Be Still And Know

1 Corinthians 4:16-17 When I was learning to play the cello, my teacher always told me to look carefully at other cellists. He told me that this was really important because I would learn something from all of them. It’s just the same with the Christian life. We can read the Bible and Christian books and listen to sermons but watching other Christians is crucial. From their example, we turn the theory into practice. That was exactly Paul’s point in these verses. He was the last person to suggest that he was a perfect example of Christian faith, but he knew that the church in Corinth needed to learn from his example. They had become arrogant and were making bad decisions and so he sent his young friend Timothy to remind them of their need to imitate him. I would be fascinated to know whose Christian example has been important for you. I think of so many people who have been a blessing to me. I think, for example, of the irrepressible joy of my Indian granny. When I lived in India I was generously welco

1 Corinthians 4:7 Try to take a few minutes to write a description of your life. You will need to include things like your health, family, friendships, job, house, car, bicycle and other possessions. Then look over the list and remind yourself that absolutely every item is a gift from God. I know you might have put some hard work into making some of them happen, but none of them would be part of your life without God. So, how dare we become arrogant and boast as if they were our own achievements? Paul’s questions are of enormous importance for all of us. The way we answer them will shape the way in which we live our daily lives. When we recognise that God’s hand has given us everything, we will see the need to have a constant attitude of gratitude to God. The person who brags about their achievements and their possessions needs to be pitied. They have totally misunderstood what is going on. Paul often encouraged his readers to be continually thankful to God. In writing to the Thessalonians he said:

1 Corinthians 3:18-19 Every day we are bombarded with powerful images of what it means to be successful. The advertising and entertainment industries feed us with a continual stream of pictures of wealthy, powerful, glamorous and successful people and urge us to be like them. Life was different in Paul’s day in so many ways, but the same worldly pressures were present. Here Paul encourages the Corinthian believers to turn their thinking upside down. True wisdom would never be found in following the world’s standards and fashions, but only by following their humble, crucified Lord. Paul’s particular concern was the way in which the Corinthian Christians had lined themselves up behind different leaders. This was such a waste of time and energy, and was a perfect illustration of acting according to this world’s standards. Paul would have none of it. He was simply a servant and the last thing he wanted was to be followed by a group of adoring disciples. Jesus showed the full extent of his love not by be

1 Corinthians 3:10-11 Every building needs firm foundations. I’ve just been reading up about the process of preparing good foundations for a self-build. As you can imagine, it’s a major task involving a careful examination of the land with the help of a structural engineer. Then it’s necessary to excavate the ground and prepare it with flood damage-resistant and decay-resistant materials before laying sufficient foundations to take the full load of the construction. It’s a highly involved process but none of that is necessary when we are building the Church of Jesus Christ. He’s already laid the foundations; all we need to do is build. There are two things that you need if you are going to get involved in building up the Church. Firstly, you need to know your role. Paul was clear that he was an expert builder. This might sound like bragging, but it really wasn’t. It was simply the vital task that God had given him to perform. You and I have our own roles to fulfil. Perhaps you are an expert builder, a

1 Corinthians 3:5-6 The divisions that had opened up in the church in Corinth were clearly causing great problems. Divisions always waste time and energy and Paul was eager to put a stop to them. We cannot be sure why people had grouped behind Paul and Apollos in this way. However, we can easily speculate that because Paul had founded the church in Corinth there were those who felt personally committed to him. Apollos, meanwhile, came from a devout Jewish family in Alexandria, Egypt and would have had a very different upbringing from Paul. It is likely that he would have come under the influence of Philo, the great philosopher, and it may well have been that his preaching was more intellectually impressive than Paul’s. We cannot be sure, and it doesn’t really matter. What is clear is that they, like any other church leaders, were different from one another and difference offers the opportunity for division. I wonder what Christian leaders have shaped your Christian life. I can think of a number of p

