God’s promise to us is that He would put a new spirit in us, and a new song on our lips. That can be hard to swallow if last year was a rotten year, but if it was, you’re precisely the person that this promise is for. Are you ready to receive them? A new spirit, a new song.

Last week on the program, we were talking about the amazing fact that the moment you and I believe in Jesus, we become a completely new creation. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17:

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; and see, everything has become new!

A new identity, a new start. And what an appropriate thing to be talking about as we set out on a new year in our lives. So many people, because of their failures, their losses, perhaps because of the abuse that’s been inflicted on them one way or another in the past, have come to the conclusion that they’re worthless.

And yet what the death of Jesus on the Cross tells me, is that God was prepared to pay the highest price possible – highest price in the universe – to give you and me a fresh start, the price of His Son’s life, Jesus. So no matter how you see yourself, you are worth so much, that’s the evidence. Look at what God was prepared to pay, to sacrifice to give you a new identity and a new life.

Jesus put it a little differently, He talked about being born again. He was chatting with one of the religious leaders, Nicodemus, who came to Him in secret one night. Let’s tune into that conversation, John chapter 3, verses 5 to 9:

Jesus said, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into their mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no-one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.

What is born of flesh is flesh, and what is born of Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I say to you, ‘You must be born again.’ For the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not see where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’

No wonder Nicodemus was confused. It’s a very strange concept to be born again, but that’s exactly what God wants to do – He wants to give you a new life. And the only way that can happen, is when the Holy Spirit enters you. After all, that’s how the first man was given life. Genesis chapter 2, verse 7:

The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

There are a few words used in the Old Testament for ‘breath’ – but they are generally synonymous, with Spirit. So the idea here is that God breathed His Spirit, the Holy Spirit into this man. That’s where life comes from. Matter itself can’t produce that. Energy itself can’t produce that. Only God can, by His Spirit.

The problem is for you and me that we have all gone astray and fallen short of God’s glory. We have all rebelled. And so although we were made in the image of God, male and female, we now have a problem. Our rebellion has corrupted us deep inside somewhere, and that’s why we need to be born again, as Jesus put it. We need a new life, a new start and, as things turn out, a fresh breath of the Spirit.

What an amazing thing to be talking about as we head into this new year, a fresh life, a fresh start and a fresh breath of the Spirit and that’s exactly what God promised us. Have a listen to this, Ezekiel chapter 11, verse 19:

I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel chapter 18, verse 31:

Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.

Ezekiel chapter 26, verses 25 to 27:

I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.

Three times God promises to deal with our hearts hardened through our rebellion by breathing new life into us – a new spirit, the very essence of God dwelling in you. That is mind–blowing. A new heart, a soft, tender heart of flesh, and a new spirit – the Spirit of God, whom Jesus also promised in John chapter 14, verses 15 to 17:

Jesus said to His disciples: If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask my Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

All He’s asking us to do here is to turn away from the things we know are wrong, to turn our lives back to Him and His Spirit will fill us full to overflowing. With new life, with a new identity, new power, the ability to live our lives for God rather than to continue in the old ways that hardened our hearts.

If anyone wants a fresh start this year, here it is:

Lord God please forgive me, please, I want Jesus. I want to put all of my faith and all of my trust in Him and I want to be filled with His new Spirit, to have the joy and the peace and the power to live for you. So today I want to accept Jesus into my heart, I know that’ll mean changes, I know that it’ll be hard, I know some people may laugh at me but from this day forward, I belong to you, through what Jesus did for me, and I know that right now, this moment you have filled me with your Holy Spirit. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. In Jesus name. Amen.

And that’s the truth. If you prayed that prayer with me you are forgiven, you belong to Jesus and you have received His Spirit.

And seriously, that right there is the beginning of your fresh new start for this year. I want to encourage you to go on being filled with the Spirit, which is exactly what Paul the Apostle encourages us to do. Ephesians chapter 5, verses 18 to 20:

Do not get drunk with wine, because that is debauchery; instead be filled with the Holy Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There’s a clear choice here about how we live. We can keep in our old ways, keep rebelling, or we can be filled with the Spirit (and the tense of the verb that Paul uses there means literally: to go on being filled with the Spirit) as we live the life that God wants us to live – worshipping Jesus and living our lives for Him.

I don’t know how last year played out for you, but I’m certain that you’re looking forward to something better this year, something more, something that fills that hole inside of you that nothing else and nobody else seems to be able to fill.

If that’s where you’re at right now then with all my heart, I believe that this is what you have been look...

As we set off into yet another new year, it’s amazing how many people can’t see the new beginnings that God has ready and waiting for them. So for some of us, it’s time to open our eyes … it’s either that, or miss out.

Have you ever been at a New Year’s eve party, and everybody’s celebrating and yahooing and carrying on, and then there’s the countdown: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, Happy New Year! And there’s lots of kissing and hugging and all that stuff, and yet the last thing you feel like doing is celebrating. What is there to celebrate? Last year was somewhere between a real shocker and nothing out of the ordinary. This year, well … It looks a bit … well, you know … and so you look around at all these other people smiling and laughing and slapping each other on the back, and inside you feel just a bit empty.

If that’s a bit how the beginning of this year feels for you, well, you wouldn’t be alone, seriously. So many people have nothing much to celebrate really, or so it seems, and for many, there’s a sense that the business of last year isn’t finished yet. A lot of that has to do with the regrets of the past; the hurts of the past; the losses or the abuse or the rejection of the past, and the biggest one of all, the failures of the past.

So many people feel as though they’ve failed at their job, at their marriage, at bringing up their kids, at loving God, and the problem with those failures is that it’s often somewhere between very difficult and absolutely impossible to set things right. I suspect each one of us, if we’re a bit honest with ourselves today, we have some regrets from last year that are still hanging over us, and often, those regrets have a lot to do with our failures.

So we set off into this New Year with a sense of failure, and the sense that we’re a failure. I am a failure, and if we’re not careful, that sense of failure, that sense of doom and gloom, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The next year turns out just the same as the last one. If you’re anywhere near to being in that space at the moment (come on, be honest with yourself), then I have some great, great news for you today. Our God is a God of new beginnings and His mercies are new today, tomorrow, the next day – indeed every day and every morning.

