I began my Sunday morning sermon with the statement by Tozer that “what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”  It’s a good statement to start a sermon with, but it is also a deeply challenging statement.

At the same time my wife has been reading Larry Crabb’s The Papa Prayer, in which he has a chapter called “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

On similar lines to Tozer, Crabb asks:

What picture of God comes to mind when you pray?  Who do you assume He is?  What’s He like?

He goes on to suggest ten common images of God that are in people’s minds when they pray.

1. Smiling Buddy: prayer is asking favours from a chum.
2. Backroom Watchmaker: why pray? Whatever will be will be?
3. Preoccupied King: he is too busy for our small concerns.
4. Vending Machine: “put in the coins and collect your treat.”
5. Stern Patriarch: he can be obeyed but not enjoyed.
6. Kindly Grandfather: grandparents’ job “to let them skip vegetables and go right to the ice cream.”
7. Impersonal Force: “a power that cannot be harnessed.”
8. Cruel Tyrant: who needs some coaxing.
9. Moral Crusader: who is most opposed to the visible sins of culture.
10. Romantic Lover: “prayer is reduced to the narcissistic yearnings of the self-worshiper…”

There they are. Ten pictures of God that come to our minds when we pray. Each one distorts prayer into something other than relating to the God who is who he is.

So what comes to your mind when you think about God?

Our Sunday services took place in the shadow of the tragic death of a young man who was well known in the community.   In our Sunday evening service we tried to address some of the questions that tragedy raises: we did it by looking at the story of Jesus and Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  We tried to see how some of the questions raised by the story reflect questions that occur to many of us when tragedy strikes.

• When bad things happen, does it mean that Jesus has stopped caring?  What is fascinating in the story of Jesus and Lazarus is the reference to Jesus’ love for the family.  The next verse says “therefore” when he heard that Lazarus was sick he stayed where he was.  We don’t expect “therefore.”  We expect something like “however.”  Some of the translations go that way, but the word is therefore, meaning that John links the delay with Jesus’ love.  Jesus was going to do something that the family did not anticipate.  His love for them was never in question.  We need to remember that when we face sadness.  Jesus doesn’t stop loving us.
• When my faith takes a knock, can I keep trusting?  That was Martha’s challenge in the story.  She believed (as did Mary, and I think they were right) that if Jesus had been there, Lazarus would not have died.  It’s a tough challenge for faith when we think that Jesus could have done something, but didn’t.  Martha chose to keep believing (Lord, even now…), and so must we.
• Jesus is the Son of God: do we believe that?  No one else could have stood outside the tomb and summoned Lazarus.  Jesus did, so demonstrating the reality of his claim to be the resurrection and the life.  We know that John did not tell this story just to tell a story: it was part of the evidence he was lining up so that people would believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that they would find life in his name.

On Sunday mornings this month I have been preaching the first four messages in a series on the life of Moses (the audio of the first three has recently been updated and the messages are available here).

The most recent message will be updated shortly.  In it, we made a start on Exodus 3 and the theme of knowing who God is.  It’s easy to miss this theme in the book of Exodus, but on several occasions God speaks about people knowing that he is the Lord.  Pharaoh and the Egyptians needed to know, as did the Israelites.  But chapter 3 starts with Moses meeting God as God gets his attention through the mystery of a bush that was burning but was not being burnt up.

• God transforms the ordinary and makes it holy.  Most of us live most of the time in “ordinary”pursuits, but God often works in and through the ordinary things.
• God remembers the forgotten.  As chapters 2 and 3 talk about God seeing and hearing and knowing, they show him acting to fulfill his promises.  He is a faithful God and will see to it that the promises he has made – to a groaning created order, not just one people – will be kept when he renews earth and heaven.

It’s not often that a church gets the opportunity to celebrate the launch of a book by one of its members (unless its pastor is John Piper or some other author).  But on Saturday evening PBC had such an opportunity.  One of our former pastors, Sam Simpson, who is retired and once again a member of the church, has written a book looking back over the nine decades of his life.

