Remember (BMC)

Preached on: Sunday 6th April 2025
The sermon text is available as subtitles in the Youtube video (the accuracy of which is not guaranteed). A transcript of the sermon can be made available on request. There is no PowerPoint PDF accompanying this message.
Bible references: Psalm 22:1-18
Location: Upper Braes Parish Church – Brightons Ministry Centre

Sermon keypoints:
‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Matthew 27:46 & ‘I am thirsty.’ John 9:28
– The cries of Jesus the man
– The very depths of human despair
– to remember God is to be remembered by God

The Lord is with me (BMC)

Preached on: Sunday 29th December 2024
The sermon text is available as subtitles in the Youtube video (the accuracy of which is not guaranteed). A transcript of the sermon can be made available on request. There is no PowerPoint PDF accompanying this sermon.
Bible references: Psalm 118
Location: Upper Braes Parish Church – Brightons Ministry Centre

Sermon keypoints:

Confident and seeking heart

Preached on: Sunday 3rd September 2023
The sermon text is available as subtitles in the Youtube video (the accuracy of which is not guaranteed). A transcript of the sermon can be made available on request. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 23-09-03 Message PPT slides multi pages.
Bible references: Psalm 27
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Sermon keypoints:
– confident heart
– seeking heart
– nurtured by exposure
– nurtured by experience

Rear view mirror

Preached on: Sunday 8th January 2023
The sermon text is available as subtitles in the Youtube video (the accuracy of which is not guaranteed). A transcript of the sermon can be made available on request. There is no PowerPoint PDF accompanying this message.
Bible references: Psalm 107:1-32
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Sermon keypoints:
– listen to God’s voice in the storm
– look back at God’s blessings and grace
– look forward in the knowledge of the wonderful things He has done

God loves you

Preached on: Sunday 13th March 2022
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. There is no Powerpoint pdf accompanying this sermon.
Bible references: Psalm 40:1-10 & John 3:1-17
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Sermon keypoints:
– ‘God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.’
– God is love!
– We are set free from a wrong perception of God
– We should recognise the times when God has been involved in our lives
– God is the one who changes us through His Spirit – not about what we do ourselves

Let us pray:

Father God, we pray that as we come around Your word now, that You will fill us with Your Spirit that You would open our ears Lord, so that we can hear You speaking to us, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him.’

These are words that summarize the entire Gospel for us. The core of the Christian message for us is ‘God loves you’ and God wants us to know that, and that is why Jesus was sent into the world to live among us, to suffer for us, and to rise again for us
and, in some ways, this has a major implication for us because it changes the way in which we should see God, it changes how we experience God in our lives, Jesus’ influence in the world.

But what he said and by what he did, established a foundation for all Christians and for the body of believers such as we are here today. The church and this foundation is all that Christians are to communicate to each other and to the world. God is love. In fact, the scriptures teach us that love is the very nature and being of God and it’s this message that Jesus was communicating to Nicodemus and so, we see that in His conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus wanted to do a couple of things and the first of these is that Jesus wanted to set Nicodemus free from a wrong perception of God.

Nicodemus had everything going for him. He was in the inner circle of the Jewish leaders. He was wealthy. He had status. He was a member of the elite Jewish council and he was considered to be very knowledgeable. However, Nicodemus had a particular perception of God and how to enter God’s kingdom, and that perception was not correct. As a Jewish leader, he had dedicated his life to this way of living. Nicodemus was traveling down a road of what he thought was important, of doing everything correctly, a road that suggests that unless you do everything 100% correctly, God will reject you forever. Nicodemus thought that God’s biggest priority was to select the elite for a place in heaven and to reject everyone else. In other words, he thought that God was like a grumpy old judge boss who would severely punish anyone who didn’t perform absolutely perfectly and there were no second chances.

I wonder how many of us have thought about God in that way? That God wants to condemn rather than to save? There are some folk who have a picture of judgment day, one where there is a huge television screen, let’s call it, showing a DVD of your life and that you will be fast forwarding your story pausing every now and then to point out all the sinful parts of your lives, parts where you made wrong choices. Of course, this is certainly not so. Such a picture tells only a really small and distorted part of the story. On judgement day there may well be a showing of a film of our lives but I feel certain that, from what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus, that what we are told throughout the scriptures, that God will be highlighting those occasions when He has been at work in our lives, like when we were created, like when we were accepted into God’s family in baptism, like when God gave us opportunities to develop as a person, as a Christian, when God molded us as a result of our experience of Him, experiences in worship, in prayer, Bible study, in fellowship with other Christians, and every time some of the perhaps not so good things of our lives are shown, Jesus will be standing right there saying ]I already paid for that. Don’t worry, I already paid for that.’

Nicodemus had a completely different way of thinking about God. No doubt, he sought to keep all the main man-made rules of his religion as well as the law, of course, which God had given to Moses. Nicodemus was a religious man, he was an upright man, he was a teacher, and he was respected in society and yet, Nicodemus knew within himself that something was missing in his life, and so convinced by the miracles of Jesus that he had seen and those that he had heard of, Nicodemus comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness and Jesus explains to him the nature of God’s love, the nature of God’s love for all of humankind, that God’s love is not static or self-centered, but that ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’

Christ came to save. Christ did not come to condemn. Why? Because God considers mankind special, and that includes each one of us, and he calls us to come closer to Jesus and not just for today, but every day. God’s love reaches out and draws others in, draws us in as well. God sets the pattern of true love. When we love somebody dearly, we are willing to give freely of ourselves, even to the point of sacrifice. God paid dearly with the life of His Son. The highest price that anyone could pay. Jesus paid the price for your sins and for mine, and then He offered to all of us, if we believe in Him, a life, a new life that He bought for us. And the message Jesus wanted to convey to Nicodemus was that he needed to allow God to be his influence and not all those other things in his life. Not the religious ritual he was accustomed to. Jesus wanted to set Nicodemus free from the wrong perception that he had of God, and then Jesus wanted to make Nicodemus aware of the radical nature of God’s love and to emphasize to him that, in order to receive the gift of eternal life, one must be born again of the Spirit.

Jesus says to Nicodemus ‘You are a respected Jewish teacher but I assure you no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born again. Humans can reproduce human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to Spiritual life.’

