Author: John Johnstone

Sermon: Sunday, 25th June, 2023
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Ephesians 3:14-21

One of the privileges we have as a church family is that we can pray for one another. A useful tool for encouraging us to do this has been the church directory. We can work our way through the list of names and make sure we pray for everyone on a regular basis. Three times we have used our church facebook group to help us to do this in a disciplined way. Perhaps it is time to do it again. But when we pray for each other, what should we pray for? There might be specific needs or problems that we know about and it’s good to pray about those. I think it’s fair to say that most of our prayers for ourselves and for others are focused on external circumstances – for good health, success at work, that our children would excel at school, for safety in travel and for personal happiness. Should we pray for such things? Yes, we should. Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer and says that we should pray for our ‘daily bread’- our everyday needs. However, this ought not to be the focus of our prayers. It’s not the focus of the Lord’s Prayer. And so, it is good for us to return again and again to Paul’s prayer with the simple question – what does Paul pray for, and what can I learn from his prayers? That’s what we are going to do this morning. We will remind ourselves what kind of things we ought to pray for.

1. Paul prays for power

When he prays for others, he asks (verse 16) that the Father would strengthen the Ephesian Christians with ‘power through his Spirit in your inner being’. Do you pray that others in the church family might know God’s power? We should. Again and again, we find Paul making this request in his letters.

What kind of power is Paul praying for? Is it power to perform miracles? Is it power to become healthy and wealthy? No. He prays for God’s mighty power to be at work so that Christ might dwell in our hearts through faith. But that leads us to another question – is it not true that all Christians already have Christ dwelling in us? Yes, that is perfectly true. ‘And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.’ (Romans 8:9) So, what does this mean? It means that we are not praying for something new, but to experience more and more of Jesus in our lives. To experience more of his influence. We’re praying for a closer walk with Jesus.

The key word here is ‘dwell’ and this is a strong word. This word ‘dwell’ is not something temporary, like staying in a hotel or an air B&B for a few nights. This word means to take up permanent residence.

I think the best picture to help us understand this is to think of a young married couple buying run down, badly decorated home, which is barely fit to live in. The roof leaks and the garden is wild and there’s so much needing to be done it is overwhelming. However, bit by bit, over time, one room at a time, the house begins to take shape and the house slowly becomes a home. That’s a bit like what happens to us when we become a Christian. Jesus moves into our dilapidated hearts, and begins a renovation project which will last the whole of our lives. So, we pray, ‘Lord, I know these attitudes in my heart are wrong – please help me to get rid of them. Please replace the hatred with love. Please replace the selfishness with kindness. Please replace the outbursts of anger with self-control.’ And Jesus, the great builder and interior designer, works in our hearts, making us more like him.

Why do I need you to pray that I would have power? Because I am weak. Why do I need to pray for the Spirit to empower you? Because you are weak too. The truth is, we desperately need the power of Christ in order to cope with the everyday things of life. We need Jesus’ power to resist all the temptations which will come our way. If you depend on your own strength, it will be a disaster. We need Jesus’ power to help us raise our families. We need Jesus’ power to help us go to our work and to do our work for his glory, and so that we can share with those in need.

The Christian life is not an easy life. In fact, it’s a constant battle between living selfishly and living for God. ‘For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.’ (Romans 7:22-3) As we pray for one another, ask God to strengthen others with his power.

Here’s a challenge for us: is there a particular room in your house that you don’t want Jesus to touch? It might be at work – you are being a bit ruthless in your behaviour and pride yourself in that and don’t really want to change. Or perhaps there’s a room with a sinful habit you have, and you don’t want to give it up. Or perhaps it is your viewing habits. We need to ask Jesus to come into all of the rooms, and change all of them.

