The Bible with Nicky and Pippa Gumbel Youth

I remember, years ago, a football match that had been arranged involving twenty-two young boys (including one of my sons, aged eight at the time). A friend of mine, Andy, was going to referee. Unfortunately, by 2.30 pm he had not turned up. The boys could wait no longer.

I was press-ganged into being the substitute referee. But, I had no whistle, there were no markings for the boundaries of the pitch and I did not know the rules nearly as well as some of the boys.

The game soon descended into complete chaos. Some shouted that the ball was in. Others said that it was out. I wasn’t at all sure, so I let things run. Then the fouls started. Some cried, ‘Foul.’ Others said, ‘No foul.’ I didn’t know who was right. So I let them play on. Then people began to get hurt. By the time Andy arrived, there were three boys lying ‘injured’ on the ground and all the rest were shouting, mainly at me!

But the moment Andy arrived, he blew his whistle, arranged the teams, told them where the boundaries were and had them under complete control. The boys then enjoyed a great game of football.

Were the boys freer without the rules, or were they in fact less free? Without any effective authority, they could do exactly what they wanted. But people were confused and hurt. They much preferred it when the game was played according to the rules. Then they were free to enjoy the game. The rules of football are not designed to take away the fun of the game. They are designed to enable the game to be enjoyed to the full.

God’s ‘rules’ are his boundaries for life, given out of his love for us. His boundaries are not designed to restrict our freedom but rather to give us freedom. Like the rules of football, they do not stop the enjoyment of the game. Rather, they enable the game of life to be enjoyed to the full.

What does the future hold in store for you?

Futurologists predict what will happen in the future. For example, it has been predicted that some babies born today will live to the age of 150. Some of their predictions may come true. Others may not.

In 1962 Decca Recording Company rejected the Beatles. They said, ‘We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.’

In 1977 Ken Olson, Chairman of Digital Equipment Co., said, ‘There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.’

There are certain things about the future that we don’t know and that we are not supposed to know. However, there are other things that you can know about the future and that makes a real difference to your life now. Today we see three reasons why, if you put your trust in the Lord, you can be confident about your future.

Bishop Sandy Millar speaks of a time when he was walking along the beach and he noticed how the sand had been churned up by the footprints of those who had gone before him. The next morning the footprints were all wiped away by the sea. He sensed Jesus saying to him, ‘That is a picture of forgiveness.’

Or to use another analogy, forgiveness from Jesus Christ is like deleting the file of all the bad stuff in our lives.

Forgiveness is never easy. We all know how hard it is to forgive others. However, we often assume that forgiveness from God is almost automatic. On her deathbed, the Empress Catherine the Great of Russia (1729–1796), said, ‘I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. The good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.’

In the passages for today we see the very high cost and huge blessing of God’s forgiveness. As P.T. Forsyth (1848–1921) pointed out, first, you have to know the ‘despair of guilt’. Then you can appreciate ‘the breathless wonder of forgiveness’.

In the days of slavery in the United States, southern slaves were living under brutal conditions. They composed some deeply moving songs with haunting melodies, rich with emotion. These ‘spirituals’ were songs of hope and anticipation. They were the soul-cry of the slave longing for freedom.

They embraced Jesus as their Saviour and Lord and, in the midst of almost unbearable suffering, they experienced his grace, peace and hope for the future. From this relationship they were able to sing:

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

In the New Testament passage for today, we see the background to the extraordinary claim of the New Testament that the one ‘they crucified’ is in fact my Lord. God is described in the Old Testament as ‘The Lord’.

The original Hebrew word for ‘Lord’ (YHWH) had no vowels and was not vocalised. It was considered too sacred to pronounce. For that reason, when vowels were added to the original Hebrew texts they weren’t added to ‘the name’ (YHWH). There has been much debate in modern times as to what vowels should be used – it used to be thought it should be ‘Jehovah’, but most scholars now think ‘Yahweh’ is more accurate.

In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, this sacred name (YHWH) is translated Kyrios (Lord). It really is quite extraordinary, therefore, that the New Testament writers (who were Jewish monotheists) made this fundamental Christian affirmation that ‘Jesus is Lord’ (Kyrios) (Romans 10:9; 2 Corinthians 4:5; Acts 2:36) and that our Lord has been crucified for us.

The Nobel Prize winner and most important Russian literary artist of the second half of the twentieth century, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), who was imprisoned for eight years for criticising Stalin, wrote, ‘The line separating good and evil passes, not through states, nor through classes, nor through political parties... but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts.’

We are all created in the image of God. Human beings are capable of acts of great love, courage and heroism. Yet, not one of us (apart from Jesus) is without sin. Do you know what’s in your heart?

During one of the severe potato famines in Ireland, a number of families wrote letters to their landlord saying they had absolutely no money at all to pay their rent and begged to be let off all their debts. The Irish landlord was Canon Andrew Robert Fausset, born near Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Ireland, in 1821.

Canon Fausset wrote back to his tenants. He said it was quite impossible to let them off their debts. It would set a bad precedent. They had to pay every single penny.

