It'll never happen to me

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oshua 23:12 Recognise the danger of turning away and being joined to the enemy

But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them ... that was a real danger and they needed to face up to it. It is important that you know that there are people who profess to be Christians but then they begin to live as unbelievers again. It is foolish to simply think that will never happen to me. It is a real danger.

Following the severe flood events of 1998 and 2000, the UK Environment Agency prioritised the need to increase public flood risk awareness. And so they produced a report drawing on data collected during research undertaken for the Environment Agency. A paper was produced contributing to understanding one aspect of flood awareness: people’s recognition that their property is in an area that is potentially at risk of flooding. They called the paper "It'll never happen to me". The title reflected the way so many people assumed that they would never be flooded even though they were living on a flood plain. Let's not make that mistake. It could happen to you.

Bravery

There are many examples of bravery in the history of God's people. Those stories should encourage us to be strong in our own day. In the sixteenth century one of the greatest preachers of his day was Hugh Latimer. On one occasion he was to preach before the king, Henry VIII. As he thought about what to preach he realised that what he had to say would not go down very well with the king.

As he began his sermon he said, “Latimer! Latimer! Do you remember that you are speaking before the high and mighty King Henry VIII; who has power to command you to be sent to prison, and who can have your head cut off, if it please him? Will you not take care to say nothing that will offend royal ears?”

He then paused and continued, “Latimer! Latimer! Do you not remember that you are speaking before the King of kings and Lord of lords; before him, at whose throne Henry VIII will stand; before him, to whom one day you will have to give account yourself? Latimer! Latimer! Be faithful to your Master, and declare all of God’s Word.”

Latimer eventually died in the reign of Henry’s daughter, Queen Mary but he had already begun on the right road long before. Be very brave.

Growth in grace

When I was a young boy my father was not very good at taking me to see the football games I wanted to see. He was much more a lover of grass roots football and so he took me to games like the local factory team or under 21 internationals. My dad liked to spot the players who were going to become big names in the future. He himself had played football alongside a man who went on to be a professional player with Ipswich Town in the period when Ipswich were working their way up the leagues to eventually be Division One champions in 1961-62. My dad knew then that the most ordinary players could improve and rise to the heights. We ought to think something like that with regard to the Christian life - we begin as young believers but we can make progress. Indeed, who knows how far we may go, by the grace of God, if we keep looking to him.

Forgiveness

Psalm 32:5 And what follows confession? God forgave the sin. That's the last bit (says David) - and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

David had sinned and so he was guilty. He deserved to be punished. But what did God do when David confessed? God forgave him. He removed David's sin and so with it the guilt and the punishment due. David escapes both.

When a person is forgiven it is as though all their sins have been washed away from them.

The huge debt they owe is cancelled. It no longer stands on the account books. A great PAID stamp comes down on the page and no more payment is required.

It is as though the criminal record listing all your sins that is kept on the police computer is wiped clean. It is gone!

Oh what a glorious thing to be forgiven! What can match it? It leads to the joy of fellowship with God and complete amazement at his goodness towards us.

Confess your sins now and find that forgiveness and joy today.

Darwin Awards and their equivalent

The world has a thing it calls the Darwin awards. This is a supposed award given to people who in their words “contribute the most to the evolution of humanity by removing their genes from the gene pool.” For example, two men in Kenya, Leonard Tonui and Michael Shikuku, were capturing selfies with a wild elephant when they were trampled to death by the irate beast who proceeded to bury the corpses with brush. The two men were actually touching the elephant's face while taking the photos.

A similar sort of award could be made to people who every day endanger their immortal souls simply by doing the very opposite of what the Bible urges us to do.

They refuse to repent. They will not trust in Christ. They say this life is all there is. There is no more.

We who believe must not fall into such foolish ways.

The best teacher and little by little

Psalm 90:12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Consider the sort of request to make – to be taught. The verse begins Teach us. This sort of thing comes up often in the psalms. A request for teaching assumes ignorance on our part and that is right. By nature we don't know how to live. We need to learn how to do that. Who better to teach us that than God himself. When serious people who know what they are doing go off to university, they find out who are the best teachers and apply to those universities. The best teacher of all is God himself. Go to him and learn. Here then is something we need to learn, something we need to learn from God. It may well not come easy but we must learn it anyway. God is able to teach us.

Understand what it is that Moses wants God to teach us – to number our days. So what is it that Moses wants to learn from God? He asks that we will learn to number our days. We learn to count when we are very young. We start with addition then substraction then move on to multiplication and division. Next come fractions and equations. The highest mathematics there is, is learning to number your days. We need to learn to number our days. What does that mean? He has spoken about death and the brevity of life and the regular manifestations of God's wrath against the people. Every person has only a limited time here on this earth. We may live 70 years or 80. However old we get, we die. What Moses requests then, and it is something that we should all seek, is that we may be able to have the right approach to our lives. It is not that we forget about the past completely but that we focus on the day ahead. He is not asking to know how long he has left but to be able to discern how quickly the days pass, the fact that death can come at any time and that life on earth will certainly end at some point. No doubt he also has in mind that judgement that follows death. If we are to number our days as we ought to then we'll be aware of the coming judgement and we'll order our days in the light of the coming judgement. You read sometimes of people who have managed to lose millions. They once were rich but now they are poor. How does it happen? Probably not overnight. Usually it is little by little. In the same way, we learn to live wisely little by little, day by day. Here is a good prayer for all of us. Ask God to teach you, to help you understand how to live – not thinking we have all the time in the world but realising life passes by quickly and death can call at any time. Ask him to help you prepare for the coming judgement in the right way.

From everlasting to everlastig God

Psalm 90:2 and 4 Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. ... A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.

Think of mountains. Some of you have been up Snowdon or Ben Nevis. You have heard of Scafell Pike or the Alps or Kilimanjaro and K2 and Mount Everest. They have just always been there. You know that silly joke about Mount Everest. What was the world’s highest mountain before the discovery of Mount Everest? It was still Mount Everest (it doesn’t matter whether it had been discovered or not!). It's like the world itself. It feels like it has always been around. Of course, as Moses shows us in Genesis, the mountains and the earth had a beginning. Now before all that, he says, God was there. From everlasting to everlasting you are God which means that God has no beginning and he has no end. He is eternal. He is the God of the ages. And because he is eternal, for him a thousand years is just like a day gone by or a watch in the night. Moses records the ages of the early men. Before the flood some reached quite amazing ages. Methusaleh was famously 969. None lived a thousand years though. But for God it is like a day gone by. If you are up at night, the hours can seem to drag but when you sleep a watch or two can appear to go by very quickly. For God that is like a thousand years or more slipping by.

One way to think of it is if you think of the long years like a long line of cars. Say each car in the jam represents 10 years. Then a thousand years would be represented by a hundred cars. If you are in car 50 then you can only see so far back and so far forward but if you are up in a helicopter you can see all the way to the front and all the way to the back. That is something like how it must be for God. He can see it all in one moment.