Unfortunately, Nicodemus was struggling with a concept of being born. He finds it really difficult to grasp this way of thinking so we hear him saying to Jesus in verse 3 to 11 ‘How can a man be born again when he is old? Surely he can’t enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born.’ See Nicodemus was looking at Spiritual matters from an earthly perspective. When Jesus speaks about being ‘born again’ Nicodemus is scratching his head,. trying to work out how it might be possible to crawl back into his mother’s womb. The thing is that, Nicodemus was too focused on what he had to do to receive the gift of eternal life/ Of course, that’s part of our nature. We find and it was part of his nature too. We find that really difficult to understand and probably most people on their faith journey will struggle with that concept too, because, most often in our faith journey, we are overly concerned about what we do, and what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus and to us today, it’s not about what you do, it’s about what God is doing for you, and what God does for you, changes you, changes your status with God. For each of us it begins and ends with a baptism based on faith. The day we were baptized is the day that we can say God claimed us for His own, it is the day we began being influenced by God, it’s the day we can say we are committed to being in a relationship with our triune God, it is from then on that we make God the influence of our lives. This relationship is absolutely important because without it we are allowing things other than God, to influence us and the influence of God has, that in the influence God has on our lives is to constantly remind us and to demonstrate to us He loved the world so much that he gave His one and only Son that when we believe in Him, we will not perish but we will have the gift of eternal life.

The message of Jesus is clear. It’s a message that will transform us. It’s a message that will allow us to take a careful look at ourselves. It’s a message that, when we give our hearts to Jesus, we will take on a new road a road of recovery and discovery, where we will find so much joy in knowing that we are loved by God. It is this message that transformed Nicodemus and we see this in John chapter 7 and verse 50 where Nicodemus tries to defend Jesus. We also see it in John chapter 19 when, after the crucifixion of Jesus, Nicodemus goes with Joseph of Aramathia to wrap the body of Jesus with spices and sheets of linen cloth. In fact, we are told in the scriptures that Nicodemus brought 32 kilograms of perfumed ointment with which to provide for Jesus burial.

Jesus had made it clear to Nicodemus that only a radical change in following God can lead to eternal life and certainly the message of Jesus took Nicodemus away from the road where he was primarily focused on himself and what he was doing the things that he thought were important to gain that space that elite space in God’s kingdom. The message of Jesus took Nicodemus to a place where he allowed Christ to do the work for him, to save him and to grant him eternal life.

But the concept of being born again remains difficult to grasp and, while most of us may have had a really good understanding of God’s message through Jesus Christ, as a body of believers, as the church of Jesus Christ in Scotland, our task is also to do all that we can in order that people can hear and experience the message of John 3,16 and that of verse 17 that God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through Him.

When I hear how people came to join the church, to join a congregation, or came back to church after being away for a lot of years, it’s often as a result of something, something new that they have experienced. In most cases, it was how another Christian brother or sister had related to them or treated them. How people were patient with them in answering their questions. How people were displaying the fruits of the Spirit which we find in Galatians chapter five – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. These are not actions that we have or that we are born with. These are actions that arise out of having a strong relationship with God and in this relationship we are influenced by God as a result of our earnest prayer times, of regular Christian worship, of Bible reading, Bible study and a fellowship with other believers and when we serve the church, when we serve our families and the various communities in which God has placed us, giving of our time and our talents and our money for God’s work, we are also encouraging others to grasp hold of the message of Jesus Christ, to set aside the things of the world and be born again.

A question we can ask ourselves today – Is the message of John 3 16 to 17 being clearly communicated in every experience people have with a church in which we serve? Are the people experiencing the message of John 3 16 to 17 when they cross our path? Are they experiencing that God loves them, that God welcomes them, wants them to be safe and wants them to be in heaven with Him? Are they hearing that God came to save them, not to condemn them, or to forget about them, because He considers them special? Are we, as a church of Jesus Christ, vehicles of God’s love?

In John chapter 4 and verse 9 we read ‘God showed his love for us by sending his only son into the world so that we might have life through him.’ The love of God is expressed through His offer to us, of a chance to join His Spiritual family and to live forever.

The starting point though, the starting point is to receive the gift of Christ and thereby taking up the offer of eternal life. So, how does this transformation happen in a believer? It is nothing less than the work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God who is love and for those who obey his word 1 John 2 verse 5 God’s love is truly made complete in them. And this is how we know we are in union with Him: whoever claims to live in Him, must walk as Jesus walked. God’s love is not just expressed in the fact that Jesus was willing to die for mankind, for you and for me, but that He lives for us, that He is in us and that is also, through us, God’s love is expressed on how much we live like Jesus, and that is the plan of God. You see, the plan of God in the world is that the kingdom of God should grow, that is why God’s Spirit works through us and we must be really attentive to that. God’s love originates and finds its birth in the stable of our hearts. God’s plan to put love in the world started with the birth of Jesus Christ but includes the rebirth of you and of me and our task is to keep ourselves in God’s love as we wait for the mercy of our Lord to bring Jesus Christ alongside of us and to take us to be with Him for all eternity. To Him who is able to keep us from falling and present us before His glorious presence, the only God, our Savior, be glory, majesty, power and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayer as relationship

Preached on: Sunday 27th September 2020
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 20-09-27-Message-PPT-slides.
Bible references: Psalm 27:1-8, 13-14
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Text: Psalm 27:1-8, 13-14
Sunday 27th September 2020
Brightons Parish ChurchMessage
Let us take a moment to pray before we think about God’s Word.May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be pure and pleasing in Your sight, O LORD, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.I wonder how you responded to the news this week about the extra restrictions? I wonder how you felt as we awaited that news being released? I suspect there’s a broad range of reaction and feeling associated with what we’ve heard, and many of us may have a sense that the crisis continues, that these unprecedented days have carried now beyond six months and their end…well, we just don’t know when that will be.
In this midst of it all, we might be asking “where is God? What’s He up to?” These are questions and emotions that the people of God across the ages have felt and asked. Indeed, David, who wrote the psalm we read today, he was in a crisis, for he faced people who were bent on doing evil towards him, ready to go to war, ready to show savagery and devour him, like a pack of wild beasts ready to pounce and bring him low. David faces his own crisis, and we face ours, each just as life threatening, each just as potentially unsettling. Yet I’m struck by David’s posture, his reaction, the emotions that flow through him, for twice he speaks of his confidence, he says:
‘…though war break out against me, even then I will be confident… I remain confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.’ (v3, 13)

In the midst of his crisis, David still has a confidence, a feeling of security. I wonder if we do? I wonder where, or to whom, we go when life seems too much to handle? Is it a spouse or a close friend, a trusted advisor, or parents? I’m sure David was surrounded by all such people, yet his confidence comes from another source, his confidence comes from another relationship, it comes from his intimate relationship with God, the Lord.

Notice what David says in verse 1: ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life – of whom shall I be afraid?’ (v1) David knows God, but in a very relational way – this is not simply head knowledge, information about God, but rather it is a reality that David knows for himself. ‘The Lord is MY light and MY salvation…the Lord is the stronghold of MY life.’ At the heart of biblical faith, is not a list of rules, nor expectation of duty, but a relationship with the living God and David draws upon what he knows of God as he faces his crisis.

So he says, ‘the Lord is my light’ – the Lord dispels the darkness of fear, the Lord lights the way ahead, and in the light of His presence and love…life, hope, faith is revived and helped to flourish.