(Click on the image for a larger photo)

Nine Decades of Blessing is the warm-hearted story of the faithful lives of Sam and Norah Simpson (Norah went to be with the Lord last year).  Together they served several Baptist churches in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

The book has been published by Ambassador in Belfast and is available by contacting our church office.

During the evening there were greetings from various people who have known Sam across the decades.  My own father worked for him in a Belfast company 50 years ago; Norman Brown, minister of Wellington Presbyterian in Ballymena was led to the Lord by Sam at a mission in Banbridge; Sam’s son Jim, who played a significant role in the production of the book, spoke too.  There were around 20 members of male voice choirs, started and nurtured by Sam, present to sing.  One of the highlights was to see Sam once more directing the choir in one of their pieces.

A great evening and a wonderful tribute to one of God’s choice servants.

PS: it was an evening for a number of ministerial jokes, including the story of a minister who went deer hunting with a farmer and a doctor.  The three men shot at one deer at the same time.  On inspection, the farmer concluded that the deer had been killed by the minister’s bullet.  The evidence?  The bullet had gone in one ear and out the other.

Sunday morning (Remembrance Sunday, so we began our service with a short act of remembrance) was the second week of a new series I am preaching on the life and times of Moses.  Last week I started with an overview, looking at the three phases of his life which DL Moody famously summarised as 40 years becoming a somebody, 40 years learning that he was a nobody, and 40 years learning that God uses nobodies.

The second message looked at the first 40 years, the formative years.  I highlighted the theme of choices (which is also highlighted in Hebrews 11’s treatment of his life).  Some of the choices that affected Moses were made by other people.  Some of these were evil choices: Pharoah’s policy of ethnic cleansing was evil.  Some of them were good: his mother’s choice to save him, his sister’s quick-witted decision to find a nurse, Pharaoh’s daughter’s choice to take care of him, in defiance of her father’s policy.  Our lives too are influenced by the choices that others make and we have opportunity to influence future generations by choices we make on their behalf.

Moses, of course, made his own choices, notably his choice to identify himself with the Hebrews.  It was a decision that made little immediate sense, but he knew that the future was in God’s hands.  Behind all the choices was the plan of God whose invisible hands were at work.

In the evening I preached from Acts 12 on prayer and the triumph of the gospel.  The story of Peter’s deliverance and Herod’s death show us the church at prayer.  They prayed despite the perplexity of Herod’s atrocities (he had killed James); they prayed despite their own personal doubts (although they prayed for Peter, they were unable to believe that he was standing at their door); and their prayers were worthwhile because God was ultimately victorious.

Last week I read The Prodigal God by Tim Keller.  It is his exposition of the famous story of the Prodigal Son, one of the best known parables of Jesus.  To get the significance of the title, you need to remember that prodigal means recklessly extravagant, and not just someone who wanders off the path.  The younger son was prodigal in that he wasted his inheritance; God is prodigal because of his grace.

Keller makes the point that the story was not designed to bring a sentimental tear to the eye – the way we often think of it – but that it would have been sharply offensive to the original listeners.  He is right: the story was told to convict the Pharisees who failed to understand Jesus’ concern for “sinners.”

In one of the books chapters, Keller turns the spotlight on what he calls “elder-brother lostness.”  It is a more subtle form of lostness than the lostness of the younger brother who runs away from home.  Here are some of the marks of “elder-brother lostness.”

• anger and bitterness when things go wrong.
• a strong sense of your own superiority which can result in racism, classism and a judgmental spirit.
• joyless, fear-based compliance.
• a lack of assurance of the father’s love which can show up as an inability to receive criticism or a dry prayer life.

Even if you are not an older brother, Keller suggests that it is possible to be “elder brotherish.”

If you have not grasped the gospel fully and deeply, you will return to being condescending, condemning, anxious, insecure, joyless, and angry all the time.

If you want to read more, buy the book which is now available as a paperback from Hodder.

Yesterday Pauline and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary: in Bangkok.  I don’t think anyone would have predicted that location 25 years ago.  We wouldn’t have predicted it 2 weeks ago.