As the writer of the book of Lamentations looked around at the terrible destruction of Jerusalem, after the Babylonians came as an instrument of God’s judgment and raised it to the ground, taking the Israelites captive as slaves into exile, he was devastated, but then somewhere inside, the Holy Spirit moved him to say and to write these words. Lamentations 3:19-26:

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall. My soul continuously thinks of it and is bowed down within me, but this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: For the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. The LORD is my portion, says my soul; therefore I will hope in Him. The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him, and it is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

That is such an incredibly poignant passage of Scripture. This man who is devastated not just for himself, but for his homeland, for his people, for the destruction of God’s temple even and the loss of His presence, this guy is stirred and moved deep inside somewhere to declare that the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases! His mercies never come to an end, for they are new every morning.

Let me take that and personalise it for you. God’s steadfast love towards you never ceases. His mercies for you are fresh and new for you each and every morning. Now if you’re at all human, you’re thinking to yourself, “Oh, Berni, that’s all fine, but if you knew how badly I blew things last year, how badly I behaved, how badly I failed other people and God, you’d know how hard it is for me to accept that.”

We often think we’re the only person thinking like that, when in fact this sense of guilt that flows out of failure is one of the most common things that people experience. It’s a natural response-mechanism that God’s put in each one of us to get us to realise that our only answer, our only refuge, our only future, our only hope, is in Him.

Do you remember the story of Moses going up to the top of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God? And God writes those commandments on two tablets of stone, but whilst Moses and God are up there doing business on the mountain, God’s people have cast an idol for themselves. Led by Moses’ brother Aaron the high priest, they melt down all their gold and cast a golden calf that they bow down and worship.

Moses comes down the mountain; he’s so angry, so incensed at these faithless people that he smashes the stone tablets with the commandments on them. You’d think (wouldn’t you) at this point, it’d be over. It probably would have been, had you or I been God, but you see, God’s mercies are new every morning, so Exodus 34 starts off this way (verses 1 and 2):

The LORD said to Moses, “Cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets which you broke. Be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself there to me, on-top of the mountain”.

And so he did. He went up to the mountain again and God gave him the commandments again. Why? Well, God explains Himself a few verses later. Exodus 34:6:

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”.

That’s who God is. God is mercy; God is love, and that mercy and that love are for you, here and now, at the beginning of this year. If only you’ll turn your regrets and your failures over to God, what a fresh start this New Year could be for you.

Even the strongest among us find ourselves feeling tired and weak sometimes. It’s not that you’re a loser, and it’s certainly not that you’re the only person on the planet that feels that way, but the daily grind has a way of … well … grinding you down, doesn’t it? Add to that the stresses and strains that life brings, especially if last year wasn’t all you wanted it to be, especially if last year had some hurts or some failures or some losses that you weren’t anticipating and you’re struggling to get over them.

You see, it’s easy to start the new year off feeling drained; not ready to face the challenges that lie ahead. We’re kicking this year off with a series of messages that I’ve called ‘New Year, Fresh Start’ because God is a God of new beginnings, and one of the things that He wants to do for you is to renew your strength.

Now, renew is a word that I love. It’s an amazing word, two parts: Re and new. We all know what the new means. Something that’s new is brand-new: A new experience, a new mercy, a new love, a new hope, a new life … Newness is fresh! It’s exciting! It’s a new start! But that re part of renew is about doing something new again. Most of the time in the English language, when a word starts with the syllable re it means again: Repeat, review, re-enter, reactivate, reaffirm and on it goes, so humour me, and think about this word renew for just a moment.

It means to do that new thing again. It means to enter into newness a second time, a third time, a fourth time, a thousandth time, and that’s the sense with which I’m asking you to understand this amazing passage of Scripture. Isaiah 40:27-41:1:

Why do you say, o Jacob, and speak...

Have you ever wondered what it would have been like, to have been there on that very first Christmas, when Jesus was born into this world? In one sense, it would have been very ordinary. A little village, Bethlehem. People all over the place. Business as usual. But in another sense … it would have been totally, mind-blowingly, gobsmackingly amazing!

There’s a bunch of guys in the Bible who I envy. Now I know what you’re thinking, the tenth Commandment:

You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife or male or female slave or ox or donkey or anything else that belongs to your neighbour. (Exodus 20:17)

Yeah, we’re not supposed to envy or covet anything because it leads to some really bad behaviour. I get that. But hear me out.

If there was anyone I could have been with in the Bible, it would have to be those shepherds who were out there watching their flocks by night. We don’t quite know what night it was. But you have to gather by what the angel said to them that Jesus had already been born so I prefer to think of it as Christmas night. Only to them, sitting there in the field watching their sheep, it wasn’t Christmas night at all. It was just another night at the office doing what shepherds did. It was a mundane part of their lives. They may have been enjoying the evening. They may not have been enjoying the evening. It doesn’t matter. They were doing what shepherds did out there on the side of a hill somewhere just outside Bethlehem.

The sun had gone down like it goes down every night. And tomorrow morning the sun was going to come up again, like it did every morning and nothing much changed in between. Maybe the moon was out, maybe not. And in the absence of the bright light and the pollution you and I have to put up with these days, the Milky Way was spread across the firmament in all its glory and all was well with the world.

That’s the picture, that’s what was going on. But on that particular night God had a plan to break into this world in the most amazing and spectacular way.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night and then an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified but the angel said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid for see I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people. To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is the Messiah, the Lord.’

‘This will be a sign for you, you will find a child wrapped in bands of clothing and lying in a manger’. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favours.’

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let’s go down to Bethlehem and see this thing that’s taken place which the Lord has made known to us’. So they went with haste and they found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in a manger.

When they saw this they made known what had been told to them about this child and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them but Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all that they’d heard and seen as it had been told to them. (Luke 2: 8-20)

I often wonder how I would have reacted had I been with those guys on that starry starry night. I wonder how I would react if that happened to me tonight at home or on the way back from work or whatever mundane thing I happened to be doing tonight. Because for me, the idea of a cosmic light show and angels filling the sky and all that jazz, well for me, it’s pretty easy to believe because it happened at a nice safe distance of two thousand or so years ago. Because you and I have watched the kids Christmas pantomimes so many times and sung the Christmas carols so many times, it’s become part of our psyche that this thing with the shepherds actually happened. We accept it pretty much without thinking.

But bring it back to reality and how would we cope if it happened to us here and now or if we’d been back there with the shepherds’ back then sitting in that field on that night. I think I would be petrified like they were to start with. It would be so unexpected, so out of this world, so impossible and yet there they were and it was happening to them and God broke into their world in this startling ‘in your face’ kind of way.

You know something? I believe that that’s what God wants to do today in your world and mine. I believe God wants to shake us out of our comfortable little Christmas ritual, our “business as usual” approach to Christmas and get right in our faces and say, “Don’t you realise what this Christmas thing is all about? Today, I’m bringing you good news for unto you a Saviour has been born for you”. And the reaction He’s looking for out of you and me is the reaction that the shepherds had.