But the Lord is also ‘my salvation’ – the One who can deliver me and rescue me – and the Lord is also his ‘stronghold’, ‘the stronghold of [his] life’, that place of security. In the Lord then, David receives protective presence and care, and it this very relationship which allows David to maintain a confidence, without fear, but also without minimising the realities either.

I wonder, do you have that confidence? In the midst of our crisis, in the midst of whatever crisis you may be individually facing, is there a quiet confidence in who God is? God doesn’t promise to fix all our problems now, and yet the Lord’s people over the centuries have affirmed His unchanging nature, that in Him they have found light and salvation and a place of refuge, a stronghold, even in the greatest and darkest of times. I wonder, do you share in that? Or, do you want to share in that?

C. S. Lewis tells of his experience standing in a dark shed on a sunny day. Through a chink in the wall a sunbeam probed its way into the dark interior of the shed and Lewis suggests it is two quite different things to look at the beam of light and how it interacts with the dark, illuminating only a small part of the shed, or to step into the light and look along the beam to its source. If you want to share in the confidence of David, you need to come into the light, the light that comes from a relationship with God, a relationship that we pursue and invest time in, a relationship that is personal to you, and not confined to four walls on a Sunday morning. Because when we step into the light and seek the Lord, although it may be dark within the walls of our shed, although our very lives may be dark, there is still light and it bathes our whole perspective when we look to its source.
I wonder, are you someone who is looking in from the side? Do you see a beam of light, but you’re simply looking on? Maybe you see it in another’s life, maybe you see it in the Scriptures, but this relationship with God, this knowledge of God, is external to you, it’s not your experience. If that’s you, how can we change that reality? How can we step into the light? Well, let’s turn to David’s example once more.

He writes: ‘One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple…
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.’ (v4, 14)

In these verses of his psalm, David gives us a window into how he pursues this relationship with God, and we see there a prayerful waiting, a prayerful seeking, of the Lord. David does this by spending time in the presence of God, which for him, at his particular point in history, meant going to the central place of worship, the tabernacle. So, David would seek the presence of God, in a prayerful way, by giving time to this.

But in that time, David would also ‘gaze on the beauty of the Lord’ – and this is language which speaks of a steady, sustained focus, rather than a one-time glimpse, and during this time instead of asking the Lord for things, David is praising and admiring and enjoying God, for who God is. David finds God captivating, not just useful for getting stuff. In spending time with the Lord in prayer, resting in His presence and appreciating who He is, David cultivates confidence, a contentment which carried him through many a crisis.

Again, I wonder, does this describe us? Is this part of our prayer life? Do we know how to slow down and wait in the presence of God, wait in such a manner that we enjoy Him? It could be argued, based on the Lord’s Prayer, that this is where we should start, for Jesus said to pray, ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.’ In one line, Jesus echoes David, for in these familiar words, which we often rush past, we call to mind who God is and we hallow Him, we admire, we enjoy, we praise Him.

But unlike David, we don’t need a temple or a sacred place, because Jesus in His death made a way for us to come directly to God, and in the sending of the Holy
Spirit, we are enabled to know God and meet with God. Indeed, Jesus would say, ‘I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you for ever – the Spirit of truth…you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.’ (John 14:16-17) At the heart of biblical faith, is a direct, immediate relationship with God, where you can relate to Him as the perfect Father, and so share in the confidence of David.

I want to give you now the prayer for this week, a prayer that my own minister, Kenny Borthwick, shared in a parish magazine some 8 years ago, yet it has stuck with me ever since and I keep turning to it, especially in the hard times, and I can do that because it’s only one line. It reads: ‘Abba, beloved Father, I belong to You, I am Your son, and I bring You great joy.’

My encouragement to you this week, is to take 5 minutes each day, and pray this line. Talk with God about each word, talk with Him about the words you find hard, talk with Him about the wonderful reality that is captured in these words. Also, can I encourage you to pray it out loud? In our psalm, David said, ‘Hear my voice when I call, Lord.’ David spoke out and there is something powerful, life-giving when we pray directly to God and speak out. I’m not asking you to do it in front of people, but the things we believe and hold dear, are the things we put into words, and same is true in our relationship with God.
So, I encourage you to speak out this prayer this week.
Why don’t we take a moment to pray this together, and I’m going to move into a more comfortable seat.
(PAUSE)

Here we are in my livingroom, in the seat I sit in each morning to spend time with God, and from time to time I’ll use that line. But I’ll also use it when I’m out walking Hector in the woods and fields. Use it where you see fit, use it where you need and want to connect with God, but let us pray it now. Let us pray.
(SHORT PRAYER)

The Creatures of the World (Wonder Zone wk.4)

Preached on: Sunday 19th July 2020
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 20-07-19-Message-PPT-slides.
Bible references: Psalm 139:1-6, 13-17
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Text: Psalm 139:1-6, 13-17 (NIV)
Sunday 19th July 2020
Brightons Parish ChurchLet us take a moment to pray before we think about God’s Word. May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Boys and girls, so far in our summer services, we’ve looked up with wonder to the stars and planets! Last week we looked in wonder at light and how it makes a difference in our world. Every week though, we’ve also marvelled at the God who made it all.

But today our drama reminded us of the incredible variety of life around us – from the tiny ant, to human beings, to magnificent trees and underground caves. Every animal, every plant, every part of this world has something amazing about it!
Those ants from the drama can do things we can’t – ants can lift 20 times their own body weight, which is the same as me lifting an Indian Rhinoceros – can you imagine?! I can’t! Also, ants don’t have ears but they “hear” by feeling vibrations through their feet, and they also don’t have lungs, instead, oxygen enters through tiny holes all over the body – that’s amazing!

I’ve also met some other amazing animals – when Gill and I travelled to Zambia in Africa we got to touch a lion and a cheetah, who were part of a programme to reintroduce their cubs to the wild. And with the cheetah in particular, such was its size that when I purred it shook the air – that was amazing and slightly intimidating at the same time!

The people who wrote the Bible included songs and poems about the world around us. One of these psalms, Psalm 104, goes like this:
“My God with all my heart, I want to tell you how amazing you are! You built the earth and covered it with the ocean, your voice thundered and mountains rose up, valleys appeared and the oceans were created! You provide water for the donkeys and other wild animals, birds build their nests and sing in the trees. You cause the earth to produce food for all creatures, including us! Stalks make their home in the fir trees, goats make their home in the mountains, small animals make their homes between the rocks! You created the sun and the moon to rule the day and the night. At night lions roar and hunt but in the morning they go back to their dens, while we go off to work. By your wisdom you made so many things!
The whole earth is covered with living creatures and the oceans are alive with creatures big and small! Lord God let your glory last forever and ever! Let everyone see and know how amazing you are! May you be pleased with everything you have created…I will sing of your astounding deeds for as long as I live because you make me glad.”

