They say that old habits die-hard. It’s true and it’s even truer of bad habits, but have you noticed how difficult it is to get rid of bad habits? Some (me included) would say it’s virtually impossible, so what bad habits do you need to get rid of out of your life?

The Power to Change

We’ve all been there. There is this one bad habit that we just can’t seem to get rid of. There’s this one … no, let me start again. Let’s call a spade a spade. There is this one sin that we just can’t seem to get rid of. That’s better – sin. That’s the right word. I know that some find that word just a tad confronting, maybe even anachronistic; a bit old-fashioned, irrelevant in this day and age, and I understand that.

If we focus on today, our lives here and now, it can seem just a bit irrelevant; but if we zoom out, and look at our lives as a whole, we can see how our sin (the bad things we’ve done) has left a trail of destruction in our lives and in the lives of others. Zoom out a bit further and look at the whole world, and you can see how sin – the sin of men and women and even young folk – is tearing families and societies and nations apart.

Now twist the lens some more and zoom out even further, and look at the whole of the history of humanity, and the thing that’s wrecked a great world and a great plan has been what? The sin of humanity: The hatred; the selfishness; the anger; the wars; the exploitation; the genocide …

Think about it. God gave us a perfectly good world in which to live. I mean, He’s given us an amazing world: An amazing universe in which to live. He’s created each one of us so incredibly: The way our bodies function; the incredible talents and gifts and potential that each one of us has, and yet somehow, humankind has been on a course of self-destruction. Whether down in our personal lives or in the geoclinal events that are sweeping the globe today, the destructive power of sin is as plain as the nose on my face and yours. You just can’t miss it. Its effects are totally devastating

And yet we kid ourselves that somehow, our personal little brand of sin, whatever that may happen to be, doesn’t really matter. I’m not such a bad person; I mean, really I’m not. Okay, I get this wrong and I get that wrong, but I’m not that bad. Everybody’s entitled to one or two bad habits, aren’t they?

Well … you see how easy it is to rationalise our own personal sin when the truth is that the cumulative effect of my sin and yours and everyone else’s is what sets us on a course to destruction. Do you see how easy it is to downgrade our sin, and write it off as just a bad habit?

So deep down, we know that sin is sin, even if we don’t’ like to admit it to ourselves, and what’s more, we use the sin of others as our excuse to escalate our sin and get revenge. The problem is (call it sin; call it a bad habit; it’s the same thing) that try as we might, we can’t seem to shake it. It’s entrenched. It’s deep-graven in our flesh. We know the difference between right and wrong; we know what’s right to do; it’s just that we can’t seem to do it. Have you noticed?

The reason for that is that it was always meant to be like that. The reason for that is that God wants to have a relationship with us and the only way, the only way that that’s going to happen, is through what He does, and what He has in point of fact already done for us, not through what we do for ourselves.

Have a listen to this. It was written by the apostle Paul a couple of thousand years ago. He was writing about this self-same problem that you and I have – the problem that even though we know what’s right, we can’t seem to do it. Romans 7:21-23:

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what’s good, evil lies close at hand. You see, I delight in the law of God in my innermost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

That’s rather a good question. Who indeed? Well our first response, yours and mine, is to get a handle on our sin. When we finally do and decide for ourselves, ‘You know what? I just have to do better. I just have to stop sinning. I have to overcome this one bad habit that’s totally ruining my life: My anger; my gossip; my jealousy; my smoking or my overeating or’ … whatever other addiction happens to be plaguing us.

It’s just that it never works. In fact, that’s exactly what Paul goes on to say just a few verses later in Romans 8:3-4:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, couldn’t do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, He’s actually condemned sin in the flesh so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

So let’s just focus on the first part of that for a moment. God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. In other words the law, a bunch of rules, is completely and utterly powerless to help us to change and get rid of this rubbish, particularly when those rules in effect are weakened by our own sinfulness.

So many people, so many people, believe with all their hearts in Jesus, and yet because they themselves can’t seem to overcome their sin, they live with a constant sense of guilt and condemnation before God. Well, if you know anyone like that, I have some good news for you today.

Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! For there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death, because God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, couldn’t do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, He condemned sin in the flesh so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. (Romans 7:25-8:4)

What Paul’s saying there is, the answer is Jesus. The answer is grace, but the grace of God in Jesus Christ is something that you and I struggle to get our minds around because grace is completely unnatural to us.

And that’s why today we’re kicking off a series of messages that I’ve called ‘The Grace Transformation’. The only thing that is ever going to change us, the only thing that is ever going to transform our lives by gradually getting rid of the sin which is so destructive, is the amazing grace of God in Jesus Christ.

“Amazing Grace” is one of my favourite hymns, but every time I sing it, I wonder to myself whether I really grasp what grace is all about. Do you? Do you have a real handle on the amazing grace that God afforded to you by the death of Jesus on that cross to pay for your sins?

I think I’m going to spend the rest of eternity and then some trying to wrap my heart around the grace of God, but as we begin to do that, what we discover is that the transformation and the freedom that we’ve been trying to make happen in our own lives (and failing miserably) just starts to happen of its own accord, as the Holy Spirit makes grace real in our lives.

You have been saved by nothing more and nothing less than the incredible grace of God; the unmerited favour of God; the sovereign decision of God to spare your life and to give you a new start and a new eternity by heaping the punishment that you so richly deserve onto Jesus on that cross. Romans 11:6:

And if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

So just as we spend some time together in this series over the coming weeks, my prayer for you is that the grace transformation that God intends for you will become a reality in your life as you come to know the truth, and that truth sets you free.

But Now

There’s a beautiful old hymn called Would you be Free from Your Burden of Sin. Now I’m not going to sing it for you; I would never do that to you, but here are the lyrics of the first verse and the chorus, just as a bit of a reminder.

Would you be free from the burden of sin?
There’s power in the blood, power in the blood
Would you o’er evil a victory win? There’s wonderful power in the blood
There is power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb
There is power, power, wonder-working power in the precious blood of the Lamb

A great old hymn, one of my favourites. I wonder how often we think about the burden of sin. The incredibly heavy load that it causes us to carry. The word sin as it’s used in the New Testament simply means, ‘to miss the mark’ or as we might put it ‘miss the point’. And the whole point of life isn’t that we should carry around a heavy burden that drains us emotionally and physically and spiritually but that we should live free as a bird to enjoy our lives.

That was Gods original plan, that was the plan that Adam and Eve were living out in their idyllic existence in the Garden of Eden until they sinned. And from that moment forward they had to live out a terrible burden of suffering and sickness, the murder of one son by the other and on it went.

Those are the consequences of sin. They were back then and they still are today and Lewis E Jones when he wrote that beautiful old hymn back in 1899, asked exactly the right question, would you be free from your burden of sin? Well … would you? The sin that dragged you down, the sin that holds you back.

Then listen to me, the only place where you’ll find that freedom is not in your good works, not in trying harder but in the wonder-working power that can only be found in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for you on that cross – the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

And it’s that grace that we’re going to chat about for a few minutes together today and the best way I know to do that is to take you back to a time when the nation of Israel was suffering under the burden of their sin.