Because when the angels had left them and gone into heaven the shepherds said to one another, “Well, what are we going to do? Why don’t we go down to Bethlehem and see what has taken place that which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste, they didn’t dawdle; they went with haste. They found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told to them about this child and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.

God wants us to come to Jesus for ourselves – to worship Jesus for ourselves, to tell the world what we’ve seen. Imagine His frustration, His great frustration when He sees people, like you and me, just going through the motions at Christmas time. Imagine how that makes Him feel when on that first Christmas, He gave to you and He gave to me the single most precious gift that has ever been given in all of human history.

So how about it? Will you grab onto this Christmas present with both hands? Will you come to Jesus and worship Him? Will you rejoice at what you’ve seen? Will you tell people what you’ve seen? Will you let Christmas impact your heart in the most miraculous way? Well, will you or are you just going to do the same old Christmas ritual this year like you’ve done for the past umpteen years?

Because here’s the thing, one day Jesus is coming back. One day, Jesus will return to this earth and when that happens it will make the cosmic light show that the shepherds experienced look like a little sideshow, I’m telling you. When Jesus ascended back into heaven this is what happened:

So when they’d come together they asked him, ‘Lord is this the time when you’ll restore the Kingdom of Israel?’ And he replied, ‘It’s not for you to know the times or the periods that the Father has set by his own authority but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and then you’ll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria and even to the ends of the earth’.

When he had said that as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up towards the heaven suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards the heaven? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come again in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. (Acts 1: 6-11)

See, that’s going to happen one day, just as unexpectedly as the angels appeared before those shepherds, just as unexpectedly as Jes...

Have you ever felt like your life has been taken over by events outside your control? It’s something that people can feel quite strongly, heading into Christmas, as other people seem to be getting ready to celebrate.

Well, if you’re in that place, where events beyond your control have taken over your life, you’re not the only one.

There are times in our lives when it feels as though circumstances or events outside of our control have completely taken over our lives. We’ve all been there and some people I know are there right now.

Perhaps you were looking forward to a family Christmas and your marriage or somebody else’s marriage in your family is starting to fall apart. Or perhaps, you find yourself completely alone or maybe sickness has struck and you’re wondering how to get through it. And at this point, the whole idea even of celebrating Christmas seems completely irrelevant, off this planet.

Despite what all the happy Christmas ads on television would have us believe, Christmas is not a happy time for many people. It’s sad but true. Now, that’s not to say that we’re all going to have a lousy Christmas, no. But when we scratch the glitzy veneer of what Christmas has become in the twenty-first century, when you go below the surface, most people have something going on in their lives that takes the shine off what should be (according to what everybody else is telling us) the celebration of Christmas.

Season’s greetings, peace on earth, merrrryyyyy Christmas, ho ho ho. Yeah, right. Somehow the umpteenth re-enactment of the Christmas pantomime at Church and that nativity scene in the store window (if you can even find one anywhere these days) just doesn’t seem to connect with life’s realities when we’ve been swamped by a wave of whatever it is in our life, in your life, this year.

I’ve had many a Christmas like that over the years. Truly, I have. Life can be tough sometimes. And when you’re involved in ministry in any way, shape or form, you’ll know that it’s even tougher because the devil is on your case. You run into opposition and attacks sometimes seemingly from every direction and on those Christmases the pantomime version of Christmas simply isn’t enough. You with me?

But let’s wind the clock back to the old, old story, to the days leading up to the birth of Jesus, the Christ. Because when I go back to that story, there’s nothing safe, there’s nothing comfortable, there’s nothing pantomimey at all about it. The road to that very first Christmas was a hard road and it’s on that road that we discover a God who’s prepared to get on the journey with us.

Think about the circumstances that had overtaken Joseph and Mary’s lives to that point. Firstly, they’d fallen in love. Hey, that’s a good thing, that’s a great thing, that’s a special thing. But then Mary falls pregnant to the Holy Spirit, out of wedlock in a day and age where that was a scandal. You can imagine how Joseph felt, right? – robbed, betrayed, dismayed, hurt, alone, disappointed, angry, the full gamut of emotions. Events had overtaken his life.

This one painful event which was completely outside of his control. It hurt so much but being the good guy that he was, he planned to cut off the engagement and to dismiss Mary quietly so as not to make a big thing of it in public. Events, circumstances, things out there that were going to rob him, unbeknown to him at the time, of the very first Christmas.

You see if you’re in that boat, you’re not the first one. This old, old story has a modern twist in its tail, does it not? The truth of that first Christmas (even though it happened two thousand years away) is here and now when you get behind the pantomime version and you check out what really happened.

So there’s young Jo about to be robbed of that first Christmas and then God. Whenever circumstances are about to roll over the top of us, it’s always, always a case of ‘then God’ because this God who loves you beyond any measure that you would care to apply to His love, He always shows up. He showed up back then for Joseph. Let’s have a listen:

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph but before they lived together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man, unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

But just when he had resolved to do this an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.”

All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the Prophet, ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel which means God is with us’. When Joseph awoke from his sleep he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, he took her as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son and he named him, Jesus. (Matthew 1: 18-25)

I wonder how many times you and I have skimmed over that old, old story with the attitude, “Oh yeah, I know that one. Yeah sure, it’s fine,” without ever really thinking about what it meant for Mary and poor old Joseph. The stress it put on their relationship, the glances and the whispers of scandal that happened in their tight-knit little community.

And just when Joseph was about to do what he thought was the decent thing out of his pain – God showed up. God showed up in a mighty way to speak truth and comfort and love and destiny into Joseph’s heart.

I don’t know how real that dream felt to him at the time, probably it was a really powerful dream if it was from God. But when he woke up it was still only a dream but it was enough for Joseph to act upon. He didn’t have the Gospel accounts of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John to rely on back then, like you and I do have now, he didn’t know how it was all going to turn out. But when he heard the voice of God he acted on it.

Christmas is about difficult circumstances. Christmas is all about God breaking into this world in an exquisite blend of love and power and humility. Christmas is about God and it’s about you.

Now I know that this is not going to come as any great surprise to you but I have never been pregnant. Something (by the way) that I’ve often given thanks for because I’m your typical male – the idea of going through childbirth is something I can’t comprehend. Which is why, I guess, God didn’t leave it up to men to be mother’s – wise move God, wise move.