We truly live in an amazing world, with amazing creatures and plants. So, here’s a question for you today: what is your most favourite animal or plant, and what is so special about it that you would thank God for it? I’ll give you 60 seconds to think or talk about that at home.
(PAUSE)

The psalm we read today is another psalm which speaks of God’s wonderful creation, but instead of talking about plants and animals, it focuses on you and me, human beings. We read these incredible words: ‘For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you
because I am fearfully and wonderfully made…’ (v13-14)

In the original language, which was Hebrew, the final line there simply reads: ‘I am fearfully wonderful.’ ‘I am fearfully wonderful.’ Not only are the stars and planets, the plants and the animals wonderful – we are wonderful, says God. You are wonderful! The complexity and intricacy of your body, mind, soul is beyond our understanding, it fills us with wonder and amazement… It was Isaac Newton who said, ‘In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.’ And yet the thumb pales in significance to what makes us human, for there is so much which sets us apart from the animal world and confirms that we are made in the image of God. Each of us has a degree of creativity within us and a desire for purpose and meaning; each of us can appreciate beauty; each of us has intelligence, morality and a spirituality. These things are not taught, these things are not modern or ancient developments, they are unique but universal to humanity. God created your inmost being, made in His likeness, and so you are fearfully wonderful.

Instead of a question just now, let us instead take a moment to pray. Boys and girls, you can get involved…
in this as well because in a moment, we’re going to ask God a question, and then wait for God to answer. The question to ask God is this: ‘who do you want me to tell, this week, that they are wonderful?’ You can ask it out loud, you can whisper into your hands, or you can think it in your head, but ask God, ‘who do you want me to tell, this week, that they are wonderful?’ And then whoever comes to mind, first off, maybe that’s who God wants you to tell. So, don’t over complicate it, just the first person who comes to mind.

Let’s take a moment to pray.
(PAUSE)

Today we’ve been thinking about the amazing world around us and that we are fearfully wonderful.
But the psalms we’ve looked at today remind us that it all exists because there is an amazing God who made this amazing world and made all of you amazing people. And this God wants a relationship with you. The psalmist says that God:
• Knows us (v1)
• Follows us (v2-3)
• Hears us (v4)
• Surrounds us (v5)
This is a God who is not only amazingly powerful and creative, this God is also caring and close. There is nowhere in fact that we can go where He is not already there, and wherever we journey God personally pursues us, for we are the continual object of His thoughts. He loves you so much that He wants to relate to you at the deepest level.
But I wonder if you want that? This way of talking about God can appear quite intimidating – is God just the ultimate Big Brother? Is He just waiting to pounce and catch us out? Well, the Apostle John reminds us of the relationship we can have with God, for John wrote: ‘See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!… This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins…There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.’ (1 John 3:1; 4:9-10, 18)

We don’t need to fear God’s attention if we have come to know His forgiveness. In that place of being His child, we can allow God to expose all the areas of our lives, just as David prayed, and so allow Him to lead us ‘…in the way everlasting’, the way of life with God close, now and for all eternity.

I pray that each of us knows this powerful, creative and caring God close to us day-by-day, as we rest in the amazing forgiveness and love He offers through Jesus.

May it be so. Amen.

We close our time together with our final hymn…

The Wonders of the Universe (Wonder Zone wk.2)

Preached on: Sunday 5th July 2020
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 20-07-05-Message-PPT-slides.
Bible references: Psalm 8
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Text: Psalm 8 (NIV)
Sunday 5th July 2020
Brightons Parish ChurchLet us take a moment now to pray before we think about God’s Word. May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Boys and girls, in our drama today the Wonder Zone scientists got knocked off course as they tried to investigate Saturn, but that helped them to see the wonders of our solar system!

Have you ever looked up at the stars in the night sky? Have you tried counting as many stars as you can see? Why not give it a shot this summer, if you’re allowed to stay up a bit later? Apparently, it’s possible to see with our eyes between 5- 10,000 stars. But even that is just a small proportion, because we think there…
might be at least 10 billion galaxies and each galaxy could have 100 billion stars – that’s a lot of stars!

Boys and girls, some of these stars have been grouped into patterns, “constellations” is what we call them, so that when we can look up at the stars, we can see different shapes. The names given to these shapes were based upon famous stories like Hercules and Pegasus.
Maybe you could try finding them over the summer too.

The psalm we read today also has a story behind it, and it also involves the stars. More than three thousand years ago there lived a man called David. He was no ordinary man, he was a king – he was king of God’s people called the Israelites.

David loved God and wanted to live God’s way and sometimes David got it right, sometimes he got it wrong. But he knew that he could talk to God about whatever happened. Sometimes he had to say sorry to God. Sometimes he needed to ask God to help him and sometimes he just had to shout about the amazing things God had done.

Our psalm today is one of the songs David wrote to God and it was all about the stars, the planets, the Sun and the moon. David was basically saying to God, “Oh God you are in charge of everything. Your name is amazing and the whole earth knows it. When I look into the night sky, I can see how wonderful you are. I know it. Children know it. Even toddlers and tiny babies know it. They all sing to you about your great and marvellous deeds…
The praises of children cause your enemies to fall silent. Everyone who has turned against you can think of nothing else to say. I think about everything in the sky, the whole breadth of the heavens that you have made. I think about the moon and the stars, the Sun and the planets. You put all of these things in their own special place. I ask myself, why do you care about us humans? We are tiny, we are weak. We don’t live very long compared to you and yet we are only second to you. You have given us crowns of glory and honour. You have put us in charge of everything You have made. You put it all under our power: the sheep, the cow, every wild animal, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea and all the creatures of the ocean. Oh, God you are in charge of everything. Your name is amazing and the whole earth knows it.”
That’s basically was what David was saying to God in the psalm, the song we read today. I wonder, when you look at the night sky, and you see the moon, the Stars, the planets, what you want to say to God? I’ll give you thirty seconds to talk or think about that at home.
(PAUSE)

The universe is vast and amazing, and it can sometimes boggle our minds when we try to think about it all. We’re still learning things about the universe, still learning things about our solar system. For example, some scientists think there might be another planet beyond Neptune, a ninth planet, ten times the size of earth – but they have not found it yet. So, scientists are still learning things about the stars, and we’re all still learning things about God – hopefully we have a risky curiosity.
One of the things that startled and amazed David, was to realise that the God who made everything, the God who was powerful and creative enough to make the whole universe, that same God cares about you and me. David said to God, ‘…what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?’ (v4) We may not seem as important, big or amazing as the stars, but God knows us and loves us.

David says that God is ‘mindful’ of us – God remembers us, God has His mind filled with thoughts about us. David struggles to understand that, because God is as big as the universe and yet He concerns Himself with you and me.

But not only do we sometimes struggle to understand this, we can struggle to believe or accept it at all…
In preparation for the “Science and Faith” night last Tuesday, someone sent me a text message, but I got it too late to include in our recording. At the heart of their message was a question about suffering; about believing in a God who is supposedly mindful and caring of us, and yet, so much is wrong in our world. I think that person, like all of us, struggled with the daily reality we face.

