[00:00:01] Welcome to the River Church podcast. We're all about bringing the life, hope and love of Jesus to everyone around us. For more information, check out our
[email protected] thanks, Gary. Good morning, everyone.
[00:00:16] How you doing?
[00:00:20] It was sort of mixed there, wasn't it? How you doing? Yes, it was mixed. Have you got steps up this week?
[00:00:29] No. Who's got their steps up this week?
[00:00:33] Does anyone who likes walking?
[00:00:37] There's some people here, aren't there? Right. I mean, atelier loves walking. You've got your steps up this week, definitely. Okay, good.
[00:00:45] Because this, you know, it's probably half and half in this room, isn't it? I mean, some people see walking as just a sort of a necessary evil. You know, you've got to get from point A to point B. So I haven't got a hovercraft or a. Or, you know, hoverboard or whatever to get there. So I'm going to have to walk. Although you can get these, the electric scooters. I mean, they're the. Yeah. Anyway, let's not go there.
[00:01:09] But other people really like walking.
[00:01:12] You know, suspense. Really? People like walking. You like walking, you know, you like getting out and experiencing the outside, or you like going for a walk in the countryside, or you find that walking is a chance to catch up with other people and things like that. Yeah. Is there people here in that room? Yeah. They like doing that? Yes. And yeah. Different attitudes to walking. Walking means different things to different people.
[00:01:39] But also, like, we use the word walk in so many different ways. Have you noticed this?
[00:01:45] Right, so walk can mean doing this, but walk can mean so many other things.
[00:01:53] Hey, that person walked through a tough period in their life.
[00:01:57] Yeah.
[00:01:59] That person walked straight into it. Ever used to use that? You've got to walk your own path.
[00:02:05] They walked out on a deal.
[00:02:07] Do you know? That's another one. He walked free.
[00:02:10] But you got those things of. There's a travel kind of sense in it. But then other ways that we use it. Walking on eggshells. Have you used that phrase, you've got to walk the line, go walk it off.
[00:02:24] Loads of different ways that we use the word walk.
[00:02:27] And I'm saying this because when we started our series, we started a series going through sort of the major narratives of the Bible. There's some odd little things that crop up now and again. And you go, I wonder really what that means.
[00:02:44] So when we started in Genesis 3, there's this verse that says, and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of day. And the man and the wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord. And that verse is about, you know, the fall of Adam and Eve.
[00:03:04] But what does it mean for God to walk in the garden? Do you ever get across, you know, things like this and think, what does that mean?
[00:03:13] What actually happened there? In what sense did God walk?
[00:03:19] Is this a kind of physical. Is this a God in physical form? Is he walking? Or is it some kind of metaphor?
[00:03:28] And as we go through the Old Testament, we find references to God appearing in human form. Is this one of them?
[00:03:36] Is this what he did? What do you think?
[00:03:40] And then as we go through the Old Testament, we started in Genesis and going through this other places of people walking with God.
[00:03:50] So we find Enoch. Enoch is a famous person who we know very little about. But it says in Genesis 5 that he walked with God. And in a chapter later, Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. And Noah walked with God.
[00:04:09] Is that because they actually walked alongside God?
[00:04:13] Was God in physical form and they went out for a chat one day? Is that what it means?
[00:04:22] Oh, there it goes, a mystery.
[00:04:25] If you're like me, you kind of want it to be true, you know?
[00:04:31] I want God to have walked with these people in physical form. Why? Because I want it to. I want somehow, some dream to be actually to do that myself.
[00:04:46] I want to be able to walk with God. I want to walk. I want him to walk alongside me. Do you know why? Because I know that if I did have a. A walk with God, he'd answer all my questions, wouldn't he?
[00:05:00] I've got all these questions that I want to ask. And it's like, God, can we go out for a walk and have a chat? Because I want to ask you all these things. And please explain to me all of these things. Tell me why these things happen.
[00:05:14] Tell me what I've got to do next. I've got this situation, God, and I want to chat and find out. And I want your wisdom. I want you to tell me what might happen next, what I should do. What do you think I should do? God?
[00:05:26] And also it's like, I want to go out because I know if I walk with God and I chat with God, that God would give me loads of encouragement.
[00:05:35] I'd know that God's in my corner, fighting my battles, if we say, use that expression. And that if I could go for a walk with God and chat with him, then I could do anything, that I could conquer anything. Because I know that God's Will be with me. Who's there with me?
[00:05:54] Is that just my dream? No, there's loads.
[00:05:57] But we know that we can't go for a walk with God. He's not available for a hang, a meet up, a walk in the countryside.
