One of my favourite films is ‘Galaxy Quest’, a comedy which parodies sci-fi films (and the television series ‘Star Trek’ in particular) about a troupe of actors who end up inadvertently defending a group of real aliens against an alien warlord. One of my favourite characters in the film is Brandon (played by Justin Long), a nerdy fan whose encyclopaedic knowledge of the TV series is crucial to the plot.

He spends the entire film harassing the actors about their series, refusing to believe that it is fictional until Jason Nesmith, who plays Commander Taggart in the series, is finally brutally honest, revealing that it is not true, and Brandon is crushed. Later on, however, Jason needs Brandon to help him land the spaceship and he interrupts Brandon’s sad admission that he understands it’s all fictional by saying ‘It’s all true!’ Brandon is ecstatic (‘I knew it!’) and his actions help to bring the spaceship down and see the aliens killed.

Many of us are rather like Brandon. We desperately want the gospel to be true. We like the idea of an omnipotent, all-loving God and a story which ends happily ever after, but in our heart of hearts as we grow up, we tend to feel that we need to grow out of such childish ways. We leave behind our belief in Father Christmas and the tooth fairy; we let go of Peter Pan and other story characters. We see the sin and strife in the world and we think that God is just another fable to make us feel better about ourselves. We think that all we see is the ultimate reality.

The fact is, however, that what we see with our eyes and touch with our hands is not the whole story. The gospel explains why the world is as it is (because of man’s rebellion against God and the huge problem caused by sin) and reminds us that there really can be a happy ending because God is the ultimate reality. Far from being a placebo or a sweet little fairy story to keep the children content, He is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the God of Angel Armies. We are to ‘fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’ (2 Cor 4:18 TNIV)

‘The Matrix’ trilogy depicts a dystopian future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality called “the Matrix”, created by sentient machines to subdue the human population, while their bodies’ heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source. In some ways, the films touch on important themes because we tend to view this life as all there is and talk of heaven as ‘pie-in-the-sky’, a fantasy world that bears no resemblance to reality. Christians are often accused of being unrealistic, living in an imaginary world of fantasy. Over the past thirty years, however, I have come to see that it is God who is the ultimate reality and that the world I currently inhabit is, whilst not a fantasy, definitely not all there is to life.

Contrary to what we are bombarded with from infancy, it is the world which is ‘held captive by dreams that will never be fulfilled in this life / Chasing the darkness and everything that surrounds/ All the emptiness buried inside’ (‘Come Alive’, Jeremy Camp) and God who has done something about that: ‘His love has conquered death’s call.’

Let’s be secure in God as the ultimate reality and have a light hold on everything the world has to offer as a result.

‘Come Alive’, Jeremy Camp

Grace and mercy are twin sides of a coin. Grace is God’s unmerited favour, the blessings He pours out on us every day which we don’t deserve. Someone has defined grace as ‘getting what we don’t deserve’ and mercy as ‘not getting what we do deserve!’ The dictionary definition is a little more precise: ‘compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.’

I find it interesting that the two new albums I have listened to recently (by Matt Redman and Phil Wickham) both feature songs which look at grace and mercy. The title song of Matt Redman’s album is ‘Your Grace Finds Me’ whereas Phil Wickham’s album features a song called ‘This Is Amazing Grace’. Both albums also look at the topic of mercy, featuring songs by that name.

Matt Redman talks about the centrality of the cross in the song ‘Mercy’ here, a centrality reflected in the lyrics:
“I will kneel in the dust
at the foot of the cross,
where mercy paid for me.
Where the wrath I deserve,
it is gone, it has passed.
Your blood has hidden me.

May I never lose the wonder,
oh, the wonder of Your mercy.
May I sing Your hallelujah.
Hallelujah, Amen.” (‘Mercy’, Matt Redman & Jonas Myrin)
‘Mercy’, Matt Redman & Jonas Myrin

Phil Wickham’s song on the same theme is beautifully constructed around the ideas expressed in Romans 5 about the ‘first Adam’ and the ‘last Adam’, with a final verse that reminds us of the miracle of our new birth and the commission that mercy gives to us:
“Made from the dust and breathed into life,
He stood unashamed with a fire in his eyes,
The image of God walking upon the world.
All of the earth was under his feet
Except for the fruit from a forbidden tree.
He took a taste and that’s how he breaks the world.

