On Thursday Ellenbook Anglican Church commissioned its new minister and on Sunday I preached my last sermon there. Several people asked me what was next, and said how they had appreciated the weekly comments I have written for the newsletters. I have been doing this for three years now, and think, maybe, I shouldn’t stop. My plan is to write a short weekly article for my website for whomever is interested. Let me start with some thoughts about God.
Luke tells us that the newly baptized jailer in Philippi and his family “rejoiced that they had come to believe in God” (Acts 16). This is a curious comment if we suppose the jailer was no atheist. Presumably he had his gods and paid special attention to his favourite. What Luke means, then, is that he now believed in the one true God, “the God who is there” (Schaeffer), the God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Dust has been thrown in the air in recent years. How can Christianity be true when there are so many other religions? In any case, don’t all religions basically teach the same thing? Then radical Islam destroyed the notion that different religions teach the same things about God, and it became clear from the LGBTI campaign that the real agenda was not to believe what all religions agreed on, but to put down Christianity.
The jailer realized that the religion he had followed before was false. This doesn’t mean everything about it was false, but it failed to put him in touch with the God who made him. Now he knew the living and true God and it filled him with joy. My own experience was similar: I had always believed in God. I spell it with a capital because at least I believed he was the Creator. But then I made him up to be the way I wanted. I would say, “I like to think of God this way,” and the god I went on to create liked what I liked and disliked what I disliked. He was a mental idol, created in my image. We believe in God the way he reveals himself, or we construct an idol. When I came to know the true God (who was not like me), I too was filled with joy, and have continued to be for the past 55 years.
“What must I do to be saved?” the desperate jailer had asked Paul and Barnabas. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,” was their stunningly simple reply. This was how the jailer came to know the true God. That is because God became a man in the person of Jesus and revealed himself that way. Similarly, when I had no place for Jesus in my life, God was just an idea. When I believed in Christ everything changed; I found that now I had an actual relationship with my Maker. What joy!