Kevin spoke this morning from Luke 17:11-19 TNIV, the story which tells us of Jesus healing ten lepers. Lev 13:45-46 TNIV gives us a glimpse into the devastating effects of the disease leprosy (which remained uncurable until modern times); the leper was forced to live outside the town and proclaim himself ‘unclean!’ To be a leper was to be an outcast, excluded from normal society and family relationships; it was a disease that could affect any age or rank.

These ten lepers were desperate and the only antidote to their situation was Jesus. They cried out to Him in a loud voice, asking Him to have pity on them (Luke 17:13 TNIV). We often find ourselves in desperate situations too and need to learn to cry out in desperation to God (whether audibly or with inner groans). God hears our cries. Now is the right time; here is the right place for us to make our cries known to God, for God is able to meet our every need.

If we have been the recipient of God’s grace, mercy and love (as these ten lepers were), our response needs to be to give praise to God. Only one of the ten lepers returned to Jesus to give praise. The other nine are not heard of again. We have a choice: which way will we go? Will we return to God with gratitude and thanksgiving, as the Samaritan man did, or will be like the other nine who took their healing for granted, it seems? The Samaritan came back and praised God in a loud voice (Luke 17:15 TNIV). He had cried out in desperation in a loud voice; he returned with exuberant praise in a loud voice! He also threw himself at the feet of Jesus and thanked Him. (Luke 17:16 TNIV).

If we, as individuals, have known the hand of God on our lives, then there is an obligation on us to praise God! We should give our praise to God loudly and audibly. It’s so easy to remain silent. We live in a society where ingratitude is rife, but those who know God should never be ungrateful.

We can give lots of things to God, including our time, our talents, our money, our belongings. But God wants our whole hearts. He wants us to give our praise to Him. Now is the right time and the right place to do so. As we cry out to God and He meets our needs, we need to return in thankfulness and extravagant praise.

GIVE
PRAISE
TO
GOD!

Last night’s Bible study looked at the question ‘Can We Know God?’ In short, the answer is ‘yes, but only in part.’ God is obviously keen for us to know Him and has given us many glimpses of His presence, character and nature, but it is impossible for humans to fully know the whole of the majesty and splendour of God. He is so vast and unsearchable that we cannot ever hope to know Him fully on this earth, and yet there is so much more to discover of who He is!

Acts 17:23 TNIV looks at the Athenian statue ‘to an unknown God’. Paul went on to preach to them of the God who had made Himself known in Christ (see John 1:18 TNIV). Paul certainly had confidence in his knowledge of God (‘I know whom I have believed’ 2 Timothy 1:12 TNIV) and so we see that faith is more than knowing what to believe but is linked to knowing whom we believe.

Why can’t we search out God in the same way we study natural phenomena?
We can’t actually see God with our natural eyes, nor could we ever hope to find Him unless He chose to reveal Himself to us (John 5:37 TNIV). We are unable to comprehend all that God is with our finite minds (Is 55:8-9 TNIV reminds us that God’s thoughts and ways are far higher than ours!) We cannot see God and live (Ex 33:19-20 TNIV), yet He chooses to make His goodness known to us and reveals Himself to us (Prov 1:23 TNIV).

How does God reveal Himself to us?
1. Through His works of creation (Rom 1:20 TNIV)
2. Through inspired people (Heb 1:1 TNIV)
3. Through Jesus, the perfect representation of the Father (1 John 5:20 TNIV)
4. Through the word (Ps 119:105 TNIV, 2 Tim 3:16-17 TNIV)
5. The His Holy Spirit (1 Cor 2:9-14 TNIV) and the gifts and fruit of the Spirit

What conditions do we have to fulfil to attain spiritual knowledge of God?
1. We have to desire and yearn for God, to earnestly seek Him (Prov 2:3-5 TNIV)
2. Seeking is more than casually looking for God. It means putting Him first in everything (Matt 6:33 TNIV)
3. We need faith in order to please God and to see the invisible (Heb 11:1-6 TNIV)
4. Obedience is the final step required of us. Acts 5:29 TNIV reminds us that ‘we must obey God rather than men!’ Without faith it is impossible to please God, but we then need to take that ‘step of faith’ and actually do what He says.

Hebrews 3 and 4 talk about a ‘Sabbath rest’ available to God’s people. The principle of the Sabbath is that of rest. God gave the Sabbath to His people as a special day; after six days of work, He commanded rest, leading by example in the creation week (Genesis 2:2 TNIV). In our Western world with its shifting patterns of work, it’s not easy to really understand the specialness of the Sabbath; many of us don’t work for 6 days anymore and we have lost the sense of anything ‘special’ about one day. But the principle of special rest, rest in which we can thank God and meditate on Him, is still vital to our physical and spiritual health.

Hebrews 4:10 TNIV says ‘anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did.’ I don’t think that just applies to our natural work. I think we are always busy striving, and the Sabbath rest Hebrews talks about is also an exhortation to rest from the constant temptation we face to ‘play God’, to do God’s work for Him. Louie Giglio has said, ‘We Are Called Into God’s “Already In Motion” Plans. Sabbath rest is remembering that God calls us into His plans, He doesn’t call us to create the plans and make them happen.’ He goes on to say, ‘God wants us to work with all our might as we participate in His plans. But Sabbath is about remembering that while we are responsible to step into the opportunities God sets before us, He is responsible for the outcomes. In the end, God did come through [for Abrahamn], and He did fulfil His promise for and through Abraham’s life.’