Mercy, Mercy
Your love is a song and You sing over me
Mercy.” (‘Mercy’, Phil Wickham)
‘Mercy’, Phil Wickham

It took me a long time work out why disobedience is so condemned in the Bible. I come from a background where obedience is the norm and my personality is such that I tend to obey instinctively, mostly because I like pleasing people and want to gain a lot of my self-value from other people’s approval. I was never a particularly rebellious teenager and don’t disobey lightly. In fact, I tend to be the kind of person who will fulfil the letter of the law in tedious detail, just because it’s written down. That’s why I am so good at administration, I suppose!

It came as something of a shock to me, therefore, to discover that rebellion is man’s natural state without God and that disobedience and obedience are far more than rejecting or following the law. In the Bible, I discovered that obedience needs to come from within and needs to be more than legalistic letter-following. It is a heart attitude which is highly valued by God.

I struggled with 1 Samuel 15:1-35 TNIV for many years. This is the passage where the Lord rejects Saul as king. The reason I struggled was that God’s response seemed disproportionate to the sin committed. It looked rather like my hissy fits: over-the-top and out of control and I knew that could not be true of God (indeed the passage reminds us of God’s character: “He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a human being, that he should change his mind.” (1 Sam 15:29 TNIV), showing us that capriciousness is not part of His nature.)

In the end, I came to understand that obedience counts more than fine words and that rebellion is essentially idolatry: putting something (in this case, one’s own ideas) before God: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king.” (1 Sam 15:22-23 TNIV)

In Matthew 21:28-32 TNIV, Jesus tells the parable of the two sons. A short story, blunt almost to the point of terseness, this parable reminds me that obedience counts more than fine words. But the Bible is adamant that obedience is about more than simply doing the right thing (the ‘burnt offerings and sacrifices’ were prescribed by the law, but God wanted more than outward obedience only); it is the overflow of a heart that is in right relationship with God. ‘In everything I want You to be pleased’, Jeremy Camp sings in the song ‘Reign In Me’, and it’s that inner desire to please God which has to be the motivation for our obedience.

As a parent I’ve seen grudging, reluctant, heavy-sighing-door-slamming obedience and it is not a pretty picture! As a teacher I’ve seen pupils obediently apologise to others, but with such an attitude that it’s obvious this is in-order-to-avoid-further-trouble obedience rather than genuine repentance. We can be just the same with God: obeying Him with gritted teeth, so to speak. I believe that’s better than disobedience, but I think what God longs for is sincerity: ‘truth in the inner parts’ (Ps 51:6 TNIV), as David came to realise after he had sinned so disastrously against God. “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” (Ps 51:16-17 TNIV)

Obedience, ultimately, has to come from within, from our desire to please God, from our longing to be in right relationship with Him, from our surrendered heart.

‘Reign In Me’, Jeremy Camp

David is described in Acts 13:22 TNIV as a man after God’s own heart. Perhaps even more poignantly, the phrase is actually ascribed to God Himself: “God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’” Everyone knows that David was not perfect and made some horrendous mistakes in his life (adultery and murder amongst them), which gives added depths to this description. More than anything else, I long to be a person who is like God and who will do everything God asks me to do.

Phil Wickham’s song ‘Carry My Soul’ has the lyrics:
‘I will run
Oh. and I won’t quit,
Chasing Your heart,
Just like David did.’

That phrase again captures for me the very essence of David. He was impulsive and made mistakes. He often acted boldly, but sometimes that boldness was thoughtless and not always wise. He had, most of all, though, a heart for God. God looks beyond the outward appearance of man to the heart (a truth described in Samuel’s original anointing of David as king in 1 Samuel 16:7 TNIV.) We, too, may make mistakes. We won’t always get it right. But God sees our hearts and knows the motivations and desires within. May we run after God, chasing His heart in all we do. Maybe that’s what Peter meant when he said that ‘love covers over a multitude of sins’ (1 Pet 4:8 TNIV)?
‘Carry My Soul’, Phil Wickham

There is a saying ‘we are what we eat’ which has been used to educate people about the kind of food they ought to be eating. I’ve had to deal with a difficult relationship with food most of my life; I am prone to gluttony and have often been overweight; if I’m addicted to anything at all, it’s probably food. It’s not particularly difficult to know what we ought to eat; the problem usually comes because we like a whole range of things that are not especially good for us or because we don’t know when to stop eating! (or know, but don’t want to stop anyway!)