It was a terrible time. God had brought them into the Promised Land from their slavery in Egypt. He had set every good thing before them, the land flowing literally with milk and honey just as He does for you and me. And just like you and me these people rejected God. They went their own way, they worshipped their idols, they sinned against Him and so following warning after warning He sent His judgement upon them, He gave them what they deserved.

He allowed the Babylonians sometimes also called the Chaldeans, the largest and greatest world power of that day, to completely destroy Jerusalem and the Temple and kill many and take the rest into captivity. It was a terrible time, those left were taken into slavery in Babylon where they lived out their burden of sin and the sin of their forefathers for seventy years, seven decades.

Imagine what that would be like, being torn from your home, seeing everything around you destroyed and being taken from your freedom into captivity as a slave. Sounds rather dramatic but I imagine if it happened to you it would be devastating. And in a very real sense the effects of our sin are devastating. Homes, marriages, families are being torn apart every day through sin. Lives are being destroyed every day through sin, it’s all around us, look up and see and it’s in us too. Our lives are devastated when we allow sin to reign.

What’s the answer? Who will save us from this body of sin and death? Hard work won’t, trying harder won’t, only grace, God’s grace. And at some point something has to give, at some point something has to change ’cause nothing else works. And at some point something did change for the Israelites who are captives there in Babylon. God came along and changed it. Have a listen, Isaiah chapter 43, just verse 1.

‘But now’ thus says the Lord, ‘He who created you O Jacob, who formed you O Israel; do not fear for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name and you are mine’.

We’re going to spend quite a bit of time in this chapter of the Book of Isaiah over the coming days but for now I want to focus with you on just two words. Here they are ‘but now’. I call it a grace interruption. Life was going along so miserably for those Israelites, those captives as it is for anyone who’s carrying the burden of their sin.

And then all of a sudden along comes God with an interruption, a complete discontinuity of grace, His free unmerited favour that He lavishes on those whom He loves, His people, those who believe in Jesus His Son who died for their sins and my prayer for you today is that you’re going to have a grace interruption just like those Israelites had almost two and a half thousand years ago.

They had no prospect of a future, all they saw was more slavery tomorrow and the next day and for the rest of their lives. But along comes God through His Prophet Isaiah and says. “But now …”

Now despite everything that’s gone before things are going to change. Now despite the fact that all you can see is a bleak future and more suffering at the hand of the sin that’s holding you captive. Now I am going to break into your world, says God, with my grace, I’m going to turn everything on its head, my free unmerited favour is going to flow into your life because I love you, but now …

That same thing that He did for His people, breaking into their slavery to sin and setting them free, is what God wants to do in your life right now, today.

‘But now’ thus says the Lord who created you. ‘Do not fear for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name and you are mine.’ (Isaiah 43:1)

With all my heart I believe that that’s the word the Lord has for you today, NOW. The grace of God, the favour of God in Jesus Christ has come to set you free.

You are Redeemed

Anybody who has ever come to the conclusion that they’ve made such a mess of their lives that nobody or nothing could ever, ever, ever make things better, anybody who’s ever been in that place needs to know something, something important … something, the only thing that could ever make things better.

One of the things that Christians do is that they throw around words, words that seem important to them but are meaningless to the rest of us. Worse than meaningless actually, it makes them sound almost like a cult, the blood of the Lamb, sin, salvation, communion, redemption. It’s a pretty long list of in-house jargon that for quite a long time kind of made the goodness of God, the amazing love of God, His grace in Jesus, inaccessible to me, it turned me off religion, to tell you the truth I remain turned off from religion and jargon and rituals. None of those things in and of themselves have ever done anything much or meant anything much to me.

And I guess that the sad thing about all of that jargon is that by using it without explaining it we kind of obscure the power and the wonder of the meaning that lies behind it.The word that I particularly want to focus on right now, not because I want to do some irrelevant word study but because it really matters, is redemption.

What does it mean to be redeemed? Who cares? Does it matter? Is it relevant to our lives today? Well you make up your own mind.

Yesterday on the program, we were talking about a bad time in the life of Israel, a time when through their rebellion against God they found themselves living out the consequences of their sin as slaves and captives to the Babylonians. It was a terrible time. It lasted for seventy years which is almost three generations.

But one day God decided that enough was enough. They’d had enough pain, enough suffering, the direct consequences of their rebellion – their sin, it’s what always happens but enough was enough, it was time to act because God so loved His people beyond measure. Isaiah chapter 43 beginning at verse 1.

But now thus says the Lord who created you O Jacob, he who formed you O Israel, do not fear for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name and you are mine.

See there it is, that word ‘redeem‘, did you pick it up? He goes on to say:

When you pass through the waters I will be with you and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire you shall not be burned and the flames shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour. I give Egypt as a ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. (Isaiah 43: 2-3)

So what does it mean to be redeemed in the context of what God is saying there to His people? Well in that context, remember as far as the Israelites were concerned all was lost, they were third generation slaves in captivity with no prospects of freedom. Jerusalem, their capital, lay in ruins. The Temple where the presence of God supposedly dwelt lay in ruins, all was lost, their lives were lost, their future was lost.

But now God comes along and says, ‘Do not fear for I have redeemed you.’

I have brought you back from the abyss. I have lifted you out of this pit, I have restored your future to you. I have saved you from a lifetime of living out the consequences of your rebellion against me, aka your sin. I have removed the burden of your sin from you.

And notice with me if you will the tense of the verb ‘redeemed‘. It’s not future tense. God’s not saying ‘I will redeem you one day’. It’s not even present tense, ‘I am redeeming you today’. It is in fact past tense, it’s a completed act, it’s a done deal, ‘for I have redeemed you’ says the Lord.

Now just imagine what they, the Israelites, felt when they heard the great Prophet Isaiah declare that to them. ‘But now’, says the Lord, do not fear for I have redeemed you’. They would have been confused. Hang on a minute, right now I’m still a slave, right now the Babylonians are still the dominant global super power on the planet, nothing’s changed.

And yet this isn’t just anyone saying this, this is after all the Prophet Isaiah. What do I do with this? How do I process this? The Word of the Lord and the evidence of my circumstances are in total conflict and opposition to one another so what do I do now? Which one do I believe, Gods Word or my circumstances?

That is pretty much the dilemma that we all find ourselves in pretty often. It looks like the burden of our sin will never leave us. The consequences will never go away and yet the truth is that in Jesus, just as the Israelites were redeemed through God’s Word and in subsequent chapters in the Book of Isaiah you actually see how all that plays itself out. Just as they were redeemed so have you and I have already been redeemed, already plucked from the pit of our despair by the grace of God.

The free, unmerited, unlimited favour of God who doesn’t want us to live out the punishment and the consequences that we so richly deserve but who wants to set us free to be all that we can be for His glory.

Romans chapter 5 beginning at verse 6:

For while we were still weak at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed rarely will anyone die for a righteous person though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Much more surely then, now that we’ve been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his light. But more than that we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:6-11)

It’s a done deal! It’s past tense. Whatever it is that’s going on in your life at the moment, whatever exile and captivity and slavery that your rebellion against God has been brought upon you, I want you to hear this very good news. The very Word of God for you today is this, ‘Do not be afraid for I have redeemed you .I have called you by name and you are mine.’

