Behold your God! (Psalm 50 & Eccl 3v11)

Let's join together in the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Father, as we come to You this evening, we pray for a sense of Your presence. We're going to be thinking about You. What an incredible challenge right at the very beginning to think about God.

God, the author of life. Behold our God. What man can speak clearly of You.

What audience can fully comprehend that which is beyond comprehension. Take the shoes from off our feet, so to speak. Wash our hearts.

Give us humility of mind. And this night, help us to realize something, the grandeur, the greatness and the loving kindness of our God. And get from our hearts the gratitude which is Your due.

Amen. Amen. Well, we're glad to have you around.

You've risked the wind. And we're going to enjoy this time of reflection around the Word of God and singing His praises and coming around the table. I can't imagine that this is the first time anyone has ever been on such a night as this.

But if it happens to be the case, we're doubly glad to see you. And we're praying for the wind of God's Spirit to blow in to the tab this evening and at the spiritual level for us all to have a real movement in our hearts and a sense of His presence. We're going to sing a scribe greatness to our God, the Rock, which is number 40.

We'll sing it through twice and then go straight into 327, a more traditional hymn on the person of God, immortal, invisible, God only wise. And as we stand and sing these songs and this hymn, we'll receive an offering for the work of God here and abroad. 40 and 327.

God is greatness to our God, the Rock. His word is perfect and all His ways are just. And what of faithfulness without injustice? What of faithfulness without injustice? What of faithfulness without injustice? He holds to righteousness and boldness and most glorious the ancient of days.

Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise. Unresting, unmasking, as silent as night, no haunting, no wasting, the moonless in night. Thy justice, thy countenance, thy story, my heart, thy clouds which abound the fountains of goodness and love.

To all life's song, in all life, the true life of all, we blossom and flourish as leaves of the tree and wither and perish but grow change and lead. Great the Father of life's light, O Lord is our leader, immortal, invisible, God only wise, enlightened, accessible, visible only from our eyes. Most blessed, most glorious, the ancient of days.

Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise. We'll be seated. And let's turn to one of the psalms.

Psalm 50. A little while ago I had the privilege here at the tab of addressing 500 or so folk, 250 of whom would be small boys and girls from the Broadwater Manor School. It was a carol service and it was semi-informal.

Happily we got the extended platform area in preparation for our simian presentation. And I got the opportunity of wandering around amongst the boys and girls, not that many girls, and men and women, informing them, encouraging them, thanking them for coming and telling them in my information a little bit about the gospel and about Christmas and what Christmas was really all about originally. And I use a little story that I've employed on occasions before of a little precocious girl and she goes to Sunday school and she comes back home having imbibed some of the lesson and she's drawing.

And her mom says, darling, what are you drawing? And she says, mom, I'm drawing God. And her mother said, but nobody knows what God looks like. And the little girl said, well, they will do when I've finished.

When I was a school teacher in my earlier years, one of the longest standing Prime Ministers was Harold Wilson. Remember Harold, the guy that's mucking the pipe? Some of you do anyway. And he'd become a household word.

One of my colleagues got the kids in the class to write out what we have just said at the beginning of our service this evening, the Lord's Prayer. Now it's incredible what you think children know and what they actually do know. Some have suggested that congregations are in exactly the same sort of condition.

So one child wrote out, our Father who art in heaven, Harold be thy name. Another referred to God as, our Father which art, as though which art was the surname of God. Behold your God.

When you think about God, what sort of impressions are upon your mind? There is nothing greater in terms of mental discipline than to think of God. I mean let's just face it logically for a moment. If God is, and the vast majority of you here this evening would agree with that, if not everybody, if God is, then God, the three letter word, is actually the biggest word in human vocabulary.

If God is, then, and I speak with thought, your relationship with your wife, with your husband, is very much secondary to cultivating a relationship with Him. Because if God is, then you are dependent on Him for every breathing moment that you have. You're dependent on Him for giving you life in the first instance.

And you're dependent on Him for your future. Well, if there's a general consensus this evening that God is, then my question is, what is this God who is like? Well, let's go to the psalm. Psalm 50.

The Mighty One, God, the Lord, speaks and summons the earth. From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets. From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth.