[00:06:09] Or is he?
[00:06:10] Is this something we've misunderstood?
[00:06:13] To know and to answer this question, maybe it's just my pet question, but to answer this question, we need to do a bit of detective work. Okay, so this is a Sherlock Holmes moment. Right. Deerstalkers on.
[00:06:28] If you don't know what that is, go and look it up. It's a hat, deer stalkers, a magnifying glass, a pipe. Right. Because that is Sherlock Holmes for me. Right, okay. And we need to do a bit of that. We need to walk through the Bible and look at places where this phrase comes up and try and understand what does it mean?
[00:06:48] What does it mean? When we come across difficult phrases and passages in the Bible, we can't just understand it from this one context. We need to look through and go, okay, what does more of the Bible speak to us about that? So we're going to do a bit of that. I'm going to jump around a lot in the Bible. I will put everything I have up on the screen.
[00:07:09] So, you know, maybe you're really fast in your Bible. You know, when Jackie came and said, you've got to, you've got to turn to your Bible, who can get the quickest of it? Maybe you're one of those. But I'm going to put it up.
[00:07:19] But let's have a go through.
[00:07:22] In Genesis 17 is the next section that I found with walking with God. And this is Abraham, whose name he appears here as Abraham is before his name gets changed. Don't worry, we get to that. I think atelier. Have you covered that already? You've covered that already. Brilliant. Okay. Anyway, Abraham, it says, Abraham was 99 years old. And the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to him, I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless.
[00:07:54] Walk before. What is he like a bag man? Do you know? It's like, carry my stuff and walk before me. Is it that kind of meaning? What do you think is that kind of thing? You know, carry my bags, go before me, walk before me like a prisoner or something. Kind of like trying to understand this, but it seems as though this phrase walk before me is connected with be blameless, walk before me and be blameless.
[00:08:21] I'm not sure what blameless walking looks like.
[00:08:24] Any clues?
[00:08:26] Has anyone seen Monty Python and the Ministry of silly walks. Some of you older people will know what I'm talking about. Sorry, not to offend, but is it kind of like an Indiana Jones puzzle where you have to step on, you know, the right kind of things before? That's walking blamelessly. Don't step on any animals or insects.
[00:08:49] What is this about walking before God and being blameless?
[00:08:55] Well, jumping on a bit more. I think this helps us to kind of sort out. And we're going to jump on from into Deuteronomy, into what's called the law, and see what God says to Moses.
[00:09:11] And it says, through Moses, it says, and now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord God with all your heart and your soul, and to keep his commandments and statutes.
[00:09:30] So here, walking in God's ways or walking in his footsteps, walking in the way God walks is connected here with fearing God, which is honoring God, respecting him, doing what he commands, loving God, again, the same thing, and serving him.
[00:09:50] You know, we honor God. We fear God by doing what he says. We respect him, as we might fear our teachers at school or our boss at work.
[00:10:00] Not quite in the same way, but you get this meaning that we do what they respect them and we walk in his ways. We walk in God's ways. And this phrase is kind of a favorite in the Old Testament.
[00:10:14] As we journey through the Old Testament, walking in God's ways comes up again and again and again. So we get it in the books of the law. So Deuteronomy, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, those books of the law which tells Israel how to behave, explained a lot of the times. To walk according to God's law is to walk in God's ways. And then you get the history books, the books of all the narratives about what Israel did. Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Chronicles, those books. We get to see that good leaders, good people, are those that walk in God's ways. And then we get into the Psalms and Proverbs, the wisdom books. To walk in wisdom, to walk in the paths of righteousness, to walk with integrity, is to walk in God's ways. And then maybe we get to the prophets as well. That other big section of books of writing in the Old Testament, the prophets, they tell God's people off for not walking in God's ways, not walking in the light, which is equivalent to walking in the truth, in the truth of God. But people walk in darkness. And so the prophets say, stop doing that.
[00:11:33] Stop doing that and walk in God's ways, stop turning down side roads, stop turning down dark paths, but walk on a true path, walk in God's ways.
[00:11:44] And that's how we might understand it in the Old Testament. That's how the word walk and walking with God comes to its sort of understanding.
[00:11:54] So what does that mean for Adam, Enoch, Noah? What does that mean?
[00:11:59] Well, as far as the biblical theme that we get walking, walking with God is walking in his ways. So Enoch and Noah walked with God. That is, they walked in God's ways. That's what I believe that it means they walked according to God's law, according to before the Leviticus law, before that was given to Moses, they had law of God that was pre law, if you see what I mean. God's instruction, God's tuition.
