There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death. Because of our sinful nature and limited perspective, we cannot trust our own understanding to lead us correctly. The only truly practical and safe path is to seek God’s guidance, relying on the Holy Spirit whom Jesus gives as ‘living water’ to lead, comfort, and empower us.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] In the morning service we began looking at a common assumption in church life of how people divide themselves and say I’m a more practically minded person and others say I’m trying to be spiritual. And often there is this putting forward that there is two opposites of practical and spiritual. My idea that I was trying to get across in the morning and for which I had so many proverbs, Bible verses that I only got through a few of them and that’s why we’re continuing tonight. But my idea was that that’s actually a wrong assumption of what are opposites, being spiritual or being practical. In actual fact if practical is one side the true opposite of it might be theoretical. Theoretical or practical.

[00:00:58] Practical because you work out what it should be by what works and theoretical because you have a theory that establishes that’s what you should try and do. Actually it’s not spiritual or practical because the truth of the matter is when you look at the scriptures you discover that the way to be really practical is actually by being spiritual. And though they may word a slightly different understanding they’re not opposites. Spiritual you can be and practical too. I had some illustrations of that We won’t go into those again. But we began to go through verses in the book of Proverbs and you would have been forgiven to think that the book of Proverbs was giving us the practicality of how to walk with God. Advice, do this, don’t do that. But you eventually realise that it’s not that idea of practical

[00:01:59] that is not theoretical because it’s based on the very central assertion of the scriptures that there is a God and he’s in charge and he’s the one who is the person who alone actually knows all the factors. If ever you wanted to have a reason why you should listen to God and seek for his leading, it is because we never know the whole story. We never know all the factors. What’s more, we don’t know all the future. God alone is that person. and because of what he knows that we don’t know and because he knows far more the totality of it than we usually do. We think we know it all. We pride ourselves because we’ve come to some learnings. A little bit of the truth is what we know. But God alone is the one and that’s the reason why the scriptures tell us that we need guidance and in Proverbs 11, 14 it says

[00:03:04] where there is no guidance a people falls. By the way the scenario is being here put in the plural. It’s not only a truth that it’s so for individual people. We all individually need to know how to walk with God and let him lead. That’s not a simple question. It’s not a matter that’s done easily for sure. But the fact that we need God to be guiding us sometimes by him telling us what to not do or what to do and sometimes by his hand bringing about something that we never intended to be the outcome. I’m not going to tell you all my personal examples but they’re filled with things where I thought I was doing one thing and God brought another to happen. Where there is no guidance a people falls is in the plural. So this is true not only for individuals but also for groups such as a church.

[00:04:03] And the fact that we ought not to rely upon just our one person’s opinion and we’ll stick to it no matter what the others think. An abundance of counsellors there is safety. It’s also true for a nation that we need to have a nation and there is a very strong biblical argument for being some sort of republic. But that doesn’t take away and if you compare the British system with the American the American is more a republic trust in there being a republic and the British system is not to discount the people and the parliament that they have but they also have an old-fashioned method of the country being governed, which is a monarchy. The understanding of the monarchy was not just for all of its pageantry and there being royal families, you must be smarter than the rest. They’re not, we know.

[00:05:04] But it is that there’s somebody who can be in touch with God and keep the ship being steered by spiritual principles is what monarchies are meant to do. I won’t make any more political comment. But to say that there’s a truth in the need for an abundance of counsellors, in our case as Christians, we recognise that we not only make the decisions ourselves as to how God might be leading us, but we open that up to the input of other people in the body of Christ. One of the things that happens when people become Christians is that they are eventually led of God to listen in to advice from people maybe who’ve been Christians a bit longer. One of the features that I used to notice for people who were church attenders were not really converted to Christ. They knew that they believed in God, they were theists,