Our God comes and will not be silent. The fire devours before Him and around Him a tempest rages. He summons the heavens above and the earth that He may judge His people.

Gather to me my consecrated ones who made a covenant with me by sacrifice and the heavens proclaim His righteousness. For God Himself is judge. Hear, O my people, and I will speak.

O Israel, and I will testify against you. I am God, your God. I do not rebuke you to for your sacrifices or your burnt offerings which are ever before me.

I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens for every animal of the forest is mine. The cattle on the thousand hills are now every bird in the mountain. The creatures of the fields are mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you for the world is mine and all that is in it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Sacrifice, thank offerings to God. Fulfill your vows to the Most High and call upon me in the day of trouble.

I will deliver you and you will honor me. But to the wicked, God says, what right have you to recite my laws or take my covenant on your lips? You hate my instruction and cast my words behind you. When you see a thief, you join with him.

You throw in your lot with adulterers. You use your mouth for evil and harness your tongue to deceit. Here's a punchline.

You speak continually against your brother and slander your own mother's son. These things you have done and I kept silence. You thought I was altogether like you.

You thought I was altogether like you. But I will rebuke you and accuse you to your face. Consider this, you who forget God or I will tear you to pieces with none to rescue.

He who sacrifices, thank offerings, honors me and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God. Now you don't need to turn to this but I want to nip over to Ecclesiastes and it's chapter three. You can turn to it if you wish.

If you find it difficult to make your way through the Old Testament then just relax and stay in Psalm 50. My Bible's got page 592 but it's the American version of the NIV so it probably doesn't help you at all. Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 11 says this, He, God, has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also set eternity in the hearts of men. Yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Let's go back to that text and I've put it up on the overhead and so those of you who have not got the Bible you can check it from there.

Psalm 50 and this remarkable eye-opening statement in the 22nd verse. These things you have done and I kept silent. God watches over men and is privy to their actions.

You thought I was altogether like you. God is aware of our theological heresy, our misunderstanding of who He is. So, God is a silent onlooker on whatever we do.

He's aware of our theological heresy and what's more He's going to keep us in a relationship of accountability to Him for I will accuse you face to face. Now I come back to my original question. What sort of ideas have you got in your mind when you think of God? A sort of benevolent gentleman in the clouds with a long beard, a Father Christmas figure? The sort of kindly granddad who when you were a kid and you couldn't get what you wanted from your own parents well you went to your granddad and he gave you the sweets or whatever.

Somebody has said it's a remarkable privilege to be a granddad because when you're a dad you've got full responsibility. When you have a granddad you can enjoy them and then send them back home. And you can go to sleep and have an undisturbed night.

In this current series which we commence by way of introduction today and we'll go through on consecutive Sundays almost up to Easter we're going to be thinking about God and the attributes that He has. I want us at the end in three months' time to be able to say to one another well we really do now have an understanding into the character of God. Something we grasped before but our information our comprehension is that much greater.

And there are remarkable things which the Bible has to say about God and if you do me the good service of taking the preaching programme which was issued with Notes and News this week and if you haven't got it this evening then get one from our welcome desk if you check through you'll see the subjects and you'll be astonished to discover some of the characteristics of God that we're going to be looking at over these next few weeks and months. But this evening just by way of a taster I want to ask you to think about just the incredible privilege of stopping for a moment and considering that God is. A. W. Tozer says without doubt the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God and the weightiest word in any language is the word for God.

One of the things that you have to know about God is this, He is eternal. That's the first thing that will come up on the overhead. Please, can it come up on the overhead? Oh, it's there, I beg your pardon.

I should have eyes in the back of my head. God is eternal. You, you were born, weren't you? 40 years ago, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, 70 years ago, 10 years ago, 8 years ago.

But you were born, there was a time when you were not. And there will be a time when you will no longer be on our earth. But that doesn't apply to God.

God is eternal. The first verse of this chapter seems to spell this out. The mighty one, God the Lord speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to the place where it sets.

There never was a time when God did not exist. When I was a kid, I don't know whether you've ever done this yourself, I tried to imagine what it would be like for there to be nothing. I closed my eyes at night and I tried to think away everything.

