Be Still And Know

Psalm 73.21-24 NLT 'Then I realised that my heart was bitter, and I was all torn up inside. I was so foolish and ignorant— I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you. Yet I still belong to you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, leading me to a glorious destiny.' The psalmist has been struggling with his thoughts. He admits that he has become very envious of wicked people who seem to him to have a really easy life. They seemed to avoid many of the problems which good people face. He wonders whether following God has been a complete waste of time for him. But the more he reflects, the more he recognises the foolishness of his thinking because, in fact, the wicked people are on a slippery path which is bound to end in their destruction. In our verses the psalmist, Asaph, wakes up to his foolishness and recognises that what really matters is his faith in God. God kept him secure and would guide him through the rest of his life. At the end of the psalm he draws the conclusion, ”But

Psalm 71.17-18 NLT 'O God, you have taught me from my earliest childhood, and I constantly tell others about the wonderful things you do. Now that I am old and grey, do not abandon me, O God. Let me proclaim your power to this new generation, your mighty miracles to all who come after me.' Over the years I have heard a number of people say that they felt that the ideal life would be one in which they did what they wanted for the whole of their life. And then, on their death bed, they would commit their life to God and receive eternal life. In this way, they figured, they would get the best of both worlds. King David would have completely disagreed with them! For him, the whole of life was made more special and precious through knowing God. He saw his life, from beginning to end, as an opportunity to proclaim how great God was and, in so doing, to ensure that future generations would also worship God. Succession planning is an integral part of any effective organisation. If there are no plans for the futur

Psalm 69.16-17 NLT 'Answer my prayers, O Lord, for your unfailing love is wonderful. Take care of me, for your mercy is so plentiful. Don’t hide from your servant; answer me quickly, for I am in deep trouble!' Waiting is never easy. Whether you are waiting for a phone call, a parcel or medical results, waiting can be exhausting. And if life is going really badly then waiting is even more agonising. That’s exactly how we find King David in this psalm. Things are going disastrously badly for him. He begins the psalm by saying that the floodwaters are up to his neck. He feels that he is sinking deeper and deeper into the mire and that he can’t find a foothold. I guess we’ve all had times like that, and it isn’t pleasant. David clearly feels overwhelmed and disorientated and, in his despair, he cries out to God. In his long life, David had learnt to be completely honest with God and this is one of many psalms in which he holds nothing back. He is absolutely exhausted, and he gives a graphic account of his con

Matthew 7.24-25 NLT “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock.” The Sermon on the Mount closes with this powerful little parable about two houses. One built on rock and the other on sand. The point is that when the weather is fine they look identical. The only time you discover the difference between them is when disaster strikes. At that moment the stability of the foundations is revealed, and the house built on sand collapses. Jesus is plainly saying that the radical teaching of his sermon is the rock on which our lives need to be built. When we do so, we can look to the future with confidence because we know that, whatever might be thrown at us, we will still be standing secure. So the key question is this – what do we need to do to build on the solid rock of Jesus’ teaching? We certainly nee

Matthew 7.15-16 NLT 'Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves. You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act.' False prophets make an appearance in both the Old and New Testaments. Jeremiah had a particular problem with them. He believed that he was called by God to inform the people that, unless they turned back to him, a foreign nation would sweep over them and take them into exile. This was not the message that people wanted to hear. They much preferred the soothing words of the false prophets who prophesied that all would be well because they had the Lord’s Temple. They had nothing to worry about. But the truth was that they had everything to worry about because Jeremiah’s words were true and in due course the Babylonians attacked Jerusalem and took the Lord’s people off into exile. False prophets were a continual challenge in the early Church and Jesus sought to prepare his followers to meet them. What they needed to know was

Matthew 7.13 NLT 'You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way.' I am always fascinated to hear people tell me the story of their lives. Although their life journeys are all completely different, they have something in common, and that is the importance of decision- making. They shape our lives to a huge extent and so it is vital that we make good and wise decisions. Here Jesus encourages his followers to enter into the Kingdom of God and he emphasises that the gate is narrow. It will only be entered by people who are deliberate in their choice and willing to face its demands. It is the gate that leads to life and fulfilment, but it would be very easy to miss it, because the much easier path is the one which leads to destruction. These are sobering words and we need to listen carefully to them. In the Old Testament we meet a number of decisive moments. At the end of his life, Moses challenged the people of Isr

Matthew 7.12 NLT 'Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.' This statement is often known as The Golden Rule. The Jews were familiar with something like this but always in the negative form. Only Jesus used the thought positively. That is to say that we are not merely to stop thieving, lying and killing but to go out of our way to love, care and encourage. And the reason for living in this way is that this is exactly how we would like other people to treat us. Jesus clearly saw this simple and clear rule as a summary of his Sermon on the Mount. This principle should be shaping the way in which we live day by day. So our first task is to decide how we like to be treated. It would be excellent if you could take some time today to make a list of the things that are important for you. To get your thinking going let me reflect on my own life. I would begin by saying that I want to be loved, and I will recognise that love thro

