Dave spoke  from Isaiah 6:1-8 tonight, looking at the holiness of God. Divine holiness is one of the attributes of God. He is separate, different, transcendent, worthy of reverence and awe. Often, we associate holiness with the God of the Old Testament and can emphasise love more, but the two different aspects of God’s nature cannot be separated. Hebrews 12:28-29 reminds us that we need to worship God with reverence and awe for He is a consuming fire. Just as  Moses was commanded to take off his shoes when he met with God at the burning bush for that was holy ground, so we need to understand the moral purity of our God and approach with reverence and awe.

Isaiah witnessed God’s dazzling holiness and saw the angels singing of this holiness. Angels are not the ‘cute’ beings portrayed in shops; they are massively terrifying beings, sent out as God’s messengers. When the angels sang, the temple shook! Isaiah’s vision saw God seated on His throne. He is never at His wits’ end but is always reigning in majesty. A vision of God puts our lives into perspective, and Isaiah became aware of his own sinfulness and how he could not stand within the holiness of God’s presence. Isaiah’s anguished cries were met at once with the seraph bringing a live coal to touch his lips. God Himself provides for our sinfulness. Is 57:15 reminds us that though God is high and lofty, He dwells with those who are contrite and lowly in spirit. He has made a way for us to enter into His presence (something only the High Priest could do once a year in the Old Testament), for His holiness and love meet in Christ, with the cross being both the emblem of holiness (since God’s absolute purity cannot abide in the presence of sin) and the emblem of love (since this was the means God chose to reconcile us to Himself.) The cross is payment for our sin, but is also the beginning of a new way of life for us, in which we too are called to be holy because God is holy. (1 Pet 1:15-16) We cover ourselves in faith and humility as Moses hid in the cleft of the rock as the presence of the Lord passed by.

God is not safe, but He is good. His holiness demands a response of holiness in return, but His love makes it possible for us to be clothed in His righteousness. Love so amazing, so divine demands our soul, our life, our all. Let’s strive to understand both the holiness and love of God and worship Him as the angels do, in never-ceasing praise.

As part of the ongoing refurbishment of the building, we are looking at replacing the stage curtains (which were installed when the church was opened in 1960!) with a concertina partition which can separate this part of the building from the community hall. In preparation for this work, a timber framework had to be added to the stage area this week:

The holiday period will soon be over and midweek meetings will be resuming in September.

On alternate Thursdays, prayer meetings will be held on 4th and 18th September, starting at 7:30 p.m. The format for these will be slightly different, in that we will be involved in prayer walks throughout Goldthorpe, but we will also still have a prayer meeting in the church building for those who are unable to walk far. Whether we pray inside or outside the building is not as important as the fact that we are praying, so please do make an effort to come along to these important meetings. Prayer is so essential for everything we do as a church and this month, we will be praying in particular for Goldthorpe. We will be praying for God to stir people’s hearts, awakening a spiritual hunger and thirst in them and helping them to realise their need of salvation, showing them that God can change lives and give hope to even the hopeless. We will be praying for the churches in Goldthorpe to be transformed by God’s Spirit and to equip Christians to live godly lives. We will be praying for local businesses and residents to know God’s blessing in every area of their lives and for God’s people to be like lighthouses, shining God’s light into the darkness. Come along and pray!

On the other Thursdays, we will be continuing our Bible studies (we’ll be studying from 1 John 4) on 11th and 25th September, again starting at 7:30 p.m. Come along to dig deeper into God’s Word and find out more of what God has done for us and how He has given us all we need to live godly lives. In this chapter, we read the amazing words ‘You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.’ (1 John 4:4) Use these opportunities to share in deepening your understanding of the Bible.

The youth club will re-start on Monday 8th September and the Parent & Toddler group will re-start on Friday 5th September. Please pray for these outreach ministries and support them if you can. Coffee mornings on Saturday mornings and badminton on Friday evenings will continue as usual. Don’t forget the Macmillan Coffee Morning on Saturday 27th September.

Finally, a couple of special notices. In preparation for ministries re-starting and because the children’s room development is continuing, anyone who is free to help with cleaning and tidying on Wednesday 3rd September from 7 p.m. will be most welcome!

Lastly, the ‘Churches Together’ meeting will be on Saturday 20th September at 7 p.m. at our church, so put that date in your diaries now!

Mark’s sermon this morning touched on the idea that we do not have to be adequate or worthy to be chosen and used by God. 1 Cor 1:26-31 reminds us that God chooses the most unlikely people ‘so that no one may boast before him’ and so that we understand our adequacy and worth are bound up in God Himself. Christ has, he reminds the Corinthians, ‘become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.‘ All we need is in Christ.

This goes against the grain of everything we are taught and everything we strive for, humanly speaking. We feel we have to be worthy in our own righteousness, to ‘deserve’ God’s favour. When we realise how flawed and broken we are, we tend to hide from God, recognising our unworthiness, rather like Peter when confronted with Jesus’s miraculous powers: ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!‘ (Luke 5:8) Yet our brokenness is no barrier to acceptance by God. The truth is that we are all broken, all stained by sin, all unworthy of His favour… and yet He loves us unconditionally and chooses us, not because we are worthy in ourselves, but because of His great mercy. As we sang this morning, ‘Though I’m broken, I am running into Your arms of love.’ (‘Joy’, Rend Collective)

Far from being a barrier, brokenness is required for us to come to the end of ourselves and reach the mercy of God. ‘A broken and contrite heart You, O God, will not despise.’ (Ps 51:17) God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Ps 147:3) Jesus talked about being the rejected cornerstone and said ‘Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces.‘ (Luke 20:18) At the Last Supper, He broke the bread in symbolism of what would be done to His body and told us that this was done for our sakes; each week when we take Communion, we remember that Christ’s brokenness opened the door to our salvation, so it should really come as no surprise that our brokenness is the pathway to God.

