Garry concluded his series on the Sabbath and related words this morning. The Sabbath, we have seen, is a time to change our focus together, a time for recalibration and renewed perspective. Related words look at taking a bride (with its obvious connection to Jesus coming for the church, His bride, and the intimate relationship we are to foster with God) and at speaking over in praise. Last time, he spoke about the expectation and anticipation we should have when coming together to worship God and the satisfaction He brings. This time, we looked at the word ‘shebeth’ which means an abode, a dwelling, a place to settle or remain, and saw something of the enduring nature of God which brings peace and freedom to God’s people.

Ps 9:7 reminds us that ‘the Lord remains forever; he has established his throne for judgment.’ Change can bring uncertainty into our lives and can be very disruptive, but we are reminded here that God’s rule is enduring. The Roman Empire brought with it freedom to travel and the ‘pax romana‘ (or Roman peace) which helped the gospel to spread, but no human empire lasts forever. God, on the other hand, will never be deposed; He is enthroned as the Holy One. (Ps 22:3) He gives us His peace and establishes us forever, remaining faithful all the time. (Ps 125:1)

God’s peace enables us to dwell in safety (Ps 4:8). It’s not that He always removes us from trouble, but He does keep us safe in trouble (as He demonstrated to Elisha and his servant when the king of Aram and his armies came against them – see 2 Kings 6:13-17). Ps 91:1-2 reminds us that God gives us shelter; He is our refuge and our fortress. We have the choice to make as to whether we follow God or not (see Josh 24:14-15), but when we do choose to follow God, He becomes our dwelling place, our safe place. We long to be in His presence (see Ps 27:3) and we are given an assurance in Ps 23:6 that we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The Sabbath gives us opportunity to dwell or remain in God’s presence together. The benefits of this are:

1. safety (Ps 91:1-2)

2. security (Ps 4:8)

3. freedom (John 8:31-32), as we hold on to truth and obey God even when we don’t understand and allow God to flow through us

4. fellowship (1 John 4:13, Eph 1:13-14) We can be glad that our fellowship with God and His Spirit is eternal and thus the time we spend with Him is precious indeed.

As we head towards September, we will continue to hold meetings in the building at Market Street on Sundays at 10.30 a.m. and at 6.00 p.m. and on Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. We will not, however, be re-starting our youth club and Parent & Toddler group at present because of current guidelines on social distancing. We will be reviewing this situation on a regular basis and very much hope to re-start these groups as soon as possible.

On Wednesday 16th September at 10.45 a.m., the Dearne Churches Together prayer meeting will be held at GPCC. It will be good to join together in person in prayer, but we will also be hosting this meeting on Facebook Live for any who cannot attend.

On Saturday 19th September, we will be holding our prayer walk (‘Take Back The Streets’), leaving GPCC at 10 a.m. After this at 11.30 a.m. we will be holding a cleaning session, so if any of you can come along to help us clean and tidy the building and grounds, that would be much appreciated.

Our AGM for 2018-2019 was due to take place earlier this year, but had to be postponed because of lockdown. This will now be held in a shortened form after the morning and evening services on Sunday 20th September.

Joash’s life was greatly influenced by Jehoiada, the priest. Joash was the son of Ahaziah, an evil king, and the grandson of Athaliah, an even more evil grandmother, and as such, the influences on him as a child were far from good. Family influences can be very powerful; Ahaziah, we are told, was encouraged by his mother to act wickedly (2 Chron 22:3). The direct and indirect influences of our families, for good or evil, can have a great influence on our lives.

The picture wasn’t entirely bleak for Joash, however. He was resc protect him from Athaliah’s murderous intentions. He lived, hidden with them at the temple of God, for six years and when the time was right, Jehoiada acted to crown Joash as king. (2 Chron 23.)

At a young age, therefore (just seven years old), Joash was thrust into a position of responsibility and power as king of Israel, where he reigned for forty years and is credited with the restoration of the temple. (2 Chron 24:1, 4). All seemed to be going well;  ‘Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the years of Jehoiada the priest.’ (2 Chron 24:2) Sadly, this state of affairs lasted only until Jehoaiada’s death. After that, Joash listened to other influences and subsequently abandoned the temple of the Lord and turned to idolatry. (2 Chron 24:17-19) It got so bad that Joash even killed Jehoiada’s son, Zechariah, whose brave words of rebuke tried to stem the tide of evil unleashed through Joash’s idolatry. (2 Chron 24:20-22)

This account shows us that Joash’s faith had no real substance, no independent, personal strength. He was a man ultimately shaped, influenced and defined by other people. He had no personal values or faith which outlasted his mentor.

Faith is a very personal matter. We are shaped and influenced by many people and different circumstances, but ultimately, we must choose for ourselves to follow God’s ways. God must be our rock, our fortress, our strength, our salvation. We need to have a faith that is independent of other people and wholly dependent on God. Our lives must be built on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ; our roots must go deep into Him. As Doug Horley says, ‘a mum or a dad or a sister who loves Jesus won’t get you there’ (to heaven): ‘You need to find him just for you.’ (‘One Way’, Doug Horley)

Do you have that independent faith which will outlast the faith of those who have inspired you? The goal is not only to start well, run well, but to finish well. Our faith needs to go beyond the faith of those who have preceded us and continue to influence those who will come after us (‘a future generation’ so that ‘a people not yet created may praise the Lord’, as Ps 102:18 puts it. Our faith needs to be real, personal and able to sustain us through thick and thin.