Anyway, back to Christmas, I’m trying to imagine what it was like for Mary who was pretty much full term to travel from Nazareth the Bethlehem for the census. We don’t think too much about it because these days the drive from A to B would take, umm, two to three hours I’m guessing; maybe four, if you took it slowly and you had a break for lunch along the way. You’d probably do it in a comfortable air conditioned car although even then, let’s say a three to four-hour car ride wouldn’t be particularly the most delightful experience for a woman who was close to full term, would it now? But back then it was a one to two-week journey.

Tradition has it … if you believe all the paintings and drawings that Mary rode on the back of a donkey, of course, there’s no Biblical evidence for that, we’re not told how she got from Nazareth to Bethlehem. But for her sake, I’m hoping she was on a back of a donkey or riding in the back of a cart somewhere rather than walking the whole way because one thing’s for certain she wasn’t riding ...

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought of this, but on the surface of things, Christmas was a crazy idea! I mean, what exactly was God thinking by sending His Son to become a man – and then to be born in some drafty, smelly shed out the back of Bethlehem? 

Yeah, absolutely, on the surface of things, Christmas is a crazy idea. I mean stand back and think about it … God’s God, He created the whole universe. Okay, He’s Father and Son and Holy Spirit, three persons in one, something that’s not that easy to wrap your mind around. But let’s just leave that to one side for the moment.

God is God. God creates everything. We read about it in the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis. It’s pretty straightforward description of what He did and it was amazing. And the crowning glory of all His creation is humanity – you and me, male and female. And the very last thing that He does before He rests to enjoy His handiwork of creation is that He hands the whole thing over to us. God said:

Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind, cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind and it was so and God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind, everything that creeps along the ground of every kind and God saw that it was good.”

Then God said, ‘Let us make humanity in our image according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’

So God created humanity in His image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue the earth and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth.’

God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit, you shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to every thing that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life I have given every green plant for food’ and so it was.

God saw everything that He’d made and indeed it was very good and there was evening and there was morning of the sixth day. (Genesis 1: 26-31)

So far, so good. Adam and Eve go and enjoy all of this amazing creation but God does one thing, just one thing that is so crazy, inexplicable.

The Lord commanded the man, ‘you may freely eat of every tree of the garden but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall die. (Genesis 2:16)

Well, you know the rest. They couldn’t help themselves, Adam and Eve, they just had to try to be like God. They ate from that one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the rest as they say is history.

Sin entered the world, sickness entered the world and just as God had promised them death entered the world. Life became hard. That’s something you and I can attest to – life is hard and all because God had to forbid them that one tree and they just had to try it anyway. Could it be all of your misery and mine hangs on just that one crummy apple? For Pete’s sake, that’s nuts!

And then as humanity spirals ever downward, as we become ever more debauched and depraved, after that moment God mounts a rescue mission – He sends Jesus to save us. What’s that about? Why didn’t He just give them access to every last tree? Why did He have to hold that one tree back from them and why did they have to blow it for the rest of us and after all that, why did God mount that rescue mission and send Jesus?

It defies human logic until you realise that love and logic have nothing more in common than their first two letters. Love isn’t logical. Have a listen to this:

But the free gift is not like the trespass for if the many died through one man’s trespass, Adams, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift and the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the effect of that one man’s sin for the judgement following the one trespass brought condemnation but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.

If because of the one man’s sin death has exercised dominion through that one much more surely will those who receive the abundance of the grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore just as one man’s trespasses lead to condemnation for all so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.

For just as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. But the law came in with the result that the trespass multiplied but when sin increased grace abounded all the more. So just as sin exercised dominion in death so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. (Romans 5: 12 – 21)

There you have it. There you have the reason that God did what He did. If you love someone you give them free will, right? He gave Adam a free will by excluding that one tree and Adam chose against God and so sin, with all its consequences, entered the world for you and me.

Now, before you think to yourself, “I am going to punch Adam in the nose when I see him in heaven.” Ask yourself, if nobody in all of history before you had sin and ultimately you were living in that garden, would you have resisted the temptation?

So sin entered the world through one man and forgiveness came though one man as well, Jesus. God sent Him into this world as that little babe we remember each year around this time so that we could be forgiven. And notice how that ‘grace‘ word comes in. Forgiven by the free, unmerited favour of God so that we could know what? God’s love.

What greater expression of love is there than to forgive someone who doesn’t deserve it? I guess only one, to do it and to take his or her punishment on their behalf, to give your life to suffer in order to purchase their forgiveness and their freedom. To step out of heaven into this hurly-burly of a sinful world and be punished even though you’d never done anything wrong.

And this is not as some Plan B because Plan A didn’t work. This was always Gods Plan A. God always knew Adam would blow it. He always knew that you and I would blow it. None of that was ever a surprise to Him and yet out of His great love, He gave us a free will to accept or reject Him. And out of His great love, He came to purchase us back from death by offering up His Son as His sense of justice demanded – to take all the fall for you and for me, to pay the price, to die the death.

Now, I know you have a lot going on in these days leading up to Christmas – those last-minute presents to buy, the things to clear off your desk perhaps before you have a few days off, the turkey to buy, the decoration to get up, all that stuff.

Now I know that you may not have a lot of time to think about this Christmas stuff but at the heart of Christmas lies a Father’s love. At the heart of Christmas – in the most unhygienic, feed trough called a manger, in that even more unhygienic stable filled with animals, right where that child was born and lay and crie...

Well, here we are again, it’s December. It’s almost the end of another year and it’s almost Christmas time, again. It happens year after year. Christmas. The question is, what do you make of it, what do you do with it? It’s an age-old problem, Christmas.

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought of this but Christmas is a real problem for guys like me, preachers I mean. Year after year, we have to crank out yet another Christmas series. And for the first few years, that’s pretty easy but then after a while you start thinking to yourself, “Well, how am I going to put a new twist on Christmas this year?”

Last year, I approached it from this perspective, the year before from that perspective, the year before that from … well, you get the picture. There are only so many different perspectives on Christmas. Well, we’ve all been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Yeah, so it’s Christmas again, so what?

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere it’s an excuse for a few days off.

If you live in the Southern Hemisphere as I do, it’s probably the summer holidays that you’re looking forward to more than Christmas itself. A chance for a decent break, a bit of a much-needed R and R and sure Christmas is part of that but the Christmas bit can be a bit of a hassle. Buying presents, figuring out who has Christmas lunch with whom and then perhaps scooting off to Christmas dinner with another part of your family. Kids, uncles, aunts, grandparents – it all gets complicated. And then there’s the fact not everybody in the family gets on. You know Christmas day is one of the peak times of the year for domestic violence.