Humanly speaking, we shy away from being broken. We admire wholeness. Yet all who serve a wounded Saviour must learn that brokenness is not to be feared or despised and that just as He was broken for us, so we too must be broken to be fit for His service. God’s will must be done in His way (‘Broken Bread’, Rend Collective) if we are to see His kingdom come in our area and our times. We serve a Saviour who is known by the scars, but we can be confident that as we offer Him our brokenness, He will make us whole.

Judy Garland sang ‘Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.’ Mark took this theme as he continued his study on Joseph this morning, speaking from Genesis 42:1-24.

Genesis 42 begins with the time of famine, which was so widespread it had even spread way beyond Egypt. Jacob sent his ten sons in search of grain and by another of those God-instances which show us His sovereignty, these brothers came before Joseph himself. The dream which had sustained Joseph for so long was about to come true.

God uses dreamers. But if we ask why God chosen Joseph all those years earlier, we may feel puzzled. Out of all the people available, why did God choose Joseph? Gen 37:1-2 shows us Joseph feeding the flock, ‘grassing on’ his brothers for their misdemeanours, a raw 17-year-old boy with nothing to show what he would become. God sees the potential in people way before it is visible to anyone else. 1 Cor 1:26-29 reminds us that God does not choose the wise and learned but chooses the weak and foolish so that He gets the glory. When we are weak, foolish and fearful, we know that we have to rely on God, for we have nothing in ourselves to rely on.

God gives us dreams, a glimpse of what He wants to do. Often, even that glimpse astounds us and shocks us, and like Moses, we go through the ‘pantomime process’:‘Oh, no, I can’t!’/ ‘Oh, yes, you can!’ Joseph the 17-year-old boy could not have comprehended all that God would equip him to do, but as he stands before his brothers, he sees the dreams about to be fulfilled. We understand, however dimly, that God’s grace is sufficient for us and His power is made perfect in our weakness. (2 Cor 12:9). When we feel insufficient and weak and in need of Christ’s power, then we can know His sufficiency and grace to meet every need and fulfil every dream.

Corrosion is the gradual destruction of materials (usually metals) by chemical reaction with the environment and the most common example of this is rusting. Rusting (more formally the oxidation of metals such as iron) takes place when the metal reacts with the oxygen in air to form an oxide. Most metals are elements which tend to lose electrons when they are involved in chemical reactions and form ions (charged elements). Metallic ions, because they are formed from atoms that have lost electrons, are positively charged.

A common oxidation reaction in corrosion is the oxidation of neutral iron atoms to positively charged iron ions:

Fe » Fe⁺² + 2e^–

The electrons lost from a metal must go somewhere, and they usually end up on a nonmetallic atom forming a negatively charged nonmetallic ion. Thus, the full chemical equation for the formation of rust is:

Iron + water + oxygen rust

4 Fe(s) + 6 H₂O(l) + 3 O₂(g) 4 Fe(OH)₃(s)

Iron(III) hydroxide, Fe(OH)₃ then dehydrates to produce Fe₂O₃.nH₂O(s) or rust.

At this point, all but the scientists amongst us are probably bored or wondering what this chemistry lesson has to do with a church blog. I suppose these meditations arose from considering how easy it is for us to react with our environments, how we are called to be distinctive salt and light in our communities, but how we often take on the qualities of the culture around us rather than allowing God’s light to shine through us. We are urged to shine like stars in the sky, holding firmly to the word of life (Phil 2:15-16), yet so often we allow the attitudes and values of the world to corrode us.

An iron chain is bought and looks shiny and bright:

If it is left to the elements, however, rusting will occur at some point, radically changing the appearance of the chain:

That same kind of deterioration can occur in us if we allow ourselves to be exposed to the world’s attitudes without being renewed by God’s Spirit. The word ‘corrosion’ itself comes from the Latin word meaning ‘to gnaw’ (think of how a corrosive acid burns skin, for example).

Often, we allow attitudes and beliefs to gnaw away at us, robbing us of the peace, joy and hope which God has promised. Hebrews 12:15 warns against a bitter root growing up within us which, if allowed to grow unchecked, will defile many. When we allow resentment, bitterness, unforgiveness or any other wrong attitude to find a lodging place in our hearts, we allow a corrosive effect into our souls which can lead to our ruin. In the world, there are many methods employed to prevent corrosion: plating, painting or the application of enamel, for example, which work by providing a barrier of corrosion-resistant material between the damaging environment and the structural material. We too need to find methods which prevent the corrosion of our souls: washing with water through the word (Eph 5:26), being cleansed through repentance and forgiveness (1 John 1:8-9), refusing to let the sun go down on our anger (Eph 4:26-27) and thereby not giving the devil any foothold in our lives, forgiving freely (Matt 6:14-15), living in trust rather than anxiety. (Matt 6:25-34) Such antioxidants work to keep us spiritually healthy and strong. Antioxidants are widely used in dietary supplements these days and have been investigated for the prevention of diseases such as cancer, coronary heart disease and even altitude sickness. Let’s be as concerned about our spiritual health as we are about our physical health and work on developing the grace-attitudes Jesus demonstrates as being the prevention to corrosion of the soul.