Dave spoke tonight about Sarah, wife of Abraham, looking in particular at Heb 11:11-12. Abraham is often referred to as the father of faith and little is really said about his wife, Sarah, but in Heb 11:11 we see that Sarah’s faith is mentioned and we should remember that God remembers all who follow Him, however insignificant we may find them. In Is 51:2, we are urged to look to Abraham and to Sarah, and certainly in this woman, we see faith revealed in different ways.

Sarah was a dutiful wife who served her husband well (when she died, Abraham wept bitterly and grieved for her.) She looked after Abraham and his family, was a good mother to Isaac and acted as a hostess for her husband on many occasions. She clearly shared her husband’s faith and coped well with his nomadic lifestyle, which cannot have been easy. Her character, even when war was involved (as in the case when Abraham fought for his nephew, Lot), reflects her trust in God. She accepted that God had called them to a pilgrim lifestyle and showed composure and serenity on many occasions. Even when her faith wavered (as it appeared to do when told she would bear a son in her old age), she came through stronger, because she learned to trust God. When Abraham and Isaac disappeared on God’s command (Gen 22), she remained steadfast in her trust.

Sarah did not, therefore, give in to fear, and in this, she becomes a role model for her. She realised the truth Paul later expressed in Rom 8:31, that if God is for us, who can be against us? She remained confident of God’s love (see Rom 8:37-39) and knew that He was faithful to all His promises. The grace of God was not found wanting in Sarah, and these aspects of God’s character are what we can rely on today.

Garry continued his series on Joseph this mornig, looking at Gen 39:19-23. It had taken Joseph years to get to the position of responsibility he had with Potiphar and yet this was destroyed in a moment by Potiphar’s spurned and vengeful wife. Life can be like this, with our world tumbling around us like a pack of cards, even when we have no idea why or have done nothing wrong. As Eccl 3:1-2 reminds us, there is a time for everything, and sometimes things come to an end when we least expect it. When this happens, there is often much grief and mourning (see Ex 34:5-8, Josh:1-2), but Joseph shows us how to live in the morning, not live in the mourning.

It’s hard when relationships and ministries end, especially if the end feels premature to us. Joseph suffered because he had done the right thing, not the wrong thing, but he did not react as many of us do and blame God. He lived by the principle ‘what’s true in the light is true in the dark’ (‘Weep With Me’, Rend Collective) and trusted God even when he could not trace His hand. Phil Wickham reminds us that God has a different perspective to us on life: ‘When all I see are the ashes, You see the beauty/ When all I see is a cross, God, You see the empty tomb.’ (‘Battle Belongs’, Phil Wickham.)

The cross seemed like total failure, humiliation, a crushing defeat, but the cross was not the end of the story. There was resurrection to come: an empty tomb and victory. For Joseph, victory was around the corner, but he could not see that at this point in his life. His reputation was smashed; his life seemed in broken pieces. God was still working for good even while he was in prison, still training him and using him. Joseph stayed true to God and worked with God and His plan, not giving up. The question for us is will we stay faithful? Will we stop at the cross or will we see the stone rolled away?

Moses had been carrying his shepherd’s staff, that ordinary piece of wood, for many years and nothing dramatic had ever happened with it. But when Moses listened to God and allowed Him to work through him, the staff became ‘the staff of God’ (Ex 4:20) and became capable of the miraculous. It was this staff which would later enable Moses to part the Red Sea (Ex 14:16), bring water out of a rock (Ex 17:5-6) and defeat enemy armies. (Ex 17:9) There was absolutely nothing special about the staff. What was special was God working through it.

This is so true of us too. When God asks us, ‘What is that in your hand?’, He is essentially asking us to name our ordinariness, whatever we have which seems so very mundane and inadequate to us. But we need to understand that if we surrender what is in our hand to God, miracles can happen.

Samson slayed hundreds of Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. (Judges 15:15) It wasn’t the jawbone itself that was special. What was special was ‘the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him.’ (Judges 15:14)

David killed Goliath with a slingshot and five stones. It wasn’t just that he was a good shot; he defeated Goliath because of his trust in God: ‘You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.’ (1 Sam 17:45) David used the ordinary things he had and was familiar with, rather than the armour of Saul, but it was God who gave him the victory.

The young boy gave his picnic lunch to Jesus and that lunch fed over 5000 people. It wasn’t that he brought a massive lunch; the miracle happened because Jesus, the Bread of Life, was present. (John 6:1-13)

We don’t need anything ‘extra’ to do God’s will. We don’t need any new, special gifting. We don’t need to pass an exam or earn more money or do something special. We just need to give ourselves wholly to God and realise that He is the One who is going to do the miracles. God called Moses to lead His people out of Egypt, and that was something way, way beyond Moses’s capabilities. But it was not beyond God’s. And this ordinary staff of Moses would become something extraordinary when he used it as God commanded. God is just as capable of using our ordinariness, whatever is in our hands, to achieve extraordinary things. All He needs is our surrender and submission.