Quite a frightening exercise. But there was a time, the physical level, when there was nothing. You think away the continents, think away the seas, and therefore you've thought away animals and human beings.

Let's try and get behind the time when the world was. In other words, there's no more world, there are no more galaxies. Now none of this can be disputed by anybody because whether you come at this from a biblical point of view or from an evolutionary point of view, we do know that there has been a process by which things have developed.

So we're going back. We've no more England, we've no more Europe, we've no more continent, we've no more sea, we've no more fish, no more animals, no more human beings. No world, no planets, no universe.

What was there then? And the answer the Bible gives is, there was God, alone, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God in His eternity. Now, having looked at the past, let's go back, let's reverse it and go to the future.

You see, forty years ago, now let's go back a shorter distance. Twenty-six years ago when I came here, my predecessor was a member of this congregation. He now no longer is, at least on Earth.

Twenty-five years before that, his predecessor was here as pastor of the tab. And twenty-five years before that, his predecessor, the founder, was around. But these men are no more.

I can't see them. But God, He will be in twenty-five years hence. In fifty years hence.

For the fifth and the sixth and the seventh pastor of the tab, until such time as the Lord Jesus comes back. So whether you look down there or you look down there to the past or to the present and on to the future, you'll always find God. So the Hebrews say of God, from everlasting, getting the telescope down to the past, to everlasting, getting the telescope to the future, you are God.

He is eternal. So there are two things that don't apply to God. One is time and the other is space.

Let's imagine that somehow this is a roll of paper and there's no end. In other words, it goes on that way, it goes on that way. And that this pen here, that stands for you and me.

Here is time, our allotted span in this world, and here is space. Because we are boxed in by time and space. There will be a time, as I mentioned, when you will not be.

There was a time when you weren't around. You have a fairly short span on this whole page of eternity. But God never changes.

Before the world was and after the world ceases to be, He will be around. Now, let's move from that illustration to one of the sun. How does a sunbeam exist? He exists, or it exists, because of the sunshine.

Now, you and I exist because God gives us life. If God was not, then you and I would not be. And the fact of the matter is, according to the Bible, that because God has given us life, and I shall show you in a moment, there is a fundamental difference between you and any other creature in the animal world.

You will always continue to be, not physically on this earth, but spiritually, because there is something of God about you. But the first thing that I wanted to draw to your attention this evening was that God is eternal. The Mighty One, the Lord, He speaks and summons the earth.

He comes from the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, from Zion, perfect in beauty. Our God comes. What does He come to do? Well, He comes to talk to men and women.

Which is the second thing that I want to bring to your attention. God has put, or, yes, I was going to go on to the third one, but let me just pause for a moment. God doesn't need, let me introduce something else which I wasn't going to say at this stage.

God doesn't actually need you and me. We need one another, but God doesn't need us. He says in verse 9, doesn't He, I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens.

Every animal of the forest is mine. I know every bird. Verse 12, if I were hungry, I would not tell you.

See, there's a fundamental distinction between God and ourselves. I do need you. You need me.

We need one another because we're not self-sufficient. We're not self-contained. But God is.

God is eternal and He has no basic need outside of Himself. I have needs. I hunger and God has given me the opportunity of having food.

I need fellowship and God gives me friends. The human race has a hunger for sex and there is the possibility of that hunger being satisfied. We have hungers outside of ourselves.

God doesn't. He doesn't need you. He doesn't need me.

He is the eternal self-sufficient God. If you said that of yourself or if you said that of somebody else, He's self-sufficient, you would actually be insulting them. But you're not insulting God.

By recognizing that He's self-sufficient. But what has God done? Well, He has brought into the world human beings like you and me. He didn't need to.

But He has done so. And He's done so for a purpose. And He has put within our hearts not only a desire for fellowship, not only a desire for food, not only a desire to breathe, He has put in our hearts a desire for Him.

He's put eternity in our hearts. Some of you are aware that I take a fairly strong line in terms of our responsibility to the created world. Because this is what God has done.

He's placed us in a world and He's given us responsibility. We are the sort of, if you like, the tenants. And I believe that it's wrong to be cruel.

I believe that the animal world in which we find ourselves members of is a world of great wonder. Chimpanzees. They have a sort of rudimentary speech.

Elephants. They can show emotion. Birds.