2. Paul prays for the perception of God’s love

Paul wants us to grasp the dimensions of God’s love for us. Often, I will pray that God will help me to love him more, and that is a good prayer. But here, Paul is asking that we would grasp the enormity of God’s love for us. It’s a love which doesn’t just have three dimensions but four: ‘And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.’ (Ephesians 3:17-18)

Notice that in verse 17 Paul says that Christians already know something of God’s great love for us. He says we are ‘rooted and grounded’ in that love. It is when we remember Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross in our place that we become most aware of that love. However, here’s the truth of the matter, I still don’t have an adequate appreciation of how much God loves me, and neither do you. And that’s exactly why we need to pray for the supernatural power of God to help us to grasp and lay hold of and rely on God’s love more.

My wife loves to swim in the sea and in lochs. I’m not so confident and so tend to just paddle around the edges. And I miss out. When it comes to God’s love, do you want to just paddle around the edges of it, only thinking about it a wee bit? Or do you want to swim in that love, making it your key thought every single day?

Human love can be a fragile thing. Sometimes people can even say the words to us, ‘I just don’t love you any more’. But God will never say that to his children. When did God’s love for us begin?

‘For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.’ (Ephesians 1:4)

‘For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8:38-39)

‘I have loved you with an everlasting love.’ (Jeremiah 31:3)

‘The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ (Galatians 2:20)

Paul also wants us to know that experiencing the love of God is not something which we just do in private. Verses 17 -18; ‘And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ…’

“It takes the whole people of God to understand the whole love of God.” (John Stott)

What does this mean? Well, we gather each Sunday to worship Jesus together, and there’s something powerful in that togetherness. We have fellowship together, sharing how God has been helping us and strengthening us, and as we hear about that, we too are strengthened. We need each other in order to grasp God’s love!

Verse 19: To be ‘filled to the measure of all the fullness of God’ means to become a mature Christian. Don’t we all want to become mature Christians? What’s the secret? The secret is to understand just how much God really loves us! It’s God’s love which energises us as Christians.

‘For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.’ (2 Corinthians 5:14) If you are compelled to live for God out of guilt, that will never bring fruitful results. If you are compelled by self-righteousness, convincing yourself that you are a good person, that won’t work either. Lasting fruit will only come from our lives if we are compelled by the love of Christ.

Let’s think of God’s love as rich, fertile soil, in which we will grow. That’s actually what Paul is saying to us here. He says (verse 17) that we are ‘rooted’ in this love. In other words, the love God has for us contains all the nutrients and goodness we need in order to flourish spiritually. Again, all the more reason why we need to grasp this love more than we do.

Let’s also think of God’s love as the foundation of our lives. Paul uses this image too in this passage. He says (verse 17) that we are ‘established’ or ‘grounded’ in God’s love for us. We all know what happens to buildings with weak foundations. When the storms come, they are liable to collapse. The same is true of us. When the storms of life come our way, the disappointments in relationships, the difficulties at work and with health, the persecution, the financial troubles, if we don’t have Jesus as our foundation we will collapse under the weight of these things. But if Christ’s love for us is our foundation, we will be able to withstand the storms, in his strength.

Friends, let’s keep on praying for one another as much as we can. And when we do so, add these specific requests to our prayers, that we would know God’s power at work within us, and that we might have the life-changing ability to better appreciate God’s love for us. This is the kind of soil that we need in our lives, so let’s ask for it.

Let’s end our time in this passage marvelling at the dimensions of God’s love. It is so broad that it encompasses men and women, rich and poor, and all the nationalities of the world. It is so long that it is a love which predates the existence of the earth, and will go on, unbroken, into eternity. It is so high, that it will take us up to Heaven one day. And it is so deep that Jesus was willing to stoop down and come into this earth to save the worst of sinners like us.