Matthew 7.11 NLT 'If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.' Some years ago I was travelling on a bus in Israel and heard some amazing pan- pipe music. I spoke to the driver and told him how much I enjoyed it. Without a moment’s hesitation he took the cassette tape out of the machine and handed it to me, insisting that I take it and enjoy it. I was quite embarrassed and insisted that he should keep it. He wouldn’t hear of it. It was now mine because I had liked it so much. Moments of generosity like that are a great blessing aren’t they? Our reading today tells us that that is the nature of God. He is always generous. He can’t wait for the opportunity to bless our lives. He could impose his gifts on us but his desire is that we should want them so much that we ask him for them. Jesus pointed out that there was nothing particularly surprising about that, because all parents love giving good gifts to their

Matthew 7.3 NLT “Why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own?” This comical illustration is taken from the carpenter’s workshop and Jesus uses it to press home his teaching about being critical. It’s so easy to spot the shortcomings of other people. Jesus isn’t suggesting that their inadequacies aren’t real. They do indeed get lots of things wrong. But Jesus encourages us to look at ourselves and recognise that our failings may be vastly bigger than the little failings of others. He isn’t saying that we should stop identifying the specks in other people’s eyes but that we should start by becoming far more self-aware. How well do you know yourself? It is very easy for all of us to develop annoying habits and attitudes which are so deeply embedded in us that we don’t see them any more. When someone points out that we are a little short of perfection, we shrug our shoulders and conclude that people just need to “take us as they find us”. Jesus suggests that this isn’t goo

Matthew 6.26-27 NLT 'Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?' The most useless thing that you can say to a person who is worrying is, “Don’t worry.” No doubt it is meant kindly but you are actually increasing the person’s problems, because you have done nothing to stop their worrying and now added a layer of guilt on top! I love Jesus’ approach. He tells his followers that they have no need to worry because God will provide for them. If he is able to look after the birds and the flowers, he can certainly cope with their problems. Trusting God is the answer. Worrying has never, and can never, build anything. I do realise that those wise words don’t in themselves solve the problem. Worries will still come knocking at the door wanting to claim our attention. So what shall we do when the next worry turns up as it is bound to do? The b

Matthew 6.20-21 NLT 'Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.' What matters most to you in your life? It could be any number of things – your family, possessions, relationships, career, hobby, sport, reputation, political convictions or your faith. The point that Jesus is making here is that whatever matters most to you will shape the way in which you live. So it is vital that you fix your sights on something that will last. The truth is that most things about this life are temporary. Our possessions are a blessing to us because they are part of God’s gift to us, but they have a short shelf life. They are either attacked by moths and rust, or could be stolen. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is encouraging his followers to keep their eyes fixed on the Kingdom of God because that is a treasure that will never let them down. It will last for ever. I have always been ins

Matthew 6.16-17 NLT 'And when you fast, don’t make it obvious, as the hypocrites do, for they try to look miserable and dishevelled so people will admire them for their fasting. I tell you the truth, that is the only reward they will ever get. But when you fast, comb your hair and wash your face.' Fasting formed a significant part of Jewish life. Solemn fasts were held every year on particular days such as the Day of Atonement, the New Year and the anniversaries of notable calamities in Jewish history. In addition special fasts were called when there was a particular emergency such as the autumn rains failing. Stricter Jews would also fast weekly on Mondays and Thursdays. In the early church many Christians fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays. So fasting was a regular experience for Christians and Jesus did nothing to discourage it. But his concern was the way in which it was done. He taught his disciples to be completely private about it. Because it was to be entirely between them and God, he encouraged the

Matthew 6.13 NLT 'Don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.' When we prayed for our sins to be forgiven and for us to forgive others we were looking to the past. Now the Lord’s Prayer looks to the future. Once again the prayer is fiercely realistic. Although we have had the privilege of our sins being forgiven, we haven’t overcome the problem of sin. Every day we will still face temptation to be less than the best. We will be tempted to cut corners, to be selfish and to neglect the needs of others. However, we can look to the future with confidence because God promises to be our rescuer, if only we place our lives in his hands. Temptation is incredibly subtle. The evil one knows our weaknesses and he will exploit them in every possible way. As we face up to these temptations we have the wonderful privilege of knowing that Jesus understands exactly what we are going through. In the letter to the Hebrews the writer says that Jesus, “understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of th