To be honest, even if I had received the message in time, I’m not sure what answer I would have given. For there’s really no answer that truly satisfies the pain we feel, the wondering and frustration in our souls, as we look around the world and see that not everything is ‘under [our] feet’ (v6), not everything is under our control, and at times it doesn’t feel like everything is under God’s control.
So, do we just naively carry on? Do we simply bury our heads in the sand? Are we clinging to a lie when a truth is maybe staring us in the face?

Well, as you might guess, I don’t think so. I still don’t have the answers, but the Bible doesn’t duck the reality of the world either. The writer of Hebrews says, “Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them [humanity]. But we do see Jesus…” (Heb. 2:5–9) In Jesus we see the mindfulness and care of God compel Him towards us, such that He – the vast, powerful, creative God of all – was willing to become a weak infant and then die in the most humiliating way, all in order to save us, to provide us with a hope and a future. Because the claim of Christianity, is that Jesus conquered the worst, He conquered death itself, for we claim He is alive even now.
And so, the claim of the Christian faith, is that God raised this Jesus to have all authority and power, it’s just that right now it’s not fully revealed, but it will be one day, and on that day, the final enemy to be destroyed will be death itself (1 Cor. 15:25-26).

I still don’t have “answers” but I do have continuing faith in God, because He has proven Himself, through Jesus, to be the mindful and caring God of our psalm, so much so, that He wouldn’t stay distant, but came to die, He came and ‘…suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.’ (Heb. 2:9)

You and I not just mere specks of dust in a vast and uncaring universe. We are so dearly loved, that the God who made it all, came near, because He could not…

imagine, He could not keep thinking about, a future where you and I are not with Him and resting in His care and His love.

I pray, that in your wrestling, in your dark seasons and times, in your marvelling at the starry night, that you would know this God close to you, ever faithful, never leaving.

May it be so. Amen.

We close our time together with our final hymn…

I will praise You (Psalm 148 Tuesday evening)

Preached on: Tuesday 23rd June 2020
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 20-06-23-Tuesday-Evening-Sermon-PowerPoint.
Bible references: Psalm 148
Location: Brightons Parish Church