They can make in some measure their wishes known. My cats most definitely can. A turkey is susceptible to an arthritic condition.

So if you overfeed him, you will cause him or her, it, to know pain. All these things we share in common with the animal world. But there is a heightening in our experience which makes us far, far beyond the most developed species.

We can talk. We can create to a certain degree. We can write books.

We can compose symphonies. And what is more, we have a desire for something that is beyond what we now know. We have a religious appetite.

We don't always articulate it like that. It takes the death of Diana in the experience of British people to bring to the surface this concept that we are made for more than just time. Because God has placed in our hearts a desire for Him.

And we know that when our physical journey is through, when the candle flame of our life is blown out on earth, it is not the end of you. It is not the end of me. That's why the Bible here speaks about God addressing His consecrated ones and talks about the covenant that He has made with them.

God has put eternity in our hearts. Isn't it interesting? That the study of man in anthropology has never yet located an atheistic tribe. Around the world, down the centuries, every community of people has given evidence in its more primitive development, its primitive stage, that they have believed in God.

Their understanding of God may be fuzzy. It may be out of focus. It may have caused them to be scared of bumps in the night.

It may have caused them to be scared of animals and insects. But nonetheless, basic to all people groups, is this desire to know God. If hunger is satisfied with food, if relationships at a physical level are satisfied by sex, if desire to breathe is satisfied by the air, then wouldn't it be extraordinary if this hunger that is common to all men and women is a mere frustration and cannot be satisfied.

I said to you that the desire that people have for something beyond themselves is indicative that God is. That God, who is from eternity, has also come and made himself known to men and women who are boxed in by time and space. God is eternal.

God has put eternity in our hearts. Now listen, here's the third thing that comes out from this passage and there are many others. God is like man.

Yes, that is what it says. God is like man. Look at verse 21.

These things you have done and I kept silent. You thought I was altogether like you. The heresy was not thinking that man was like God, but thinking that God is exactly like man.

You see, the Bible makes it very clear that there is something God-like about you. This my cat doesn't share. This the elephants don't share.

This the chimpanzees, whatever the animal rights philosophers may say, don't share. There is an infinite distinction between you and between the animal world. God has fashioned you in his image.

Now I don't get a very clear concept of God from you, but I do get some impression. In a limited fashion, you can create as I've illustrated. In a limited fashion, you are a master of your circumstances as I can demonstrate even by standing here and waving my arm around, a deliberate decision which I am making.

But there is a sense that though man is like God, he's not altogether like God. There is an otherness. There is a distinctiveness.

There are things that God has that I can never have. I can never be eternal in the sense of, well I've demonstrated, there was a time when I was not. But in God's grace, as I link into his life, it could be said that there will never be a time in the future when I will not be.

Why? Because, you see, I'm linked to God as the sunbeam is linked to the sun. And the only way to get rid of the sunbeam is by annihilating the sun. The only way to get rid of me and you, soulless creatures that we be, is by annihilating God.

That's why one of the old-fashioned hymn writers can say, His for ever, only his. And it goes on in the final line of that great hymn to make this comment, While God and I shall be, he is mine, and I am his. God is eternal.

God is all-sufficient. But God has created men and women in his image and has put eternity in their hearts. Which allows me to make one last final point.

God has a future for man. God has a future for man. You see, the day has never dawned when God hasn't had his eye upon you.

That's again basic to the psalm. He summons the world, the peoples of the world, the Gentiles and the Jews, to talk to him. He speaks to them as though his knowledge of them is greater than the knowledge of the animals.

And yet of the animal world, he says, I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine. Did you hear about Charlie the dog this last week? You didn't? One man had a mobile phone, and he lost it. I guess having a mobile phone is very much like having one of these automatic television adjusters.

I can never find out, can you? What it is that always goes missing, especially if I want to see something that's key. This guy couldn't find his mobile phone. He lost it.

So he hit on the idea of using the socket phone and dialing his number, so then he'd find the mobile. Well, when he dialed his number on the socket phone, a ringing came from inside the dog. The dog had actually swallowed the mobile phone.

