Sunday 1st FEB Evening Service

Brothers and Sisters

Just a reminder, this Sunday evening there is an event happening for us and an exclusive number of other churches.

The purpose: David Traneer, Pastor at Holland Road has had a heart to recognise, stand with, unite with smaller but like minded churches across Brighton. 

We are all aware that it can be tough serving in small churches. It is our hope that, as brothers and sister from these churches, we can join together to comfort, encourage, share, pray for, build up one another.

This Sunday evening we hope to be a first step along that kind of path. The beginning of what we hope to be a fruitful journey together. Relationship takes time and energy, but there is also great reward as we get to know new people, make new friends and most of all, discover the Lord Jesus in a different context. Who knows what might come out of it?

We (those of us who lead the respective churches) hope you will make the choice to be 'in' on this. We also know that this first meeting is a bit of a 'toe in water', 'finger in the air' meeting. We have prayed about it and done our best to gauge the meeting right, but it is just the start so please be patient with us if it doesn't quite work as we would all like, perhaps it may be a bit awkward or people don't mix easily or whatever. We will appreciate and take on any feedback for improvement you might have.

It is at 6.30pm, Oasis Christian Fellowship in Hangleton. It should be formally finished by 7.30pm so it need not take out your whole evening.

The Churches and leaders involved are ...

Holland Road Baptist Church - David Traneer

Oasis Christian Fellowship - Andrew Edwards

Centre Church (Formerly 'Church on The Rock) - Tyler Eveson

Portslade Baptist Church - Phil Cook

Us!

There is also a kind of honorary leader involved - Graham Jefferson. Graham was Pastor at New Life Durrington ... 'forever' - before retiring. He is a wonderful, humble, godly and more seasoned father-figure to us, we have come to love and appreciate him very much! I hope you will get a chance to meet him Sunday evening too.

I hope that gives you some idea what this is about and encourages you.

But lastly, of course we all know our church is small, which means that even if we all attended there is not many of us, but in reality, some of you have little ones so cannot possibly attend. Others of you will already have had things arranged and so cannot attend. I do understand. But that does mean there will be even fewer of our small number, so if you can attend please do so. I am genuinely proud of you and would love for others to meet you! 

Every blessing

Julian

Where is God? Why doesn't he do something about suffering! Part 4

From last blog we can see, if God wanted to get rid of suffering, He would need to get rid of all the causes of suffering. Since mankind is a major player in causing suffering, that would mean getting rid of us.

Just get rid of the really evil people

God could get rid of the Adolf Hitlers, Fred Wests, peadeofiles and rapests etc. that would make the world a better place wouldn't it?

That's a good point. Let's just imagine God agreed to do that. Great. Problem solved right? Wrong. This just raises another question that must be answered.

Where to draw the line?

Where do we draw the line? If we said, "We get rid of all the Hitlers and Mussolinis" etc., fair enough, that would save about 6 million Jews and who knows how many Ethiopians, World War 2 would not have happened, but the world we live in would still be full of misery and suffering because of people. And we don't know if World War 2 would not have happened. Who knows what would have happened? One thing I do know, if there was no World War 2, I would not exist! In fact, millions of people would disappear. Think how many people met and fell in love because of circumstances created by the war? Literally, millions of people alive now would not exist. But anyway, getting rid of Adolf Hitler etc, would not get rid of suffering or evil. Not nearly!

So we have to draw a line somewhere that rules a lot more people out. So for example, do we draw the line at rapists? Imagine you said 'Yes' and every rapist just vaporised, disappeared from planet earth. Would the world be a better place?

That would be a lot of people. How many 15 year old lads pressurised their drunk girlfriends into having sex - that's rape. There are loads of them. Many grown men did it as teenagers. Now they are happily married with young families etc., on your decision, suddenly they would be gone. Their children left fatherless, families broken and devastated. 