TUESDAY EVENING SERMON

23 June 2020

Good evening everyone, welcome to Tuesday evening sermon, it’s great to have you join with us as we dig deeper into God’s Word. After tonight we will have our discussion time in our Jitsi room and there will be questions to download from our website, so you just need to go to the sermons page or website and you can get the questions there and if you need the login details for the Jitsi room then just put something in the live chat at the side or drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook and we’ll get you the details so you can join us tonight. This is the last Tuesday evening sermon of this file format probably until after the summer break and so this is the last time to engage in this sort of format. Beginning from next week we’ll be having a program of different events over the summer on a Tuesday evening, giving space for us to be built up in our faith but also time to have some social time together some prayer time together, a variety of different things and we’ll get that information out to you in due course, so tonight – last time for the Jitsi discussion room, join us if you are able or get the questions from the website afterwards so that you can reflect on the passage and its application for your life afterwards. So, let us open our Bibles, open our Bible Apps, turn to Psalm 148 and we hear it read for us once more by Erin Lang. Let us come to God in prayer, let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. Holy Spirit draw close; be the spirit of wisdom and revelation for us tonight, that our eyes, our ears, our minds, our hearts, would be opened to what you would have a see and hear and do and be from this night on and forevermore, and all to the glory our God and Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, for we ask it in His name. Amen So, Psalm 148 – it’s one of the five final Hallelujah! Psalms that makes up the end of the book of Psalms, drawing to that crescendo of praise to God, as we saw on Sunday morning. And so, we saw that there is that clear invitation to all creation to join in the praise of the Lord, Yahweh, as we saw in earlier Psalms, and so that was the focus of where we drew our attention on Sunday morning. But this Psalm is laced with relationships, relationships to one another and relationships to God and, you know, it’s really interesting that Jesus had such a balance of his relationships, He was the only individual ever to live in perfect balance of all His relationships and, let me just take you over into Luke chapter 6 where, in verses 12 to 19, we see these relationships, that are laced there throughout Jesus’ ministry and life, and so we open in verse 12 that Jesus goes up the mountain to pray and spend the night praying to his Heavenly Father, to Father God, and so we see that He has that relationship with His Father and this defines so much of His life, it is His principal relationship, that up relationship, to Father God – but then moving on in chapter 6 to verses 13 to 16, Jesus calls a group of individuals to be close to Him, to have relationship with Him, He has the twelve – He also has the 72 later on in Luke chapter 10, and He also has the three that He spends a principal amount of time with, but He has these relationships, these ‘in’ relationships, we might say, that He invested time in these relationships. And then there is the crowd, there is the world, there are those beyond his circle of close followers and He invests time in those relationships as well – verses 17 to 19 – He goes down from the hill with His disciples and there’s a great number of people needing His help and so Jesus heals them, He spends time with them, He brings the kingdom of God in their midst. He has not only an upward focus and relationship with God, He not only has an inward focus and relationship with His followers, He has an outward focus and relationship with the wider world, and He has them all in perfect balance throughout His life, and one writer helpfully gave this the picture of a triangle, and of the three sides of a triangle being in perfect balance, the ‘up’ at the top of the triangle and in the two sides ‘in’ and ‘out’, and we all need to be in balance just as Jesus lived. We need to have that balance of ‘up’, ‘in’ and ‘out’ but so often, we don’t live that way, we often have an imbalance and, as churches, we often have an imbalance as well. So why am I even talking about this in relation to Psalm 148? Well, as I say, there’s a principle invitation for all creation to praise God – that upward relationship, but there is that wider context of relationship as well, all defining our relationship from God, and if you kind of juxtapose that example of Jesus’ life in the triangle against the Psalm, for me it just opened up the Psalm so very powerfully and so I wanted to bring that for you tonight in this sermon. So let’s start with the upward relationship, the top of the triangle. Clearly that the Psalm is calling us, calling all creation, to turn its attention to God, to give God the praise that is due His name alone, because, as the Psalmist reminds us in verse 5, ‘Let them praise the name of the Lord, for at His command they were created’, at His spoken word of creation everything has come into being, and that includes you and me – as we saw in verses 11 and 12 – but as we saw also on Sunday that He has raised up for His people a horn – a deliverer, a strong deliverer, and for us, now, we see a prophetic word of reference to Jesus, even though at the time it would have been understood in the context of who God had raised up as a king for his people. And so, we have these reasons to glorify God as we saw on Sunday, to praise the
Lord, but we’ve to praise Him alone, in verse 13, ‘For His name alone is exalted’, we’ve to praise the name of the Lord, we’ve to praise Yahweh alone, and so we’ve to have Him and give Him His rightful place as King, that the fundamental claim of this Psalm is that God alone is King, the Lord Yahweh alone is King, and what’s striking about that for us human beings is that, so often we imagine ourselves kind of above all creation alongside God because we are very creative beings, we are very powerful beings, as one of the Psalms says, we’ve been made a little lower than the heavenly beings, and so we often get ourselves kind of confused, we have a false perception of ourselves, and this Psalm calls us to orientate our lives rightly – to worship God alone, yes with our words, but praise is so much more than just what we say, as we saw in the Psalm, that the created order doesn’t utter a word really, but with their lives, praises God, glorifies His name. So, words are important but they are not the whole way in which we praise God. And so, the Psalm calls us to orientate our lives such that our lives, our worship, to the Lord. But what does that look like? What does that look like? How does that affect our time? – how does that affect what we use our money on? – how does that affect the manner in which we live? – the choices that we make? And so, I think that’s where I find that the triangle quite helpful again, because in the triangle there is the ‘out’ and the ‘in’ corners as well, that they’ve all to be in relationship but, in balance, but they are in relationship to one another and so, we define how we live ‘out’ by what God says, because it’s in relationship, it’s a triangle: likewise, with the ‘in’ corner, it’s that idea of what does it mean to tell love our neighbour, to love our brother and sister, to invest and then, again defined by what God says, it’s all in relationship. And when we allow God to be God and have that proper relationship upwards to Him, we heed what He says about these other areas because we are allowing God to be God, and we realize that we are not God, that only He is over creation. So, let’s go first to the ‘out’ corner; and what’s striking about this Psalm, like much of the Old Testament when we dig into it deeper, is that it radically challenges that the wider philosophies, mythologies, traditions, that would have been prevalent around Israel at the time; and so ancient Near Eastern mythologies and traditions, argued, portrayed, had a theology which said that the Sun and Moon were divined, that the great sea beasts were was just as powerful as God, that even the ocean depths were a form of chaos, kind of fighting against God in some way, and yet this Psalm, like all the Old Testament, challenges that theology, and it says that only God alone is divine, that everything else has been created to praise Him, that He is not in a battle of wills, there is no contest here, He alone is exalted – that’s what we see in verse 13, ‘for His name alone is exalted, His splendour is above the earth and the heavens’, His splendour – it’s a picture of His glory, of His Kingship, and what the Psalm is helping us see is that God is not on the same level as everything else, that everything else is under Him, He rules alone, He alone is sovereign, He reigns on high as King, and so the name of the Lord, Yahweh, His named alone is exalted and is to be exalted, His name alone is to be praised. So, what’s the application of all that? Well, two ideas here in the outward area; on the one hand is just as relevant today as it was then, that challenge to the wider plethora of religions (?), worldviews (?), which say that everything is equal, that there are many ways to God, and the Psalm, as with the whole theology of the Bible, says differently; that the Lord Yahweh alone is exalted, that He alone is God over all, and I guess the question comes about how do we share that? – how do we make that known? – and again, that will come down to, how do we go about evangelism?- that evangelism is still just as needed today as ever, and in our culture increasingly so, we are beyond Christendom where it can be assumed that everybody is a Christian or has a Christian worldview. That can no longer be assumed, it is long gone, it is no longer here. Now, I am not someone who is in favour of street evangelism, I actually did that in my teenage years so – not my teenage years, my student years – I know how disastrously it goes often and so that’s not what I’m talking about, I’m not talking about ramming religion down people’s throat, I’m not talking about any number of different ideas of evangelism that we might have, but when we live in a culture that really drowns out and at times seems to just push the Lord to the side, there comes a time when the church needs to say, as it should always have said, how do we make God known in our context, in our place, here? – and it’s not enough just for the minister to do it, it’s not just enough for the minister to be the one calling people to follow God, to turn from their ways – and that’s the basic meaning of repent – because such a small proportion of our congregation, of our parish, come to church on a Sunday, might ever come to church on a Sunday, and so there’s that calling, that invitation, that challenge, for us all to be involved in that in some way, somehow. In some way, somehow, we need to figure out how to be equipped in that, how to go about that, how to do that in our context, in our parish, now in 2020, that people might know the Lord alone is Yahweh, that He alone is exalted. But also in the area of ‘out’ is something around what we quite often call creation care, creation care, because, it’s really striking that this Psalm references so much of the wider creation, as I said on Sunday, it’s almost like the Psalmist is looking out on everything he can see and imagine and he’s astounded by it all and he sees that it’s all there to glorify God and all called to participate in the glorifying of God; and creation alone, the wider creation, excluding humanity, sings in perfect unison and tune, it’s us who are out of tune, but there’s that relationship within the wider creation and it gets me thinking about how we might be getting in the way of what creation is to do, because if everything belongs to God, and He alone is Lord of it all, then we have to look after that because, as his stewards, we were given the responsibility to do that and what is important and valuable to God should be important and valuable to us. And I know that in our kind of branch of Christian theology, we can sometimes struggle with that, we get so focused on the word, and we get so focused on evangelism, that basically that’s all mission ends up being; but