[00:06:03] but they’d never had an experience of coming to know that closeness of relationship through which you got guidance from God. And if I went and visited some of the people, this is in Sydney, the church that I had, if I went to visit some who often came to church, some of them surprised me by saying, one person actually said, if you keep visiting me I’m going to stop coming. That’s a bit of a reverse of the normal, what you hear. But what they’re saying is that we’ll come on our own terms, but we’re not going to somehow get hooked up in a way that, you know, we’re going to get spoken to and involved and drawn in more than we want. But this verse says, in abundance of counsellors there is safety. And it’s talking about if you don’t have a lot of input

[00:06:54] from whatever scene it is that you’re enabling God to do it, I want to tell you where there is no guidance, the people fall. Oh boy, do you see that in our Australian politics at the moment. Well, this is showing that there’s a good rationale for believing in getting guidance for there being what we call revelation when God speaks. God speaks and it’s revelatory and something that helps us find our way in life. And the book of Proverbs has quite a number of things to say that bring to the surface the rationale of this. I want to give you another verse, which is a very famous verse made by one of those old Fact and Faith films. Put your hand up if you’ve watched a Fact and Faith film. I just want to see if there’s anyone left. I belong to the older age group

[00:07:50] and everybody would have put their hand up 20 years ago because they were science films but with the facts of science that backed up the existence of God. And anyway, there was a fact and faith film that carried the storyline of a bomber in World War II and it was an allied bomber and set it up to find its way back to an airport that was in Africa. But what they did not know was that they had a tailwind and they were calculating how long it should take them. Their compass ceased to work but they said we know how long it should take we’ll fly that time and then look around for the airport. Well they flew the time but being ignorant of the fact that they had a tailwind all the way they went quite a large amount of miles past their home base. So when they looked around, they found nothing

[00:08:48] and eventually ran into fuel and the plane crashed in the middle of nowhere. Some people survived and they tried to walk their way out but they probably went in the wrong direction. And when eventually research was done, they found the crashed plane. They found a number of survivors who eventually died without water. And there’s a verse in Proverbs, this one, it says, there is a way that seems right to a man. Now, it’s not talking about man as not woman. It’s talking about to humans. There is a way that seems right to us in our humanity, but the end of it is the way to death. And what makes the way that a lot of people think they’ve found is simply that it’s not based on real guidance from God. How can you find guidance from God? Actually, the scriptures is the best way.

[00:09:46] And the scriptures speak about the fact that sometimes God steps in to our consciousness and leads us. He does it in the first instance by conscience and by there being conviction of rights and wrongs. He does it by their coming to us at different periods of our life as we consider an awareness that we are not really right with God. It’s called conviction of sin. In religious revivals it’s something that happens very much to a lot of people at once in a district where they all suddenly get overcome. It’s the Holy Spirit who comes on places but also comes on people and brings to them a conviction that they’re offside from the Almighty. This is not just a case of picking up a few individuals who have robbed a few banks or done a few murders.

[00:10:38] It’s a case for all of us for the scriptures speak and say for all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. The glory of God is the standard. We not only fall a little bit short. We are sinners from our history. It’s the reason why the original story of the fall of humanity is being kicked out of the garden. We’ve been kicked out of the place of paradise. We’ve been forfeited a closeness with God because all of us have the consequences of the fall in the human nature that will find its way to sin still. There’s quite an old doctrine that the Christian church has propagated. It’s called original sin. A lot of people have got funny ideas. It’s picking an apple or something. Original sin is the effect of the original fall that our forebears underwent that made the rest of us sinners.

[00:11:38] And so when we turn up, we’re doing something wrong. It isn’t like a new plant that’s come in our garden for the roots go right back to the original sin. And we sin because we’re already sinners. And every time we sin, we prove that we’re sinners. That’s why another verse says, For all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. And because of that naturalness, in a bad sense of the word natural, but because of that insidious presence of sin in us, we are liable to trust our own opinions, believe we’re doing good. When we’re so ignorant and so in need of guidance, where there’s no guidance, things fail. And these people in the plane just said, Well, we know what we’re doing and flew on. But they missed the airport they should have landed at because of the tail when they didn’t know about.