What about spouses who cheat on their husband or wife causing emotional torture, pain and suffering? Should we get rid of all of those people? That means get rid of my Dad? If you say, "No, people should not hurt one another like that but we should not get rid of them". Well, many people's lives have been devastated in that way. Many people found life so painful they committed suicide. Because of their experience, they would say, "yeah, get rid of them". Of course, that also means that lots of people who are alive now would never have been born! You can see, this is a very messy business! But it leads to another complicated question.

Who should be the judge?

It is easy to say, "Just get rid of the really evil people" and it makes a lot of sense. But then someone has to decide where exactly to draw that line. So Who decides 'Who'? Me? You? Someone else? A panel? The good people? Well no-one's perfect. So then we have to decide who is good enough. And then who is the 'we' that decides the 'who is good enough to be a judge?'

Whoever gets to make the decision would never find a place to draw the line that satisfies everyone. No-one would be happy with where the line is drawn. 

See how complicated it gets?

Surely the answer is to let God decide. If we agree on that, then we have to accept that we probably won't agree with His decision. He is never going to draw the line in a place that suits everyone. God could play it safe and rule out only the Mussonlinis and Hitlers. But then it would hardly touch the suffering in the world. We'd still be asking our question, Why does God allow suffering? So then, if God is to decide, we just have to trust that His judgment is best even though it is not what we would do. If we agree on that point, then guess what? God has drawn the line, where none of us would. 

We only see the evil that is. We don not see the evil God has prevented. A clue to this is easy to point out. How many times have you been driving your car, not properly concentrating, looked up at just the right moment and managed to stop? Had you left you home 1 second earlier you'd have been in a crash!

I believe God prevents many crashes by prompting people at just the right moment, or delaying for just the right amount of time. He saves people all the time and they don't even know it. Who knows what tyrants the world has been saved from?

So God has drawn a line, not where you or I would draw it, but we have to trust there is good reason for it, which we will come to in a later blog.

In the next blog we will see why God allows natural disasters, diseases etc and how even those things are connected to us.

Don't give up following these blogs, otherwise you won't get a full picture.

Feel free to post any questions. I'll do my best to answer to address them all at some point.

Where is God? Why Doesn't He Do Something about Suffering? Part 3

Anger at God is Understandble and Right

So we see from my last blog, it is understandable and right to be angry with God in the face of suffering - especially when God doesn't seem to do anything. Now we take our next step in piecing the jigsaw of 'Why God allows Evil and Suffering'

A Mixture of Good and Evil

That our world is a mixture of good and evil is obvious. But putting it like that robs the truth of its reality. We do need to face reality if we are going to get real answers that matter. So I am saying, if we want to understand why God doesn't do away with suffering and evil, it is not enough just to acknowledge the world is a mixture of good and evil. We need to understand a little of what good and evil is. As we understand these things, we will begin to understand why God allows suffering.

Good and Evil are Not Equal Opposites

I am talking for now, about the evil that people do. We will see how this relates to natural disasters like Tsunamis and disease in a later blog, but we need to begin with people. 

We can imagine that good and evil are kind of equals at opposite ends of a spectrum. But that is not true. Think about it. 'Good' is what we all should be all the time. It is never right to be bad or evil. It is always wrong. If you agree with that, then you will see the first really important point: we can never, ever make up for, or cancel out the bad or evil we have done. Here's why.

The Nasty Friend

Imagine you are talking with a friend, happily chatting away, having a laugh, enjoying the conversation, then unexpectedly he gives you a piece of chocolate. "That's kind of him" you think to yourself, when suddenly he punches you right in your face really hard. The punch only lasted a moment, you are dazed, hurting, freaked out, confused and in a state of shock. All the while he carries on speaking to you politely as if nothing happened.

You say, "What the heck's wrong with you, you total freak!"

He says, "look, so I punched you, it only lasted one tiny moment - I've chatted kindly with you for about 3 hrs and I gave you that piece of chocolate which I didn't have to give you. Surely 3 hrs of being good and a piece of chocolate makes up for one tiny moment of bad".

You reply, "What? No! You should never ever be bad, you should just be good, there is no rightful place for that badness, even if it was just a tiny moment". 