there are so many really strong arguments in favour of the need to look after the wider creation, and if you’re not convinced about that – that that’s important for Christians to do nowadays – then can I encourage you to maybe pick up this sizable tome, you can borrow mine if you don’t want to borrow it. It’s ‘The Mission of God’ by a gentleman with the title ‘Wright’, this is one of the books I had to read during my training, Christopher Wright, ‘Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative’, and he has a whole chapter on mission and God’s earth. I just want to read you a small, kind of summary paragraph that he says, ‘To love God means to value what God values. Conversely therefore, to contribute to or collude in the abuse, pollution, and destruction of the natural order, is to trample on the goodness of God reflected in creation; it is to devalue what God values; to mute, to mute, God’s praise and to diminish His glory’. And he goes on to give many more reasons why care of creation is seen as one of the hallmarks of mission, a very challenging, thoughtprovoking chapter and so if you want to delve into that a bit more, then think come speak with me if you want a bit of broader theology on why creation care should be seen within the mission of God. And just get to get really practical on that, I think in the first year I was here in Brightons, I had that all-age talk where I got chatting with the children about how we look after the wider creation. I wonder if any of you have done anything about that. I’m pretty sure I talked with them about biodegradable toothbrushes – anybody got their toothbrush yet? – shampoo? – shampoo as a soap bar instead of having a plastic bottle, plastic not being as recyclable as you might think. Likewise, because of the plastic issue, investing in safety razors – using this for about a year now and cutting myself a lot less, though hopefully that doesn’t change just because I’ve mentioned that now, or what about even in the kitchen instead of cling film and tinfoil getting a reusable beeswax wrap which, when it might eventually -and we’ve had this one for a good wee while now, but when it might eventually no longer become usable is completely biodegradable as well. Just really simple quick practical ways that we can put this into practice but we can embody and partner with the mission of God which includes care and redemption of the wider creation, so as not to mute the voice of creation as it sings its praise to God; and so that’s the other part of the ‘out’ relationship that I wanted to bring today – as we look out and we think about mission, do we think about creation care? – and do we think about evangelism? So, let’s go to the other corner of our triangle, the inward relationship, and at the end of the Psalm, the psalmist is calling the people of God to their place of praising the name of Yahweh. He says, ‘He has raised up for His people a horn, the praise of all His faithful servants of Israel, the people close to his heart’. But, of course, this is all situated within that earlier context of ‘praise the Lord, let them praise the name of the Lord’. There is that call, ‘let them’, it has a bit of an unfortunate, English phrasing, it doesn’t sound – it’s like – well, just let them kind of get on with it, or something quite kind of tame, just slightly permissive, but really the idea is real exhortation! When God said, ‘let there be light’, it wasn’t just a nice – well it would be kind of nice if that happened – type thing, it was ‘let there be light’ It was a kind of – it was a command, clearly. Now, it’s different here, but you get that idea that it’s more than just a nice permissiveness, it is a real calling to say, ‘this should come into being’, that the praise of Yahweh should be core to His people for who He is, that He alone is exalted, that He alone is Lord over all, that He has raised up for His people a horn, a strong deliverer, a saviour, and that his people are close to his heart. And in that inward part of the triangle, the idea there is around how we care for one another? – it is around how we challenge and encourage one another? – it is how do we spur one another on in our faith and towards love and good deeds? – and a couple of thoughts come to mind. Clearly, as I’ve said – there’s that call to praise the Lord, the psalmist is crying out and this would be used in the context of praise and worship and, it would be clear, in the Old Testament about how to go about doing that – in our context, how do we do that? – how do we spur one another on? – what is the means that we have to do that? – because it’s not just the minister’s job, it’s not just the elders’ job, what are the means that we reach out to other and we spur one another on in our faith? I’m having some really great discussions just now with the Discipleship Team about looking at different models for how we spur one another on in our faith, because as it stands, quite a small proportion of our Sunday congregation engage in Fellowship Groups and maybe that’s not for everyone, maybe Fellowship Groups aren’t intentional enough to be expanding and growing – at one point in recent church history there was the ‘cell movement’, the idea that cells multiply and grow, and so we’re bouncing around some ideas just now within Discipleship Team about, well, what models are there? – and what models might we try? So over the summer we’re going to try, as a Discipleship Team, one particular model and see – does this have anything that might be of benefit to have Brightons? – that might encourage one another and provide a means by which we can be drawn alongside our people and saying, ‘Come on! worship the Lord, worship Him not only, as I say, in what we say but in our very lives and orientate much more of our lives around Him and for Him and for His praise and glory. I don’t know how that’ll go over the summer and if we have anything to share you’ll hear about it in due course. But I’m struck by those words ‘the people close to His heart’. It’s striking, isn’t it, that the psalmist comes back to that? – that he describes and he paints this picture of all creation, the great depths of the ocean to the very heights of creation and the heavens itself, with the angelic beings and the Sun and Moon and stars in outer space, the animals on the land, the vegetation, the great sea creatures, and yet he comes down to the people and he describes them and reminds them of this, that they are the people close to His heart. I’m reminded of that lovely story in the Gospels where the Apostle John is resting with Jesus and his head is on the chest of Jesus, and he hears – I can just imagine him hearing the Heart of Jesus beating, the heart of God beating, that he was close to Jesus, he could hear its rhythm, and he knew the wider heart of Jesus, the wider character of Jesus, the wider love of Jesus, and I wonder, ‘Do we know that? – do our people know that? – does our wider parish know that? – that there is that invitation to know the heart – to hear the heart of God beating for you and from me. There’s a part of the ‘in’ of the triangle is enabling that, is facilitating that, facilitating that experience of Jesus that we know His heart beats for us, beats with the rhythm of love for you and for me, because we are near to his heart as the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 13, ‘but now in Christ Jesus you, who were once far away, have been brought near by the blood of Christ’. We’ve been brought back into that relationship with God, that God might not just be the old man in the sky, but we know that the living Jesus walks with us now, today, that we are near to Him and He is near to us, and we have that invitation, as I was saying just last week, to hear the voice of God for ourselves – once more and every day. Again, how are we enabling that? – how are we leaning into that for ourselves? – we’ve looked at, in this series on the Psalms, of digging into God’s Word, for example, what have you done about that? – how are you creating space for the Lord to speak to you? But how can we enable that for others? – and again, that’s part of the question I have with the Discipleship Team is, how else can we be equipping people? – and so that’s part of this testing of a model, because this particular model that we’re looking, its principal focus at times, is what is God saying to you now? – inviting us into that dynamic experience with God because we are the people who are close to His heart. I pray that we may know that God close and as we give Him His rightful place, as we look up – that, yes, praise would flow from our lips, that praise would be seen in our lives in the ‘out’ and how we share our faith with others and how we care for creation and see that as an equal part of mission, and how we spur one another on and look out for one another and get beyond the weather and and how are you doing and get into the the real gritty issues of faith and life, and help our brothers and sisters to experience God and to hear his voice for themselves. May we live in praise of God and with these relationships in balance. To Him be all glory, now and forever. Amen. Let us take a moment to pray before we finish up for this evening. Our God and Heavenly Father, You are the Lord, Your name alone is exalted, You alone are in splendour above the heavens and the earth – to Your name alone, the Lord, Yahweh, our Father in heaven, we bring You our praise, we bring it in the name of Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, to glorify You and adore You and not only to see that, but to live it out in our lives as well. Father, lead us on, we pray, individually and as a congregation, in how we might live these relationships in balance, that we might live ‘out’ well, that we would be active in the sharing of our faith, that we might grow in confidence in this, that we would yearn for it more, Lord, that we’d overcome fear because we yearn for people to know that You alone are the Lord, that You are there for them, but Lord too, may we be a witness, may we be good ambassadors and stewards of Your creation, to care for what You care for. Lord, show us how we can take those practical steps, but Lord equally, be with us as we seek to draw alongside one another, to spur one another on in faith and help one another know that You are near and we are near to You – that we are dear to You, and that You invite us into much more than just ticking the box and following rules, that You invite us into a life of faith with You which, as we were thinking about, is meant to be full of dangerous wonder. We are meant to experience You, God, and know Your voice for ourselves. Lead us in this Lord, equip us for it better, but may all of it Lord, be to Your praise, be to Your glory, to point to You, to delight and revel in You, our God and heavenly Father; and so hear us as we draw this prayer, this series in the Psalms, and indeed our Tuesday evening sermons to a close for now, as we say together that prayer which Jesus taught His disciples: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen. Thanks for being with us tonight everyone for Tuesday evening sermon. We do have the Jitsi discussion room starting quite shortly after
this, so get in there if you’re able to join with us or download the discussion questions for your own reflection from the website. Next Tuesday evening we have our question-and-answer evening with our group of local scientists, so if you’ve got a question about science and how it relates to our faith, then get a question in, drop us an e-mail, post on facebook even in the live chat just now. Get it in, we’d love to have any number of questions and try and engage with those. So, if you’ve got something that you want answered, something that maybe you’re unsure – how does this relate to my faith? – how do I understand God about this? – how do I understand this in relation to the Scriptures? – then get in touch, drop us a message, we need it by Friday so that we’ve got enough time to record things in advance of next Tuesday, so, I hope to see maybe on Thursday evening with our Thursday evening live prayer, if not Sunday morning either in our pre-service Zoom cuppa or afterwards in the service at 11 o’clock. And as you go from here, may you, your family and loved one, know the blessing of God Almighty, the Lord whose splendour is above the heavens and the earth, this night and for evermore. Amen.