Even if it doesn’t get that bad you know there are going to be clashes or you’re going to have to smile sweetly at someone that you don’t really like or you just know that so and so is going to have too much to drink again this year.

Those are the burdens that many people carry into Christmas, it’s just the reality of life. So as things turn out, Christmas isn’t just a problem for preachers like me who have to dream up something fresh and new each year, it’s a problem for many, many people. I heard someone say once, a Bible believing Christian she was, “I hate Christmas, I wish we could just skip over it.” It’s pretty sad but it’s the reality for many people even those who actually believe in Jesus. So Christmas gets something of a bad rap, I wonder how many people who are out there who would just love to skip Christmas. I wonder?

Well, as you look ahead to the next ten days or so in the run up to Christmas, I wonder how you’re feeling about it all, exhausted, frustrated, anxious, stressed. What are the emotions that generally accompany this thing we call Christmas in your heart in your life? What are you feeling? Is Christmas a problem for you?

Can I be honest here? I struggle with the kids pantomime version of Christmas. I struggle with the whole Carols by Candlelight phenomenon around Christmas where people get together in parks and sing Christmas carols as though they believe them, when most of the entertainers up on the stage and on our television screens don’t have the remotest faith that Jesus is actually the Son of God.

It’s like we wrap this whole Christmas in tinsel and lights and tie a neat bow around it. And we make it out to be this happy time, when the truth is, for many people, well, they struggle with Christmas. Now I don’t mean to be a Christmas Grinch here. Personally, I love singing Christmas carols because they mean something to me but what I really want to know is why don’t we sing Christmas carols all year round? Why don’t we celebrate the coming of Jesus all year round?

I remember hosting a Christmas in July service at our Church some years back. It’s a bit of a phenomenon down under as many restaurants put on Christmas dinners in the middle of winter when it’s cold and at the service we actually sung Christmas carols. I can’t tell you the number of people who came up to me afterwards and told me how weird it was singing Silent Night in the middle of July.

Yeah, we wrap a whole bunch of rituals up in a nice neat package in December and we call it Christmas. And it’s all supposed to be sweetness and light and yet how much of it really, really, really speaks into our hearts about the wonder of what God did on that first Christmas?

What I want to do today is to unsettle you, to drag you out of your Christmas ritual comfort zone and ask you, “Why do you do what you do at Christmas time? Why are you racing around buying presents for people who don’t really need anything? Why do you put tinsel and Christmas decorations around your house and maybe even a Christmas wreath on your front door? What are the candles and the Christmas tree and presents and all that food really about? What do you do it for?”

If you stripped away all that packaging and paraphernalia what would Christmas actually be for you? Luke 2: 8-14:

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified but the angel said to them, “don’t be afraid, for see I am bringing good news of great joy for all people. For to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

“This will be a sign for you, you’ll find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger” and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, “glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favours.”

So if you took the packaging and the paraphernalia and the ritual and the racing around away, is that what Christmas would mean to you? Would you in your heart shout out, “Glory to God in the highest heaven. Glory, glory, glory. Hallelujah?” Because if not, don’t you think you just might be wasting your time with all this Christmas nonsense that you go through each year?

All this pressure you put yourself under, all these presents you buy and the money you spend and the decorations you put up and the food that you stuff yourself with – is that what Christmas is all about?

Or in your heart, is it about the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God to be the Saviour of this world? The biggest Christmas gift of all history – the Son of God given to all humanity, given to you and given to me.

So let me ask you, what is your Christmas all about?

I guess when it comes to this whole Christmas thing; we see it from where we sit. And for most of us, our perspective (our take on Christmas) comes through the ritual that surrounds it – a ritual that we’ve acted out year after year for as long as we can remember.

Sure, it’s changed a bit. When we were kids it was all about the excitement of presents. But you know the deal, you know all the things that you do in the weeks leading up to Christmas, you know how Christmas Day is going to pan out. You know the carols you’re going to sing and the food that you’re going to eat and the people you’re going to celebrate Christmas with. If it’s at all possible, this exciting celebration of Christmas has become something of a routine for you. A bit of a contradiction but it’s true for most of us, life is full of contradictions right?

When it comes to Christmas we kind of narrow our view, we lower our gaze and focus on the well-worn familiar path of the Christmas ritual. Whatever that looks like for each one of us, we narrow our perspective and like Pavlov’s dogs we get on with that part of life and in many respects, that’s how it was on that very first Christmas two thousand odd years ago. Although it wasn’t called Christmas back then. In fact, the ...

Christmas is just around the corner, can you believe it? But the sad reality is that domestic violence will again spike sharply over the Christmas period. Can you believe that? Well, too often, anger spills over during the holidays, so I thought that this week, we’d share in a timely word on anger management.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but when a seed falls to the ground and dies, ultimately it sprouts and takes root.

And if it was the seed of a plum tree – we can be pretty certain that the thing that’s growing there is going to one day produce – not apricots, not apples, not pears…..we all know, it’s going to produce plums.

Because it’s a plum tree that’s taken root. In fact, the root produces the fruit.

It’s just one of those basic facts of life that actually we don’t have to think about. The root determines the fruit.

And it’s a bit like that in our hearts. IF our hearts take root in goodness then we’ll produce good fruit. In bad things and we’ll produce bad fruit.

In sweet things and we’ll produce sweet fruit. In bitter things – and we’ll produce bitter things.

This is not rocket science – right?

This week on the program….Want to take a look at the phenomenon of anger in our society and in our lives.

Anger is a real phenomenon in the hearts of so many people. Pressure building up in life – people explode.

Like a pressure cooker – vent the steam otherwise it blows up. It’s the same with people – so many people venting their anger – epidemic proportions.

• Road rage
• Supermarket rage
• Call centre rage

In fact, this weeks program is prompted by a real-life experience.

Stan the painter. He was doing some work at our little terrace house. Painting a few walls – at the same time, he was doing a big job in one of the wealthiest streets in the country.

Huge mansion – special paint $1,000 a tin – unbelievable – houses in the street worth $15-$25 million – mega wealthy. Lots of people having building work done in that street – narrow street – yet great views, massive mansions…unbelievable

Been working there for a few weeks now – and he was telling me – “You wouldn’t believe the strife between the neighbours – house I’m working on – 70 year old woman – hasn’t talked with her neighbour for 20 years. Argument over some building work.

All the neighbours are fighting… the woman I’m working for – done some work before – but now she’s so mean and nasty and swears.”

Stand back from that – unbelievable… these people have everything in life – nothing they can’t buy or have or own really… everything their heart desires

Yet there’s – well a spirit of anger and bitterness and dissension…

Makes you wonder – what’s going on here. We, like Stan and his brother Douk – two Greek painters, lovely people do a great job. Honest as the day is long – wonderful men.