Where there’s a conflict of evidence between your circumstances and God’s Word, God’s Word wins. God’s Word always wins.

I wonder if you could think of the most precious person in your life, just picture their face. If that person, the one that means more to you than anyone else, if that person were in trouble, what would you do, how would you react?

You Are Precious

We all have someone or we’ve had someone in our lives who is more precious than anyone else. It’s probably a wife or a husband or a child or a friend or a mentor, everyone’s circumstances are different but of course if I asked you to picture the face of that person it would come to you in an instant, right? And if I asked you, how do you feel in your heart about that person then I’m sure that you’d tell me exactly how you feel.

It could be that you love that precious person with all your heart. It could be that … that precious person has passed away and you miss them with all your heart. Or perhaps that precious person betrayed you and is with someone else now and all you feel is a sense of pain and loss and devastation when you think of him or her.

Whatever your circumstance what I know is that … that precious person elicits a strong emotional response in your heart. That’s because they are or were precious to you and dear to you. Now you may not always have treated them the way you should have. That’s almost certainly true because none of us is perfect, I get that, you get that. But precious is precious.

So imagine for a moment the response that God has to someone who’s precious to Him. Imagine what’s going on in God’s heart for someone who is precious to Him. It would completely dwarf anything that you and I could ever think or feel because the love that God has is infinitely greater than the love that you and I can ever have.

Over the last few days on the program, we’ve spent some time examining grace. In fact, more specifically the grace intervention of God into the life of Israel when the nation as a whole was in a desperate place. A quick recap, through Moses and then Joshua God had brought Israel out of four and a half centuries of slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and with honey, the land that He had promised to Abraham centuries before.

Battle by battle they had to take it and He blessed them in the land and yet the nation of Israel rebelled against God. Despite all the good things that He’d given them they worshipped false gods so after many warnings through the Prophets of old God punished them. He allowed the Babylonians, the world’s super power of the day, to invade, destroy Jerusalem, destroy the Temple and take the people into slavery, into captivity back to Babylon where they laboured under the burden of their sin, generation after generation for seventy years.

But there came a point where God said, enough is enough. Let’s pick up the story, Isaiah chapter 43, verses 1 to 4.

‘But now,’ thus says the Lord, ‘he who created you O Jacob, he who formed you O Israel, do not fear for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you, when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume you for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour’.

‘I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you because you are precious in my sight and honoured and I love you. I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life’.

Now we’ve spent a bit of time lately on the program talking about the first three verses there. This is a major grace intervention, a bleak dark hopeless time for Israel. All they can pretty much remember is seventy years they’ve spent in slavery. All they can see is a future, a lifetime of slavery and exile. The consequences, as they’ve now come to understand, of their rebellion and sin against God.

Sin always has consequences and yet seemingly out of nowhere, out of the blue, God shows up and does His ‘but now’ intervention. He completely turns the tables and tells Israel that He’s already redeemed them which incidentally is what He’s already done for thee and me even though our circumstances, like theirs, won’t always immediately reflect the fact.

You have to ask yourself, ‘Why?’ You see they deserve the punishment of God, they were getting their just deserts and then this, why did He do this? Well in that passage I’ve just read to you He tells us why, did you pick it up? It was towards the end, verse 4 of Isaiah chapter 43. He says:

Because you are precious in my sight and honoured and I love you.

That’s why. Because when God looks at His people they are precious in His sight. Listen to me, God loves all people. But those who belong to Him, those in this day and age who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour are special, they’re different, why? Because they’re precious in His sight and honoured and He loves them, that’s why.

Do you believe in Jesus? Have you accepted Jesus as your Saviour? The one who redeems you from the pit, the one who plucks you from the precipice and gives you a new life, have you? If the answer is yes know that He has a plan and a future for you because you are precious in His sight and honoured and He loves you.

Each one of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, each one of us deserves the exile from God and the slavery to sin that we, by our own hand, have bought down upon our lives, each one of us. And yet in Jesus, through Jesus, because of Jesus the grace of God has instead fallen on our lives.

Change doesn’t happen in our lives by working harder. We don’t get rid of the sin in our lives by trying harder because nothing that you or I can do can set us free from the exile and slavery occasioned by our sin anymore than the Israelites could have fought the world’s super power Babylon to set themselves free from the slavery occasioned by their sin.

Change happens, transformation begins, freedom starts to take hold in our lives when we take grasp of the free, unmerited favour of God, the grace that we have in Jesus Christ. When we become so thankful for what Jesus has done for us on that cross the Holy Spirit changes our lives. It’s a grace transformation, not hard labour. And it was always meant to be.

To be perfectly honest with you, I love my job because I get to share this good news with you each and every day here on the program and it is good news, right? The sin that’s ruining your life at the moment, Jesus came to take it away. Listen to this Scripture, Romans chapter 6 verse 14.

For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under the law but under grace.

What did God say there through Paul the Apostle in His Word? That sin no longer has any dominion over you. It no longer has any power or influence over you. Why? Because no longer are you called to hard labour in trying to keep a bunch of rules, the guilt of failure is gone because you are now no longer under a law but under grace. Hard labour doesn’t work. It never has and never will.

So if you’re into hard labour, if you’re into trying to be a better person, if you’re on some self-help kick at the moment, stop it, it will always end up in failure. The only thing that makes a difference is Jesus. The freedom you’re looking for from the burden of your sin is found in Christ and Christ alone.

Come to me, (He said) all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11: 28-30)

Would you be free from your burden of sin? Then the answer, the only answer is Jesus.

Do Not Fear

Before the break we were chatting about the fact that anybody who belongs to God, anybody who believes in Jesus is incredibly precious in His sight. When you think about it, that is incredibly special. I mean, I care about people, really I do, but my own children, well, they’re different. They are special because they are precious to me. It makes sense doesn’t it?

God is very much the same only on a much bigger scale, much more powerful, much more loving scale. He created every person on this planet. He loves them all and His heart is that none should perish but all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). But as we saw there in the Book of Isaiah chapter 43, He will do amazing things for His people – His own, those who are precious in His sight. Why? Because they’re precious.

I want to take another quick look at this passage together because our preciousness to God is something that really needs to sink in, Isaiah 43: 1-8.

‘But now’ thus says the Lord, ‘Who created you O Jacob, he who formed you O Israel, do not fear for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name and you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume you for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.’

‘I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you because you are precious in my sight and honoured and I love you. I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.’

Those powerful promises come to Israel at that fearful time when they’ve been in exile as slaves in Babylon for almost seventy years. They come to Israel at a time that must have seemed to be to them a hopeless time.

As I said at the top of the program, when disasters befall our lives as they invariably do, there’s this terrible time between when the bad stuff happens and when God sets things right. It’s a fearful time. I remember a time when my finances were so incredibly tight, some years back and it didn’t seem to matter how much I prayed God was mute and inactive or so it seemed. I was close the brink of financial disaster.

