Since Mark’s sermon on Jeremiah 6:16 (The Dream Cross Code), I have been thinking a lot about signposts. A crossroads without signposts isn’t much use: how do you know which way you’re supposed to take if there are no signposts?! And some signs aren’t that helpful at all. This one in France always makes me smile (one arrow points one way proclaiming ‘all directions’ whilst the other points in the opposite direction proclaiming ‘other directions’!):

At the National Railway Museum in York yesterday, one of the new exhibits is a ‘typical’ railway signpost with some decidedly untypical signs!

In case you can’t read the signs, they say:
* ‘Late again, miss the train’
* ‘Single or return?’
* ‘I left it on the 3.15’
* ‘One last kiss goodbye’
* ‘Bustle and confusion’

I’m not sure those signs would be terribly helpful at a train station, but Psalm 119 has some other useful advice about signs: “How can a young person live a clean life? By carefully reading the map of your Word. I’m single-minded in pursuit of you; don’t let me miss the road signs you’ve posted.” (Ps 119:9) Another verse from that psalm says “Barricade the road that goes Nowhere; grace me with your clear revelation. I choose the true road to Somewhere, I post your road signs at every curve and corner.”

When we are at the crossroads, we can know that God will give us the signposts we need to make wise choices and that there is grace available for us to walk in His ways. The people of Israel did not make a wise choice according to Jeremiah: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it,and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’” (Jer 6:16) They refused to take the right path and refused to listen to God (see also verse 17). God’s warning to the church at Laodicea, as to all the churches mentioned in Revelation 2 and 3, is ‘Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’ (Rev 3:22) We need to be grateful for the road signs and signposts that God gives us and we need to heed what He says to us. There is no substitute for obedience.

Mark started last night’s sermon by asking us to define ‘cool’: is it defined by the way you dress, by the things you own (big house, swimming pool, fast car etc.), by the gadgets you possess? The problem with defining ‘cool’ is that it is very subjective: young people may think it’s cool to dress one way (low-slung jeans, for example, which apparently make it difficult to walk normally and which reveal all manner of underwear and bare flesh…!) whilst others think that’s just plain daft! Hairstyles are one area where there’s great experimentation, but it’s a fine line between looking stylish and foolish.

Mark used a microwave to demonstrate how a flat pack of popcorn (which would definitely be inedible) can be transformed into buttery, edible popcorn:

That could definitely be counted as cool!

Coolness in the Bible is not always something to be admired, however. The church at Laodicea (Rev 3:14-22) thought they were successful and pleasing God. Laodicea was famous for producing black wool (which was used to make rugs and carpets), for being a rich banking city and for eye ointment: all things which made it stand out from its neighbours. But God’s opinion of the church there was far from complimentary: He described them as ‘wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.’

The reason for this judgment was that they were neither hot nor cold; they were lukewarm – a state which God says prompts Him to ‘spit you out of my mouth’ (Rev 3:17). Other versions talk about vomiting or spewing – strong words indeed.

It was not that the Laodicean church was not doing things, but their motivation and attitude towards God were clearly not right. They were no longer on fire for God and were not serving Him whole-heartedly. In some ways, it is very easy to just ‘go through the motions’ with regard to our Christian walk, but God sees our hearts and knows what we are really like on the inside. Being lukewarm is like trying to drink tepid tea: the instinct is to spit it out because it is not what it should be!

God’s solution for this church was counsel ‘to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.’ (Rev 3:18) They needed spiritual gold (not the ‘stuff’ that the world considers necessary to be cool); robes of righteousness (not the fashion items the world deems cool) and spiritual vision (not the eye ointment for which the city was famous). God disciplines His children (see Hebrews 12:5-6) out of love. Our primary task must be to love God with all we are and have and to hear what He is saying to the churches: “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” (Rev 3:22) That way, we avoid the peril of thinking we’re cool when all we really are are fools.

With the advent of spring finally reaching Goldthorpe, the family service last night looked at the theme of ‘coolness’. This can, of course, be taken in a number of ways! We started with a wordsearch on ice creams to get us into the Bank Holiday mood:

There were many different answers (pistachio, strawberry, vanilla, cookie dough etc.), but here’s a photo of a huge ice cream to keep us on topic!