You can see the point. 100 moments of goodness do not make up for 1 moment of evil. Now I know it is not just about 'moments' of evil, but also there is a qualitative element. In other words, it is about the degree evil and the degree of good to make up for it. That unexpected punch may only have lasted a moment, but the pain lasted ages - it was a particularly bad thing to do even if it only took a moment. You could say, it is the size of the evil, not the length of time it took. 

However, suppose, after the punch the friend gave you £1,000,000. Would that make up for it? You might think it was financially worth it but still, it doesn't cancel out the evil. Imagine hanging out with this guy, every now, and then at some point each day he suddenly smacks you straight in the face and puts another £1,000,000 in your account. A freindship like that, even if financially worthwhile has got something profoundly wrong - it is perverse!

The good does not make up for the bad, it just adds to the perversion of the bad. Those violent moments should never, ever have happened, and the idea they can be justified or cancelled out by good deeds is perverse. Those evil moments invaded and stole what should have been good moments. All the other good moments should be good anyway, that extra piece of chocolate in the story above, was an extra kindness, but that doesn't somehow give credit to act badly! In the same way, an extra kindness after a bad deed does not 'repay' for the bad. 

Good and evil are not opposite equals. Why?

Doing and being good, and doing and being evil, are ways of using time right? We do good and evil in time. The problem is, we did nothing to get time, it is freely given by God, so that we can do the highest good possible with it. We have no time of our own, we cannot add a moment to our lives. It is all given to us by God to use for the highest possible good. Doing the highest possible good with the time we are given is what it means to glorify God.

So when we take that God-given time, and act selfishly with it doing evil, we are abusing that God-given time because God didn't give it to us to use like that. And we can never make up for it because, whatever other time we have is also given by God to us to do the highest possible good with. So, whatever good we do with that time is just the good we should have done anyway - it can never be more than our highest good, so it can never produce the 'extra' needed to make up for time wasted, abused and misused.

Story

Mum sends Johnny to the shop with £10. She says, "Buy 10 bars of chocolate for £1 each and bring them to me". 

He takes the money, but on the way a mate stops and says, "Hey, you wanna buy this packet of crisps from me for £1?" 

Johnny cannot resist, he buys the crisps and eats them. Johnny then buys 9 bars of chocolate because that's all he can afford. He returns and says, "Sorry mum, I lost /spent £1 so could only get 9 bars. But I will make it up to you, I will pay it back!"

Next day she says the same, "Go to the shop with this £10 and buy another 10 bars and bring them back".

Everyday she does this, every day Johnny brings back the 10 bars. But does that make up for the £1 He stole? No it doesn't. That is still owing. The problem is, all the money given him is for a purpose. He has no money of his own at all, so he can never make up the £1 he owes because every pound he gets comes from her anyway. 

What if she gave Johnny an extra pound?

Even if she gave him an extra pound and said, "This is yours to do whatever you please, as long as you do good with it (because it is always wrong to do bad with it), and then he said, 

"here is the pound I owe you mum, now we're square". 

That doesn't help and here's why. That pound was an 'extra' pound, so an 'extra' good should be added to Johnny's record. Repaying the money he owed, is just doing the good he should have done in the first place. But what about the 'extra good' that should have been done with the 'extra pound'? It has not been done because he used it to pay what he owed. That 'extra good' is missing! So you see, we can never make up for the time spent doing bad.

All our time comes from God and is for us to do good with. Every time we use our time for anything other than the good God intended it for, is like stealing from God. The Bible calls this sin. The attitude  that says, 'I will do whatever I want with My time' is a sinful attitude that is in rebellion against the God who has given each of us all of our time for the highest possible good. He has never given us permission to do evil.

You might say, "That's not fair, having to use all our time to do 'His will'". But His will is the highest possible good. And it includes things like, rest, enjoyment, play, good work etc, so what's our complaint? 

Now if God is to remove suffering from the world, He would need to remove all the causes of suffering, and the causes are evil, and evil is that which is less than the highest possible good. The problem is, it is we humans who do evil and cause suffering. So if God is to remove the cause of suffering, guess what? You got it! It would mean removing you and me!