It was a fearful time for me, especially as a man because we men have this instinct of protecting our families and providing for them. Looking back on it, I can see exactly what God was doing. If I was going to be useful to Him as His servant I needed to discover His faithfulness first hand, my faith in Him needed to grow. But back then I didn’t have the luxury of that lesson. Back then, it wasn’t some academic exercise about growing my faith, it was a fearful time.

Fear is something that we’ve talked quite a bit about on the program over the last few months and I keep circling back to it not because I have some fixation with fear but because it’s important to overcome fear. And so often, as I open my Bible, I hear God saying to me, ‘Listen up Berni, don’t be afraid. There’s no need to be afraid.’ It appears so often in Scripture, it’s remarkable. Maybe it’s because God knows that fear is something that’s eating away at a lot of people.

Did you notice how that passage from Isaiah that we just read, began? ‘Do not fear for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you’re mine’.

It’s a great theory there God but what does that actually mean? Well He goes on to say this, ‘So when you pass through waters I’ll be with you and through rivers they won’t overwhelm you. When you walk through fire you won’t be burned and the flames shall not consume you.’

So often we’re looking for God to save us from the rivers and the fire whereas all along He’s looking to save us in the midst of them. That’s a huge insight. Let me say that again. We are always looking for God to take the rivers and the fire away but God is looking to meet us in those places to save us in the middle of them. ‘God get me out of this river. God get me out of this fire. God what the blazes are you doing?’

And His answer is, ‘Child, don’t be afraid, you won’t drown in the river. You won’t burn in the fire’. God’s favour and protection are with us in the middle of those terrible fearful times, that’s why He says do not be afraid. And He says it again in this same chapter in a different way. Let’s have another listen, Isaiah 43: 5-7.

Do not fear for I am with you, I will bring your offspring from the east and from the west and I will gather you. I will say to the north ‘give them up’ and to the south ‘don’t withhold, bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the ends of the earth’. Everyone who is called by my name whom I created for my glory, whom I have formed and made.

What is God saying to His people, to you and to me in those few verses? Don’t be afraid. Why? Because He’s with us and just at the right time He will bring salvation through His power and His might and His compassion and His Word.

If the Israelites had a choice, they certainly wouldn’t have put themselves in Babylon as slaves in captivity for seventy years. But God had a purpose in letting that happen, His purpose was to bring His people to their senses and back to Him. That’s what often happens to us in times of trial. In the good times we just go on our merry way, a way that all too often leads in the opposite direction to the one that God wants us to head in, a direction that leads away from God rather than towards Him.

And this God in whose sight you and I are so incredibly precious, like a good father, allows us to suffer the consequences of our sin. Or sometimes it’s not so much that we’re doing the wrong thing but rather that He wants to take us deeper with Him, to grow our faith in Him, to bless us with His faithfulness.

And so we find ourselves in those dark and fearful places and when we do what God says to us, what He’s saying here through His Scripture is this, ‘Don’t be afraid, I am with you. I’ve got your back. I’ve got it covered. I have redeemed you.’ And you’ll see that when the time is right. And once that gets through into our hearts guess what? The fear just goes away.

How many times have you in your life been in a dark and fearful place and how many times has God come through just at the right time to save you from all the terrible things that in your fear you imagined was going to happen to you? Exactly. God always comes through.

Now His salvation, whatever that’s been in your life, His way of plucking you out of that mess isn’t always the ideal outcome that you’d imagined in your mind, it’s not always the ‘live happily ever after‘ ending. No, more often it’s much better than that because in our suffering God is interested in achieving something much more important than a fairy tale ending.

Here’s how James put it almost fifteen hundred years after Isaiah, James 1: 2-4.

My brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of any kind consider it nothing but pure joy because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete and lacking in nothing.

And as you and I look back on the trials that we’ve faced and the way that God’s helped us out of them, we know don’t we how powerfully He’s worked in our hearts and in our lives to transform us into who we are today. You know what they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and He does that by His grace because we’re precious in His sight.

He’s transforming us day by day back into our original image, the very image of God. He’s setting us free from all the hang-ups that hang us up because we’re precious in His sight.

Me? I call it The Grace Transformation. So whatever you do don’t be afraid – He’s got you covered.

God’s Transformative Power

Grace is the free, unmerited favour of God in our lives. It is something that we don’t deserve; it’s born out of His heart of incredible love for you and me. That’s why He sent Jesus, and that’s why the Bible says that:

It’s by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not a result of your works, so that no-one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

But that’s not just a forensic statement of fact about something that happened in the past, the day you gave your life to Jesus, it’s a statement about your life today and tomorrow. It’s not the end, it’s just the beginning.

I know that there are people listening today, maybe you are one of them, who are crying out to be saved by the grace of God. Would you be free from the burden of your sin? Would you? Come on … do it … pray with me now:

Father God, the sin in my life is killing me; it’s robbing me of my todays, its robbing me of my future; and something has to give. Lord, today I’ve heard about Jesus, the free unmerited favour of God through His death on the cross that is available to me. Lord, I want that, I want your grace; I want to accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour. I need saving from my sin; I need that ‘but now’ grace intervention in my life. Please do that for me. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Come on, if you prayed that prayer from your heart with me today, then be assured of this: God has heard you, He has come to set you free, Jesus will start to make a powerful difference in your life from this day forward, there is nothing surer than that.

And whatever you do, don’t just leave it there, get on with it, start praying, start believing, start living your life for Jesus, start reading God’s Word, the Bible. And I know you will be utterly amazed at the invention of grace – that totally unmerited, unlimited favour of God upon your life – because God has the power to transform your life, to radically change your life for good, for His glory.

Have a listen again to what His Word says about you and your life and the transformative power of His grace in you. 2 Corinthians 3: 17 and 18:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

What God is saying is that we don’t change our lives by trying harder or working harder, by complying with the letter of the law. Because that sort of glory just fades away, that’s the point that the apostle Paul makes in the few verses before the ones we just read.

Now our lives are transformed as we gaze upon God, as we draw close to God, as the Holy Spirit brings freedom into our hearts and that freedom works its way into our lives.

God’s presence in us through Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is what transforms our lives, so if you have been trying to live a better life, if you have been trying harder and harder and harder and harder and failing, just stop and listen.

Instead, draw close to Jesus and allow Him to transform you from one degree of glory to another. So that as each day goes by, the glory of the Lord will shine through you into this dark, hurting world, into the hearts of people whose lives are being lived out in darkness.

This comes from the Lord, the Holy Spirit, not from working harder – it’s a gift of grace. Just as you and I have been saved from our sin from eternal damnation through Jesus, by His grace, so our lives are being transformed from glory to glory, a day at a time, through Jesus, by His grace.

Jesus is the power of transformation, Jesus is the one who will transform you and your life, Jesus is the one who came to give you a completely new life, one that will last for ever and ever and ever. Amen.

Jesus – He is the answer! So please don’t spend one more day trying harder to be a better person, or to get yourself out of this mess that you find yourself in. Go to Jesus and experience His power of transformation – The Grace Transformation.

You know that old saying that when you’re too close to something, you can’t see the wood for the trees? Well the closer you are to a problem, the harder it is to see the solution. It’s a fact of life, so when we are too close, when we’re blinded by the complexity of a situation, how do we get that sense of perspective that we so desperately need?