1 Corinthians 2:1-2 For the apostle Paul, the cross of Christ lay right at the heart of his message. Take away the cross and he had no good news to share. But he also recognised that it was a really difficult message to pass on. As a Jew he was eager to preach the cross to his own people, but they found the whole idea deeply offensive. Their scriptures told them that anyone who hung from a tree was cursed by God (see Deuteronomy 21:23). When he shared the message with non-Jews their reaction was that it was all nonsense. How could someone being killed be a sign of power and victory? They just didn’t get it. But none of this put Paul off. He was absolutely convinced that the message of the cross was both wise and powerful. Paul was so eager that the cross should be the focus of his message that he was happy that his preaching was unimpressive. He described himself as having been timid and trembling when he first got to Corinth, and said that his message and preaching were very plain (vv3-4). He was gla

1 Corinthians 1:10 In this letter, Paul does a lot of straight talking to the Corinthian church. It is significant that the first issue he addresses is unity, because everything depends on it. A disunited church cannot possibly be effective and 2,000 years of Church history have proved that to be the case. Disunity wastes time and energy and prevents any organisation from making headway. In Corinth they had started getting behind different leaders. Some supported Paul, but others preferred Apollos or Peter, while others were only prepared to follow Jesus. It was all getting very messy, and Paul appealed to them to drop this divisiveness. Unity is just as vital today, and we all have a part to play in contributing to it. Absolutely key to unity is humility. Mother Teresa wrote: “Only humility will lead us to unity and unity will lead to peace.” The humble person is willing to listen and to learn. They may have strong views, but they are willing to admit that they might be wrong. They are constantly loo

1 Corinthians 1:4-5 These are incredibly generous words aren’t they? But they are also rather surprising when you know what follows. This letter to the church in Corinth is full of very serious criticisms of their life together. Indeed, at times it feels as if they got nothing right. But Paul was determined to start his letter on a positive note, and he did so by pointing to all the ways in which God had blessed them. First of all, Paul gave thanks for the gifts that God had given them. This letter has a great deal to say about the gifts that God gives to his Church. Paul was convinced that God had given the Corinthians everything they needed to be an effective church. He would spend much time in this letter pointing out the way in which they had mishandled those gifts, but there was no question about the generosity of God. Secondly, he rejoiced that they belonged to Jesus. Amidst all the challenges of life in a hostile city, they had the security of a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ that

1 Corinthians 1:1 This is a fairly familiar beginning to one of Paul’s letters, but what interests me today are the last five words “and from our brother Sosthenes”. We always refer to this letter as coming from Paul, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard reference to the fact that it also came from Sosthenes. So who was Sosthenes?. He was obviously a very significant person in Paul’s ministry to be mentioned right at the start of this letter. Unfortunately, it is impossible to be sure who he was and not least because Sosthenes, surprisingly, wasn’t an uncommon name. It is tempting to think that he might be the Sosthenes who we meet in Acts 18, who was chief ruler of the synagogue in Corinth, but we cannot be sure. If it was that Sosthenes it would be fascinating to learn how he became a Christian, but we simply don’t know. However, the presence of this mysterious Sosthenes tells us two really important things. Firstly, Paul believed in working closely with others. There is no question that Paul had a r

Psalm 10:1 This is one of many psalms of lament. Like many such psalms it is really a psalm of complaint. David is not at all happy and he wants God to know it. His life is dominated by evil people, and he can’t believe that God doesn’t get involved and do something. He sees his enemies acting wickedly and getting away with it. In fact, worse than that, their lives seem to be very successful, and they live with a confidence that nothing will ever go wrong. I draw great strength from David’s honesty. He doesn’t put on an act before God, but tells him exactly how he feels. I believe that that’s exactly what God wants. The truth is that probably all of us have had times when it has felt as if God was far away. On many occasions people have told me that they felt that their prayers were just bouncing off the ceiling. When we go through a particularly tough time, and especially when we see people doing evil things but still prospering, it is easy for us to feel that God is far away from us. But the truth i