We will see in a later blog, how it is because we ignore God and do our own thing in life that the world is the mess that it is. 

Once we understand this principle, we can move on to see the implications of it. When we have done that, we will begin to see why God allows suffering and what he has done about it (past), what He does about it (present) and what he is going to do about it (future). 

Where is God? Why doesn't he do something about suffering! Part 1

Right now, so many people are suffering. Perhaps you are. There are two ways we all suffer. We suffer when we ourselves are victims of other people or other things. We suffer when we have to watch people we love suffer - particularly our children. 

This raises big questions about God. 

You see, whenever we see or experience suffering, we want to stop it. Often it is all so unfair and so wrong!  Not only do we want to stop it, but, if we could we certainly would, no question about it. We do whatever we can. Doctors train for around 6-9 years so that they can help people who suffer. We pay loads on taxes so that people can get help through NHS. Our most brilliant minds in the world are doing science trying to find out how to help sufferers. To want to help is human.

Sadly, too much of the time we are helpless. We find too often we can only watch people as they suffer. I told a story in a sermon last week of a young Christian woman, 21 yrs old, married 18 months and had a 3 month old boy. She was so happy. That was before her grief. He husband was doing some DIY, something went wrong, he was engulfed in flames. For the next 12 days his wife was at his bedside in hospital. She could hardly bear to look at him, but neither could she leave him. His head was twice its normal size, he had hardly any skin, he was in terrible pain. All she could do was look on, utterly helpless, until he died. Suffering  is deeply distressing. We even feel angry with ourselves because we cannot help but want to.

This is why we get angry with God - and rightly so. That's how we see it.

But sadly, many people go from being understandably and rightly angry with God to totally rejecting Him, writing Him off and even denying He exists. Again, these are understandable responses, but not helpful. In fact, they make things worse.

In my next blog I will begin to address this issue head on. 

Th Kite, by John Newton

Once upon a time a paper kite 

mounted to a wondrous height,

Where, giddy with its elevation, 

it thus expressed self admiration:

“See how yon crowds of gazing people 

admire my flight above the steeple;

How they would wonder if they knew 

all that a kite like me could do!

Were I but free, I’d take a flight 

and pierce the clouds beyond their sight;

But, ah, like a poor prisoner bound,

 my string confines me to the ground.

I’d brave the eagle’s towering wing 

might I but fly without a string.”

It tugged and pulled, while thus it spoke, 

to snap the string.

At last it broke.

Deprived at once of all its stay, 

in vain it tried to soar away.

Unable its own weight to bear, 

it fluttered downward through the air.

Unable its own course to guide, 

the winds soon plunged it in the tide.

Ah, foolish kite, thou hadst no wing, 

how couldst thou fly without a string?

Oh, Lord, I see

 how much this kite resembles me!

Forgetful that by Thee I stand, 

impatient of Thy ruling hand;

How oft I’ve wished to break the lines 

Thy wisdom for my lot assigns.

How oft indulged a vain desire

 for something more, or something higher.

But for Thy grace and love divine ,

a fall thus dreadful had been mine!

****

Gospel Truth

Speaking of JESUS, the Bible says ... 

Isaiah 53[6]

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to his own way; 

and the LORD has laid on him 

the iniquity of us all.

[10] Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,

and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,

he will see his offspring and prolong his days, 

and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

[6] We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to his own way; 

Sheep really are dumb creatures. The first thing you notice about them is that they all follow each other, even though none of them knows where they are going. Another thing you notice about sheep is they are vulnerable. They are not good at defending themselves.

Nowadays shepherds pen them in to keep them safe. In the olden days the shepherd really was that, a Sheep-herder. The shepherd would herd the sheep and lead them to good grazing ground and keep them safe. Without a shepherd the sheep would certainly stray and that would mean real trouble.

The Bible says that we are like sheep without a shepherd, that is sheep that have gone astray. 

If we are honest, we cannot deny this is true. The truth is we pretty much totally ignore God and do our own thing. Just like sheep we have gone our own way, like sheep we have followed the crowd. The crowd of lost humanity. We have joined them, thrown our lot in with them, believed what they believed, desired what they desire, valued what they have valued, behaved like they behave and have had little or no regard for our maker. Every single one of us has turned our back on God.