Sermon: Sunday, 18th June, 2023
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Exodus 14

This is one of the most dramatic and famous historical accounts in the Bible. Imagine being an Israelite family on that day. You’ve been slaves for the whole of your lives. It has been a living nightmare – you’ve been worked to the bone by a ruthless superpower who have been committing genocide against your people, drowning Israelite baby boys in the river Nile. Making bricks without straw in a country which despised you and who worshipped false gods. It’s been that way for hundreds of years. But in recent days, God has raised up a leader called Moses and performed supernatural acts of judgment against your Egyptian oppressors, bringing them to their knees through ten plagues. The last of the plagues resulted in the eldest male in every Egyptian household being killed. However, your house was safe, as the doorway was covered in the sacrificial blood of a lamb, just as the LORD has instructed. The only safe place was to be inside a home marked by this sacrificial blood. To your astonishment, the Egyptian rulers finally agree to let you go. Moses assures you that God will direct us to a country of our own. It’s been such an overwhelming time. Could it really be true? You’ve never felt this way before – brimming with excitement and best of all – free. God has brought you to Pi Hahiroth, with the sea in front and the desert behind. You head to sleep to dream of what our own country will be like.

However, the next day, after such an emotional high, your hopes come crashing down. Ominous sounds are heard and they’re getting closer and closer. That nauseous feeling returns to your stomach as you realise the Egyptian army is approaching. A country of our own? It was too good to be true. You’re trapped! The sea is ahead of you and our old enemies are behind you. It seems like you are going to be slaughtered. Your best hope is to be taken back to Egypt. There is no way of escape. That’s what’s happening here in Exodus 14. Pharaoh has changed his mind. In stubborn foolishness, he regrets letting his slave labour force go and pursues them with hundreds of chariots. Each one probably carried both an archer and a swordsman. These chariots were the weapons of mass destruction of the day – terrifying.

But what has this ancient battle got to do with us here in Kirkcaldy this morning? Before looking at some of the details, let’s just take a step back and try to see the big picture. This event teaching us of what it means to become a true Christian. The Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt is a crucial visual aid for us, teaching us what we must experience in our own hearts, if we ever want to make it to the promised land of Heaven.

In what ways are we like these Israelites? What is this visual aid teaching us? Where are we in the story? We’re like the Israelites because we too were slaves and under the power of an evil and merciless ruler. The Bible tells us that before we become Christians, we are slaves to sin. Jesus said, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.’ (John 8:34) If you’re not a Christian yet, you might well find that offensive. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Just as the Israelites were in Pharaoh’s iron grip, so we were in the grip of Satan. We lived to just please ourselves and with barely any thought of pleasing God. Doing what you want might seem like freedom, but it’s actually spiritual slavery, because God has made us and designed us as human beings to live in a relationship with him, following his ways and not our own. That’s how true freedom is found, through a living relationship with God.

Just as drug addicts are addicted to their drugs, or alcoholics to the bottle, so all human beings without Jesus, are addicted to living selfish lives, breaking God’s rules on a daily basis and failing to love God. Before we become Jesus’ followers we are slaves to sin. When we put our trust in Jesus and his death on the cross, we are set free. The Bible says, ‘But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.’ (Romans 6:17-18)

There’s another way we’re like the Israelites here. They were completely trapped with no way of escape. They could not save themselves. They were helpless. The sea was in front of them and the enemy soldiers behind them. Left to themselves, they were doomed. They needed God to rescue them, to save them. In the Bible, that’s exactly how God describes the situation of all human beings. We are slaves to sin, but we have no way of setting ourselves free. We have no way of escape. Left to ourselves, we will eventually die, and then have to appear before God and give an account for our lives. ‘And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment…’ (Hebrews 9:27) If you’re not yet a Christian here this morning, this is a visual aid just for you. You cannot rescue yourself spiritually any more than the Israelites could set themselves free. Your only hope is for God to open up a way of escape.

That brings us to the most beautiful part of the visual aid. When there was no way of escape, God made a way. He supernaturally sent a wind to gather up the waters of the Red Sea. He opens up a way for us to leave slavery behind once and for all, and to head towards the Promised Land. He deals with our enemies in a decisive blow, destroying them with his power. When there was no way, God makes a way, and leads his people to safety. This is the God who saves – the God of salvation. In the wonderful song of Moses in the next chapter we read: ‘The Lord is my strength and my defence; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he has hurled into the sea.’ Exodus 15:1-4) This is what lies at the heart of the Exodus. The LORD has become our salvation.

