Kemsing with Woodlands

Life can be tough. And we come to God, come to church, read the Bible, wanting to feel better. And often we do. But sometimes, God raises our hopes that things will get better, not just that we’ll feel better. We have to live in a world where there’s a mismatch. A mismatch between the promises of God and the realities of life. A mismatch between sermons that invite us to trust God and a life that feels like it’s falling apart anyway.

Daniel knew all about this. He was in captivity, in Babylon. And then he opened his Bible.

On Thursday, we had our monthly church prayer meeting.

We prayed for Christians in Egypt. Here’s a report from one website:

Coptic Christians in Egypt do not accept the condition of submission imposed on Christians in Islamic societies: they continue to build churches and even promote television networks to spread the Christian proclamation. This is why they must be attacked as "infidel fighters", and their churches must be blown up. This is, in short, the message of instigation.

Sometimes, the world appears to be utterly chaotic. Evil can appear unchecked. It can seem as if there’s no-one at the driving wheel, no-one at the controls. History is one big runaway train.

A sermon given on Remembrance Sunday 2017.

2017 has had us worried at times. We’ve watched the tensions between the United States and North Korea ratchet up. The fear that any actual war could turn nuclear is very sobering.

This is the most important service we hold each year – our quarterly combined services. It’s such a precious thing to come all together, to worship God as one church. There are good reasons why we don’t do it every week, but it’s vital that we come together, once in a while.

Indeed, the two PCCs have been going through the process of formally merging our two parishes. It is increasingly the case that our two churches work together in partnership, so we’re cementing that partnership for the generations to come. That’s a really good thing to be doing.

This is one of the most famous stories in the Bible. Daniel in the lions’ den.

It’s a story that fascinates, captures the imagination. Children love it, because it’s about lions, loins that roar. Adults love it, because it’s a story extremely well told, and a dramatic rescue miracle.

But it can be hard to relate to. It’s a good story; it’s entertaining. But how does a one-off, miraculous rescue of hero named Daniel speak to the lives of ordinary Christians like us?

They say that wise people learn from their mistakes. And really wise people learn from the mistakes of other people, without having to make them themselves.

Today, we come to one of the great cautionary tales in the Bible, Belshazzar’s banquet. It’s in the Bible so that we might learn from Belshazzar’s mistake. We’re going to look at what his mistake was, and what we need to learn if we are to avoid repeating it.

Personal testimony can be very powerful.

We’re motivated by the stories of brave men and women, who have struggled against the odds, and come through.

As Christians, we have Christian testimony. It’s good to hear Christian men and women tell stories of their God. As they’ve battled through illness, unemployment, addiction, personal sin, they can look back and testify how God helped them, sustained them, got them through.

Have you ever felt the pressure to compromise? To compromise your principals? Above all, to compromise your identity as a Christian, to compromise your relationship with God?

I’m sure many of us have. How do you resist? How do you remain faithful?

You’ve worked for your employer for years. Long hours. Turned away other offers. They call you in. From now on, they take priority over everything else in your life. It doesn’t matter what promises you’ve made to your family or your church; regularly drop everything for the company.

The more reliably you know the future, you more accurately you can plan in the present.

If you know what weather we’ll get here next summer, you can decide whether to save up to try and go abroad.

One decision many of us have taken is to go through life trusting the person of Jesus. We’ve done that, not knowing what tomorrow will bring. When we get to the future, will we be glad we did so? As we look back on now, will we see trusting the person of Jesus as a wise move, or not?