In turning away from God we have all made ourselves filthy with sin. This is what 'iniquity' is, sin.

Another metaphor the Bible speaks of is 'robes of righteousness, pure and white' but we have stained ours with sin. Every wrong deed we have done is a stain. Every wrong thought, word, attitude of heart is a stain on your robe and mine. That is why JESUS said ...

Matthew 12 [36] 

But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. [37] For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”

I cannot imagine how many careless words I have spoken, I cannot remember a fraction of them. But each one is a stain and I will have to account for every one of them - not a single one will be forgotten on that day.

 That is also why Jesus warns us ... 

Luke 12 [2] 

There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be made known. [3] What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.

and ... 

1 Corinthians 4 [5] 

Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. 

and ... 

Hebrews 4 [12] 

For the word of God is living and active. ... it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. [13] Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

We are like a piece of rotten fruit that looks scrumptious on the outside, but when you bite into it is it black with rot, crawling with maggots - yuk, you spew it straight out. 

1 Samuel 16

[7] But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

In other words, we look at a person and think, "They're ok" but God sees right through a person, God sees what is on the inside. He sees the whole person. He sees you and He sees me.

Adam and Eve 

Adam and Eve sinned and when they did the Bible tells us they did two things. They hid and they tried to cover up their nakedness.

We do the same, we try to hide the truth about ourselves and we try to cover up our nakedness, or to put it another way, we don't want anyone to see our shame. But the very fact they wanted to hide things exposed their shame, and it is the same for us. 

"Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account."

When I was a little boy, about 7 years old, there was a skanky family that lived across the road. I went into their house a few times. Every time the wall of smell hit me as their front door would open. It was overpowering. On one occasion I came out of their home, and as I walked my hand brushed my jacket and I felt something wet - it was poo! Yuk! It was on my jacket and on my hand, their poo! It made me sick! I was really angry, disgusted and upset. Our robes are unimaginably worse. That is just the sad truth.

We, like sheep have followed the crowd and wandered so far from God we are lost. We hide most of our wickedness in our thoughts. We have all committed crimes against God and humanity in our minds and hearts. We thought 'no-one knows', but the truth about us is not hidden from God. But ...

The Lord has laid on Him [Jesus], the iniquity of us all.

Good News!

Here is the good news for us, the amazing news.

The Lord, who sees every stain on our robes, takes the robes off us and lays them on Jesus! Think about that. The God who sees everything and to whom we must give an account is the one who takes away all our sin and has laid it upon Jesus. Not some of it but absolutely ALL of it. 

But it goes further than that. It tells us that Jesus' life was made 'A guilt offering'. All the filth we are stained with means we are all carrying a heavy load of guilt. For us it is normal to live life weighed down with a load of guilt. But we are a million miles from how God intends us to be - guilt free! Imagine how different we would be if we had never, ever sinned at all. We would know nothing at all of guilt or shame. We would have no regrets - not a single one. God does not erase the stain on guilt from our memory, but he has dealt with it so that it never comes up in our relationship with Him. So far as He is concerned, it is as though we have never sinned.

Psalm 103

[11] For as high as the heavens are above the earth, 

so great is his love for those who fear him;

[12] as far as the east is from the west, 

so far has he removed our transgressions [sins] from us.

God did this because He loves us. Consider how much He loves us to do that for us. 

Consider JESUS kindness to us. For JESUS, to have to put on our filthy robes was awful. It was bad enough me getting someone else's poo on my jacket and on myself. JESUS took upon Himself the sin of the whole world and experienced all of our guilt. He did it so that we could know the joy and freedom and lightness of spirit that comes with being completely forgiven by God.

But as we close these thoughts we must remember the most important thing of all, that is the reason for all our mess in the first place.