[00:12:31] They walked with God, they walked in his ways.
[00:12:35] What about Adam and Eve?
[00:12:37] What about Adam and Eve? Well, I think they're special.
[00:12:41] They're special people because I think the language around there, it was actually God walking, not Adam and Eve walking. And a language of trees and garden was very much a physical thing. I think Adam and Eve actually walked with God in a physical way.
[00:12:58] They did it.
[00:13:00] But you notice in that verse that after Adam and Eve sinned, where God was walking, they weren't.
[00:13:08] They'd walked off somewhere else, they'd hid from God. They were no longer walking in God's ways. They'd chosen to walk elsewhere.
[00:13:19] So if that's the Old Testament, how does that relate to us? Well, let's go insert. Let's keep our magnifying glasses out, our detective spectacles on.
[00:13:32] How does that get into the New Testament? How does that relate to us?
[00:13:37] Well, what we see is this whole language of walking with God continues all the way through the New Testament. So in Acts, the church, God's people, it says, so the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of Holy Spirit. It multiplied this phrase, walking in the fear of the Lord. See those words coming back together.
[00:14:07] And then Paul in his writings, in the letters, he continues this metaphor. So in Romans, he says, walk in the footsteps of the faith that our Father Abraham had. And he says, when he's talking about baptism, he says, we die to our old life and are raised that we too might walk in newness of life.
[00:14:27] And again and again, I'm going to give you some more examples. Here's one from Colossians says, and so from the day we Heard we have not ceased to pray for you. That's Paul talking about the Colossians, asking that you may be filled with a knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.
[00:14:52] Having a knowledge of God, being filled with the Spirit is connected with walking in God's ways. And a chapter later, he says in Colossians 2, therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.
[00:15:09] How Walk in him, Walk in Christ, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you are taught, abounding in thanksgiving. And then from Thessalonians, he says, finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, walk in God's ways. It's interesting. This is from these versions that I've used here. Translations, not version, these translations. The English Standard Version, which is more literal in its translation of the word. So if you've got an NIV or an nlt, it might actually translate the metaphor to now live in him, or live as you've been instructed. They've gone the further jump to actually do the translation of the idiom, the metaphor for you.
[00:16:10] So in the New Testament, walking in Christ, walking with him is in obedience. And we see that lastly in John's letter to John 6, it says, and this is love.
[00:16:24] That we walk according to his commands.
[00:16:28] How we love God. To love God is to walk in obedience with him.
[00:16:38] And that's the thing, isn't it? Walking with God.
[00:16:42] Do you want to walk with God?
[00:16:45] Do you want to walk with God?
[00:16:49] And to do that all through the Old Testament, all through the New, to walk with God is to walk according to his instruction to us, his wisdom, his insight, his love to us is to walk in his commands.
[00:17:07] Now, maybe, maybe that revelation isn't new to you, but maybe you're just a little bit disappointed because you actually secretly wanted Enoch and Noah to have walked with God physically, Right?
[00:17:23] We look back and we think, Enoch walked with God. He walked in this way. He walked beside him.
[00:17:29] He got to experience God in a physical form. Maybe that dream, I've just squashed that dream.
[00:17:38] And maybe instead we just go, okay, well, God, if walking with you is to obey all of your commands, what's in it for me?
[00:17:48] What's in it for me?
[00:17:50] Is that an irreverent. Is that a wrong question to ask?
[00:17:56] Don't know. Can I ask God what's in it for me?
[00:18:02] Maybe we feel bad about thinking of that.
[00:18:06] Sometimes we bad about thinking, hey, what's in it for me?
[00:18:10] I don't think it's bad to actually ask that question.
[00:18:14] Because if God loves us so much, right? If he made us and created us and gave us our form and gave us life, then surely walking in his ways is good for us, right?
[00:18:29] Surely it is good for us.
[00:18:32] So I'm just asking the question, hey, God, how is walking in your ways good for me?
[00:18:39] How is it? How is like, not just a kind of ephemeral kind of, hey, it's good for me. You know, like, taking your vitamins is good for you. You know, actually, like, how is it good for me? I want to know that.
[00:18:54] Let's go back to the Old Testament. Sorry, I'm flipping around. Let's go back to the Old Testament.
[00:19:00] Have I got this up screen?
[00:19:02] Oh, yeah, I did. Great. Okay. And it says, they put this. I'll just read it out. Leviticus 26. It says, if you walk. This is God speaking. If you walk in my statutes, that means his laws, and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in this season.