As usual, there were prizes for the winners:

… including cool sunglasses:

‘Being cool’ is a hard thing to define. For some, ‘the Fonz’ was the epitome of cool:

This is one person’s idea of ‘cool’:

Others may think of fashion, fast cars or fame when they think of this word, but Mark had other ideas…

Abraham is our ‘faith father’ when it comes to the journey of faith. This morning, we looked at how he models faith for us and shows us how to be those who are “willing to live in the risky faith-embrace of God’s action for them” (Rom 4:12, The Message)

We are first introduced to Abraham (then called ‘Abram’, ‘exalted father’) in Genesis 11 and in Genesis 12:1-5 we hear God’s call to him and his response to that in setting out from Harran on a journey which would occupy him for the next one hundred years! He set out on a journey of faith, not really knowing what to expect, not really knowing where he was going, simply knowing that God was speaking to him and believing that that was enough. Hebrews 11:8 says ‘By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going’. We don’t always have all the answers as we set out to walk by faith, but the key question is not whether we can understand what God is saying to us but whether we will obey. Understanding often comes later on in the process: what precedes it is obedience.

Abram’s initial response to God in setting out on this journey of faith is the beginning of his adventures. Our initial response to God in setting out on the journey of the faith is also the beginning of our salvation adventures. The journey starts when we realise we cannot save ourselves and have to receive God’s gift of righteousness by faith (see Romans 1-3). That has to be a personal response to God and will always seem risky! But just as we start the journey by faith, so we must continue by faith: ‘we live by faith, not by sight.’ (2 Cor 5:7) Paul had strong words for the Galatian church which started off well enough by faith but then believed they had to continue by works! (Gal 3:3) Abraham journeyed to many different places throughout his life, and at each place, he received further revelation from God and that deepened his relationship with God. Time and time again in the story we read how that happens and Abram responds in worship and with sacrifices. Wherever he went, it seems he ‘built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the Lord.’ (Gen 12:8)

Abraham shows us how to start our journey of faith: by hearing God, obeying God, embracing what God says and does for us, no matter what it may look like to the natural eye.

He shows us how to continue to walk in faith, having that deepening relationship with God and continuing to respond to each revelation God gives him with worship and sacrifice and obedience – even when what God is saying doesn’t seem to make sense, as will happen many times over this hundred year journey!

And he shows us how to end the journey, still looking ahead to all that God has for him, eyes on the eternal city built by God (Hebrews 11:9-16):

“Oh, the glorious day when we arrive
And Heaven’s gates are opened wide
All our fear and pain will fade away
When we see You
Face to face,
Our Great and Awesome King .
You will reign in brilliant light
Forever glorified
In Your city
And we, Your daughters and Your sons ,
Will see the kingdom come
In Your city.” (‘In Your City’, Phil Wickham)
‘In Your City’, Phil Wickham

The Christian life is a journey that starts by faith and continues by faith. That may seem obvious, but it is surprising how often we begin well and then fail to continue in the same vein, perhaps thinking of faith more as a propellant than an ongoing fuel.

In the Parable of the Talents (Matt 25:14-30), the Master commends the two servants who use their treasures boldly and resourcefully, but the third “who prudently wrapped up his money and buried it typifies the Christian who deposits his faith in a hermetic container and seals the lid shut. He limps through life on his grade school catechism and resolutely refuses the challenge of growth and spiritual maturity. He wants to take no risks. But precisely because of this, he loses the gift entrusted to him.” (Brennan Manning, ‘A Glimpse of Jesus: Stranger to Self-Hatred)

When we hear God’s voice calling to us, we have a choice. We can follow the direction of that voice (which may well mean leaving all that seems familiar and secure and safe) or we can stay where we are, refusing to move in this new direction (because of fear or because we prefer the old life to that which is on offer.) Quite often, we don’t think of the crossroads in those terms. We view procrastination as a ‘waiting period’ and I’m certainly not saying that we don’t have to ponder and reflect, especially life-changing decisions. But quite often ‘endless delay creates more problems than it solves’ and ‘we postpone a decision (which is a decision itself), hoping that the Storyteller will grow weary of waiting and that the imperious inner voice will get laryngitis.’ (ibid.)

If we are to continue to grow in faith, we need to be aware that we have to not only hear God’s voice but heed it. James has been blunt about this: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22) and “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.” (James 4:17) Procrastination is very different to listening and hearing God. Procrastination is really putting off the thing you know you ought to do because, deep-down, you don’t want to. There may be good reasons why you don’t want to, but no reason is good enough to say ‘no’ to God!