Sight for the Blind

It’s funny how you and I can be blind to something which is patently obvious to someone else. A lot of that has to do with proximity. I was sitting with a young man the other day who has a great business. He’s a well-known speaker and author and travels all over the world and he’s an absolutely delightful human being, not full of himself in his own sense of self-importance which is pretty rare among media personalities.

Anyhow, he and I catch up every once in a little while to chat and before our last meeting I was thinking a bit about his business and something glaring jumped out at me – an opportunity that he was missing to really take his enterprise, which he works very hard at, to the next level.

So we chatted over lunch and he became more and more excited and then I could see it in his eyes, he had one of those, ‘now why didn’t I think of that’ moments. It’s so obvious, how come I didn’t come up with that? Can I tell you I’ve had many of those moments in my life from my early days in IT consulting when our managing director would fly in and review a project that I was working on and he would see this and see that and this and the other thing that I’d missed, why didn’t I think of that? I remember thinking that to myself, it’s so obvious.

And these days in this ministry of Christianityworks of which I’m the CEO. The ministry that’s responsible for this radio program that you’re listening to and lots of other things to boot. Even though I’m many years older and hopefully just a bit wiser than I was as a young consultant I know that there are still things that I miss.

And so what I’ve done is to surround myself with some smart, insightful, external advisors as well as some great board members who see things differently because they’re not involved in the day-to-day running of the ministry. It’s through their input that so many of the amazing things that God’s done through Christianityworks have in fact happened. And it’s also through their input and advice that we’ve managed to avoid a few mistakes along the way.

You get the point right? The closer you are to something the harder it is to see the wood for the trees. And one of the things that you and I are really close to, far too close to, unavoidably close to is our sin, our weaknesses and our failings. Now that’s a dangerous thing because as we saw last week on the program – sin always, always, always has painful consequences.

And if our weaknesses and failings, our sin are tucked away in the blind spots where we can’t see them they’re going to continue to ruin our lives. What we need is that external perspective and wisdom and insight to help us see what’s wrong so that we can do something about it.

If you’ve been able to join me over the last few episodes on the program, you’ll know that we’ve been talking about the powerful transformation that God wants to bring into our lives, to make our lives better by setting us free from sin which robs us of the amazing life that he always intended we should have.

God is a God of new beginnings and He is also a God of powerful lifelong transformation and growth. That seems a little far-fetched when you’re down there in the mire of the consequences of your own sin but it’s true. And we saw together how God spoke and brought transformation over the nation of Israel precisely at such a time as that, when it seemed impossible.

When as a result of their sin they’d been in exile in Babylon as slaves for seventy years, when because Babylon was the dominant super power of the day freedom and transformation and redemption and restoration all seemed completely impossible.

Right in the middle of that God stepped in and said this:

‘But now’ thus says the Lord, ‘he who created you O Jacob, he who formed you O Israel, do not fear for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name and you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire you shall not be burned and the flames shall not consume you.’

‘For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you because you are precious in my sight and honoured and I love you. I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.’ (Isaiah 43: 1-4)

So God steps in to redeem them but the problem for Israel is that they still probably don’t completely see their sin, they still probably don’t have a good handle on what got them there in the first place and how to avoid it in the future.

So just a few verses later God acknowledges that and this is what He says, Isaiah chapter 43, verses 8 to 10:

Bring forth the people who are blind yet have eyes, who are deaf yet have ears. Let all the nations gather together and let the people’s assemble. Who among them declared this and foretold to us the former things? Let them bring their witnesses to justify them and let them hear and say it is true. You are my witnesses, says the Lord and my servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.

In other words, the blind will see and become God’s witnesses. The deaf will hear the truth and will be able to tell others, ‘hey guys, it’s true’. God is going to remove the blind spots and clear out the deaf ears so that they can really see things as they are, so that they can see God as He is, so that they can see themselves and their sin for what they are.

When you think about it that’s exactly what you and I need in our lives, isn’t it? That external perspective and where better the get that than from God Himself? Who could be wiser? Who could care more? Who could love us more? Who could give us better advice than God Himself?

So God goes on and sets Israel free and restores them back to the Promised Land, back to Jerusalem, great. But if He doesn’t bring sight to the blind and hearing of truth to the deaf then they’re just going to make the same mistakes all over again just like you and me.

Do you imagine that a sculptor would begin and sculpture and then leave it incomplete? Do you imagine that a potter would toss a lump of clay on his wheel and leave it to go rock hard as a half-formed lump of dirt? No. They want to complete what they started and so it is with God.

He didn’t redeem you from your sin. He didn’t reveal Jesus to you to save you just to let you rot in your sin for the rest of your life.

Listen to how the Apostle Paul puts it in Philippians chapter 1, verse 6. He says:

I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.

God wants to finish what He started in you. He wants to keep shaping you and transforming you and one of the main ways that He does that, just as He did with Israel, is through His Word.

One of the great tragedies of the Church is that there are so many so-called Christians. People hungering to be set free from the consequences of their sin, who trifle with the Word of God, who pick and choose what suits them and worse still who ignore it all together.

I wonder how many people today have a Bible or two or three or five, sitting on a shelf or in a cupboard at home, somewhere gathering dust. A Bible that they haven’t opened for months or even years. I wonder. And those self-same people are invariably the ones whose lives are in turmoil. They are the same people who are wallowing in the consequences of their sin.

Wake up! God wants to bring sight to the blind. He wants to bring truth to the deaf. He wants to transform your life so that you can be all that He ever planned you to be, so you can do all the things He ever planned for you to do.

God has an amazing plan for your life, God wants to transform your life, are you ready?

The Great I-Am

I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember this but back when I was young there was a game that came out called Twister. Here’s how it worked. There was a plastic mat with coloured circles on it and you put it down on the floor. There might be two or three or four players and for each player the dial would be spun on a wheel and it would land on a certain colour.

What you had to do is put one of your hands or your feet on a circle of that colour on the mat. Now it’s easy for spin number one or perhaps two but with multiple players on the mat, by spin number three or four you had to do contortions to get around the other players on this relatively small mat to be able to place either a hand or a foot on the colour required.

Eventually the three or four of you playing would end up collapsing in a heap from all the contortions. I mean I really can’t remember how you won the game but I do remember it was a lot of fun.

Well I have to say the contortions could get pretty uncomfortable particularly when someone else fell on top of you and knocked the stuffing out of you.

Now when you stand back and you think about that game objectively you come to realise that the reason people were doing these contortions there on that mat, is that their reference point was the dial that was spun around to select a colour. And to tell you the truth I see a lot of people living their lives like that because of the reference points that they choose.

If you choose wealth as your reference point then you’ll be contorting your life to fit with its demands. If you choose career you’ll be contorting your life to fit with its demands. Let me give you an example. The other day I caught up with a man for breakfast, now he’s just a few years younger than me and he works in the finance sector.