[6] We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to his own way; 

God has dealt with all our sin so that we can stop going astray, turn back to Him, stop following the crowd and instead follow Him. That is where sin begins, turning our backs on God. Turning back to Him is what the Bible calls repentance. It means acknowledging the truth. That we have ignored God, that we have sinned, that we do need forgiveness and that rather than turning our backs on Him, we are now coming back to Him, acknowledging He is God and He alone, through JESUS death on the cross can save us from the ultimate consequences of our sin.

What will you do? Continue to turn your back on God or turn back to God?

If you choose to turn your back on God, then you turn your back on the only one who can deal with the problem of your sin. You turn your back on the one who loves you and offers you salvation.

If you turn back to Him, you can experience forgiveness and the joy of knowing JESUS as your great Shepherd.

Psalm 23

The LORD is my shepherd,* I shall not be in want.*

[2] He makes me lie down in green pastures, 

he leads me beside quiet waters,*

[3] he restores my soul.* 

He guides me* in paths of righteousness* 

for his name's sake.*

[4] Even though I walk 

through the valley of the shadow of death,** 

I will fear no evil,* 

for you are with me;* 

your rod and your staff, 

they comfort me.

[5] You prepare a table* before me 

in the presence of my enemies. 

You anoint my head with oil;* 

my cup* overflows.

[6] Surely goodness and love* will follow me 

all the days of my life, 

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD 

forever.

Want to know more, come to church. St Georges Hall, Sunday @ 10.30am.

Are you too proud to acknowledge JESUS?

Psalm 91[2] I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, 

my God, in whom I trust.”

In 1992 I did a mission at Glastonbury festival. I will never forget speaking to one spaced out couple. They said to me, "Christian people are weak, that is why they are Christians, their faith is a crutch to help them through because they cannot make it alone". 

They were quite right, I cannot imagine life without Jesus. I am very proud to say of Him, "He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust".

But here is the truth: EVERYONE is weak! My newfound friends at Glastonbury soon found out they were weak. Weak and vulnerable, far more vulnerable than me.

As we talked it became clear that their lives, their joy and happiness, meaning and purpose was all bound up in each other. As we talked it became clear to them and to me that they were a crutch to each other. If anything happened to any one of them they would be utterly devastated.  But something will happen. Even if they are faithful all their days and grow in love, death will eventually come and mercilessly rip them apart, killing one and devastating the other - and that is the very best they can hope for!

In the end that is true for everyone. No-one is self sufficient. No-one is strong. Those who think they are, are deluded. Everybody needs somebody otherwise life becomes almost unbearable. But we will all find that if, ultimately we rely on ourselves or other people, then when faced with the ultimate challenges of life THEY WILL FAIL US. Our fitness and health may give us the edge over a cancer, our loved ones may give us strength to fight another day, doctors and nurses may be able to "save us", but not ultimately. Ultimately they will all come to the end of them selves and will be powerless against the relentless enemy of life and relationships - DEATH!

Ultimately JESUS does not fail! He alone is ULTIMATELY sufficient, trustworthy, reliable, dependable and able to save - even from death because He alone has conquered death.

Christians have the same kind of people everyone else has, the difference is they know that none of those people will help an iota when confronted with the ultimate realities of death and the judgement that will follow. Only JESUS will stand, and as a follower, I and every believer will stand in Him!

So Christian, be proud to be a follower of Jesus. Be proud and unashamed to confess Him! Do not believe the propaganda that would make you feel embarrassed. Of course it is easier to dutifully follow the crowd like everyone else, gullibly believing what everyone else believes, and why do they believe what they believe?  Because what they believe is true? No! But just because they are told to believe by the PC police, or the biased Atheist Scientists or the school teacher or the politicians or "everyone else" or others from the so-called "establishment" who know nothing about God and Jesus.  They are the ignorant ones, they have never found out about God and Jesus, believing them is the easy option. 

But remember Jesus said ...

Matthew 10:[32] “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. [33] But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.

On that great and glorious day, nothing else will matter to us except that JESUS acknowledges us as His own. Everything will depend upon Him acknowledging us and there can be nothing more terrifying than the utter hopelessness of being disowned forever by JESUS. I don't want that for myself, for you or anyone.

Hold your head high and proudly say of HIM,  “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”