Just as important as our physical health is our spiritual health, however. Paul tells Timothy ‘train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.’ (1 Tim 4:7-8) Sadly, we’re often more interested in our physical health than our spiritual health. (Perhaps it seems more visible and ‘real’ to us…)

Over the past thirty years I have come to see that ‘we are what we believe’. We simply cannot divide faith from any aspect of our lives. Why should we look after our bodies and strive to be healthy? Because our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:20 TNIV). Why should we care about the poor and disadvantaged in our society? Because God commands us to. (Deut 15: 11 TNIV, Prov 22:2 TNIV, Is 58 TNIV). Why do we believe in the sanctity of human life and therefore oppose abortion and euthanasia? Because we believe we are made in the image of God (Gen 1:27 TNIV), that life begins at conception (Psalm 139:13-16 TNIV), that life is precious as a result and that God holds the keys of life and death (see Revelation 1 TNIV).

We have to know what we believe and why we believe and whom we believe. As a church I hope we teach these things regularly, because if it’s true that we are what we believe, then it’s obviously important we are believing the right things. Our faith will determine our actions and as the world very well knows, actions speak louder than words.

There is a great deal of diversity within churches over what we actually believe. The Apostles’ Creed sets out what could be called ‘the bare minimum of belief’; most churches have a ‘Statement of Beliefs’ pinned up on a notice board. But belief and faith are about more than giving mental assent to a neatly typed list. We have to do more than read the Word of God; we have to obey it (see James 1:22-25 TNIV). One of the prayers in the ‘Book of Common Prayer’ urges us (with regard to the holy Scriptures) to ‘hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.’

Computer programmers used to talk about ‘GIGO’ – ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ Whether it’s computers or food or spiritual things, the principle is the same. What we inwardly digest will determine what kind of people we become. Let’s train ourselves to be godly and believe all that God says!

Yan Hadley spoke this evening on the dangers of distraction, distortion and deception, using texts from Matt 24:4, 10-11, 24 TNIV and 2 Cor 11:14-15 TNIV to discuss how the enemy seeks to sidetrack us from a pure devotion to Christ. His deception is accomplished by subtly targeting and questioning God’s integrity, as in the Garden of Eden, when he distorted the truth (Gen 3:1 TNIV), contradicted what God had said (Gen 3:4 TNIV) and suggested that God was withholding good things (Gen 3:5 TNIV). Just as Eve was deceived, we can be led astray by those who look and sound plausible, being dressed in sheep’s clothing, but who are false prophets and wolves (see Matt 7:21-23 TNIV, Matt 7:15-16 TNIV).

The enemy seeks to damage us through distortion to the message, the methods and the mission of the church. Nowadays, the message of the gospel can be distorted through liberalism (rationalising the supernatural and denying the miraculous), through humanism (developing a system of thinking with mankind at the centre and no focus on God) and through secularism (where any sense of the sacred is lost). We need to be unafraid to confront any message which distorts the truth, as Jesus did when confronting the moneychangers in the temple (Luke 19:43-44 TNIV), for we must not be conformed to the world (Rom 12:2 TNIV).

The enemy seems to focus on methods which involve personality, manipulation, sensationalism and celebrity rather than allowing God to build the house (Ps 127:1 TNIV) and work through His Spirit (Zech 4:6 TNIV). All wrong methods have to be renounced (see 2 Cor 4:2 TNIV), for we must be people of integrity.

We must also never lose sight of the mission Jesus has given us to go and make disciples of all nations. We are to be His witnesses (Acts 1:8 TNIV) and must not be distracted from this primary task.

God has given us a number of safeguards against deception:
1) A commitment to the supremacy of Christ and the centrality of the cross (1 Cor 2:2 TNIV, Col 1:18 TNIV)
2) A reliance on the absolute authority of God’s Word (Matt 4:4 TNIV, Acts 17:11 TNIV)
3) A dependence on the fullness of the Holy Spirit who will lead us into all truth (John 16:13 TNIV)
4) The sacrifice of making time to be alone with God, allowing time to be unhurried and undistracted in His presence (Matt 6:6 TNIV, Ps 27:4 TNIV, Jer 33:3 TNIV)