I always want to be involved in what God is doing. But there are many times when I need to rest from striving and allow God to be God. I need to stand back and watch Him in action, rather than always trying to work things out myself. The temptation to do it my way is strong. Sabbath rest allows us to let go of that temptation and to be still and know that He is God. (Ps 46:10 TNIV)

Garry continued his series on the Beatitudues (‘Looking For Heroes’) last night, focussing on Matthew 5:9 TNIV: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.’

The word ‘peace’ (‘Shalom’ in Hebrew) has many connotations, including completeness, soundness, safety, tranquillity and serenity. Peacemakers are people who are peaceable, who bring peace and who generate peace. God Himself went to great lengths to achieve peace. He seeks peace and is devoted to it and urges us to live at peace with everyone as far as we are able (Rom 12:18 TNIV). It’s a topic frequently mentioned in the New Testament (eg Col 1:19-20 TNIV, Hebrews 12:14 TNIV) and yet we often want to receive peace without necessarily passing it on!

Peace Achieved
Peace is high on God’s agenda. Luke 2:14 TNIV reminds us that the angels proclaimed peace to those on whom God’s favour rests and Simeon, on seeing the baby Jesus, declared that He would guide our feet into the path of peace (see Luke 1:76-79 TNIV). God is the God of peace (see Rom 15:33 TNIV, Rom 16:20 TNIV) and it is so important to Him that He took the responsibility for doing something about the problems we faced, even though sin was our problem, not His. Col 1:19-20 TNIV reminds us of the price Christ paid, Christ who is our peace (Eph 2:14 TNIV). He is the way we obtain peace with God and thus brings us the gospel of peace (Rom 10:15 MKJV). God has gone out of His way to make peace!

Peace Received
Jesus promised to give His peace to His disciples (John 14:27 TNIV). He who had a perfect relationship with His heavenly Father offers us the chance to have the same unity with God. His peace can be ours. Yet this is not a naive, blind peace, for in talking about peace He also reminded His disciples that in this world they would also experience trouble (John 16:33 TNIV). Some people are naturally serene by temperament, but Jesus knew what it was to be troubled and in distress (see the Garden of Gethsemane, Mark 14:33 TNIV), yet He could also talk about having peace in those situations. Our relationship with God can be undisturbed, even when we are facing tumultuous circumstances.

God wants us not only to have peace with Him, achieved through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, but to have peace with other people too. Peace is a fruit of the Spirit.

Peace with others
We live in a broken world with broken people who break God’s hearts. When we mirror God’s character, our hearts too will become softened and tender. Those who exemplify God’s character will have trouble in this world and we will often feel that our hearts are broken. Other people may not want to live at peace with us, but as far as we are able, we are to live at peace with others. Truth and righteousness must not be compromised, but we have to be willing to go much further than we often are in order to achieve peace. God’s peace then can be the umpire or arbiter in our lives: ‘let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.’ (Col 3:15 TNIV)

Achieving peace with others often requires great effort on our parts (see Rom 14:19 TNIV, Eph 4:3 TNIV, 1 Cor 7:15 TNIV). We are urged to be ‘of one mind’ and to ‘live in peace’ (2 Cor 13:11 TNIV). In order to live at peace with brothers and sisters in Christ, we have to keep on loving and forgiving and we have to make every effort to live at peace not only with Christians but with everybody (see Heb 12:14 TNIV). Peter goes one step further and urges us to ‘seek peace and pursue it’ (1 Pet 3:10-11 TNIV), a word which can also be translated as ‘persecute’ – we have to chase and really seek after peace! James reminds us that true heavenly wisdom is peace-loving (James 3:17-18 TNIV) and that those who sow in peace will reap a harvest of righteousness. Peacemakers really do show the character of God and therefore can truly be called His children.

‘It Is Well’, Kutless

We had three birthdays to celebrate last night:

Happy Birthday to all!

Stephen preached on a little word which can make a big difference this morning – TRUST.

Stephen is a gadgets’ man! – he loves things like multitools (small enough to fit into a pocket but big enough to do a variety of jobs!)

When he first became interested in computers, they took up a whole room!

Today, he preached from an iPad which is much smaller and quite a lot more powerful:

In the same way that everything seems to be getting smaller these days, trust is a small word which has a big impact on our everyday lives. It’s often easier to trust ourselves than God. As we grow up, we become more skilled at doing things and end up saying ‘I can do that!’, but we need to understand that God wants to be involved in every aspect of our lives. When Jesus was in the wilderness, the devil tempted Him to tell the stones to become bread (Matt 4:3 TNIV), something He was definitely capable of doing (His later miracles clearly demonstrate His ability to feed thousands!) He refused to heed the temptation to do this for His own benefit, because He knew that ‘man does not live on bread alone’ (Matt 4:4 TNIV). Just because we can do something doesn’t mean to say we should. Jesus put His trust in God rather than trusting in His own ability – and if the Son of God lived that way, we definitely need to!

Trust needs to be the hallmark of our lives, whether facing situations where we feel we can do what is required or when facing situations where we don’t feel capable. Whenever, wherever and however we find ourselves, we need to trust in God. Prov 3:5 TNIV says ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.’ We have to be willing to trust God; when we do so, our confidence grows (Jer 17:7 TNIV says ‘Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him.’) The challenge for us every day is not to go it alone, but to include God in everything we do and to trust Him in every situation.