Psalm 9:1-2 It’s good for us to ask the question: “What is praise?” It certainly isn’t simply a matter of singing a few Christian songs, beautiful as they may be. And it doesn’t necessarily happen when we attend a service of worship. It has to do with the state of our hearts, not just our mouths. We can read the Bible and sing spiritual songs all day long, but if our words are not flowing from a heart that is in love with God, then we are just going through the motions. In this psalm David speaks of praising God with his whole heart. He knew that his life depended upon God and his praise flowed from the recognition that without the Lord he would have been totally lost. This is a challenge to all of us. Half-hearted worship is totally inappropriate when worshipping the God who has given us everything. CH Spurgeon, the famous Victorian Baptist preacher, put it well when he said: “A half heart is no heart at all.” We can’t be sure when David wrote this psalm, but it has been suggested that it might have

Psalm 8:3-4 I know very, very little about astronomy. However, whenever I hear about it, I find it mind-blowing. I totally understand where David was coming from in this psalm. Let me give you a few facts about our amazing universe. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second, so it covers 671 million miles per hour. In a year light travels about 6 trillion miles. Even if you managed to travel at the incredible speed of light it would take 96 billion light years to get from one side of our universe to the other. Let’s leave it there! All we need to conclude is that David asks a really good question. Why on earth should God take the tiniest bit of interest in those miniscule specks of dust that we call human beings? The psalm doesn’t offer an explanation as to why God has acted in this way. It simply affirms that that’s the way it is. God has chosen to give human beings this phenomenally important status and asked us to look after his creation. The punch line of this psalm is simply an outpouring of wors

Psalm 7:10-11 Evil is an uncomfortable issue. Most of us live peaceful lives and rarely come up against anger and violence. We don’t deny that there is evil in
the world but we hear about it on the news so, usually, are far removed from it in our day-to-day lives. But as we bring our worship to God we have to acknowledge that there is desperate evil in our world. Our psalm today makes clear that God is really angry about this, and so we cannot ignore it. There are people who die in violent conflict, and many of them are completely innocent. There are millions of people who have been displaced from their homes and as they wake up today they are in a place where they don’t want to be. There are also millions of Christians who are unable to worship God openly because of their government’s laws. Evil was on David’s mind because of a particular person when he wrote this psalm. He was having terrible problems with Cush of the tribe of Benjamin. This is the only reference in the Bible to this particular Cush

Psalm 6:2-3 When we think of the Psalms, we will often think of the ones that glow with praise and worship. Many of them, of course, are exactly like that. However, the majority are what we call psalms of lament, and this is one of them. Everything seemed to be going wrong and out of the depths of pain and despair David cried out to God. We don’t know what was causing him to feel this way, but he brought his raw emotions to God. He had become disorientated, and he looked to God to put him back on track. It’s vital that we follow David’s example and come to God with complete honesty. There will be many times when our hearts are overflowing with praise and worship. But there will be days when we are struggling with our emotions too. Perhaps we have moved to a new area or started a new job and we are feeling confused and unsure of ourselves. At other times tensions within relationships dominate our minds. Health issues, whether our own or of those close to us, will hold centre stage on other occasions. I

Matthew 6:22-23 I’ve worn glasses since I was a boy. From time to time people will gaze at my glasses and enquire: “Can you actually see anything out of those glasses?” When I take them off I find that, sure enough, grease and dust has accumulated and a good clean transforms their usefulness. The principle is a simple one. Jesus points out how vital it is that we ensure that our lives are full of light. We need to make sure that we are focusing our attention on those things that will help us to see life generously and clearly. The reason that this is so important is because there is much darkness in the world. With the arrival of the internet we have instant access to destructive and dangerous material as well as resources that inspire and encourage us. Every day we have a choice to make about where we focus our attention. Jesus recognised this when he went on to say that if the light that you think you have is actually darkness, how great is the darkness! We need to know how to identify the light so