How can this woman be so nasty to them?

Anger and bitterness has taken root in her heart. That’s why. You let things get to you and get angry with people over and over and over again – like bitterness takes root in your heart. The root produces the fruit.

God actually talks a lot about anger – you know it’s a word that pops up 375 times in the Bible – makes it one of the leading subjects.

Anger is something that we all have to deal with – and it springs up, out of a root of bitterness.

The writer of the book of Hebrews in the NT – puts it like this:

Hebrews 12:14-15.

Pursue peace with everyone – and holiness – because without them you won’t get so much as a glimpse of God. Make sure that no one misses out on the grace of God, so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble – because through it, so many will be contaminated

See – there it is – the root produces the fruit.

The root of bitterness takes hold in our hearts… it springs up and causes trouble and contaminates everyone around us.

We all have a problem with anger some days – some more than others… the longer we let it go on, the more it takes hold and produces bitterness – and a bitter root produces bitter fruit.

A root – is something we cultivate and if we don’t want it to keep growing – have to stop feeding it.

Be angry but do not sin – do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not make room for the devil. (Ephesians 4:26)

We all get angry from time to time – that’s not the sin – the sin is letting the sun go down on your anger – keeping it in your heart, brooding, planning revenge, going over it and over it and over it and over it…

The right way of handling it is just – get over it. Forgive and move on. Then, then we won’t be cultivating the root of bitterness which – sure as God made little green apples – will produce fruit of bitterness.

Not something we can do on our own though – I believe we need an antidote to this venom… something that heals and cleanses and just gives us a fresh perspective – let’s go back to that earlier quote….

Pursue peace with everyone – and holiness – because without them you won’t get so much as a glimpse of God. Make sure that no one misses out on the grace of God, so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble – because through it, so many will be contaminated.

Let’s get down to practicalities… dealing with anger, dealing with that rising temper. When someone provokes us – you know they do something and you can feel your blood boiling and you go all red in the face… right at that moment, it’s so easy to spit out something venomous – words that we can’t take back. Words that damage a relationship. People even throw something – do something…

Sometimes, when we’re provoked, we can be a bit quick on the draw when it comes to responding. Let me share a story with you:

I remember once as a consultant – some years back now – used to run an IT consulting group

I was being mucked around by a large and important client of a particular ethnic heritage…..dealing with them for months to try to kick off a project – meant a lot of money – large, global organisation. After months of investing time and effort with the management… they pulled the plug on the project.

Received an e-mail from one of the consultants working with me – info about the client – explaining that the organisation had decided not to go ahead. I blew my stack – sitting in my office reading the e-mail – couldn’t believe that they’d wasted so much of our time and resources – not fair – losing so much revenue.

I had a few choice sentiments that I almost expressed in reply to that e-mail to my fellow consultant – even typed an angry e-mail… just about to send it I thought better of it and sent a benign e-mail instead.

Just as well, I hit the “Reply to All” button and the e-mail ended up with the client as well as my colleague!!! Gulp.

Can you imagine – my thoughts of anger included some pretty vitriolic stuff about their ethnicity too.

Berni – why are you sharing this with us? Simple – we all go through this sort of thing – day by day. People, organisations, circumstances drive us insane and we want to explode.

You know the saying: “no man is an island”. None of us can go it alone. We all need help, wise counsel, a bit of muscle from time to time. The question is, who or what do you turn to, to get that help when you need it? When it comes to getting help, sometimes, we do the craziest things.

There used to be a game show on television called Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where they asked you a whole bunch of questions and if you got them all right you would end up winning a million dollars. Well not surprisingly not all that many people won the million.

One of the rules of the game was that you had three lifelines when you ran into a difficult question, you could ask the audience, you could do a 50/50 where the computer removed two wrong answers out of the four multiple choice items or you could phone a friend.

The ‘phone a friend’ always intrigued me. The contestant would run into a difficult question and choose to phone a friend, they would give them a thirty-second call with a friend of their choosing. Sometimes the friend was able to help with the question, other times not.

I wonder when you run into a difficult question in life where do you turn? What option do you take, ask the audience, 50/50 or phone a friend? It seems that often what we do is we try to build ourselves an insurance policy in life to provide a safety net for those difficult times.

Some people try and get a financial buffer by earning lots of money, some people try to build a social relationship safety net so that they have friends and family in place when the difficult times hit. That’s not a bad thing. Other people invest in their career and their reputation as though that somehow is going to make a difference when the tempest hits.

Whatever your safety net is it’s something you’ve had to work hard to build, it’s been an investment. Now there’s nothing wrong with a bit of sound planning, it’s good to have a network of family and friends, it’s good if you can to have some savings to fall back on and if there’s still such a thing a secure job and a career path. Nothing wrong with any of those things until we put all our trust in them as though they’re going to be able to save us when a tsunami sweeps across our lives.

Over the last few weeks on the program we’ve been talking about idolatry. My favourite definition of an idol is anything that we place above God in our lives. We have a innate desire to worship something, that’s how we’ve been made and the crazy thing is that often we worship the wrong things and in so doing we miss out on the very best that God has ready and waiting for us, that God has ready and waiting for you.

Idols are always imposters. Idols can never deliver what we hope they can deliver. So in your life what are the safety nets that you’ve been investing in and building that you put your trust in?

One of the things we can so easily do is to work hard and save hard for a home of our own and when we finally get that we start behaving as though this home is a ‘forever’ thing, that it’s safe and permanent and inviolable. I happen to own a small apartment only several hundred metres from the ocean. We literally live at sea level and as safe and secure as this home feels, hey should a tsunami hit we’re done for.

Why is it that we behave as though the things of this world have the power to withstand the tsunamis of life? When we do that it’s called idolatry because we end up worshipping those things with our lives, we end up placing our trust in them and when you stand back from that behaviour and you evaluate it objectively it’s just nuts and not surprisingly that’s exactly what God says in His Word, lets take a look, Isaiah chapter 44 verses 9 to 20:

All who make idols are nothing and the things they delight in do not profit, their witnesses neither see nor know and so they were put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? Look all its devotee’s will be put to shame, the artisans too are merely human, let them all assemble, let them stand up, they shall be terrified, they shall all be put to shame.

The ironsmith fashions it and works it over the coals, shaping it with hammers and forging it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry and his strength fails, he drinks no water and he’s faint. The carpenter stretches a line and marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes and marks it with a compass. He makes it in human form with human beauty to be set up in a shrine.

