderstood. No, if you really are a Christian then your whole aim in life should be to do what is good and pleasing to God.

It is the Christian who is ideally placed to do good works. He is not doing his good works to get himself to heaven. That is already certain. He's doing it for God's glory.

One thing that stunts good works is the thought of past failure. The Christian is forgiven for all his sins and every new day or hour he starts again with a clean sheet. All his bad deeds, all his failure to have done good in the past is all forgotten and he begins again to do what is good.

I want to urge you who believe to good works then. There a thousand different ones, from little acts of kindness to great acts of charity. We cannot do them all but we can, by God's grace, do some. Let's do all we can. In John Wesley's famous words “Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can.”

Saved through faith

The Christian is saved through the gift of faith

Paul then adds that this grace comes through faith – and in case you are then tempted to think it is, after all, all a matter of what we do, he adds and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. Even faith itself - putting your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, leaning on him – is a gift from God. Faith is more a matter of the means by which God's grace is received.

If I drink a milkshake with a straw I don't say I'm drinking the straw – I'm drinking the milkshake through the straw. The milkshake is the thing not the straw.

If I say to you “come and see me” I will tell you my address and you will knock on my door and I will open the door to you. The knocking on the door and the door are important but quite incidental really. It is just the means to the end.

In case there is any confusion, however, Paul says that even faith is a gift from God. You can't have it unless God grants it to you. It really is all of God's grace. The through faith is important though. To have faith is to believe. It is to put your trust in.

How the Channel Tunnel was made and how good works happen

The good works spoken about in Ephesians 2:10 were prepared in advance for Christians to do by God himself.

Let's not miss this encouraging bit - which God prepared in advance for us to do (literally to walk in). God not only prepared us who believe to do good works but he has also prepared the works that need to be done too.

You know that when they dug the Channel tunnel, they didn't simply start this end and work through to France. No, they started at this end and at the other end, in France, too. And then on one historic day (December 1, 1990 it was) the two halves met and were joined to make a whole.

Now in a similar way, God has worked not only to make believers capable of doing good works but he has also prepared in advance good works for them to do.