[00:12:42] How many people are there in our society who don’t know the truth? They have got a rebellion against God that came from the fall of the human race. No exceptions. There may be people who try hard to be good and people who don’t bother. There’s people who get corrupted more than others. That doesn’t change the fact that every one of us has got a heart that really is not right with God. The Bible says, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Who really knows the truth of their own human heart? And how easy it is for us to rationalise what we do and to somehow look at ourselves as not being a really bad case of a sinner? There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. The Old Translation read, There is a way that seems right to a man,

[00:13:36] but the ends thereof are the ways of death. this is a proverb and a proverb that gives us a part of the rationale although proverbs are very practical things of how to live best and do it in a way that will work nonetheless they’re proverbs that are based on the truth that we need guidance trust in the Lord with all your heart lean not to your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths That’s a really mighty verse in the scriptures. The book of Psalms and the book of Proverbs, some of the other wisdom books that are there in the middle of the Old Testament, they’re talking to us about the need for guidance. Not that God promises always to have, you know, a telegraph from heaven to tell you the exact details. He doesn’t work like that.

[00:14:29] Sometimes guidance isn’t so much that he tells you exactly what to do, but rather when you commit your way to him, he sees to it that you get to do the right thing, even though you didn’t hear a voice from behind the clouds or you didn’t get some other way of guidance. Sometimes God does give those special types of guidance, but he doesn’t have to. What he guarantees by that verse is that if you put your trust in him, acknowledge him, pray to him, he sees to it eventually you get to the right place. Sometimes you think this way and he gets you the other way. how many times I could I’m not going to tell you all my stories this juncture because but that’s happened to me I’ve been amazed at how he got me where he wanted me because he’s a God who wants to guide us just as well because we could take all

[00:15:21] but we made our own choices we make a wreck well I better go to some other verses we’ve got a few more to clean up I went searching for the Sunday morning service and got so many different verses to use I didn’t know how to what to do so that’s why we’re doing this tonight but we’ll look at another verse and this one will be one that is very good to keep in mind when you’re understanding about the religions the denominations of the world as they try to work out what way we should govern our church in Proverbs 16 16 first of all it says how much better to get wisdom than gold to get understanding than to be than to be chosen oh understanding is to be chosen rather than silver and well what it’s doing here is putting this the chasing of of knowledge and understanding is something that will take you to the truth far better

[00:16:33] and take you to a life that’s worth living than if you simply make the materialistic or the greedy idea of being as rich as you can how much better to get wisdom than gold Now this is not making a case against having a gold watch or being a person that recognises we have an economic life to live. It says how much better. It’s not saying chase wisdom and don’t chase gold. It’s saying how much better to get wisdom than gold or to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver. And there’s quite a truth in that because sometimes the choices that we make in life are really couched in terms of how high a priority you put on learning and how less a priority you might put on a career that will make you rich or make you successful in some other less than wise way.

[00:17:38] It’s better to spend your time than in the morning I told the illustration of the fellow I met overseas who divided his life into three sets of time. When I met him he was older than me and he was going to spend all the years up until the end of his 30s I think getting education which is a rather long haul don’t you think? Then he said the next set of time I’m going to serve the Lord with the knowledge that I’ve got. And he had those three and the final one was when he has to settle down to dying but that’s the fellow who understood this verse. How much better to get wisdom than gold. To get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver. So if you have a choice and the choice is to go into some training that might keep you from being terribly rich

[00:18:32] this verse would tell you you’ve chosen the better way. And sometimes the finding of God’s guidance comes by us getting now. You know that the book of Proverbs indeed the wisdom literature of the Old Testament has definitions of what is wisdom. It says that the beginning of wisdom is the knowledge of the Lord. It says that that choice of God above other things is what is wise. It also has definitions of what is foolish and foolish is usually in terms of the things that make everything ruined in life. So be foolish is to be someone who doesn’t care for God’s principles who doesn’t seek to enlist him in helping you. The eyes of the Lord, this is one of my favourite verses rove to and fro throughout all the earth seeking to prove himself mighty on behalf of those who are faithful to him or trust in him.