Jer 9:20-21 contains a call to lament, for ‘death has climbed in through our windows and has entered our fortresses.’ This could, in some ways, be perceived as what we have been experiencing in 2020 with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic. Certainly, an awareness of death and the fear of death seem to have been rising as we witness a global pandemic for the first time in our lives, and the social and economic consequences of the pandemic will be felt for many years. But what is perhaps more alarming is how much panic and fear have become a part of people’s lives, for this is not how God wants us to live.

Heb 2:14-15 makes it plain that Jesus shared in our humanity so that by His death He might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. People have been woken to the reality and possibility of death (often by persuasive rhetoric), but fear of death is not the only response we can have to this inevitable conclusion to life. Jesus has made a way for us to live without fear of death. Rom 8:15-17 makes it clear that God has liberated us and set us free. We can rest in God’s love for us and perfect love drives out fear. (1 John 4:18) This is not a delusion, but a reality based on the fact that the reason for fear of death (punishment) has been removed.

We fear death largely because it is unknown and we are not sure what (if anything) lies beyond death. Some maintain there is nothing beyond death and therefore no reason to fear, but for those who believe in eternal life, there is the question of judgment and punishment (and blessing and reward). Christians believe that the death of Jesus meant He took our punishment and judgment and so we can face eternity with hope. His resurrection gives us the hope that we too will live beyond the decay of our mortal bodies. (1 Cor 15:50-56) There may still be apprehension (because we do not know with certainty what this new life will be like), but as Sara Groves sings in her poignant song ‘What Do I Know?’, ‘I know to be absent from this body is to be present with the Lord, and from what I know of him, that must be very good.’

To leave this world is to be with Jesus (John 14:1-4, Luke 23:39-43, 2 Cor 5:6-8) Ultimately, our lives and times are in God’s hands and therefore we have hope, not only for this life, but for life beyond death. No matter what happens to us, no matter that we are living through a pandemic, we can live without a fear of death, for Jesus has conquered sin, death and the grave. Don’t let the statistics, politicians or scientific advisors box you into a place of fear. Jesus has broken the power of him who holds the power of death and gives us the opportunity to experience eternal life.

Stephen spoke this morning on the deceitfulness of sin. The song ‘The Snake‘ (sung here by Al Wilson) reminds us that no matter what kindness shown to a half-frozen snake, it will always be true to its own nature; in the song, the snake eventually bites the woman who has rescued it and reminds her that this is, after all, what snakes do. To show mercy and kindness to the snake ultimately counted for nothing; the snake repaid the kindness with a poisonous bite.

In Genesis 3, we see that the devil appeared to Adam and Eve in the form of a serpent, ‘more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.’ (Gen 3:1) Through the deception of the snake, Adam and Eve both disobeyed God’s command and ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Sin may well have appeared in the form of delicious-looking fruit (Gen 3:6), but the consequences were death, banishment from the garden of Eden and eternal separation from God. The appeal of sin may be great, but we should not be deceived: the ways that seem so right to us, if not God’s ways, will lead to death.

We too can be like the tender-hearted woman in the song, befriending sin, holding it close to our hearts and believing that its appealing allure means we will come to no harm. We can dress it up, cover it up, hide it and rationalise what we are doing, but ultimately, sin will always come back to bite us. If we do not confess our sin and repent of it, sin will lead us away from the life God wants us to live.

It’s all too easy to become comfortable with sin and essentially to sleep spiritually because of it. We must not tolerate sin in any shape or form in our lives, but must run from it. (2 Tim 2:22) We must ask God’s Holy Spirit to reveal sin in our lives to us, for our hearts are deceitful and it’s all too easy to be lulled into thinking everything is fine when it is not. As we pray the words of Ps 139:23-24, asking God to search us and reveal any offensive ways to us, we can be confident that God will enlighten and highlight any areas which need our repentance. The, having confessed our sin and repented, we can be guided by God’s Spirit and can walk in the paths of light. (1 John 1:9)

In the middle of his speech in Athens, Paul, talking about God as the Creator of all mankind, said, ‘God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.’ (Acts 17:27) Seeking God is part of our spiritual journey; as Jesus reminded us, ‘seek and you will find.’ (Matt 7:7) That seeking may well feel like groping or fumbling in the dark, but it indicates both determination and persistence.

Moses told us that we would find God ‘if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul’ (Deut 4:29; see also Jer 29:13) and the psalmist reminds us that the Lord has never forsaken those who seek Him. (Ps 9:10)

To seek God is to put Him before all other things; it requires a determined heart and a steadfastness of purpose. So often in the Psalms, we see people whose longing for God becomes their heart’s cry: ‘My heart says of You, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek.’ (Ps 27:8) or ‘You, God, are my God; earnestly I seek You; I thirst for You, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.’ (Ps 63:1) We catch a glimpse of this earnest seeking in the Canaanite woman who came to Jesus to heal her daughter. When Jesus apparently rebuffed her advances because she was not of the Jewish faith, she said, ‘Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table’ (Matt 15:27) and was subsequently commended by Jesus for her great faith. (Matt 15:28) She received her heart’s cry (the healing of her daughter), in part because of her persistence and earnest seeking.

Jesus demonstrates to us the importance of right priorities in our lives when He told us, ‘I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.’ (John 5:30) He came to seek and to save all who were lost (Luke 19:10), and his determination in seeking us out when we were sinners and wanted nothing to do with God gives us a glimpse into the kind of persistence and determination which has to become part of our pursuit of God. To seek God is our goal and desire… and we know that those who earnestly seek Him – with determination, refusing to be cowed by the dark night of the soul or the apparent silence of heaven at times – will be rewarded by Him. (Heb 11:6) Zephaniah urges us to seek righteousness and humility (Zeph 2:3), and as we seek God with all our hearts, we will surely find Him to be our satisfaction and delight.