In this way, the Exodus story points us straight to Jesus dying on the cross. Because that’s when God sent his son Jesus to die on the cross that he opened up a way of escape for us. Before, there was no way for us to be forgiven by God and to enter Heaven when we die. We had no way of getting to Heaven, because we are just too dirty and sinful, and our huge debt of sin disqualifies us. But when we trust in Jesus, he pays off our spiritual debts completely, setting us free, and leading us to the Promised Land of Heaven. When there was no way of escaping God’s just judgment on our sins, God himself opened up a way, by coming to die for us. The cross is the real Exodus. Jesus death and resurrection is the definitive way God opened up a pathway back to himself.

How do we know this is true? How do we know this opening of the Red Sea is a picture pointing forward to a greater salvation to come when Jesus would die and rise again? In Luke’s Gospel, there’s the wonderful account of Jesus’ transfiguration. This is when Jesus was soon to die on the cross. But for a short time, his inner glory comes bursting out, and his face shines like the sun. Moses and Elijah appear from Heaven to talk with Jesus. And what are they talking about? ‘They spoke about his exodus, which he was about to bring to fulfilment at Jerusalem.’ (Luke 9:31) Jesus’ death was the real Exodus. The opening up of the Red Sea was just a ‘trailer’ about God saving his people, to whet our appetites. The main saving event in all of history was Jesus’ death.

What, then, does God want from us this morning? He wants us to stop relying on ourselves, and trust completely in him for forgiveness and salvation. In a word, he wants our faith. He wants us to believe that only he can open up a way to Heaven. Let’s think back to the Israelites on that day. In order to be saved, they would have had to step onto the seabed, in faith, believing that the Lord would keep holding back the waters on either side of them. Imagine taking that first step. Maybe your faith is weak, but you trust that God has done this, and you begin to walk across the sea. It’s God who has saved you. It is 100% God. He has opened up the path, and he just wants you to walk through.

What does God want from you this morning? He wants your faith. He wants you to trust that Jesus is the only hope you have for your sins to be taken away and blotted out. ‘By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.’ (Hebrews 11:9) God doesn’t have a sea he wants you to pass through. But he still wants your faith, your belief in his way to be saved. ‘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.’ (John 3:16)

The Israelites had to put their trust in God that day. The question is, will you do the same? Will you say in your heart right now, ‘Yes I know I don’t deserve to go to Heaven, but Jesus died on the cross in my place, and that’s the path I’m stepping out onto.’ If you do that, you will be set free. Believe today that only God can rescue you, and trust the way of escape he has made for us.

What else can we learn form this passage? There are three short lessons.

1. We see how hard the human heart is even in the face of evidence.

Here, we are thinking of Pharaoh in particular. He’s not just seen one outstanding miracle from God but ten. Time and time again, God revealed his power and authority to Pharaoh. God is the true King. And how does Pharaoh respond? He keeps on rebelling. He has all the evidence, but persists in rebelling against God. It seemed like the Israelites were the slaves and Pharaoh was free, but actually it was the other way round; Pharaoh’s heart is a slave to rebellion and sin against the true God. Many people are like that today. They have evidence of Jesus’ life, miracles, death and the greatest sign of all – his resurrection from death. Yet, it makes no difference. ‘The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.’ (1 Corinthians 2:14) Were it not for God’s Spirit, we’d be just like Pharaoh. We’d see the evidence of his power, and continue rebelling. How hard the human heart is. We cannot save ourselves.