I will praise You (Psalm 148)

Preached on: Sunday 21st June 2020
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 20-06-21-Message-PowerPoint.
Bible references: Psalm 148
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Text: Psalm 148 (NIV)
Sunday 21st June 2020
Brightons Parish Church

Good morning everyone – I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s service as much as I have, because all the hard work undertaken by our Sunday School groups has truly provided a time of all age worship and so our thanks goes out to everyone, including the leaders and tech people for all the hours they have put into preparing for today.

Let us take a moment now to pray before we think about God’s Word once more. May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Boys and girls, during lockdown we’ve all spent a lot of time at home. Here are three places we might have spent some time: the garden; the bedroom; the living room.
Which one do you think has been used a lot more… during lockdown? Get up off your seats, come and tap on the screen! (PAUSE)

A lot of people have been telling me about all the time they have been spending in the…garden! So many people have been busy tidying up, playing in or simply enjoying their garden. Gardens are wonderful places to see incredible things and I want to show you a few things in my garden, so let’s go outside. (WALK OUT TO GARDEN)

Well, here we are in the garden, where I’ve been spending time with Hope, Gill and Hector! One of the new things in our garden are these plants – can you guess what they might be? They’re very small just now but hopefully they’ll grow to be much taller over the summer!
Can you guess? (PAUSE)
These are sunflowers, which my dad gave me to grow with Hope, but I’m clearly not as good at growing things as my dad because here’s a picture of his sunflowers, which have grown so tall already! Now, over the summer a beautiful flower will appear on each plant. But do you know that each sunflower is actually made up of over 1000 individual flowers, all held together on a single stalk. That’s incredible, and it makes me marvel at this wonderful world! Let’s see something else in my garden.

(MOVE) Up in this tree, is a bird box, and the blue tits have hatched and flown out. Do you remember Ian telling us about the bird box in his garden? Well, Ian sent me some pictures of the baby birds when they left the bird box, and now that they have, Ian has also been able to look inside the box and see the incredible nest that they built – again, I’m left marvelling at this wonderful world!

I’ve really enjoyed being in the garden during lockdown but I’ve also enjoyed going out for walks – we usually go up into Ercall Wood and again, there have been times when we’ve stopped and marvelled at this wonderful world, even on a windy day, and we’ve also marvelled at the sunset from our study window.

I wonder if that’s why the psalmist wrote the song we read today? Did he look around and see all the incredible things in the world? And knowing that each one was made by God, is that why the psalmist calls upon everything to praise God?

But, how does the sunflower, the bird, the field or sun praise God? Well, there’s actually a clue in the psalm. We read that all the world is to praise the Lord because ‘…at his command they were created… [they] do his bidding…’ (v5, 8) – basically they praise God just by being there and doing what they do! The sunflower, bird, field and sun fulfil their purpose by simply going about their business – as they blossom a thousand flowers, build intricate nests, dance in the breeze or shine with the colours of love – in just being who they are, they praise the Lord, for they are heeding His Word of creation to be a flower, a bird, a breeze in the field and the sun in the sky.

I wonder if the psalmist was looking out on the world around him, seeing how wonderful it all was, but maybe also hearing its collective voice of praise to the Creator, a collective voice where nothing was out of tune!
Beginning next Sunday, we’re going to spend five weeks looking around this wonderful creation and seeing what it teaches us of God. We’ll be learning a new song, which you can hear after the service today. There’ll also be interviews with scientists, dramas and much more.

But we’d also like to hear your questions. For the boys and girls, we are looking to answer one of your questions about science and faith every week in the service, so get someone at home to send those questions into us.

For adults and young people, we’re going to have a
Question and Answer evening on Tuesday the 30th of June, but we need your questions by this Friday – so please get them in and we’ll get our panel of local scientists to talk through your questions.
One reason for doing this, is to help us see that science and faith are not opposed, for this wonderful creation points us to a wonderful Creator. So, get your questions in and join us for our summer services – we’ll also be giving out these books to all children and young people!

Boys and girls, what part of the world, what part of creation, makes you go “wow!” – why don’t you share that with someone at home or think about it just now for
30 seconds. (PAUSE)

There are so many wonderful things in our world, things that make us go “wow!” and the psalmist helps us see that all of these parts of creation sing a song of praise to God, and they sing it in perfect tune and unison.

Boys and girls, the person who wrote this song didn’t just say everything in the sky, and all the plants and animals on the ground, were to praise God – who else is meant to praise God? Who else did he mention in the psalm? Will I read a little bit to you again? ‘…men and women, [elderly] and children’ (v12) – so who else is to praise God? (PAUSE) That’s right – you and me! All of us! We’re all to praise God! We’re to praise God because He made us, but the psalm gives us another reason to praise God as well.

The psalm says: God ‘…raised up for his people a horn…’ (v14) – that sounds very strange! Is it a horn, like on a rhino? No – that’s not what he means! But what does the horn of a rhino do? Let’s talk or think about that for 30 seconds at home just now. (PAUSE)

I think a horn helps to protect the rhino, especially when it’s in danger. The horn also helps the rhino have a good life because with a horn, a rhino can do more things.

But the psalmist isn’t talking about a rhino, the psalmist is talking about a person, a person who helps protect and rescue people, a person who helps others find life. I wonder, does that remind you of anyone? It reminds me of Jesus, because He said: ‘I have come that [you] may have life, and have it to the full.’ (John 10:10)

Jesus also said, ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’ (John 10:11) Jesus was saying He would help us receive this eternal life, by dying on the cross, for you and for me.

So, that’s another reason to praise God – because God loved us so much, that He died, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, God in a human body, died on the cross, for love of you and me, so that we could be rescued, protected and given eternal life by coming to know Father God for ourselves, when our sins are forgiven.

When we realise all that God has done for us, we’re supposed to add our voice to the whole of creation and join in praise to God! And when we do that, and only when we do that, are we then also singing in tune to our Creator, the One who loved us enough to die for us.

I pray that all of us, young and young at heart, may add our own voices to the great song of creation and invite others to do so as well! May it be so. Amen.