“Procrastination means that we stop growing for an undetermined length of time; we get stuck. And with the paralysis of analysis, the human spirit begins to shrivel. The conscious awareness of our resistance to grace and the refusal to become who we really are brings a sense of oppression.” (ibid.) We can fight God all we like, but we are the losers if we win that battle…

If you are in that place of indecision and procrastination, fearful to take that new step of faith, wary of what God is saying to you, it is easy to listen to voices that urge caution and hold back. “Only Jesus Christ delivers us from indecision,” says Brennan Manning, and I would agree with that. The inner voice of the Spirit, prompting us to leave our comfort zones and continue to walk by faith, stirs us and moves us forward. The alternative is to live fragmented lives, lacking in harmony, and to miss out on a new adventure in God. The world has a proverb: ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ I think the Master approves of that one!

The tension inherent between the doctrine of man’s free will and God’s sovereignty often puzzles people and can’t be fully explained. Both sides of this coin are needed; one verse which perhaps captures both sides is in Philippians, where Paul says “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose.” (Philippians 2:12-13) We have to ‘work out our salvation’ (not in the intellectual sense of trying to fathom it, but in the sense ‘to do that from which something results: to bring about, result in’, living out our salvation as testimony to what God is doing), but God is also the One who works in us to bring about His purposes.

It’s easy for us to run to extremes with every doctrine: either sitting back in passivity, waiting for God to work, or frantically manipulating circumstances and people to fit in with our view of what God wants to do. Neither extreme is to be commended!

I recently had to contemplate major changes in my life and desperately wanted to know God’s will for my future. Ideally, I wanted a very Biblical experience: a burning bush, a blinding Damascene light, a pillar of cloud or fire, that kind of thing. Whilst part of the desire for such a visible or audible manifestation of God was because I wanted to be sure I took the right path and didn’t make a mistake, there was also the sense that such visions make life easier (so I thought) when it comes to times of trial or doubt.

You could say that God spoke very decisively indeed to me, but it certainly didn’t take the form I had prayed for! Instead, this quotation in a book I was reading (which prompted me to read the whole book from which the quotation came!) pierced through the mixed motivation of my heart and showed me that in most major crossroads of life, there is a partnership between us and God:

“There are those who, by virtue of their own passivity, dependency, fear and laziness, seek to be shown every inch of the way and then have it demonstrated to them that each step will be safe and worth their while. This cannot be done. For the journey of spiritual growth requires courage and initiative and independence of thought and action. While the words of the prophet and the assistance of grace are available, the journey must still be travelled alone… No words can be said, no teaching can be taught, that will relieve spiritual travellers of picking their own way, working out with effort and anxiety their own paths, through the unique circumstances of their own lives, towards the identification of their individual selves with God.”(Scott Peck, ‘The Road Less Traveled’)

This quotation pierced the outer veneer of spirituality I was adopting (surely there’s nothing wrong with wanting a Biblical experience of God?!) to reveal the true motives of my heart: the sense in which I felt that I needed ‘proof’ of God’s will, that I preferred safety to risk, that a cast-iron vision of God removed any need for faith and that it was a much ‘safer bet’ than stepping out in a new direction with no guarantee of ‘success’ along the way. I also found it highly ironic, because one of the things that frustrates me immensely as a teacher is a pupil who wishes to be spoon-fed the answers all the time rather than finding the exhilaration of discovery for himself, yet here I was actually wishing God would spoon-feed me the next steps of my journey with Him or speak to me in red text (Garry’s Bible has the words of Jesus in red, which makes it so much easier to distinguish God’s voice from all the other voices we hear!)

To grow spiritually really does require courage and initiative and independence of thought and action. The journey of faith is not for the faint-hearted. But as we seek to ‘work out’ our salvation – often, indeed, with fear and trembling, with effort and anxiety – we can be encouraged by the fact that we never walk alone.

“Standing on this mountaintop
Looking just how far we’ve come
Knowing that for every step
You were with us.

Scars and struggles on the way
But with joy our hearts can say
Yes, our hearts can say:
Never once did we ever walk alone
Never once did You leave us on our own
You are faithful, God, You are faithful.” (‘Never Once’, Matt Redman)
‘Never Once’, Matt Redman