Matthew 6.12 NLT 'Forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.' The Lord’s Prayer has its feet firmly planted on the ground! It talks about our everyday life and here it faces up to the horrible but undeniable fact that sin forms a big part of our lives. But here’s the good news. Through our faith in Jesus, sin is no longer an overwhelming problem. Before we met Jesus sin defeated us but now, through his death on the cross, we can claim his forgiveness. We no longer need to trudge through life with the burden of our sins and failures. If we own up to our sins, he is willing to set us free from them, so that we can be fully alive. God’s forgiveness is a wonderful gift but if we are willing to receive it, it places a huge responsibility on us. We have to share it. Day by day we need to be ready to pass it on when people offend us or deliberately trip us up. This is the tough bit. When we are deliberately wronged everything in us cries out for justice. We want the perpetrator to be puni

Matthew 6.11 NLT 'Give us today the food we need.' Have you ever wondered why we ask God for food on a daily basis? Why not ask him to supply us for a week or even a month? It’s a perfectly sensible question and the answer is clearly that God wants a relationship with us. He wants us to live in continual partnership with him. Every day we need to turn to him to obtain the nourishment that we need. This applies in both a physical and a spiritual sense. Just as we need to eat each day so too we need to ensure that we are receiving spiritual nourishment. However excellent last Sunday’s church service was, or however blessed you were by yesterday’s time of prayer, you need to open yourself to the breath of God’s Spirit today. You need him to strengthen you to live for him in the particular challenges and opportunities of this unique day. I am struck by the fact that everything in this prayer is plural. The prayer begins with the words “Our Father in heaven” and here we pray for the food that we need. The mome

Matthew 6.10 NLT 'May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.' The Lord’s Prayer, in common with the whole of Jesus’ ministry, is focused on the Kingdom of God. So we need to have a very clear idea what this kingdom is. In essence, the Kingdom of God comes wherever God is recognised as King. When his rule is accepted, the results will be immediately seen because it will be marked by peace, love, joy, truth and justice. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we are saying that we have signed up to working for this amazing Kingdom and we want to bring it about here and now. We want the Kingdom to be established in our family, our community, our work-place and our church. In this life, the Kingdom will always be under attack just as it was throughout Jesus’ ministry, but we need to keep our focus on the King as we seek to encourage every evidence of his Kingdom. Some years ago, I was sent a wonderful press cutting which gave me an insight into what the Kingdom could look like. It

Matthew 6.9 NLT 'Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.' The Lord’s Prayer is a wonderful model prayer and has been central to Christian worship from the earliest days. In the previous verse Jesus told his disciples that they didn’t need to inform God of anything in their prayers, because he already knows everything. Here he spells out what they should pray about. In the first century there was a guide for Christian living called the Didache which recommended that the prayer should be said three times a day. Christians will vary in their use of the prayer but, whenever we use it, it is exciting to reflect that it takes us back to the words of Jesus himself and to the heart of the kingdom. It is often helpful to pray the prayer very slowly and to use each sentence to trigger our own personal prayers. The Lord’s Prayer is all about relationship. It begins by looking to God because everything in this prayer flows out of our intimate relationship with our heavenly father. As an Aram

Matthew 6.7-8 NLT 'When you pray, don’t babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!' Prayer is often described as being like talking to a friend. There is much that is right about that description apart from the fact that God is totally unlike any friend that you or I have ever had. For a start, he knows everything. One of the key features of a conversation with our friends is that, wonderful as they might be, they don’t know everything. In a conversation we spend plenty of time-sharing information with them. So the big question is this. If God knows everything, what is the point of praying? The answer is a wonderful one in that, relieved of the necessity of informing God, prayer is all about relationship. As we pray, we affirm the fact that we are his children and that we are totally dependent on him. That’s why it is so important to

Matthew 6.6 NLT 'But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.' Jesus was reacting against the people who made a great show of their praying. They prayed in the synagogues and at street corners because they were looking for an audience. Jesus obviously wasn’t saying that it was wrong to pray in synagogues and at street corners but that it was wrong to turn prayer into a religious act which is totally focused on people, and not on God. So Jesus drew attention to the importance of private prayer which reveals where the heart is. Without that personal relationship with God, prayer has no meaning. It’s just an act. Jesus’ continual concern was with what we would call religion. He could see that many of the most religious people in his society lived their lives furthest away from God. The word religion means to “bind back”. It ties people down to a particular set of beliefs and practices, but it

Matthew 6.3-4 NLT 'When you give to someone in need, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in private, and your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.' Is there anything worse than hypocrisy? Jesus certainly hated it and had the harshest things to say about the hypocrites of his day. He wanted everyone to have the joy of a real relationship with their heavenly Father, and he knew that putting on an act to impress other people totally missed the point. In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus contrasted the hypocrite’s play acting, with true devotion to God. The giving of donations to the poor and needy is a responsibility that everyone has, but the way in which it is done is what matters most. Jesus pointed to the hypocrites who announced their giving with trumpets. This may simply have been dramatic language to describe the sheer vanity of some people’s giving. But we do know that trumpets were sometimes used in connection with giving in the temple.