WHY READ THE BIBLE

In 1856, my great great-grandfather came from England to live in Melbourne and he received a letter from his brother back home. The letter told him that he could no longer live a selfish life, just doing what he wanted or he was headed to hell! The letter also told him he needed Jesus as the Lord of his life, but sadly, I don’t think my ancestor, or his son, or his granddaughter took any notice of this message! Finally my father came along and in 1978 I was born! After I became a Christian, my father did the same, but it was too late for our forbears! Each of us has a letter from God Himself, and it’s called the Bible.  Three generations of my family ignored the warnings of one letter, but you and I can’t ignore God’s message that Jesus died that we can be forgiven for our selfishness and we can start afresh! We remember His sacrifice for us this morning as we take communion together!

Back in the 1950’s an engineering professor told his class to buy the most expensive slide rule they could afford because it would serve them “all their professional lives”! Within ten years, engineers were using calculators instead of slide rules! Since that time, technology has been changing much faster than we can keep up! By contrast, Isaiah 40:8 tells us that “The Word of the Lord endures forever!”  God never changes and His Word is always relevant! The Bible is more up to date than tomorrow’s newspaper – and much more reliable! The more the world changes, the more security we have in reading God’s unchanging truth!”  Three significant questions are:

1.       Can we still trust the Bible?

A mate of mine some years ago told me that the Bible is a “load of rubbish”! I replied that as an English teacher, I insist that the students read the book first – before giving a book review! Years later he became a Christian and lined me up to run a Bible study at his home, which I did for seven years until I moved to Cronulla. Seven years later, the group is still running in the Gong– even though he and I have both moved away. He is now more active in his church than ever!

The famous evangelist Dwight Moody said, “The Bible was not just given to increase our knowledge – but to change our lives! I once met a young man who was working in the cane fields in Queensland, when he saw a tiny scrap of paper on the ground with writing on it. He found that it was a verse of Scripture, and even though I can’t remember what it was, it made him think about his life and he became a follower of Jesus! 

Proverbs 3:5 tells us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart!” I once needed an assistant for a job I was doing in the city and none of my friends wanted to help! I prayed in church one night for a helper and when I turned around, here was this young man I mentioned above! I’d never met him before and I asked him if he was looking for work. When he said he was, I simply said, “You start tomorrow!” And he did – and stayed working with me until the job was finished three weeks later!

A young boy once gave his grandmother a Bible for Christmas and wrote in it what he’d seen in another book, “With compliments from the Author!” This reminds us that the Author of the Bible is also the God of the Universe – who controls our lives and calls us to account on Judgment Day!

2.       Can we still live by the Bible?

A more important question is, “Can we still live without it?” I’ve never heard of someone reading the Bible and then committing suicide! And I’ve never heard of people who support euthanasia quoting the Bible to back up their choices. Instead, Jesus said, “Man cannot live by bread alone!” And he added, “but by every word which comes from the mouth of God!”  We may feel that we can get through life in our own strength, but without God’s guidance, our lives are likely to be random efforts to fill in time and to make as much money as we can so that we can keep filling in time! It makes so much more sense to allow our personal God to help us make wise choices which keep us on the path to eternal life!

A Chinese scholar who was not a Christian was employed to translate the Scriptures into his language. One day he stood up and said, One who made that Book made me, for it tells me things about myself that no-one else knows and even things that I didn’t know!” One of my former flatmates was from Communist China, but he read the Bible aloud in his room every day, and he knew without any doubt,  that only the Bible can show us how to live! 2 Timothy Chapter 3 tells us that Scripture is useful to teach us, correct us and train us in righteousness. In other words, the Bible helps us see things through God’s eyes instead of just our own!

                3   Can the Bible still point us to heaven?

I met a young man who was serving a part-time prison sentence on weekends and he told me that because he was about to become a father, he needed to know about the Bible so that he could teach the truth to his child! I gave him a copy of the Daily Bread notes which are sent out free to anyone interested! The next time I saw him, he was really excited, and he said, “Now I know that God is willing to forgive all my sins!” This is confirmed in Psalm 32: 1,2, which says, “Blessed is he who has forgiveness of his sin – whose sin does not count against him!” Without forgiveness of our sins, we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven!

A caretaker in a university, a very simple man, was once seen reading the Book of Revelation (the most difficult book in the Bible to understand!) Someone asked if he understood what it means, and he answered, “Of course I do! It means Jesus is going to win!”