He cuts down cedars or chooses a Holm tree or an oak tree and lets it grow strong among the trees in the forest. He plants a seed and the rain nourishes it then he can use it as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes some bread, then he makes a god and worships it and makes it a carved image and bows down before it.

Half of it he burns in the fire, over that half he roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied, he also warms himself and says ‘ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire’ but with the rest of it he turns it into a god, his idol and bows down to it and worships it, he prays to it and says, ‘Save me for you are my God’.

They don’t know, they don’t comprehend, their eyes are shut so they can’t see and their minds as well so they cannot understand. No one considers nor is there knowledge or discernment to say ‘half of it I burned in the fire, I also baked bread on its coals, I roasted me and I’ve eaten, now shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood? He feeds on the ashes, a deluded mind has led him astray and he cannot save himself or say ‘is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?

Hmm, isn’t that great? There was Isaiah talking about physical idols, statues but they’re no different to the idol we set up in our lives today, the physical things that we build to worship and place our trust in. I love how he unmasks the stupidity of idols. That’s exactly what we do with the physical things that we turn into idols.

One half of them we consume and enjoy like money or a nice house or friends or our careers, whatever it is that we’ve set up above God in our lives. And with the other half we sacrifice to it and we trust in it as though somehow it has the power to save us like some god.

Even our relationships, good as many of them are, have you ever been in a difficult spot and used the ‘phone a friend’ option and found there’s nothing your friend can say or do to help you? Of course you have. Have you ever asked the audience, gone out there for help and found that there was no help that could withstand the tsunami? Of course you have.

Right at the end of that passage that we just read from Isaiah, the prophet leads us to the right question to ask, the question we should be asking of the idols in our lives, ‘Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?’

And the right answer to that question, the only answer to that question is ‘of course it is, dummy’. When earthquakes and tsunami’s hit your life who’s going to save you? When you come to that final barrier in this life, your physical death and you’re staring down the barrel of eternity let me ask you, who can save you?

Do you see how ridiculous it is for us to set up idols in our lives and to worship them and to sacrifice our lives to them and to put our trust in them? The more we invest in them, the more we trust them, the more deluded we become imagining they have the power to save us. They don’t have that power, listen to me, idols are frauds, they’re imposters and at the very best they’re nothing but second best.

When something or someone who you trust leaves yo...

The mistake that so many of God’s people make, is that they think that their relationships with other people can fill the deep void within, a void that’s been designed so that it can only be filled by God Himself. And so they spend their lives getting second best, when all along, God’s very best is staring them right in the face. 

Over the last week we’ve been chatting about laying hold of God’s very best for our lives because there are so many imposters out there that claim to be able to give us what we’re looking for, that they lead us astray. An imposter is never as good as the real thing.

I remember once I was travelling in South Africa and I wanted to bring home a special gift for my daughter. I was shopping in a mall in Pretoria and I wandered into a handbag store. I spotted a Louis Vuitton handbag and I thought she would really, really like that. Yeah it was pricey but I thought no she would really like it so I bought it for her.

I was right, she loved it but about eighteen months later the catch that keeps the bag closed came apart. Well not a problem, I thought, this is a Louis Vuitton handbag. So I looked it up on the internet and found the authorised Louis Vuitton repairer here at home and took the handbag into them.

The lady behind the counter took one look at it and she informed me that it was a fake, a knock off and as much as she’d like to help me she was unable to do so. Well I was pretty angry I have to tell you, not with her but with the person who sold the bag to me because I quizzed them over and over again to make sure it was the real thing. And that’s the thing with fakes, they look real, they pretend to be real but they simply can’t deliver what you’re looking for.

I remember when I was studying at Bible College, a good many years ago, one of our lecturers, Dr Barry Chant, gave a class on the things that lead ministers astray, that get them caught up in sin that ends up tearing their ministry apart. And he said something along these lines.

It comes down basically to three things; girls or in the case of women guys, gold and glory. Those are the top three things that lead men and women of God who are called to ministry, astray. That’s always stuck with me – girls, gold and glory. Pretty simple really and when you think about it, it applies not just to people in ministry, it applies to all of Gods people because those three things, girls or guys, gold and glory are pretty much the three main categories of idolatry today.

In this day and age most of us don’t think much about idols. In western countries we don’t see many physical idols and in eastern countries where there are so many religions that use idols routinely, you get to the point of being oblivious to them. I know when I first started travelling to India regularly the number of idols I saw hit me in the face but now I almost don’t notice them.

An idol is an imposter, it’s anything that we set up as an alternative to the one true God, the One who sent Jesus, His Son, to die for you and me. And we take these imposters and we worship them as though they’re real, they’re not of course but we treat them as though they are and we worship them and we sacrifice our lives to them.

So let’s start off by talking about this whole ‘girls and guy’s’ thing. It’s one of the most natural things on the planet, girl meets boy, they fall in love and they want to spend the rest of their lives together. And if you’ve been through that you’ll know how compelling and intoxicating romance is. It plays to our emotional desires and to our physical desires and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. Until we start imagining that this is it, this is what I’ve always been looking for and we start expecting our mate to make us happy.

We start expecting this one relationship to give us all the contentment and joy and fulfilment that we’ve been looking for for all our lives. And then all of a sudden we’re heaping expectations on this girl or guy that they simply can never meet up to. The truth of it is my wife, as wonderful as she is, simply cannot fill the void in me that only God can fill. And if she looks at me to do that for her she too is going to be sadly disappointed.

Remember the first Commandment in the Ten Commandments, Exodus chapter 20 verses 2 and 3:

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, you shall have no other gods before me.

The moment we take something, even something as sublime and as wonderful as this pinnacle of human relationships, the exclusive relationship of one man and one woman in the lifelong relationship of marriage and we elevate that above God then we’re committing idolatry and that goes straight to the second Commandment, Exodus chapter 20 verses 4 and 5:

You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them and worship them for I am the Lord your God and I am a jealous God.

Of course some people take this one step further, they decide to focus on the physical side of this boy/ girl thing or into same sex relationships and end up turning sex into their idol as though somehow sexual gratification will give them what they’re looking for, that too becomes idolatry, Colossians chapter 3 verses 5 and 6:

Put to death therefore whatever in you is earthly. Fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed which is idolatry. On account of these things the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient.

Listen up, it is good for a man and a woman to fall in love and to give themselves completely to one another for the rest of their lives, that’s certainly God’s plan but when we take this good thing and we elevate it and place it above God or when we pervert this good plan and sleep around hoping to find gratification, it’s just like that fake Louis Vuitton hand bag I was telling you about earlier. Eventually it will break and we’re left with nothing because there’s a hole inside you and a hole inside me that only God can fill, it’s just the way we’ve been made.

