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

Michelangelo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.