[00:19:30] God wants to help us and he’s watching to see. As a matter of fact it’s very interesting if you chase down some of the words that are used about how for a church to be governed you discover something that’s all the way down through church history there have been people who haven’t quite latched on to the truth. What does it mean for there to be a God who’s looking after us it also means that he oversees and God wants to set his church with people who on his behalf oversee what’s happening. That word overseer coming across into different languages where it ends up in the word bishop did you know that? A bishop is an overseer but there was a man the Anglican church gives a pretty good picture of what I’m now here talking about because there was a time back in life when the raw argument between the Protestants

[00:20:30] and the Catholics was waging and in the case of the Catholics there were those who had people who were leaders in the role of what we call overseers but because of the corruption that was involved and the fact that they very often became a human thing of power as to who were the people put in charge there was a reaction and the Protestants who had a reason for being Protestants in terms of believing the scriptures of how you get to be right with God by faith and not by works who believed in the Reformation that Martin Luther led as to the authority of the Bible as more important than that of the Pope the Protestants believed that you should rather listen to what God says and indeed God is in the business of overseeing his own church where you see the word overseer used in the Old Testament

[00:21:28] you have to track this down in a couple of languages so Hebrew and Greek and whatever but when you look back to what the word overseer means it’s really interesting there’s a verse in the Greek version of Deuteronomy 11.12 that says I didn’t give you this one so don’t worry Deuteronomy 11.12 The land which the Lord your God cares for the eyes of the Lord your God are always on it it’s actually a picture of the person who most is an overseer is God he watches that comes about by there being examples of human people who close to God oversaw different scenes and one of them is in Esther this I did give to you Esther 2 and verse 11 and it’s about the scene of the young girl who was caught up to be in the beauty contest as to who’d be the next queen what an unfortunate happening and she was chosen and then was placed in into this position

[00:22:45] and she had a I think a relative might be grandfather not sure exactly uncle anyway called Mordecai and every day Mordecai walked in front of the court of the harem where Esther had been placed to learn how Esther was and was happening and what was happening to her and in the original languages it’s giving the same idea that Mordecai made himself an overseer every day walking in front of the court of the harem to learn how Esther was getting on. That’s actually one of the words that is used in all of that. It comes across in the jumps of languages to our Greek word that means an overseer or you could say an elder because they’re talked about as old men usually or you could say a person who’s a bishop. There was actually in the Anglican church set up which came about as a bit of a result of this clash between the people

[00:23:55] who were Protestant and believed in the truthfulness of the story of Jesus’ death and the cross being how we get forgiven not just your good works doing it. I’m probably simplifying the clash between the Protestants and the Catholics but back in those days of the beginning of the Protestants you get the Puritans coming on the scene and they tried for a while to represent that more conservative Protestant way of believing that you get right with God not by your works but by what Jesus did on the cross and by your trust in him and you believe that you’re justified by what Jesus did. That’s the heart of what it is to be a Protestant. Well anyway, that was what led to the set-up of the Church of England. The Church of England had quite a lot of political and even physical wars

[00:24:50] that happened between Catholics and Protestants to get to what is the present scene in the governorship of the Church of England and all the Commonwealth nations that have kept the King or Queen, whoever it is, as the head of state of those nations. We, Australia, happen to be one. But the idea of this is that there is a way that the governorship is done from God and so it’s trusting in God to lead the nation. Now, I won’t go into how that works out. This is not a politics message. But just to bring to you that there was a time when the Anglicans were being set up to have such a way. The one man spotted that their attempt wasn’t succeeding but he set up some laws as to how they should go and his name, I think, was Hooker. I wrote it down. This particular fellow was a person who was named Richard Hooker