2. We see how Christians, at times, can wish they weren’t Christians any more.

Perhaps that sounds a shocking thing to say. God had shown his faithfulness to Israel by bringing them of Egypt with signs and wonders and by protecting them from the angel of death. God redeemed them, with lambs dying instead of them, so the angel of death would pass over their homes. But now there’s a new challenge, and it’s like they have spiritual amnesia. It’s as if they think, ‘God can’t handle this situation’. We’re trapped. How do they respond to this new threat? ‘They said to Moses, ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!’ (Exodus 14:11-12) They respond with biting sarcasm, fear, and unbelief. They turn on Moses and do not trust in the Lord. They wish they were slaves once again in Egypt.

Yet, we all can be like that. God has brought situations into my life and I’ve doubted whether God can handle this new situation, even though he’s been faithful to me for my entire life. I might even think, it’d be easier if I wasn’t a Christian and then I could have an easy life, blend in, and not have to tell people about all this serious stuff of sin and salvation. Then I wouldn’t have to come to church and be committed with my time and money and resources. I could just chill out and enjoy life. I could indulge my pet sins. For a time, our old lives seem preferable. Israel’s desire to go back to Egypt is something we might face too. We need to pray that God would keep us in a place of faith, rather than a place of fear. God’s grace here is also astounding. Even when his people wobble so much, he remains faithful to us.

3. We see how God brings us to a place of weakness so that we fully rely on him.

‘Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. They are to encamp by the sea, directly opposite Baal Zephon.’ (Exodus 14:1-2) Notice that it is God who deliberately leads the Israelites to a place where they are hemmed in by the sea and the desert, knowing full well that the Egyptians will trap them on the other side. Why does God do this? Because it’s when we understand our own helplessness that we begin to trust in God and his salvation, and he alone gets the credit and the glory he deserves.

Impossible situations in our lives are occasions for God to show his grace and love and power in our lives. We think we can’t go on, but he provides for us. This is exactly what Paul speaks about in his second letter to the Corinthians. ‘We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.’ (2 Corinthians 1:8-9) Are there situations in your life just now which seem to be hopeless? Are you beyond your own resources? Don’t be surprised if God breaks in and reveals his glory in that situation, perhaps not right now, but in the future. God specialises in bringing us to a place where we have to rely on him. When things seem impossible and beyond us, keep on trusting. Remember what Jesus said to Jairus when his daughter had already died. Could Jesus handle this impossible situation? He says to Jairus: ‘Keep on believing.’

As a church, we must not rely on ourselves. That’s why the prayer meeting is so important. And if we lack Sunday School teachers, crèche helpers, finance, conversions, and face all kinds of pressures from the apathetic world we live in, we must fully rely on God’s power. We want to see a church planted in Leven, but we want God to get all the glory, and that will only happen if we rely on him at each step. And in our lives at home and in work, take your impossible situations and bring them to God in prayer, knowing that he loves to display his glory in our lives. ‘The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen.’ (Exodus 14:18)

We don’t face troubles on our own. ‘The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.’ (Exodus 14:14)

Sermon: Sunday, 4th June, 2023
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Psalm 130

The Christian life is not an easy one. I hope our church is never a place where we all pretend to be fine when we are not. Everyone in our church has significant areas of brokenness and difficulty. Of course, there are times of great joy in the life of faith, but there are also times when we feel overwhelmed, like we cannot go on. It is during such dark times that I am so thankful to the Lord for Psalms like Psalm 130. Here, we understand that most Christians go through such dark times; we are not alone. But it also provides us with first-hand experience about how we can find the light again, and that is so important.

In verse 1, the Psalmist is crying from ‘the depths’. He feels like a drowning man, plunging hopelessly into the ocean. Have you been there recently? Perhaps you have. If not, you probably will be before too long. It’s a miserable place, where we wonder if God will even hear our prayers. We feel hopeless. We feel as if there is no way out.