Last weekend our daughter who is working for the year in SE Asia developed acute appendicitis and had to be flown to Bangkok for surgery.  Five days later we flew out and we’ll spend the next week or so with her before rejoins her colleagues for a retreat about 3 hours from here.

It’s our first time to be in Asia: Sunday morning was also our first time to be in the Middle East, though it was just for two hours as we transited through the amazing modern airport of Abu Dhabi.  It’s a long way from Dublin to Bangkok and Etihad serves up the journey in two neat, almost equal portions through its Abu Dhabi hub.

We are housed in a Bangkok suburb, courtesy of friends of some people who were in Westlake with us 10 years ago.  The house comes with a pool and our host family has a driver who ferried us around the city as we ventured out for the first time yesterday for some shopping and a special lunch.

Lunch was in a 53rd floor Japanese restaurant with a stunning view of part of this sprawling city.  At least we saw a lot of the city for part of the time: our view was eventually limited as clouds came in, bringing a thunderstorm.  We were waited on hand and foot by the attentive staff.  The foot bit is literal as one of the waiters discovered I was suffering from a painful Achilles injury.  He arrived at the table during the meal with a tube of anti-inflammatory gel.

Bangkok is a huge city, home (I think) to some 11 million people.  There are humble corrugated-roofed buildings and cramped tenements alongside impressive, bright modern skyscrapers.  Motorbikes share the busy city roads with buses and brightly coloured taxis.  Street vendors push their bicycles laden with fruit for sale, or set up their pavement tables offering a quick lunch.

It’s a long way from Groomsport, where our wedding lunch was served 25 years ago.  Those years 25 years have seen plenty of change in many ways.  I am still married to the same loving wife.  Happy anniversary, Pauline.

Last night I spoke at the Christian Union on the Coleraine campus of the University of Ulster.  I used to be part of the CU in Coleraine some 30 years ago.

They asked me to speak on the question of whether the Bible is gospel or garbage.  No doubt it’s a slightly shocking title to some ears but it honestly faces the fact that it has become fashionable to reject the value of the Bible.

My talk asked four further questions:

• What is the Bible?
• Why should we pay attention to it?
• Is it reliable?
• What is its message?

You can download a copy of the message here.

Towards the end of my talk I shared this powerful statement from Mahatma Gandhi:

You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilisation to pieces, turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet.  But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature.

Good win for Everton – 5 out of 5 now and this with 10 members of the squad unavailable.

BBC SPORT | Football | Europe | BATE 1-2 Everton

This week Pauline and I are back in Switzerland.  We are guests of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Geneva who have invited us to be with them for their church weekend.  The weekend takes place in a hotel in the mountain resort of Leysin (the picture is a Photobooth shot from our balcony which looks out onto the Alps).  We got here yesterday after stopping off with some friends on the way and taking time to have lunch and a stroll in Montreux.  We now have a couple of days to ourselves before the start of the church weekend.

In terms of theme for the weekend we are going to work through some aspects of Moses’ life.  I will be teaching six sessions and Pauline will introduce a series of application question that will be worked through in small groups.

Moses has been a bit of a theme for me recently.  Our small groups at PBC are working through some group studies between now on Christmas and I have been teaching his life from a leadership point of view at the Irish Baptist College.  I’m also hoping to preach a series of Sunday mornings at Portstewart between the end of October and Christmas.

For the record, here are the session titles for what we are doing over the weekend.

1. Your life is a story to be told – in which we take an overview of Moses’ life which the New Testament maps out in three sections of 40 years each.
2. A sovereign God and 2 significant decisions – in which we look at some of the formative moments of Moses’ early life.
3. On losing the dream – in which we look at what happened to Moses in his desert years.
4. The 5 excuses of a highly reluctant leader (with apologies to Stephen Covey) – in which we look at the classic exchange between Moses and God when God calls him.
5. Deliverance, God’s way – in which we look at the revelation of God in the plagues and in redemption.
6. It’s about God, not you – in which we look at Moses at his best and Moses at his worst during his years as a leader.

As an overview, it’s worth remembering D.L.Moody’s clever summary of Moses’ life:

Moses spend the first forty years thinking he was somebody.  Then he spent his next forty years … realizing he was nobody.  Finally he spent the last forty years learning what God can do with a nobody.