[00:19:21] And the land shall increase, yield its increase. And the trees of the field yield their fruit in a time when food is the most important thing. Do you know that you want your crops? That's what most people are involved in.
[00:19:37] Then God is saying, if you walk with me in my ways, I will give you blessing of food, of increase, of avoiding the word wealth here, but you get what I mean. Do you know God will bless them physically if you walk with me.
[00:19:58] And we see that instruction, right? We see that instruction carried on through the Old Testament.
[00:20:04] And when we get to the wisdom books, we see that God says, hey, if you walk in my ways, if you live your life according to my wisdom, life will go well with you.
[00:20:17] Maybe. Sometimes we think that's common sense, right?
[00:20:20] Hey, if we learn to love one another, forgive one another, learn with patience with one another, we don't do stupid things, then life generally goes well with us, right? Yeah.
[00:20:34] Yes, Ian. Yes. Yeah. Good. Okay.
[00:20:38] And God says, hey, this is my blessing upon you. If you walk according to my ways, I will bless you.
[00:20:47] And when we fast forward into the New Testament, we see that Paul writes that salvation is really connected with this walking in God's way. So Ephesians 2, big passage, big passage where Paul is writing about the benefits really of what Christ has done for us and says, you were dead in the trespasses. That's the Wrongdoings and sins in which you once walked.
[00:21:15] We walked in the wrong way.
[00:21:18] We were children under the anger, the wrath of God at one point. But God being rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ. It is grace. You have been saved. We've received this gift of salvation, this grace which has been lavished, poured out upon us.
[00:21:38] And so we are created. We are new creations in Christ Jesus for good work which God prepared beforehand that we should what we should walk in them.
[00:21:52] God has prepared good works.
[00:21:55] What do they look like? They look like observing God's instructions to us.
[00:22:01] These are good works.
[00:22:04] They produce goodness.
[00:22:06] They glorify God. And as we do them, as we do them, it is identity. It is who we are to walk in them. We have been created new so that we should. We can walk in God's ways.
[00:22:24] We have been saved.
[00:22:27] We are being saved, and we will be saved. There is a past, present and future notion to salvation that has been lavished upon us.
[00:22:39] And so in the present, right now, we get to walk in God's ways because he has put his grace upon us.
[00:22:48] And so John will write, if we say we have fellowship with God and while we walk in darkness, we lie and we do not practice the truth.
[00:22:59] Walking in God's ways is part of who God has made us to be.
[00:23:05] This is our identity. This is who we are.
[00:23:10] But aside from the whole benefits and the blessing that is poured out upon us from walking in God's ways, there's another aspect that God wants to communicate to us.
[00:23:26] And in that verse in Leviticus back in the Old Testament about pouring out his blessing upon the physical blessing, about the rains, comes also another benefit.
[00:23:39] A few verses later it says, and I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you, shall not hate you or despise you. And I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people.
[00:23:59] If you walk in my way, says God, I will walk among you.
[00:24:06] I will be present among you.
[00:24:10] And we see that in the Old Testament in terms of pillars of fire and smoke and thunder and earthquakes and all those kinds of things, lightning from heaven and all those things where the presence of God shows up in this sort of, this physical way.
[00:24:27] But for the norm of it, it's an awareness of his presence that is right there in the midst of them.
[00:24:38] That smoke, you know, filled the tabernacle and temple. They knew God was with them, and to have God with them was dependent upon them walking in his ways.
[00:24:53] And we fast forward to the New Testament and Despite God being this sort of this presence among them that they couldn't really understand, they couldn't touch. What happens in the New Testament, what happens on Christmas, God literally calms down what hadn't happened, maybe apart from a few strange appearings, but what happened, hadn't, since Adam and Eve is what God walked with man.
[00:25:29] God walked with us.
[00:25:33] A people who had gone astray. They'd gone their own way, they'd walked down their own paths. They walked into the darkness.
[00:25:41] And God shows up in physical form. And what does he say?
[00:25:45] He says, come and follow me.
[00:25:49] Come and walk with me.
[00:25:53] And Jesus, what did he do?
[00:25:56] He walked.
[00:25:58] Have you read the Gospels?
[00:26:00] I mean, Jesus walked. There weren't no buses, no trams, no E scooters, no whatever you want. He walked.
[00:26:07] He walked from town and village, around, up and down, all around the whole nation of Israel, or whatever Israel was at the time, yes, owned by the Romans.
[00:26:22] He walked around and he taught people what to do to walk with Him.
[00:26:30] But then he died and he was buried and his disciples were heartbroken. We can't walk with God anymore.
[00:26:40] He's gone.
