Midweek Message - Wednesday 25th March (& Greetings from Inverness!)

Dear All,

Firstly let me say how glad Susan and I are to have been able to get home from our trip to the US visiting family. As you may know our original flights were cancelled, but we’re grateful to God that through the prayers of many and the helpfulness of some undoubtedly hard pressed British Airways & American Airlines administrative staff, we were able to land back in Inverness late last night.

I’m very conscious that we have returned to a very different UK, a very different Inverness and a very different situation for Inshes Church than the one we left just over a fortnight ago. So much has changed and keeps changing and at such a pace. There is so much to adjust to for us all.

For me personally, I think the hardest thing will be not to be able to meet with God and with one another, face to face on a Sunday, a Wednesday or indeed at any time or place. Yet in that regard, I found myself encouraged by an article that directed me to something Charles Spurgeon had written. Spurgeon was a great Baptist preacher in the 19^th century and one of his best-known books The Cheque book of Faith consists of daily devotional thoughts based on a biblical text. Amazingly, the entry for March 15^th, which was the last Sunday we were able to meet together as a church, read as follows:  

Therefore say, “Thus says the Lord GOD: Though I removed them far off among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a while in the countries where they have gone.” (Ezekiel 11.16 ESV)

Banished from the public means of grace, we are not removed from the grace behind the means of grace. The Lord who places his people where they feel like exiles will himself be with them. He will be to them all that they could have had at home in the place of their sacred assemblies. Take this promise as your own if you are called to wander!

God is to his people a place of refuge. They find sanctuary with him from every adversary. He is their place of worship too. He is with them as he was with Jacob when he slept in the open field and woke, saying, “Surely the LORD is in this place” (Genesis 28.16). To them he will also be a sanctuary of peace, like the Most Holy Place, which was the noiseless abode of the Eternal. They will be kept from fear of evil.

God himself, in Christ Jesus, is the sanctuary of mercy. The ark of the covenant is the Lord Jesus, and Aaron’s rod, the pot of manna, the tables of the law are in Christ our sanctuary. In God we find the shrine of holiness and of communion. What more do we need?

Oh, Lord, fulfil this promise and always be to us like a little sanctuary! *

In these strange and testing times, while we are scattered and unable to meet together, may it be that we get to know our God better and prove Him as our sanctuary, our refuge. Let’s pray for one another to that end.

Yours in Christ, and in all that these days hold for us,

David

* This is taken from the 2019 version of The Cheque book of faith published by Crossway