[00:25:59] and Richard Hooker’s laws were set for the church to be able to balance the impact of scripture and of tradition and of reason. And that worked fine except if you didn’t understand the impact of human sin upon what people do when they get in power and what people in their heads do when they think their reasoning can work it all out. And one of the things that wasn’t fully understood enough was that there’s not an area of human beings that wasn’t affected by the fall, by sin. There isn’t any way that you can safeguard any human set up that’s always going to come up on the balance of things like Hooker’s laws proposed would happen. But I think the Puritans ended up finding that out that somehow or other there was a not a fly I guess it was a fly in the ointment that it didn’t necessarily work with the Anglican church.

[00:27:11] As a matter of fact the idea of Hooker’s laws was that you get this balance between those inputs. The Anglican church sort of recognises the need for the balance because how Hooker talk was in terms of there being a middle way between those things to be balanced. And amongst Anglicans there are those who propose that you don’t go highly like the lower Anglican idea when you say low church they’re talking about the effect of the Protestant Reformation that came in little boats across across the ocean to England and had an influence and they were the conservatives who were people who listened to Martin Luther and those around him that came after him for the Protestant Reformation. And those who rejected against that because in their balance of things they wanted to give a greater slice to human reason and they also wanted to allow

[00:28:13] a lot more of the corruption of when you have bishops who got to be very powerful that they also got to be quite corrupt. And so the high church of the Church of England is one that has always struggled with a reaction against people who think they’re so much in power that it’s been a danger of corruption. And that is why there are some amongst Anglicans who say we’re middle church. You might be wondering how did I know all this? Well in Sydney where I was a pastor of a church John Howell was in my area. He used to come to some of our church functions. Politically he explained himself to me that he was actually on the basis of middle church but he meant politically. And I think it is the case of his party that they needed to broaden themselves enough so they could get enough votes to get into government and then they get some of their conservative

[00:29:10] ideas passed. But middle church as used as a term for politics I can see a pretty good rationale for taking that approach practically but as far as the church is concerned there’s no way you can survive a middle church way where you say we’ll have some conservatives here and we’ll have some real liberal ones who go along with the world and all of its suggestions there those two don’t mix and that is indeed the trouble of a lot of the denominations another interesting fact of history is the Presbyterians came out of that because they believed in the bishop brick if you want to call it that the set of elders as being people far more scriptural and far more sticking to the Bible and gave to them a rule so that they didn’t have to have people in the middle trying to say you’ve got to listen to this other side

[00:30:07] They were proposing all sorts of wild things. Anyway, I won’t keep going about the church government except for the fact that there is a danger in not giving due understanding, credence, to the sinfulness of the human heart. And it’s because of the sinfulness of the human heart that we need to recognize the place of God’s guidance and the need to get close to God and let his Holy Spirit fill us to really get the guidance through. For what happens is that if you become a Christian but you walk at distance from the Lord, you’ll end up compromising too much. You want to know who did that? Peter. When he thought he didn’t, you know, he gave too much credit to his ability to be strong. But when Jesus got arrested, Peter really compromised and he denied the Lord. You probably know the story.

[00:31:15] Jesus forgave him that. And Jesus called him to be someone who stuck to the Scriptures. When you’re converted, he told Peter, strengthen the brethren. When you’re turned around from doing and thinking the wrong thing, you help the others. And he did. And you can read the letters of Peter and see how he sticks to God’s way. And he hasn’t got a compromise involved at all anymore. Well, guidance is what we need. And we need it because we’re sinful. And if we walk away from the Lord, we can get tricked by the world. And we can live by its standards with rationalisations. We won’t be giving enough credit to the easiness with which our sinful human nature, which we haven’t finally done away with. You’ve been forgiven totally. That’s what the atonement is all about. You get forgiven by Jesus.