This morning we finished our series on the heroes of faith of Hebrews 11.  I actually preached on the first two verses of Hebrews 12, where the spotlight moves from those who have run their race and have taken their seats to us.  The basic command of the verses is that we are to run with endurance the race before us.  We do that as we are aware of the witnesses, as we get rid of hindrances and as we fix our eyes on the Saviour.

You can read a copy of the sermon here.

In addition it was great to welcome Derick Bingham to our service.  Derick has had a very influential Bible teaching ministry for several decades.  At the start of the year he was diagnosed with acute leukaemia.  At first he was given very little chance of survival but God has been good to Derick and has raised him up again.  Graciously he joined us this morning to express his thanks for the encouragement he has received.

For more news on Derick, you can read his own blog updates.

This evening we have one of our regular “conversation” services where I talk to a member of the congregation about life and faith.  This evening it’s local businessman, Norman Lynas.

Things generally looking up for Everton after the mess of the first few weeks of the season.  Yesterday saw their fourth win in the past four games: twelve goals scored and none conceded in the process.  Saha is effective if fit.  The major blot was Stephen Pienaar’s injury: another Everton man with a knee injury.

I’ve been ordering books from ICM Books for a few years.  They have an online ordering facility (the website has been revamped) and you can order by phone.  Yesterday I took the opportunity to call in at the premises on a country road outside Lurgan.  It’s easy to miss, though there is a sign, as it ICM is housed in a series of modern outhouses in farming territory.  Inside there is a superb selection of good Christian books at better than usual prices.

For the record, I picked up the revised edition of the Expositor’s Bible Commentary on Genesis-Leviticus (I’m doing quite a bit on Moses these days); Sam Storms Convergence: The Spiritual Journey of a Charismatic Calvinist (I have at least one friend who would regard that as a contradiction in terms: perhaps I’ll lend him this book); Breaking the Idols of your Heart, a contemporary look at the teaching of Ecclesiastes by Dan Allender and Tremper Longman (Longman’s commentary didn’t quite convince me, so we’ll see how this goes); and a book by Philip Douglass, of Covenant Theological Seminary: What is your church’s personality. Douglass reckons that, like people, churches have personalities: he finds 8.

Check out ICM Books either online or if you are in the area, by popping in.

A key point from our Sunday morning in Hebrews 11 was the idea that faith refuses top accept the inevitable but learns to trust in the unexplainable.  Here is a further idea on the same lines.  It originates with Jim Stockdale who survived POW camp and comes via Jim Collins (Good to Great) via Dan Allender’s book, Leading with a Limp.

You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your existence.

Interestingly, Stockdale (the context was survival in the camp) was not contrasting this mindset with pessimists, but with optimists who pinned their hopes on being released by a certain date.

Faith refuses to accept the inevitable but it learns to keep trusting in the unexplainable.  That seems to be the clear teaching of the final section of Hebrews 11 where the writer talks about faith’s wonderful accomplishments then goes on to talk about people who by faith were sawn in two.

In yesterday morning’s sermon we looked at how some of faith’s stories have positive outcomes – natural outcomes, personal outcome and national outcomes are affected as people believe God.  The challenge of that is what we do with our belief that God has not changed and that he is still sovereign over these arenas of life.

Then there are faith stories that have negative (for now) outcomes, notably as people are martyred.  Here is where we see that while faith refuses the inevitable, it also learns to trust God through the inexplicable.  Hebrews 11 makes no difference between the faith of the people who saw positive outcomes and those who saw negative outcomes.  Nor does Acts make a distinction between the faith of James (martyred) and that of Peter (miraculously freed from prison).  God does not leave Paul with his thorn because Paul’s faith is deficient or he goes about his prayer in the wrong way: he leaves it because he knows that in some way it is actually good for Paul.  How much harm has been done pastorally by people who have not understood these things?

It’s important to note the not now aspect of all of this.  There is a sense in which none of Hebrews 11’s stories comes to its complete conclusion.  All the Old Testament heroes died without getting everything that is promised.  They are waiting until “the work on earth is done” and we are all made perfect together in a kingdom that will never be shaken.