The Bible tells us in graphic detail how Jesus died for each of us so that we might live forever! How can we possibly ignore it unless we want to spend eternity alone and in outer darkness! If you would like to read the Bible for yourself, please take a copy of Luke’s Gospel, or apply for Our Daily Bread notes to help you read it, or start with the free book, Ultimate Questions, which I can offer you this morning!

The Bible has a message for you every day of your life! If you don’t read it, you won’t know what God wants to say to you today!

HOW DOES GOD SPEAK TO US?

1 Kings 19: 9-18

Last week I told of the death of my dear friend Viv – a decent lady who suffered a great deal in her sixty years of life. Once when she asked to stay at my home in Kandos while doing practice teaching at the nearby primary school, I offered to pick her up at her Penrith home and drive her to my place personally. But Viv liked to do things her way and she insisted on taking her own car. A few weeks later, on her return journey, she had a head-on collision and spent almost a year in hospital! To her this was just bad luck, but God had known what lay ahead for her and had offered Viv an escape opportunity through me, which she didn’t take. Unfortunately, the same thing happens on an eternal scale. God can see the disaster which lies ahead if we don’t heed His message at the opportune time! So often God speaks to us through His other servants and we ignore Him! Let’s look at the main ways He does speak to us, and be willing to listen to His voice!

In our reading today, we learned that although God is capable of doing spectacular things, like sending cyclones and earthquakes, He often chooses to speak to us in a “still, small voice” by just giving us a thought or a prompting or a sudden understanding, or even the solution to a problem! Sometimes we can only hear His voice where there is stillness and quietness around us and we tune into Him through prayer!

Mainly though, He speaks to us through the three S’s:  His Scriptures, His Son and His Spirit.

The Scriptures – (His written Word) Sometimes God speaks through Scripture to His people generally. E.g. Hebrews 10:25. “Let us not give up meeting together...but let us encourage one another!” But other times He gives us specific answers to our needs. On one occasion, while pasturing the church down in Berry, I felt that visiting people down there was a real waste of time! But when I arrived home, my Scripture reading for the day said, from 1 Corinthians 15:58, “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain!”

A girl I once taught with had felt rejected right through her childhood because her parents had never really wanted her. But one day she read in Psalm 22 the words, “You made me trust in you even at my mother’s breast. From birth I was cast upon you!” With these words she realised that God had never rejected her, but had been at her side from the very moment she was born! So often like this, God speaks to us directly from His Word. We need to read the Scriptures regularly to see what He is saying to us personally!

The Son – (His living Word) Jesus has spoken to us all through His birth, His death and His resurrection. At His birth, He indicated that as God, He was willing to reach out to us by becoming one of us – a human being! Through His death, He demonstrated His great love for each of us by dying in our place, and through His resurrection, He has told us of His power over death! I once had a boss named Bob, who wasn’t a Christian, but he turned out to be the brother of my school French teacher, who was a Christian. When I told Bob that the whole Christian faith rested on the resurrection of Jesus, He couldn’t believe his ears!  He said with excitement, “That’s exactly what my brother has been saying to me all these years!” In other words, the Resurrection speaks to us with a message louder than thousands of Christians could ever convey!

Jesus speaks to us through His example. Back in the 1890’s a book was published with the title,  In His Steps – telling of a small American town where the townsfolk set out to ask themselves in each situation, “What would Jesus Do?” This became a catchcry throughout America, and even today you sometimes see people wearing the badge, “WWJD?” But Jesus speaks to us most by His presence with us. He says, “Come unto Me all who are over-burdened and I will give you rest – I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls!” For this reason, I urge people always to take Jesus with them – into the workplace, into exams and job interviews etc! Jesus will not only speak to us but will often speak through us on these occasions!

The Spirit – (His spoken Word) The Holy Spirit speaks to us generally of our sinfulness and our need for Jesus!  But the Spirit also speaks to/through us through 1) what we say, 2) what we pray and 3) what we display!

1.       Sometimes the Spirit gives us what we call a ‘word of knowledge’. For example, a mate of mine once told me that his father was undergoing tests for cancer. I said to him quite confidently, “Your father will be okay!” This message came to me through the Holy Spirit, and sure enough, his father after the tests was perfectly all right!

2.       I once advertised for a buyer for my first apartment in Kings Cross and no-one replied. I prayed that if I went into the street, the Lord would show me a suitable prospect. Sure enough I walked about one hundred metres from the building and there was a young Asian man with a newspaper, looking at real estate signs in the street. I said to him, “Are you looking to buy an apartment?”and he replied that he wasn’t but he was acting on behalf of a friend who was! I took him to my apartment and shortly afterwards the friend came along and agreed there and then to buy it!