[00:32:11] But you need to let the Holy Spirit control you to help you counteract the draw of sin still to do the wrong thing. Thank goodness when at last the Lord comes again and we all go to glory, we won’t have that pull to sin anymore. We’ll have our salvation made complete and we’ll be with Jesus in glory without there being the pressure of having a sinful part of us that is always backsliding. But we need the Holy Spirit. And we need the Holy Spirit that he might guide us and also that he might give us the courage and the strength to follow his guidance and to look to him to help us. There is no temptation taken you but such as is common to man but God is faithful who will with a temptation also make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it. It’s in Corinthians somewhere but it’s a verse

[00:33:08] that talks about God will help you in the stresses of when those pulls come not to follow closely to Jesus not to obey his word we need guidance and we need the Holy Spirit to help us to actually find the way that God wants for us to go. Now in the morning I had it finished with a verse from John chapter 4 we’ll put that one up I’m jumping to John 4 and verse 10 oh you’re very quick it’s up there already Jesus answered her now who the her is the woman at the well she was amazed that Jesus as a Jew wanted to ask her for a drink of water normally the Jews would disdain from bothering talk to a Gentile woman like Jesus did but his answer to her is really interesting if you knew the gift of God this is where I finish this morning if you knew

[00:34:05] the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you give me a drink you would have asked of him or asked him and he would have given you living water living water being the symbol and the gospel of John in particular but often in the scriptures of the spirit and his working that famous verse in John 7 37 where Jesus stood up and cried of any person thirst let him come to me and drink he who believes in me as the scripture has said out of his innermost heart shall flow rivers of living water and the offer that Jesus offers us brings to us is that he will give us the Holy Spirit and it is by the Holy Spirit coming to help us that’s why he’s called the advocate it’s why he sometimes this one word in the Greek is translated as advocate another time translated

[00:35:05] as counselor he’s the one that literally is the word in the Greek it means to be someone called alongside and when you have the Holy Spirit living in your life he helps you in those times of weakness he helps you in those times you do not know he’s the living water now what’s so relevant in this verse is that she’s speaking about water and getting a drink and whatever but he’s speaking about something spiritual because what Jesus offers is in the spiritual realm. In the book of Romans and all of the wisdom literature that you find in the scriptures if you read it carefully is not a contrast of doing things in practical ways that we can do with our human knowledge. It’s not denying the place of our natural gifts or our use of human skills, but it’s talking about

[00:36:03] the fact we need God. And we need God in particular by the power of the Holy Spirit if we’re going to be able to make the distance as a Christian. There’s no such thing as making the distance without there being help from God to get you out of the slough of despair or the temptations that come to poor Pilgrim walking on Pilgrim’s Progress towards the Celestial City. We need the Holy Spirit, but Jesus said if you knew who was talking to you, he’s saying about the drink, the water, but you would ask him, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. And the way to go as a Christian is always to recognise the need to walk after the Spirit. Read the book of Galatians and it talks about us having a fleshly side that would drag us down, but we need the spiritual side.

[00:37:02] And it talks about walking after the Spirit and walking after the Spirit means being led by the Spirit. And being led by the Spirit isn’t like, you know, you get telegrams every day from heaven and they come with a sweet smell and you just obey them literally. The way the Spirit leads is by his presence, sometimes just that quiet conviction, sometimes that sense of hope he puts in you when you think you’re going to give up. And then some peace comes over you. The peace of God, the Bible promises, will keep your heart. What does it mean for the peace of God to keep your heart? It is the work of the Holy Spirit who brings to you the assurance of his presence within and his ability to have the power to help you to do it. The Apostle Paul talked about his life as a Christian