And the story, though it's a little indelicate, continues that 24 hours later, the phone was rendered somewhat dirty, but completely useful by the dog, and the owner is quite happy, and, well, the dog had an experience which must have been quite extraordinary. It was a sort of a camera-grabbing moment. Can you imagine the look on the dog's face? You know, I meant to bark, and here I am ringing.

The owner was in touch with his dog, and he didn't know it. God is in touch with you, and he does know it, because he has set eternity in your heart, and he has a future for you. Because, you see, into or from eternity, the eternity in which God exists, he has stepped into time.

As you are given a lifespan in God's eternity, so God, in the person of the Lord Jesus, stepped into time. Jesus was not God unshielded. Jesus is God absolute, but Jesus is God encased in human flesh.

That's why the favorite term of our Lord Jesus was son of man. He steps out of eternity into time, and he is therefore imprisoned, in some degree, like you and me. He has 33 years.

He is boxed into time. He is boxed into space. He can't be in Jerusalem and also in Nazareth.

He has pushed aside certain aspects of his deity in order to become son of man. And as son of man, he relates to you and to me. Now, I can see something of God in you, because, as I've indicated, there are things that mark you out from the animals.

But when I see the Lord Jesus, with great respect, what I see of God in you pales into insignificance. You see, the Lord Jesus could well have employed that little illustration that I began my address with this evening. What is God like? I'm drawing him, Mom.

But nobody knows what he's like. Mom, they'll know when I'm finished. When Jesus is finished, we know what God is like.

What is he like? He's the God of eternity. Who decides to create people in his own image. And when they, in time, make a mess, he steps into time and into space.

And he becomes one like us. He's hungry like we're hungry. He gets tired like we're tired.

He relates to us. He relates to the failure. He relates to the tragic situation.

And when he dies on the cross, what does he do? Well, he's the culmination of the final sacrifices to which God makes reference in this 50th chapter. He is the one who shall make absolute all the sacrificial system that's gone before. He shows, through Jesus, does God the Father, the salvation that he has for men and women.

So, there's my introduction. You see, this bread and this wine, they actually are basic to God's revelation of himself. He steps out of eternity into time in the person of his Son.

Because you and I have made an absolute mess of being in time. And he takes upon himself the responsibilities of your failure and when he dies on the cross, his body is broken for you. His blood is shed for you.

And what he does as a result of that is he links you back to your creator so that you have the same guarantees of eternally existing as the sunbeam has as it's linked to the sun. And that gives life a wonderful meaning, a wonderful framework, a wonderful dimension. Brothers and sisters, this is our God.

The eternal, self-sufficient God who brings you and me into this world puts eternity in our hearts and through the Lord Jesus Christ and his death on the cross shows that God has a future for us in his eternity. Let's sing further the praise of this great God. I was thinking about this communion service and thinking how absolutely essential it is that at this place we meet with the Lord.

And that last verse is very good, isn't it? Be still for the power of the Lord is moving in this place. And I suppose you might say, well, where? You know, I don't see it. But actually he's moving in each of our hearts, in our minds, and in our spirits.

This is a building place as well as a place of worship. And each one of us that believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are a miracle. It needs to be an affirmation in our hearts that that's the truth.

I couldn't believe in Jesus Christ unless the Holy Spirit had moved upon me, shown me my sin, and pointed me towards Jesus Christ as my saviour. What's true for me is true for you. Be still for the presence of the Lord.

The Holy One is here. He comes to cleanse and to heal and to minister his grace. Tony was talking this morning about not making New Year's resolutions.

Well, I did actually. I've got my list there. I'm not going to read it to you.

It's a bit too close to my heart. It's not so much New Year's resolutions as things I would like to be different in my life, things that need to be straightened out. And the song I'd like us to sing, and I think we can sing it again seated, is Lord Give Me an Undivided Heart.

It's in the Supplement 106. And then we'll sing that through once, and then we'll sing it through again, but not the first verse, please, because as the first verse is being played, I have a scripture to read. Lord, oh, give me an undivided heart.

I know what you think, to do what you do. Oh, Lord, give me an undivided heart. To see your face.

An arm with bitter faith. To see victory. In all that I do.

To worship in spirit and truth. To see less of me, and much more of you. Oh, Lord, give me an undivided heart.

Oh, Lord, give me an undivided heart.