Matthew 6:19-21 The Bible often confronts us with the question: “Where is your treasure?” It’s a crucial question because the answer to it will determine the way in which we live. Clearly some people store up treasure here on earth, but Jesus points out the absurdity of doing so because earthly treasure cannot last. In the ancient world clothing was an important sign of a person’s wealth to a far greater extent than it is today. Moths were therefore much feared; Jesus points out that our clothing is always at risk of being destroyed. Jesus’ reference to rust is much less clear. The word he used normally refers to eating away and probably refers to the way in which rats, mice and worms could munch their way through a person’s store of grain. At the time that Jesus lived, most house walls were made of hardened mud. Thieves therefore had a reasonably easy task to dig through a wall and carry off an owner’s valuables. The point that Jesus was making was absolutely clear. However carefully you might look a

Matthew 6:13 Life is full of temptations. There is nothing that we can do to prevent that. Temptations come knocking at the door of our lives continually, encouraging us to cut corners and make unwise decisions. Perhaps you will be tempted today to eat foods that you know are not good for you, to be economical with the truth in conversation with others or to become angry with an awkward person. Whatever it is, you and I will find ourselves being encouraged to be less than the best. There is nothing we can do to stop temptations, but there are things that we can do to stand up to them. Martin Luther wisely observed: “I cannot keep birds from flying over my head, but I can keep them from building a nest in my hair.” There are steps we can take – for example, if overeating cakes is a problem then it is helpful not to visit so many cake shops! It is often very easy to find ways of avoiding temptation, simply by ensuring that we don’t put ourselves in the way of it. The main way of resisting temptation

Matthew 6:12 The word sin is not popular. Most people will readily identify abuse, murder and bank robbing as sin but would be very reluctant to place the label on any of their own misdemeanours. I recall the time when a good friend of ours, who wasn’t a Christian, attended an evangelistic meeting. The evangelist gave an amusing and powerful message in which he made it absolutely clear that we are all sinners. Our friend is the gentlest and kindest of people, and was deeply offended by the evangelist’s language. She couldn’t bring herself to believe that she could ever be considered to be a sinner. However, Jesus was quite clear that we are, indeed, all sinners and, therefore, in need of forgiveness. The word for sin that is used here literally means debt. We have all thought, said and done things that have rung up a debt. And the problem is that we have no way of paying that debt. All we can do is to own up to our debts and find someone who would be willing to pay them on our behalf. That is precisel

Matthew 6:11 The Lord’s Prayer starts by looking at God and the coming of his kingdom. It now moves to three specific requests, the first of which is food. Nothing is more basic than nourishment – whether we are thinking about physical or spiritual food. Our bodies soon become weak and sick if we ignore the need to eat properly, and exactly the same is true of our spiritual strength. It simply isn’t possible to remain strong in our relationship with God if we are not being regularly fed with spiritual nourishment. Our bodies give us very clear signs of our need to eat. If we miss a meal, we normally feel so uncomfortable that we take decisive action. Our spiritual hunger, however, is different. Although we will immediately suffer from not being spiritually fed, it is possible to get so distracted by life that we forget how desperately we need a good spiritual meal. We put it off until we have a bit more time. The fact is that we have as much need to be fed spiritually as physically, and the result of

Matthew 6:10 Jesus often spoke about the kingdom of God. He wasn’t talking about something remote but a living reality now for those who were willing to live in line with God’s will. The kingdom of God comes to our homes, churches, businesses and communities when we decide to let God take control. It’s wonderful to see the way in which the Lord’s Prayer flows. It starts with us proclaiming that God is our Father and that we need to honour and reverence his name. That immediately leads to us into the practical task of bringing into reality the kingdom of God where we live. Incredible as it may sound, we are able to see the kingdom of God come about in our lives today, in the same way as it is in heaven. This is clearly a prayer that can only truly be prayed by people who are determined to live as disciples of Jesus. In praying this prayer, we are declaring our commitment to turn this world upside down. I mentioned yesterday that one of the striking features of the Lord’s Prayer is that it is so sho