3.       In the 1800’s a blind lady used to write rowdy drinking songs for use in American pubs. But when she became a Christian, the Holy Spirit led her to write hymns instead, and she wrote thousands of them – many of which are still sung throughout the world today. In fact last Tuesday, Annie and I sang one of these at a church service at my mother’s nursing home!

Let’s read the Scriptures, seek the presence of Jesus, and pray for the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, so that we know in our hearts what God is saying to us! And in Matthew 28:20, Jesus says, “Be assured that I am with you always – even to the end of the age!”

CAN I FACE DEATH?

 Luke 12:16-21

You may have seen a movie called The Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford.  But in the past, The Fugitive was a television series starring David Jansen.  Now Jansen didn’t just ignore God, as many Hollywood stars do.  He also made a TV min-series called The Word, which denied the truths of the Bible. Is it surprising then that one night Jansen had a dream in which he saw himself carried out of his house in a coffin? He was so frightened by this, that he rang all his friends and cancelled a party he’d planned for that night! A day later, he was carried out of his house in a coffin! Jansen lived a life denying God, and as a result was terrified of death! But Jesus died to take the sting out of death for us! He died to open a way into eternity where we could rejoice in His loving presence!

There are three mistakes people make in facing death:

1.                   Denial:  A former prime minister of England when told by his doctor that he was soon to die,  replied, “Die? That’s the last thing I’m going to do!”And it was!  But the great evolutionist, Professor Julian Huxley denied God all his life, and as he lay dying, he looked up at something unseen to others in the room and said, “So! It is true!” But by this time it was too late for poor old Huxley! Contrast this with the words of Stephen, the first Christian martyr: “I see heaven open, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”  I had a relative who couldn’t face the fact that one day she would die. She made no will and as far as I know, made no preparation to spend eternity with Jesus! The police had to break into her house when she died to free the six or seven cats who were left there to starve, and my parents had to shovel up the mess that the cats had left behind in the house. The house itself went to another relative who hadn’t seen her for fifty years! And before World War 11, a grave in Germany containing an atheist was sealed with a granite slab and bound with strong chains, with the tombstone inscription, “Not to be opened throughout eternity!” But a small acorn had somehow fallen into a crack, and its outer shell had died! Years afterward, a mighty oak tree had now broken up the slab covering the grave! This man had tried to deny God’s power over death and eternity!

2.                   Delusion: I saw a TV movie in which a woman dying of cancer spent her remaining days trying to line up a new lady for her husband! But she forgot to prepare for what lay ahead for herself!

A dear friend of mine was dying of cancer a few years ago, and as she wasn’t a Christian, I wrote to wish her a happy birthday first, and then added, “Viv, you are one of the nicest people I know, and if niceness were an assurance of a place in heaven, you would get there with the best of them. I then went on to explain that we’ve all failed to reach God’s standards and that only by accepting Jesus can we enter heaven. Viv wrote back and said, “Yes, I had a great birthday. My kids shouted me a sky-jump as a special treat!”  She ignored the fact that I was trying to offer her something far more exhilarating and far more lasting! Sadly, Viv showed no interest, to my knowledge, of spending eternity in the presence of Jesus! But some people even try to bribe God. An earlier King of England, King Ethelred, had this written on his tombstone, “In order that I may be worthy to enter the Heavenly Kingdom, I give Almighty God three farms to be held forever for a monastery!”  Imagine trying to pay your way into heaven when Jesus offers free admission! And anyway, Ethelred’s  gift was probably abolished by King Henry VIII, along with all the other monasteries!

3.       Delay:  2 Corinthians 6:2 says, “Now is the day of salvation!  I once invited a man along to church one Sunday morning, and since I was preaching, he may have missed out on the chance of salvation that day! Sadly, he didn’t have any more Sundays! He had a turn of some kind during the week and by the following Sunday he was in his grave! This could happen to any one of us at any time! I know of many, many students I’ve taught as teenagers in the past who are now in their graves! Let us spend each day with God now, and until we meet Him face to face! We should heed the words of Amos 4:12, “Prepare to meet your God!” (This could not be said of the man in today’s reading! It could not be said of Professor Huxley or my relative, or my friend Viv, or the man who refused to come to church, or even of poor old King Ethelred! But let’s be sure your family can say of you, “He/she was ready to meet God!”

How great would it be to have the attitude of the famous evangelist Dwight Moody, who said, “When you see my death notice in the paper, I’ll be more alive then than I am now!”