He had taken a new job in the bank that he works for to advance his career. So instead of working close to where he lives, he now has to travel a long way each day to and from work. And he’s having problems in this new job. It’s a high pressure, high target work environment with an unreasonable boss. So much so that in this large bank they simply can’t get people to apply for jobs in this particular office.

The more I listened, the more I heard this man basically asking me for advice as to how he could contort himself to fit into this environment. But what I saw from what he’d told me was that it was a toxic work environment where no matter how good he became at his job, no matter how much he twisted himself to fit he was never going to succeed.

When I pointed that out to him in an instant he looked at me with eyes wide open and said, ‘You know what, you’re right, you’re absolutely right’. His reference point was trying to please an unpleasable boss. And because I wasn’t close to it I was able to stand back and basically point out to him that he had the wrong reference point.

Do you see how easily we can do that when we’re close to a problem? It’s something that happens to each one of us and it’s something, as we saw last week on the program, happened to Israel. God brought them out of slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land, the Land flowing with milk and honey, where He blessed them immeasurably and yet off they went and they worshipped idols and foreign gods and behaved badly and turned their backs on God so after many warnings He punishes them.

The Babylonians invade, they destroy Jerusalem and they take God’s people into captivity for seventy years. But after that time God decides, look enough is enough, so He comes to set them free as we saw, if you were able to join me, in Isaiah chapter 43.

Now even though they were being set free one problem still remained. He needed to reset their reference point from the things of this world back to Him. Have a listen to what He says to them in verses 11 to 17 of that same chapter, chapter 43 in the Book of Isaiah.

I, I am the Lord and besides me there is no Saviour. I declared and saved and proclaimed when there was no strange god among you and you are my witnesses, says the Lord, I am God and also henceforth I am He. There is no one who can deliver from my hand, I work and who can hear it? Thus, says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, for your sake I will send to Babylon and break down all the bars and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned to lamentation.

I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus, says the Lord who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse and army and warrior. They lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, they are quenched like a wick. (Isaiah 43: 11-17)

So what God is basically talking about here in this passage is that He is going to defeat the Babylonians also called the Chaldeans.

Now that’s amazing because they were the dominant super power of the day. But in doing this amazing thing before the eyes of His people these Israelites, who indeed had been in captivity for seventy years as slaves, He’s making a point to them.

He’s saying, ‘Look, the only one who has the power to do this is me’, God Himself. All those other gods that you were worshipping, which is what got you here in the first place, do they have the power to do this? Do the Babylonians have the power to stand against me? No, of course they don’t.

So why chase after those other gods? Why have your reference point for your life out there somewhere. Because if you do that you’ll end up doing contortions to fit with the demands of those other things which you call gods, whether it’s wealth or career or reputation or maybe a physical idol, whatever it happens to be for you, all those things are false gods.

I know there are some people who need to reset their reference point today, who need to stop spinning the dial in their lifelong game of twister and focus on the one reference point, God Himself, who has the power to set them free.

Can I ask you quietly but directly, are you one of those? Because if you are today, here, right now is the time to make Jesus the number one reference point of your life.

In the days of old before satellite navigation, ships always didn’t know exactly where they were. Of course these days using simple Sat Nav technology they can pinpoint their location on the globe within just a few metres. But back then they couldn’t. So when it was dark or stormy or foggy if they were close to the land they ran a very real risk of crashing into the rocks.

That’s why lighthouses were built, as a reference point, a light that shone out into the darkness, to help them head in the right direction rather than the wrong one which would lead to death and destruction.

Jesus said this, He said:

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in the darkness but will have the light of life. (John 8:12)

The question however is for each one of us, who or what am I following? Who or what is my reference point? Is it that unreasonable boss who somehow tricked me into thinking that I had to conform to his plans and contort my life? Is it that extra money I’m chasing which is causing me to do that long commute and to miss out on time with my family? Is it …? Well, what is it?

I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again. God’s plan is to transform your life completely and radically, to set you free to be who He made you to be and He’s done that by grace.

And when we let the light of Jesus shine in our hearts, when we let the light of Jesus guide our steps, when we make Him our reference point in place of all those other imposters out there, then the grace transformation that God has always wanted to bring you starts to happen in your life.

Listen to Him again: I, I am the Lord and besides me there is no Saviour.

A New Reality

Before we believe in Jesus, our reality is determined by the here and now, how we feel and what we’re going through, and all too often what we’ve been through in the past shapes us to a great degree, but the moment anyone believes in Jesus, the past becomes completely irrelevant. The moment we take God for who He is, the great I-am, all those other things cease to be all that relevant to our lives because in Him, you and I are completely transformed. Have a listen to 2 Corinthians 5:17, written by the apostle Paul:

 If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.

 How much of the past has passed away? Everything, all of it, every last little bit is gone the moment you believe in Jesus because in God’s sight and in reality you have become a completely new creation, you have literally been born again and everything about you has become new, everything.

And God wants us to see that today. That’s why in that verse that I just read He says, ‘See, see everything has become new’. Do you see? Because that’s the great reality that God wants you to see today – the reality of your complete transformation. You, your life, your slate wiped clean and your future, whatever it may hold in God’s plan for you is bright because your God, the same one who sent Jesus for you, is pouring His grace out into your life today through His Word and His Spirit.

Back there in the Old Testament, Israel was punished for their sins but you and I, we have a new contract, a new arrangement with God written in the blood of Jesus who bore the punishment that you and I so richly deserve. Back then, the Israelites didn’t receive mercy but eventually they received grace.

Today you and I, if we believe in Jesus, we receive both mercy and grace, both freedom from punishment that we deserve and the unmerited, undeserved favour and blessing of God through Jesus, through Him alone and nobody else.

What a grace transformation, the power of the past over you is broken, your future lies in God’s hands – what a blessing! What a grace transformation!

When the apostle Paul was writing to his friend Titus, this in part is what he said about this utterly amazing grace transformation. Titus 2:11-14:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passion, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright and Godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify for Himself a people of His own, who are zealous for good deeds.

In other words, the way we respond to God’s grace, the best way to experience the grace transformation in your life, is to let go of all of that bad stuff: The bad stuff that’s crowding God out of the picture, and to live your life as a great big thank-you to God for what He’s done for you. Now isn’t that a powerful idea? Simple, but powerful. Live your life every day, everything you do, as a big thank-you to God for His grace. Wow!

Now there’s a transformed life right there, right? Of course we’re going to make mistakes along the way, but when you say thank-you to God the best you can with every thought and every hope and every deed, just imagine how powerfully God will work in us and through us. That’s where it’s at.

Those idols, those things that we’ve elevated to the wrong level in our lives, they can never deliver that. In fact, quite the opposite. They end up being burdens that weigh us down. The only thing that lifts us up, the only thing that sets us free, the only thing that brings the change that we need in our lives, is the grace of God through Jesus Christ. That’s the only thing.

We’re going to talk a lot more about this next week on the programme as we continue our look at the amazing, powerful grace transformation that God wants to bring to pass in your life.

The past, your past is history, it’s been, it’s gone and nothing can ever buy it back. And whilst, to a degree, it’s shaped and defined who you are today, it can’t hurt you. I mean, it doesn’t have to hurt you, unless of course, you let it.