1. Conviction

Why is the Psalmist in such a place of spiritual darkness? Is it because of the death of a loved one? Is it because of long-term sickness? No. We see from verse 3 that the Psalmist has begun to see the blackness of his own heart, and to see how offensive his thoughts and actions must be to God. We call this conviction of sin. And so the steep-sided pit which the writer is in is a pit of shame and guilt and sorrow. We aren’t told what the specific sins are. But I’m sure most of us can relate to this experience, when we realise how disgusting and shameful our thoughts and behaviours really are in God’s eyes. This is one of the seven penitential Psalms, where we find someone not just feeling sorrow for themselves because they have God into a moral mess in their lives, but more than that, they have deep sorrow because they know their indefensible behaviour is ugly in the sight of God, and deserves to be punished.

Again, please notice that this is the experience of a believer, a Christian. It reminds me of the words Jonah expresses, having rebelled against the clear instructions of God, and having been cast into the sea and swallowed by a great fish. He says: ‘The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.’   (Jonah 2:5-7.

What about our own lives? Could it be that we don’t go into ‘the depths’ as much as we ought to? That might sound controversial. But it might be that we’ve become so desensitised to the sin in our own hearts, and that we’ve lost sight of the holiness of God, whose eyes are too pure to behold iniquity, and so we are ignorant of our own sinfulness. Experiencing such spiritual sorrow can be a good thing, if it leads us to repentance and faith.

‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.’   (Matthew 5:4)

‘Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.’   (2 Corinthians 7:10)

We need to slow down in life, and give ourselves time alone with God, and think through the sins in our lives. Then we might taste something of this sorrow for sin.

2. Confession

When we go through the dark depths of conviction of sin, we need to follow the Psalmist’s example here, and confess our sin to God. I love the fact that in verse 2 he cries out to God for mercy. Please don’t overlook this – it’s very important. This cry for mercy informs us that he knows he does not deserve God’s forgiveness. He knows he cannot earn God’s forgiveness. All he can do is cast himself on the character and promises of God.

It has been said that ‘God is always the most offended party when we sin’ and that is true. Even if we lie to someone else, ultimately it is the law of God we are breaking: do not bear false testimony. Then in verse 3, we have the powerful image of God keeping a record of all our wrongdoings in a book. It would need to be a very thick book, with many pages. It would be a thick book for all of us here. The Psalmist acknowledges that if God gave us what we deserve, if he gave us strict justice, then we would be done for. We would have no hope: ‘If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?’   (Psalm 130:3)

Then we come to some of the most wonderful truths in all of the Bible: ‘But with you there is forgiveness’.   (Psalm 130:4) This is what we celebrate as Christians. We must never take this truth for granted. Some people have a really casual attitude to their sin, and to forgiveness. They think: ‘Of course God will forgive me, that’s his job’. That’s what God does, isn’t it? Well, in a sense, but he only forgives those who earnestly turn from their sins, and throw themselves on the mercy of God, trusting in Jesus for their salvation. It took the death of Jesus on the cross to make the forgiveness of sins possible, so it is something we should never take lightly or trivialise.

“Free, full and sovereign pardon is in the hand of the great King. It is his right to give it, and he delights to exercise it.” (C H Spurgeon)

‘The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him…’   (Daniel 9:9)

How did the Psalmist know that there is forgiveness with God? I think the main teaching on it stemmed from the sacrifices offered at the temple. There was always the idea that through the shedding of blood, through the death of a substitute, there could be forgiveness. This underlined just how costly God’s forgiveness really is. At the end of the day, all sin must be paid for and accounted for.

We read in Leviticus: ‘He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and take its blood behind the curtain and do with it as he did with the bull’s blood: He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it. In this way he will make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been…’   (Leviticus 16:15)

If you have been in the depths, and you lay hold of God’s forgiveness, it is the sweetest experience. Martin Luther once had a dream where Satan brought a scroll full of Luther’s sins. Luther said: ‘Is that all you have’? And Satan then brought two more scrolls, full of Luther’s sins. Luther said to Satan: ‘Write across each scroll, the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin’.

Sometimes, when we wrong other people, they never forgive us and never forget what we have done, even when we sincerely repent and ask for forgiveness. Not so with God who says: