Because today’s western society insists there is no absolute truth, it follows that there is no agreed norm to guide human behavior. This makes life and the choices we make, entirely arbitrary.

Robert Letham in The Holy Trinity makes this comment about the postmodernism of today: Postmodernism cannot stand the test of everyday life. It does not work and it will not work. ‘It fails the test of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who insisted that language and philosophy must have ‘cash value’ in terms of the real world in which we go about our business from day to day… We assume there is an objective world and act accordingly… Wittgenstein compared a situation of there being no objective truth to someone buying several copies of the morning paper to assure himself that what it said was true!’ (L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell, 1963, pp.93f; quoted in R Letham, p.453.)

Story of faith. How then do we respond? Given that ‘story’ is something that our society accepts let me make some suggestions for conversations you might like to plan with a friend or friends over coffee.

To begin, it’s worth making time to think about your own story of faith. Recent research reveals that when church-attendees have been able to tell family and friends their ‘story’ of faith, their friends are more likely to accept an invitation to attend church. And, more than that, their friends are more likely to return.

My ‘story’. In telling my story I recount how I was keen to find out answers to two key questions during an undergraduate degree at Sydney University – ‘Did Jesus really rise from the dead?’ And, behind that: ‘Is the New Testament authentic?’

Yes, my questions are those of the Age of Reason, but I find that I receive a hearing because my response is framed in a personal story. As one of my subjects was Ancient History I had professors to speak with and sources to examine. I was directed to primary sources, such as Tacitus’s History of Rome, Josephus, and Pliny’s correspondence during the reign of the Emperor Trajan.

Tacitus, Josephus and Pliny are all agreed that Jesus is a real and influential figure. Indeed, there is more than a suggestion within Josephus that Jesus was not only put to death on the order of Pontius Pilate, but that his followers, even on pain of death, said that they had seen Jesus physically alive again. For his part, Pliny confirms the central claims of the New Testament that although Jesus of Nazareth was crucified as the Messiah his followers gathered weekly to worship him as the risen Lord.

Furthermore, I understood that the Bible, written by many different writers over more than two thousand years, provides us with historical context. We see this, for example in the birth narratives of Luke.

In his introduction Luke writes: Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may have the certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

Luke wants us to know:

He was writing a history—he was setting down an accurate and orderly account of events that had recently occurred. His writing is not myth or legend that have the appearance of a history such as Tolkein’s, The Lord of the Rings.

His research is thorough. While he says that he himself is not an eyewitness, he was careful to check the accuracy of the facts (1:2). Thucydides said: Where I have not been an eyewitness myself, I have investigated with the utmost accuracy attainable every detail that I have taken at second hand (History of the Peloponnesian War).

His narrative is true. Luke’s reference to eyewitnesses was more than just a convention. The picture we have in Luke and Acts leads us to conclude that he met with people who had been with Jesus throughout his public ministry – the twelve disciples and other close followers, including Mary. It seems that he met with these people in Jerusalem when Paul was under house arrest in 56-59AD.

Dr Edwin Judge, an internationally acclaimed historian comments: ‘An ancient historian has no problem seeing the phenomenon of Jesus as an historical one. His many surprising aspects only help anchor him in history. Myth or legend would have created a more predictable figure. The writings that sprang up about Jesus also reveal to us a movement of thought and an experience of life so unusual that something much more substantial than the imagination is needed to explain it.

My story – over a first cup of coffee – begins with an unexpected figure whose own story looms larger than that of anyone else. I suggest to my coffee conversationalist that they might like to read Luke chapters 1-3 before our next cup of coffee.

When the subject of religion comes up we often hear comments like: ‘Religion is for the weak-minded’, or ‘it is poisonous’. We also hear, ‘All religions are the same’. And if the conversation continues, we might get told, ‘Religious people are so self-righteous!’ There are also those who tell us, ‘Everyone’s right in their own kind of way.’ ‘In any case, when I die, if there is a God, I’m sure he’ll accept me: I’ve led a good life’.

So, in this indifferent and sometimes hostile world, how do people come to faith in Christ? In 2 Corinthians 4 Paul provides some helpful clues. Let me identify them briefly.

In 2 Corinthians 4: 3-4 he writes: … even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Many interpret, the god of this world as a reference to the powers of evil. Satan is responsible for blinding people to the truth of Jesus. Certainly, there is support for this in Jesus’ Parable of the Sower (Luke 8:12) where Jesus does say that the devil takes God’s Word from people’s hearts. But when we look more closely we see that the seed of God’s Word doesn’t take root or bear fruit for other reasons as well. It may fail in a time of testing or because people’s lives are dominated by the cares of or love for the world.

That said, the phrase the god of this world, can be understood another way. This understands the god of this age to be what is called an appositional phrase where one idea sits alongside another, explaining it.

Following this reading, the god of this agemeans ‘the god that consists of this age’. In other words people make this age their god. A total preoccupation with this world blinds people to the spiritual realities of the next. As someone has commented ‘it is because they have chosen to worship what is less than God that God has given them over to a darkened mind, and so yes, the devil finds it so easy to steal the word of God from their hearts’.

Malcolm Muggeridge, one time editor of the English Punch magazine observed that men and women are trapped ‘in a tiny dark dungeon of the ego… So imprisoned and enslaved, we are cut off from God and from the light of his love.’

How then do people come to believe? Paul answers that by telling us that there are two keys: the ministry of God’s Word and the supernatural miracle of God’s Spirit.

In 2 Corinthians 4:5-6 we read: 5For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. 6For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Verbal communication about the Lord Jesus Christ is essential. To tease out Paul’s words here, he is saying ‘I just speak about and preach Jesus. I tell people who he is, what he has done, and why he has done it. I explain that Jesus is not just a great teacher or miracle worker, but God walking in our shoes. I point out that Jesus is more than a prophet; rather he is divinity who perfectly reveals God because he is truly God in the flesh.’

And, as we learn from his ministry elsewhere we learn that he explained the negative news that all men and women are fatally flawed, far beyond what we ever think. But amazingly, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God offered us all an amnesty when we turn to him in repentance and in faith. It’s an act of love and mercy far greater than we ever dreamed.

And, Paul continues with another necessary facet to people coming to faith. As he introduces men and women everywhere to the Jesus Christ, God through his Spirit takes the veil from people’s hearts and enables them to see the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ.

Paul explains that as we conduct a verbal ministry God chooses to accompany our speaking with something we can’t provide – his miracle of illumination. God has made his light shine in their hearts.

This necessary work of God raises another facet of our partnership with God: we need to pray – pray that God whose nature is always to have mercy will be merciful to the people of our age.

Yet, is it not true that often when we do start to look for opportunities to speak with friends or family about Jesus, we neglect to pray?

Let me urge you to commit to praying regularly for at least five people you know and who you would love to see come to know the Lord.

As to our verbal ministry of communication, over these next weeks I plan to set out seven suggested topics for coffee conversations drawn from Luke’s Gospel. I will welcome your comments.

With concerns abounding over the tensions within nations and between nations we wonder what the future might hold.

Psalm 146:3 says: Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs he returns to the earth;… How appropriate is this warning. Those with influence and power will never have the perfect answers to our deepest concerns, our security and our future.

The psalm speaks of the mortality of princes. A deeper layer of the theme is found in Isaiah 32:5 which says that the fool, one who denies God, will no more be called noble. And there is an even more sombre meaning, drawn from God’s words to Adam in Genesis 3:19: “… You shall return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return”. It is all rather depressing.

But the warning comes in the context of a big picture of God. For Psalm 146 is the first of the cluster of five psalms that conclude The Book of Psalms. Each of these psalms opens and closes with one Hebrew word: Hallelujah.

Hallelujah brings together two Hebrew words: Hallel a verb meaning praise, and Jah which is a contraction of the word for God – Jehovah or Yahweh. Put together they are a command: ‘Praise the Lord’.

This is the context of Psalm 146’s warning. No matter how powerful or how rich, how impressive or influential someone might be, they are still only human. The paths of human power and glory always lead to the grave. Despite the passing of the centuries Psalm 146 has lost none of its relevance. Only one person is worthy of our unconditional trust: the Lord God Almighty.

Which brings us to the second theme of the Psalm: Blessing.

In verse 5 we read: Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God,…We are to put our trust in the God of good news.

And as the psalm continues to unfold, the focus is on God as creator, his faithfulness and his justice, his love and his commitment to give life and hope.

The notion of a creator God is aggressively dismissed today on social media and by opinion-shapers. Yet some of the finest scientific minds agree that at the very least, we are not here by chance. The universe is the work of a supreme intelligence.

(You may want to read Henry F. Schaefer III, Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence (Apollos Trust: 2003) and John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking (Lion, Oxford: 2011).)

Furthermore, God is truly the God of good news. In verses 7 and 8 we read: …who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free;.. He opens the eyes of the blind. He lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The oppressed, the hungry, the prisoners, the blind, and the righteous, as well as the sojourners or immigrants, the widow and the fatherless (verse 9), are the recipients of God’s help.

The flow of the sentence tells us that these are not different groups of people, but the same people. This describes the people of God as a whole. The righteous are those who are righteous by faith. They don’t put their trust in princes. They put their trust in the God who is faithful, the God who has good news to offer, the God of the gospel.

Now the psalmist is not saying that there is no place for human agencies. That’s not his point. The question he is asking is this, ‘Where do you put your trust – in human princes or in God?’