Forgetting the Past

Over the last little while on the program we have been chatting together about the amazing transformation that the grace of God brings into our lives. I like to think of it as a grace transformation.

If you’ve been able to join me, you’ll know that we’ve been spending some time in just one chapter of the Old Testament, in the book of Isaiah chapter 43 because that one chapter happens to be cram-packed full of the transformation that God’s grace brings into the lives of His people.

It’s amazing to me how much Gods managed to pack into just one chapter of His Word the Bible, His living Word. And if you and I can just drink that in, the amazing power of God’s grace, then we’re going to experience a transformation in our lives that words simply can’t describe.

Now to some that might sound to be a bit over the top, a bit much if you will. Transformation? ‘Hey I’ve believed in God for years’, some people are saying, ‘I’ve never experienced any transformation’.

Well that may be you, that may ring a little true for you and if it does stick with me because we’re going to dig deep today into what God has to say into your life about His grace transformation for you.

Have you ever wondered what grace is? Grace is when you receive something good but you don’t deserve, it’s the flip side of mercy. Mercy is when you are spared a punishment that you deserve. Grace is when in its place, you receive a blessing that you don’t deserve. Two sides of the one coin – mercy and grace. And one of the greatest acts of grace that God could ever pour out on anybody is a freedom from their past.

Let’s dive into Gods Word now, Isaiah chapter 43, a pivotal time in the history of Israel, they were in Babylon of all places, having been captured and exiled as slaves by the Babylonians.

Now for them that was an outrageous thing because they knew that they were God’s chosen people. They knew that God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt some centuries before and brought them to the Promised Land, the Land He had promised to Abraham many many centuries before.

And yet here they were again, not living in freedom in that Promised Land but living in captivity as slaves in another land. Why? Well because they had turned their backs on God. Now God was patient with them but eventually His patience ran out and He allowed the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem, destroy the Temple and take His own people into captivity.

The Israelites were living out the consequences of their own sin. Does that sound vaguely familiar? It happens to all of us when we turn our backs on God and go our own way in sin, in rebellion against Him. We all end up living out those consequences and as far as the Israelites could see there was no hope for the future, they were stuck there in slavery, great, just, let me say, like it is for you and me when we’re wallowing in the slavery of our own sin.

But then God decides to speak through the great Prophet Isaiah. He speaks of bringing the power to change things. He speaks of breaking into their dismal reality. He speaks of the fact that He has redeemed them, that they are precious to Him, that they needn’t be afraid, that He’s going to open their eyes to the great reality, the great unseen reality which is Him.

He is bringing transformation, release for the captives, a new life, the very same thing He wants to bring into your life, the very same thing that Jesus came to this earth to bring for us.

But before that transformation, before that release can happen something else needs to happen in the hearts and the minds of His people. Have a listen to what God says through Isaiah chapter 43, verses 14 to 21.

Thus, says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, ‘For your sake I will send to Babylon and break down all the bars and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned into lamentation. I am the Lord your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King’. Thus, says the Lord who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse and army and warrior. They lie down, they cannot rise as they are extinguished and quenched like a wick.

‘Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I’m about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, don’t you see it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, wild animals will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert to give drink to my chosen people, the people who I formed for myself so that they may declare my praise.’ (Isaiah 43: 14-21)

What is it that needs to happen? God needs to shift their focus off their circumstances onto the great and mighty redeemer that He is. And God needs to get them to forget their past and place their hope in Him for the future because if all they can focus on is their past failures and their present predicament then they won’t be ready to receive the freedom that He’s about to bring. And the very same is true for you and me.

There are some people tuned in today who are gripped by their past. They can’t get over their failures, they can’t get over their hurts, perhaps the abuse, whatever it is in their past that’s holding them back. And the thing about the past is that it’s so powerful it seems that nothing, NOTHING, can set you free.

That’s precisely how it would have seemed to the Israelites. Seventy years in captivity, seventy years of the punishment that by now they knew they so richly deserved and no hope for the future until all of a sudden, without warning the grace of God breaks into their bleak reality and God calls on them to forget their past and replace it with a vision of a bright future – a way in the wilderness, waters and rivers in the desert to give drink and to bless His chosen people, the people whom He formed for Himself to declare His praise.

I believe that God is saying the very same thing to us today, to you and me. Forget the past, He’s wiped your slate clean through Jesus, through the death and the sacrifice of Jesus on that cross for you, the past is irrelevant when you consider the future in the light of the grace transformation that God wants to bring into your life.

Do you hear Him through His word today?

Let Go of Your Idols

It’s one of the great paradoxes of life: that the good things in our lives can actually distract us from the best thing in life. It’s actually far more common that you may think.

Consider a marriage, the most important of all human relationships on this planet, always has been, always will be. How easy is it for a young couple to get married and then they buy a home and the mortgage cuts in and so they work longer and harder and in any case they both enjoy what they do.

Then children come along and they focus on those as they rightly should. And as the months and years slip by they become so focused on all those other good things that they forget to focus on their marriage. And then one day they wake up and they wonder, ‘where did all the love go?’

Is it a bad thing to buy a home? No. Is it a bad thing to enjoy work? Of course it isn’t. It’s great to have a job that really invigorates you. Is it a bad thing for a husband and wife to bring children into the world and to love them and to nurture them and to sacrifice for them? No, that’s a great thing! In fact it’s hard to imagine a greater blessing than children.

None of those things in and of themselves are bad things, they rarely are. But when it comes to the health of that marriage, if those good things become more important then the best thing – the marriage that brought them to pass in the first place then that, that’s a bad thing, a very bad thing.

Over the last little while on the program, we’ve been looking at the nation of Israel through the eyes of the Old Testament Prophet Isaiah at a time in their lives where they’d been in exile as slaves because they turned their backs on God to follow after a whole bunch of other things that seemed good in their eyes.

We’ve picked up the story in Isaiah chapter 43 where God speaks of the amazing grace that is about to befall them, the grace transformation as I call it.

But to bring about change sometimes we have to let go of some apparently good things, things that are drawing us away from the best thing.

Let’s pick up their story now in the next chapter, Isaiah chapter 44 beginning at verse 9. God says this:

All who make idols are nothing and the things they delight in do not profit, their witnesses neither see nor know and so they will be 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 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 out a line and marks it out with a stylus and 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 and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it, then it can be used for fuel, part of it he takes and he warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread.

Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire, over this half he roasts meat and he eats and he’s satisfied, he also warms himself and says, ‘I’m warm, I can feel the fire’. And with the rest of it he makes 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 do not know nor do they comprehend for their eyes are shut so they cannot 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 the coals, I’ve roasted meat and have eaten, now shall I make the rest of it a abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood’? He feeds on ashes and a deluded mind has led him astray and he cannot save himself or say ‘is not this thing in my right hand a fraud’. (Isaiah 44: 9-20)

It’s a pretty simple and powerful piece of logic, isn’t it?

Okay back then, people made idols and worshipped them. Of course in some parts of the world that still holds true for the rest of us though we make idols out of other things, good things it would seem – jobs and careers and relationships and reputations and possessions.