[00:26:42] But then he raised to life again. Hooray. Hallelujah. Jesus is back. We can walk with him.
[00:26:48] And then he ascends to heaven.
[00:26:51] I mean, you know, I thought I had God with me to walk beside, but then he goes.
[00:26:57] But before he goes, what does he say?
[00:27:00] I am always with you.
[00:27:02] And so, as Jesus ascends to the Father, he sends the Holy Spirit to us.
[00:27:09] God.
[00:27:11] God dwells with us, in us.
[00:27:17] Not just here when we're together as church, but on Monday morning, on Tuesday evening, everywhere that we go, God is with us.
[00:27:32] And it's a literal God with us, right?
[00:27:37] We can't see him in physical form, but God is still with us.
[00:27:43] His Holy Spirit is with us.
[00:27:47] And so, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, we walk not by sight, but we walk by by faith, trusting, believing that God is actually with us.
[00:28:02] But just like the Israelites, what we need to remember is that there's a conditional aspect of walking with God.
[00:28:13] We don't walk with God on our own terms. We don't say, hey, God, come and walk with me along where I want to go.
[00:28:21] We don't say that.
[00:28:22] It's the other way round.
[00:28:25] Now, I've never had dance lessons.
[00:28:29] I know that might amaze many of you here, but I've watched Strictly Come Dancing a few times now and again, right?
[00:28:38] And what I'm led to believe is when you do ballroom dancing, there are Two people together, and one of them leads and one of them follows.
[00:28:49] Has anyone done ballroom dancing?
[00:28:52] Oh, there's a few people. Wow. Okay.
[00:28:56] Okay. Maybe I should get you out to demonstrate. No, I won't. It's all right. It's fine.
[00:29:00] But one of them leads and one of them follows. You can't have both people leading because you end up with very sore feet. I think very sore toes.
[00:29:09] But one person leads. One person indicates this is the time, this is the beat to walk. What we're dancing to. They indicate this is the movement we are going into. This is the direction we are going.
[00:29:22] This is where we go. There is one leader and one follower.
[00:29:28] If we want to walk with God, we need to understand that God is the one who leads, and we need to go where he leads, and we need to go in step with Him.
[00:29:43] We have to do it on his terms sometimes in the ways and the places that we don't want to go, that we're struggling in faith to follow.
[00:29:54] Do you know Paul as so great an apostle? He was so amazing in his faith. He still pleaded with God. At a time he writes, he pleaded with God to remove him from a difficult circumstance that he was going through.
[00:30:11] But God said to him, trust me in your weakness. I am strength. I am the strong one.
[00:30:19] And God is calling us to walk with Him.
[00:30:24] If the band would like to come back up, be great.
[00:30:29] God is calling us to follow him, to walk with him as he leads us.
[00:30:40] And then there are things in our lives where we struggle with walking with God, whether it's in a workplace, whether it's in relationships, whether it's the home life.
[00:30:55] Do you know, as I go on through my life, I find more things that I didn't realize that I'm walking in the wrong direction. And I'm not listening to God.
[00:31:04] But God, in His grace, points these things out gently.
[00:31:08] And I know this.
[00:31:10] I'm sure that we can all think about areas in our life where we think, hey, maybe I need to think about that again.
[00:31:18] Maybe I need to submit myself and be brought into line, submit my footsteps, my walking, to be in line with God himself.
[00:31:31] If we could stand.
[00:31:41] And just before we go into just a song of response, it would just be great just to take a moment, just to bow our heads before him and dedicate ourselves once again to walking with God.
[00:32:08] Lord, we just want to thank you, Jesus, that you came down so as we, as humanity, we're going our own way. You came down to show us the right way to explain the Old Testament. Explain everything, explain your law, explain your wisdom to us.
[00:32:35] But to sit with us, to walk with us, to walk in our shoes, to understand, to show us how, to walk the right ways as people.
[00:32:51] And, Lord, we struggle with it.
[00:32:54] We struggle with it every day of our lives, Lord, we struggle to walk with you, to follow you, Lord, into those hard places, those places where we haven't got faith to go.
[00:33:09] But, Lord, just as Paul writes, where we are weak, you are strong.
[00:33:13] And so, Lord, we pray. Would you help us, God?
[00:33:18] Would you help us?
[00:33:19] We want to follow you, Lord. We want to glorify you with all that we have.
[00:33:26] So would you help us, Lord? Help us to follow you.
[00:33:31] Help us to dedicate ourselves to you and glorify you with all of our life.
[00:33:39] Amen.
[00:33:41] Amen.