When we open our minds and hearts to God, whose beauty and love are now perfectly revealed for us in the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s eternal Son, we will find Hallelujah will rise to our lips, again and again. We will find that whatever our song of experience was in the past, it can now finish with Hallelujah, the heartfelt song of praise, of hope and of joy, to the one true God.

In the words of Psalm 146:10 – The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord!

And now that the Lord Jesus Christ has come we can truly sing: And he shall reign forever and ever. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

We regularly hear that social media and governments have powerful tools which reach into so many aspects of our personal affairs – phone calls, email, social media and our online searches.

Psalm 139 tells us of another powerful source that looks into our lives – not just our activities, but into our very thoughts. In his psalm, sometimes described as the crown of Hebrew poetry, David speaks of a Watcher who is not a mere passive receptor of information, like the prying of cyberspace, but someone who knows and understands every detail of our existence. ‘You have searched me, you know me, God,’ David says.  ‘I have no privacy, no place from which I can exclude you. There is no corner of my mind where I can shut the door against you. Everything I do, everything I say, everything I think, is wide open to you.’
‘You hem me in behind and before, you have laid your hand upon me’, he continues.

At first it seems that David is saying, everywhere I go, every step I take, I feel you breathing down my neck. But the larger context indicates that he doesn’t see it this way at all. The words you hem me in can also be translated, ‘you guard me’ or ‘you encircle me for my protection.’ He doesn’t view God’s all-embracing knowledge as a threat, but rather as a refuge. He is not at all resentful of God’s all-seeing intelligence.

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? he asks. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast, we read in verses 9 and 10. David’s imagery of taking the wings of the morning is that of traveling at the speed of light to a far place. Even there he will still find God. The instant the thought enters his head that he might escape God, he realizes how impossible it is.

Many of us have felt the same as David, but we might have a note of frustration in our voice: ‘God, I want to get away from you.’ Perhaps surprisingly, David isn’t trying to run away. His reaction to God’s all-embracing knowledge is one of deep-felt gratitude. For unlike human prying eyes, God’s eyes are pure and he is just in all his ways. For when we truly turn to him, his presence is not a threat or a cause for anxiety, but rather a joy. David understood that God’s presence means guidance and protection.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,”  even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you (vv.11-12). David was anticipating the possibility that in a moment of panic he might find himself saying, ‘God has left me and forgotten me.’

Rather he was saying, no matter how dark the situation seems, God has infra-red vision – he sees in the night just as well as he sees in the day. God’s reassuring hand is there in the tough times and in the good times. In another psalm (Psalm 23) David could say: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

‘Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done,’ are the words of a Christian song. How easily we forget to thank God for the countless good things he provides for us. We take it all for granted.

But there is something else we often forget: King David wrote about it in Psalm 103. It seems he wrote this for the great choir he established in Jerusalem, in the context of his personal growth in his understanding of God.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, David began. What is interesting for us is that he did not go on to list all the specific things God had done for him. Rather he focused on features of God’s character that I can only touch on here – God’s grace, his goodness and his greatness.

God’s grace: God will not always accuse, nor will he keep his anger forever (v.9). Martin Luther once commented, ‘Wrath is God’s strange work.’ Anger is alien to God: it is his response to our failure to honor him and give him the thanks that is his due. There was a time when there was no anger in God; equally, there will come a time when there will be nothing further to rouse his anger.

God’s forgiveness: For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him (v.11). Children sometimes ask their parents, ‘How much do you love me?’ and they open their arms saying, ‘This much, or this much?’ When David said this to God, he realized that not even the expanse of the universe can illustrate the vast dimensions of God’s love. 

So he continues: As far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us (v.12).  We can’t watch the sun rise and set at the same time. We have to turn our back on one to see the other. Through the lens of the New Testament we see that through the cross of Christ, God found a way of detaching our sin from us, so he could condemn the one without condemning the other. The illustration means that when we ask God for mercy, he has to turn his back on our sin when he looks at us, because he puts us and our sin on two different horizons. 

God’s goodness and awesome power: We have even more reason than David to bless the name of God, for we live on the other side of the cross that once stood on Calvary’s hill. That cross is a far, far greater measure of God’s love than the unfathomable depths of the universe about which David spoke. The arms of the cross show us the grief that tears the heart of God because of our sin. In Christ, God not only lifts us out of the pit, he lifts us from the depths of hell and raises us to new life forever.

Is there any real praise of God in our hearts? It’s easy to go to church, to sing songs, and say Amen to the prayers, but to have no real personal connection with him. It’s easy to hear sermons that move us, but we’re not really listening to God because we’re more impressed with the preacher than we are with relating to God.

True blessing. Do you have a sense of God’s blessing in your life, a sense of connectedness with him that comes through knowing Jesus Christ? If you do not, then do what Jesus said: Ask, seek and knock. God promises to open our eyes to the truth.