[00:37:56] as one that he did with all the power. It wasn’t that he did nothing. It was that he didn’t work at it. It was though that he did with all the energy that God would inspire within him or the Spirit would give him. That’s the key to the Christian life, the presence of the Holy Spirit. And to call on him at times when you feel defeated, Call on the Holy Spirit. Go to the Father if you want to have your prayer to heaven. In the Bible, for example, prayer is largely from earth to heaven. It’s also a prayer that prays to the Father is the thing to do. It’s not that you can’t say Jesus or not that you can’t call on the Holy Spirit. They also are a part of the Godhead. And so you could say, Holy Spirit, I’m not doing too well. Can you please step in? There are times when you need to say that to him

[00:38:50] when you’ve been a bit of a failure, it’s your fault anyway, but he still is gracious. You can call on him to come when you’ve been the failure. Or you can recognise a circumstance where the weapons against you by society or by whatever’s being asked of you or by the size of temptations are bigger than you think you can manage. Call on the Holy Spirit. Ask him. He’s not called the comforter for nothing, though his methods of comforting isn’t only there, there, you’re fine, happy boy, wipe your brow. No, I wish you could see that painting that was done about Oliver Cromwell when he had a big pitchfork and he was poking in the backside of reluctant soldiers to go over the hill, as it were, into the battle. In the caption at the bottom it says, Oliver Cromwell comforts his servants or soldiers,

[00:39:47] comforts his soldiers. And the comforter is the one who will prod you into battle as well as one who will comfort you when you might have failed. He’s a counsellor. He’s a comforter. He’s the one that draws alongside and he’s given that depiction by Jesus and it’s true. And if you get in some tight spot, call on the Holy Spirit. Call on him. It’s just equally a right thing to do is to call on Jesus. I like, if you get in a tight spot, you call on Jesus. I had a friend who came to Christ at a young age. He used to want to follow me around my preaching stations and he came from a home where there was a real difficult father, I think a demon-possessed man. He had a difficult past. He himself had been in jail and all of that several times. And we went on a camp and in the camp time

[00:40:43] he went for walking outside in the dark. But in the darkness, some evil thing came. He told me about this one stage and he called Jesus and the evil presence disappeared. It’s not easy being a Christian, but you’ve got ones who love you, a Jesus who died for you, a death on the cross that’s sufficient for the forgiveness of all of your sins. And his Holy Spirit who will come if you call him. And when you need guidance, don’t just assume you can work it out practically. The most practical thing you can do is to recognise that Christian life is lived by spirituality. Let’s have prayer. Heavenly Father, we give you thanks. Lord, that we don’t have to suffer the result of of our sinfulness, original sin popping its head up again. We don’t have to be defeated by the evil one who would like to cause us to fail.

[00:41:51] Lord, we don’t have to give in to the pressure of the world. Oh Lord, teach us. Teach us how to call on you. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. That’s David in the Old Testament understanding. Understanding that God was on his side. I shall not want. He leads you beside the still waters. I love that part where he leads you. There’s something very beautiful when you watch sheep, when the shepherd knows how to take them down by the little stream. He leads you by the still waters. They don’t like the heavy rushing rivers, but they love the still waters. He restores my soul. When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, get rid of the wild dogs, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me

[00:43:01] in the presence of mine enemies. Surely, says the psalmist, the Lord will be with him for the rest of his life. Lord, give us that confidence, we pray, that we might know that you are on our side and we can call on you to help us. Help us to seek your guidance, whether you do it by somehow arranging things that we didn’t get a choice, or whether you do it because you give us a quiet conviction, or whether you do it by friends that come alongside and help us to understand. Lord, we give ourselves to your guidance. My prayer is that we will be a people who tonight will go out from here and be able to know the Lord is my shepherd. What does a shepherd do? He cares for the sheep. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. And when we know it’s the Lord who is the shepherd, I guess we too say, I shall not want.

[00:44:04] Lord, if there’s someone here who doesn’t really know for certain that Jesus is their shepherd, that they are his sheep, would you prick them about that and help them to do something about it and search out how to be certain that they belong to Christ and he belongs to them? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.