In the long run idols, imposters, as attractive as they may seem can never deliver what we’re looking for, as attractive as they may appear.

Gold is a symbol of wealth and it’s one of the main things that draws us away from God. Think about it God/ gold, only one letter of difference between those two words and how easy is it for us to substitute one for the other. Even more so because in this world we’re told wealth equals success.

Who among us haven’t dreamed of striking it rich, of being able to live in a big house, a mansion with all the comforts and pleasures that money can buy. A great view, lots of rooms, lavishly furnished, a few high and luxury cars in the multi car garage, flying around the world first class of course or even in your own jet with everyone kowtowing to you because you’re such an important person.

That’s a dream, a fantasy that many people churn over inside themselves over and over again. It’s so seductive that many people are intoxicated by it and they can’t let it go. So here’s what they do, here’s what I did for much of my early adult life, they sacrifice their lives to it. They throw themselves into the pursuit of earning as much money as they can.

I’ve seen some of the houses that people build for themselves, not far from where I live, live some of the wealthiest people in Australia, houses that sell for upwards of thirty million dollars, one recently just went for fifty million dollars. Hey that’s a ridiculous amount of money and these mansions are so big, so ridiculously huge they must be cavernous.

Today I want to introduce you to two people who, perhaps more than any other Bible characters, show us how easily you and I can fall into idolatry. How easily you and I can turn our backs on God, and then tell ourselves that what we’re doing is just fine. These two people are like mirrors of who we are, and how stupidly we sometimes behave. 

As I said I want to introduce you to a couple of Bible characters from the Old Testament Book of Judges who in a single chapter, Judges chapter 17, show us how easily we can fall into idolatry. Now these aren’t any of the A list players like Abraham or Moses or Isaiah, these are just two people who only appear this one time whose story in the context and in the whole sweep of Israel’s story told across the Old Testament is frankly pretty insignificant.

And yet God chooses to have their story included in the Bible in a Book that frankly not many of us go to all that often, in fact when I shared a message about these two people at our Church recently my Pastor came up to me afterwards and commented ‘that’s great, it’s good for us to go to Books in the Bible that we don’t go to all too often’.

Well there is a reason I’ve gone to this chapter. We’re told in the New Testament:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness so that everybody who belongs to God maybe proficient, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16)

Now this particular one is one of those sorts of Scriptures. It’s the story about a woman, we don’t find out her name and her son Micah. Now this is not the Micah who wrote the Old Testament Book of Micah, different guy altogether. So let’s dive in and have a bit of a look at their story. We’re going to Judges chapter 17 beginning at verse 1.

There was a man in the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah. He said to his mother, ‘The eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you about which you uttered a curse and even spoke it in my hearing, that silver is in my possession, I took it but now I will return it to you,’ and his mother said, ‘May my son be blessed by the Lord’.

Then he returned the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother and his mother said, ‘I consecrate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son to make an idol of cast metal.’ So when he returned the money to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver and gave it to the silversmith who made it into an idol of cast metal and it was in the house of Micah.

This man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and a teraphim and installed one of his sons who became his priest. In those days there was no king in Israel, all the people did what’s right in their own eyes.

Now it starts off as quite a bizarre story, mum has lost eleven hundred pieces of silver, that was a huge amount of money for them back then, no doubt this was her life savings. There were, of course, no banks with high interest accounts or even with safety deposit boxes for her to secure her fortune in. So she did what everyone else did back then had to do, she hid it.

Nevertheless, it was stolen. Imagine having your life savings stolen, all of your financial security, any sense of a happy retirement is gone. And then all of a sudden it emerges that her son, young Micah, was the thief, her own flesh and blood. He nicked all her money and now, obviously, his conscience gets the better of him and he returns the money.

Now mum should have been outraged, she should have been angry at this terrible act of theft and deceit. Instead she says ‘may my son be blessed by the Lord’. Well of course it’s good to forgive someone quickly but only Freud would have a field day with that one.

And then to celebrate she does what? She goes and makes an idol cast of metal using two hundred pieces of silver which in itself was a huge amount of money. And she consecrates the silver idol to the Lord our God, have you heard of anything as crazy as that? I mean the first of the Ten Commandments:

You shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3)

The second of the Ten Commandments:

You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them and worship them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God punishing children for the inequity of their parents to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me. (Exodus 20:4)

How could they have taken something good, the silver and turn into something bad, the idol? The answer comes in the last verse of the passage that we read earlier: Because in those days there was no king of Israel, all the people did what was right in their own eyes.

And that right there is exactly what we do, we reject authority, we reject the authority of Gods Word and we do what’s right in our eyes. I had an elder in a Church tell me recently that he doesn’t read the Bible because he finds in boring. Really? That same elder has come to the conclusion that he thinks that sex outside marriage is fine.

Well of course he would because he’s rejected Gods Word and that’s exactly what we do when we take something good and we turn it into an object of sacrifice and worship which displaces our worship of God and the rule of God’s Word in our lives. It removes Jesus as the Lord of our lives. We ignore Gods Word and replace it with what seems to be right in our own eyes.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, idols are imposters. They rob us of Gods best. If Micah’s mother had truly wanted to bless God to celebrate the return of her life savings there’s a whole bunch of other things she could have done with two hundred pieces of silver. She could have given it to the poor, she could have taken it to the Levite’s to use in the service of God, hey she could have even thrown a party in honour of God and his goodness.

The one thing she couldn’t do to honour God was to build an idol which by the way then took up residence in Micah’s house to further lead him astray. And just as easy as it was for Micah and his mother to pervert the Word of God, that’s how easy it is for you and me when we reject His Word because we think we’re smarter, we think we’re wiser, we think that our ways are better than His ways.

I see it happen in people’s lives time and time again and I have to guard against it in my own life over and over again. Idolatry is singularly one of the most natural sins that we can commit and we do it at our peril.

Before the break, we met Micah and his mother who took something really good and turned it into something really bad. They took what was, in effect, a blessing from God and turned it into a curse. Something that you and I, if the truth be known, are incredibly adept at doing. Let’s just remind ourselves of their story:

There was a man in the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah. He said to his mother, ‘the eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you about which you uttered a curse and even spoke it in my hearing, that silver is in my possession, I took it but now I’m going to return it to you’. And his mother said, ‘May my son be blessed by the Lord.’

Then he returned the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother and his mother said, ‘I consecrate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son to make an idol of cast metal’. So when he returned the money to his mother his mother too...