Mostly none of those are bad, I mean the wood that the idol makers used wasn’t bad of itself but they become bad and they become dangerous and they become destructive when we elevate them to a level in our lives where we start believing that they have the power to save us and to make us happy. Because when we do that, in our hearts we have no need of God and He becomes less important in the scheme of things.

That’s exactly what Israel had done in the first place seventy years before which had landed them in this mess of slavery and exile that they found themselves in, a mess that God allowed to befall them to bring them back to their senses. They built these idols in their lives and in effect they worshipped them instead of God and it’s in the same way that we make idols of things in our lives and worship them in place of God.

Can an object make you happy on your deathbed? Can it? Or some prized possession that you’ll soon be parted from? No of course not, they’re powerless. It doesn’t make any more sense than taking a bit of wood and using half of it to cook your dinner and the other half to make an idol that you worship.

God’s grace is completely and utterly amazing but for God’s grace to have its full effect in radically, powerfully transforming our lives then you and I need to worship just the one God. The God whose poured His grace out on us through Jesus Christ. The God who has the power to transform our lives.

So you and I need to renounce some of the things that we’ve put above God in our scheme of things, some of the things that are just good things that we’ve elevated to the wrong level, that will be most of them and a handful of them will be the things that we know are wrong. Whichever they are we need to put them back into their rightful place so that God can be in His rightful place in our lives and our Lord of all. That’s where transformation begins.

A Future of Freedom

Freedom is a big deal. I grew up during the cold war at a time when the threat of communistic dictatorship loomed large as a threat across the globe – or at least that’s how it appeared to most of us. And still today there are totalitarian regimes where people aren’t free to say what they think or do what they please within the reasonable bounds of a just law.

I remember some years ago I was in a place, a country in Asia, that on the surface of things seemed to be a peaceable, lovely place to live. I was doing some IT consulting work for a large well-known organisation. Late one Saturday evening when a few of us were still at the office getting some work done that had to go out as quickly as possible, we sat down to have a bite of dinner.

And I was chatting with one of the young men whom I’d come to know reasonably well over the preceding few weeks and I was telling him what a lovely country I thought this was. As I did, a dark look came over his face. His eyes darted around to make sure that no one else was within earshot. He lowered his voice and said, ‘Well yeah it is on the surface but understand we’re not free to say what we think. If I criticised the government in any way I would probably go to prison. It’s a terrible thing’, he said, ‘when you can’t say what you think.’

Up until that point in my life I’d never even thought about it because I have, all my life, lived in a country where we have complete freedom of speech and action and religion within, as I said, the reasonable bounds of a just law.

And yet the more I thought about it the more I realised how terrible it must be simply to not be able to have one of those basic freedoms, the tension and the oppression that a person must feel when they simply aren’t allowed to speak their mind.

My dictionary tells me that freedom is the power or the right to act, speak or think as you want, the freedom of choice, the absence of subjection to a foreign domination or a despotic government. The power of self-determination or that sort of thing.

To a degree that definition hits the mark and yet to a greater degree I think it completely misses the mark. Why do I say that? Because the dictionary definition of freedom, the common definition assumes that freedom means to be free from something out there somewhere whereas the most common slavery that we all experience is the slavery to the evil that lies within.

Don’t believe me? Ask anybody who has ever been addicted to something. Ask anybody who has ever suffered because of their selfishness or their anger or their dishonesty. Ask anybody whose marriage has ever failed because they were unfaithful. Yeah surely the greatest tyrant of all lies within and God calls it sin.

Now conventional wisdom has it that we are masters of ourselves, that we can determine how we think and act and feel and react and behave. The Bible on the other hand, God’s Word, maintains that we are all slaves to sin until God sets us free. It’s a view that’s one hundred and eighty degrees diametrically opposed to conventional wisdom in this world.

In the course of the story of Israel’s redemption from slavery in Babylon that we’ve been looking at and exploring together over these past few weeks through the Book of Isaiah chapter 43 and 44. It’s really interesting that God isn’t about just setting them free from their captors, the Babylonians who had enslaved them in a physical sense. God’s also is in the business of setting them free from their sin which led to their physical enslavement and which has enslaved them in a spiritual and emotional sense as they live out its consequences.

Have a listen to this, Isaiah chapter 44, verses 21 and 22:

Remember these things O Jacob and Israel for you are my servant. I formed you, you are my servant. O Israel you will not be forgotten by me. I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like a mist. Return to me for I have redeemed you.

I love that. I absolutely love that because you and I know that the most powerful slavery of all is our slavery to sin, our addiction to some behaviour based on a destructive attitude or thought pattern that try as we might we cannot, simply cannot rid ourselves of. It is every bit as powerful as a heroin addiction, this slavery that each one of us has to our sin.

And God comes along and says, just look at the powerful picture language here. He says that He swept away our transgressions like a cloud and your sins are like a mist for He has redeemed you. Past tense, done deal, end of story. Again centuries later the Apostle Paul puts it this way writing to his friends in Galatia, Galatians chapter 5, verse 1.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.

It seems a strange saying, ‘for freedom Christ has set us free’, it’s a tautology in grammatical terms and yet it’s a powerful statement of the whole purpose of Jesus coming to this earth. The whole purpose of His sacrifice on the cross, the whole purpose of His being raised up from the dead, the whole purpose of God’s grace is to set you free.

Did you hear that? The whole purpose of God’s grace is to set you free. For freedom Christ has set you free so that you can be free indeed. How ridiculous is it for us to go looking for freedom in the idols of this world, which only lead to slavery and destruction? How ridiculous is it to look for freedom in the works of our hands, which only lead to enslavement to our own dead works.

The only place where we find true freedom, freedom that exists even amidst the most oppressive regime – is in Jesus Christ, an inner freedom that is so free that there is no condemnation, no guilt, no limit, no boundary. A place where we can soar like an eagle though a storm may rage around us. The whole point of grace is to set you free. That’s the grace transformation, its freedom.

Just a few verses on in chapter 5 of the Book of Galatians, Paul writes that we have all been called to freedom, so don’t use your freedom for an opportunity for gratifying your desires but use it to serve one another in love. That’s verse 13 of Galatians chapter 5.

Imagine a Church, imagine a world even where people instead of always being out to get what they want, turn their whole lives around to help others to get what they need. Just imagine such a Church. Just imagine such a world. How different would things be if people truly were free to live that way?

Well my friend that freedom isn’t something that you and I can conjure up in our lives. It’s not something that we can make happen in us. It’s not something that we can work harder to make happen. It’s only by the power of the Holy Spirit, the very power of God that dwells in each one of us who believe in Jesus Christ that it will ever happen and that freedom is available to each one of us here and now.

Father God, we know that we’re sinners saved only by grace, by your grace, your free unmerited favour through Jesus Christ and we believe each one of us that you mean to bring an amazing grace transformation about in our lives.

Lord God, we confess to you today how desperately we need that. And we pray that you will bring this grace transformation to pass in our lives for every day that we have left on this earth so that when we come to you on that day we’ll be ready, ready to live eternity in the presence of your glory. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

And may the amazing grace of God lift you out of the pit of your sin and raise you up to be all He meant you to be.