You can download a readable copy of the sermon here.

The weekend Manchester Derby turned out to be an exciting business.  Plenty of pot-stirring ahead of the actual game and some intriguing sub-plots.  One of the big talking points at the end was the timing of Michael Owen’s winning goal, well into the sixth minute of injury time.  Mark Hughes wasn’t best pleased about it.  It was fascinating to read his apparent acknowledgment that this kind of thing used to happen when he played for Manchester United, though he sees it differently now!

At any rate, in an era of experiments with 6 referees, including two on the goal lines, and the debate about the use of video technology, is there not a far simpler solution available?  Why does football not take a leaf out of the book of other sports and have a clearly visible clock which a time keep will stop and start when instructed by the referee?  There could even be a buzzer or horn sounded at the end.

Or is that too simple?

On the subject, I picked up the following on Twitter yesterday afternoon from a Baptist pastor in England:

BST ends on last Sunday in October, GMT ends on last Sunday in March, FAT (Fergie’s Alternative Time) ends when Man United score a winner!

Slow out of the blocks is one way you could describe Everton’s Premier League campaign.  This weekend saw them in the relegation places after a home hammering at the hands of Arsenal and two narrow defeats in games where they should have done better.  However yesterday saw what turned out to be a fairly comfortable 3-0 win against Blackburn, and this after a 4-0 Europa League win on Thursday evening.

Sunday was a Daniel-themed day.  In the morning, which was also our ministry fair, with various ministries displaying their work and encouraging people to be involved, we got to Hebrews 11’s mention of the prophets and of people who by faith muzzled lions and quenched flames.

As we looked at the stories of Daniel and his three friends, we thought about how faith sometimes gets us into trouble, how it cannot be negotiated, how it invites God to work and how it points others to God.

Here is a link to the text of the sermon.

In the evening we had a student oriented service.  Not only does PBC have young people who pursue their studies away from the area, but we also have the Coleraine Campus of the University of Ulster on our doorstep with students coming to the area from all over the world.  Our service included a video snapshot of students’ views on meaning, a couple of interviews – one from a recent graduate and one from a new student, and a drama that aimed to show some of the pressures of choices.  I preached from the start of the story of Daniel and his friends, picturing them as three young students starting out at the University of Babylon. They were people of conviction – but with courtesy – who knew when to engage with the culture and when to draw a line.

With the start of September we are now into the autumn season at PBC.  We were back to one morning service with a surprisingly large crowd (one last weekend on the coast for the city folk?).  I preached on David and Samuel – the last two Old Testament faith ‘heroes’ to get a mention by name.  My particular interest was to show that in both of their lives God started to work when they were young.  The roots of what eventually led to lives of great national significance were being planted when they were young men.

Samuel fulfilled a role as a righteous leader in the nation.  He was called on to speak for God when the nation (and the king) needed to hear what God had to say.  He was called on to speak truth when it was not popular.  The roots of that can be seen when God first spoke to him and sent him with an uncomfortable message to Eli.

David ruled righteously and was a significant military leader.  It’s hard to think of him without thinking of Goliath, the Philistine champion.  That unexpected victory was the start of David’s dominance of the Philistines.  But its roots went further back to the way David proved the reality of God’s presence and protection when he was looking after his father’s sheep.  Looking after sheep in the desert seemed like an obscure task.  But it was in obscurity, doing what others considered menial, that foundations were being led for David’s rise to power.

Here is a link to the manuscript of the sermon.

Our evening communion service is back with David and Goliath: while the story may inspire us to trust God about the giants we face, we all need David’s greater Son to deal with the giants that are too big for our slings and stones and that keep us in fear.

This weekend brings crowds to the North Coast with the annual airshow.  The event runs over two days, it’s based in Portrush (or the air over Portrush), though there are viewing points back along the coast towards Porstewart.  The show starts and ends with the Red Arrows: I was in Portstewart this morning and managed to see some of their work.  One of this year’s star attractions was a brief visit by an Airbus A380 which flew by this afternoon.  Here are a few pictures.

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