In our series on ‘Questions’, we looked at Exodus 3 & 4, Moses being commissioned by God. This encounter with God radically changed Moses and we see raw, honest communication (so necessary for all relationships) as Moses questions God and God asks Moses ‘What is in your hand?’ (Ex 4:2) We can learn much from this exchange.

Moses clearly felt inadequate to the task of going to Pharaoh and leading the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery. His ‘Who am I?’ question to God reflects how we often feel too. God’s answer is that it’s not really about who Moses is, but who God is; it’s not about who Moses is but whose He is. In other words, it’s not about Moses’s identity, but God’s. ‘I will be with you.’ (Ex 3:12)

Moses’s next question looks deeper into this question of God’s identity and who He is. It’s one thing to go to the Israelites and say, ‘God is with me’, but he anticipates their questions and assumes they will want to know more about this ‘God of their fathers.’ They will ask for more details and Moses is unsure about his relationship to God. He hasn’t got all the answers. He doesn’t know how to answer the questions that will surely come. We can often feel like this too. We don’t have all the answers to the many questions people ask us about God and we feel uncertain and often lacking confidence because of this. God’s answers take us ever further and deeper into His heart: ‘“I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Ex 3:14)

Moses’s next question presupposes that these answers aren’t going to be enough to convince the Israelites, let alone Pharaoh! (Ex 4:1) He was struggling to believe that he, this outcast for forty years, this man who had been in Midian being a shepherd – a shepherd, of all things! – could be used by God to lead God’s people out of slavery. It seemed impossible. Yet God asked him, ‘What is in your hand?’ (Ex 4:2), and used the ordinary shepherd’s staff to convince Moses, turning it into a snake! God was going to take the ordinary things of Moses’s life and use these to demonstrate His miraculous, totally supernatural power to the Israelites and to Pharaoh. He would give the people the signs they needed to believe it was God. God would sort it out.

Ultimately, what God is looking for is not our ability and skill, but our obedience and faith. The ordinary things of life, when surrendered to God, can become something amazing. God is the One who steps into our ordinariness to equip us for the extraordinary. He is the One who qualifies us, as Paul reminded the Corinthians. (2 Cor 3:5-6)

The past eighteen months, especially lockdowns, have changed so many things for people, including (at times) how we gather together as the church. Some may ask why we need to meet together in person, given that we can do so on Zoom or other Internet platforms, but Heb 10:25 reminds us of the importance of gathering together to encourage and instruct each other. There is something about meeting together in person which cannot be replicated online!

Gathering together involves worshipping God together and also hearing from the word of God (see Luke 2:13-14). Jesus, the Word of God, is God’s way of communicating to the world, and the written word of God in the form of the Bible is important to our spiritual growth (see 2 Tim 3:16). God has inspired the word and brings things to life by His word (see Heb 11:3, Ps 1:3, Heb 4:12). His word is important because it challenges us and sanctifies us; we can hear the word in spoken form and can also sing the word of God in our songs, all of which helps to build faith as we gather together.

God’s word needs to be read, understood and applied for it to take effect in our lives. It’s good to gather together to hear this word and to allow God to speak through it.

The prophetic voice makes up a significant part of Scripture. There are 16 books in the Old Testament named after prophets (including the major prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel and the twelve minor prophets) and prophets feature in many of the historical books (Elijah and Elisha probably being the most well-known of these) as well as Moses being a prophet in the first five books of the Bible. In the New Testament we see prophets and read about the gift of prophecy. It’s clearly an important aspect of a life of faith, yet most of us struggle to engage with prophets and prophecy.

The prophetic voice is often uncomfortable, bringing us face to face with God, a God who does not bow to our wishes but who is passionate about holiness and justice, and uncompromising in His demands for people to be wholly devoted to Him. The prophetic voice is insistent about the majesty and power of God, relentless in calling us to repentance and whole-hearted service and uncompromising in waking us from complacency, ignorance and indifference to a life spent dedicated to God.

Prophets see life from God’s point of view. They live in a God-centred world. Most of us lack this ability, believing ourselves to be the centre of the universe and God to be a Father Christmas-like figure benevolently doling out sweeties (aka blessings) to us when we are good. The prophetic voice challenges this viewpoint, confronting us consistently and persistently with the God who IS.

Idolatry is the chief sin the prophets spoke out against. Idolatry means to put something or someone, some philosophy or ideology, before God. It means to rely on someone or something more than God. This is no irrelevant topic, though many feel because they do not worship statues that they have no idols.

In recent months when faced with ‘unprecedented’ situations, people have looked to governments and scientists to provide solutions to illness. They want human ingenuity and talent to provide answers. There is nothing wrong with using our skills to help people, but if we are trusting in people and their solutions (e.g. vaccines), we are not necessarily trusting in God. There is a danger when we put our full trust in anything other than God.

The prophetic voice was never popular. Even the religious authorities refused to listen. I believe we need the prophetic voice more than ever today, but it’s unlikely ever to ‘sync’ with the popular voice or the ‘mainstream’ view. The prophetic voice will always cut down the roots of sin (and self-reliance or reliance on others are at the heart of sin) and call us back to simple trust in God. That will always be a radical, unpopular solution, but this is at the heart of the prophetic voice.