‘But,’ he wrote, ‘I enclose something that might help you.’ In contrast to so many of the other landlords at the time, he sent a cheque for a very large sum of money – which far more than covered all their debts.

Their hearts must have leapt with joy when they saw the word ‘but’. ‘But’ is a powerful word when facing trouble, tests and temptations.

Tony Bullimore, aged fifty-six, was one of Britain’s most experienced transatlantic yachtsmen. He was feared dead after his sixty-foot yacht, Exide Challenger, capsized amid the icy vastness of the Southern Ocean, two months into the Vendée Globe round-the-world race.

The keel came off in fifty-foot waves. The boat went over. In his book, Saved, Bullimore described it as being like the Niagara Falls upside down. For four days he was entombed in a dark, noisy, wet and cold upside-down world with fifty-foot swells and a temperature hovering around freezing.

He suffered the discomfort of seasickness and drawing breath from a few feet of air between the water level and what was once the bottom of the boat. He was more than a thousand miles from the nearest land. As the air supply diminished he prayed that he would be rescued.

It was the Royal Australian Navy that came to the rescue. With modern satellite and surveillance technology the Australian government had pinpointed the progress of all the yachts and sent out a rescue team.

After four days, Bullimore heard banging on the side of his yacht. He said afterwards, ‘I can never thank the Australian Navy enough for what they have done because they have genuinely saved my life, there is no question.’ The first words when he emerged were, ‘Thank God, it is a miracle.’ He said, ‘I felt like I had been born all over again. I felt like a new man. I felt I had been brought to life again.’

As one journalist put it at the time, ‘A rescue that succeeds against all odds and every expectation is the best of all stories. It is pure and spontaneous joy.’ Supremely Jesus ‘gave himself for our sins to rescue us’ (Galatians 1:4a).

As I look back on my life, I can see many occasions when God has rescued me. As you face difficult situations you can trust that God will rescue you.

‘Big John’ had been living on the streets of London for almost ten years. Before that he had spent over nine years in prison. Most of his teeth were missing. He was addicted to methadone. His nickname on the streets of London was ‘Big John’ because he was a big guy who had once boxed for the Army.

‘Big John’ walked into our night shelter for the homeless at HTB. He came with his friend ‘Little John’. ‘Big John’ loved it and appreciated all the young people who cared for him. He started coming to church. He came on Alpha. He encountered Jesus. He was filled with the Holy Spirit on the Alpha Weekend. He came off the drugs. God turned his life right around – from despair to joy.

He started telling his friends on the streets about Jesus. Each week he would turn up at church with more friends. His nickname, on the streets, changed from ‘Big John’ to ‘John the Baptist’!

One of the guys he had met on the Alpha weekend was in the property business and found him accommodation. A dentist in our congregation volunteered to replace all his missing teeth. He reconciled with his mother and his daughter and built a relationship with his grandchildren, whom he had never met before.

Following Jesus is life-changing. He constantly turns people’s lives around. He turns despair into joy (Psalm 30:11).

Avoid smoking and using tobacco products

Be physically active every day

Eat a heart-healthy diet

Maintain a healthy weight

Manage your blood pressure

Control your total cholesterol

Keep your blood sugar healthy

According to the American Heart Association, these are the seven things that you should do to keep your physical heart healthy.

The human heart weighs less than a pound (450g). It beats 100,000 times a day and over 2.5 billion times in the average lifetime. Your system of blood vessels – arteries, veins and capillaries – is over 60,000 miles long – enough to go around the world more than twice.

This is not just an amazing spectacle; it is the ‘heart’ of human life. Without your heart your body would quickly cease to work. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the Western world.

Jesus spoke a great deal about the heart. The heart is a metaphor for the inner life. The word Jesus used means the seat of the physical, spiritual and mental life. The heart is the centre and the source of the whole inner being – thinking, feeling, and willing.

God is concerned, primarily, about your heart. He wants you to have a healthy heart. He said to Samuel, ‘The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart’ (1 Samuel 16:7).

Even more important than a healthy physical heart is the condition of your spiritual heart. In the passages for today we see five key ways to keep your spiritual heart healthy.

When I was at university I was taken to hear a talk entitled, ‘Where will you be in ten years’ time?’ It was intended to be an encouragement to us to persevere in our faith in spite of all the challenges that life would hold after university. All that I can remember is thinking at the time, ‘Ten years! That is a lifetime away.’ I could not even begin to imagine that far ahead.

Now, by contrast, I look back at my life and ten years ago seems like yesterday. Life has flown past. It seems to be accelerating at an alarming rate. I now understand the wisdom of those who encouraged us early on to take a long view.

We live in a society of instant gratification. Instant meals. Instant messaging. Instant cash. Instant loans. Instant fake tans. Instant fortunes won. There is a great danger of short-termism. The passages for today remind us that God is the ‘everlasting God’ (Isaiah 40:28). God views things through a wide-angled lens: he takes a long view and he wants you to enjoy a lifetime of his favour (Psalm 30:5).