The last message I preached, not yesterday, but the one previous to that, I preached in Mandarin, in Hong Kong. But I suppose I best stick to English today. And if I spoke in Cantonese, you probably don't know what I'm talking about.
The theme of our camp, of course, is Yuzhou Zhuang, King of the Universe. And since we have only two messages, I will take it then into two main themes on this subject. Yesterday we talked about God as Creator, the one who created all things. He is King of the Universe for the simple reason that He created the Universe. It is His Universe. And He rules over it.
I hope you don't mind. I will speak slowly for the sake of the translators. I hope you don't get too tired of my speaking at this speed. My normal tendency is to speak very fast. I think Lao Tai and others will remember from early days that I spoke so fast, the translator was almost out of breath, trying to keep up with me. But I will try to speak slowly.
Today we need to look at King of the Universe from another aspect, which I think is even more amazing than what we talked about yesterday. The creation is amazing. But when we talk about God as Redeemer, this is truly, we can say, truly mind-boggling. The mind is not able to grasp the astonishing reality that the King of the Universe is also our Redeemer.
So there are two fundamental aspects about the King of the Universe. First, that He is the Creator. And second, and in my view more important than that, is that He is the Redeemer. Now, when we think of redemption, there is no way that anyone will come to redeem you, to save you, unless he cares about you. We can think of God as Creator of the vast universe in which we are like a speck of dust. And why should He care about a speck of dust? Why should He be mindful of us?
As the psalmist said, what is man that you should consider him? What is man that you should be mindful of him? Why should God care, in other words, about you and me? He is too great for the likes of us. He is so wise. His wisdom, who can comprehend? Why should He be interested in human beings of such limited capacity in comparison to Him? The most brilliant man on earth must rank below a fool when it comes to the vastness of his wisdom.
Wasn't it Isaac Newton, the great physicist, who said, I don't know one-tenth of one percent of anything. Now, if Isaac Newton conceded that he knew next to nothing, what happens to the likes of us? How much do you and I know? If God measured us by our knowledge, why would He bother to talk with us? He must be bored to death talking to the likes of us. If you talk to a kindergarten child about any subject, he doesn't know anything. There's no point talking to him on this, you know. You can talk about dolls, or you can talk about teddy bears and stuff, and how long can you talk about teddy bears? What does God have to talk with us about?
In other words, why should He care? That's why I'm saying, in order to be a redeemer, He has to care about us. One of the great problems for many Christians is that they don't really believe that God cares. When it speaks about faith, one of the hardest things to exercise faith in is that this great God of unspeakable majesty, surrounded with countless angels, who governs the universe of a size that our minds cannot even begin to fathom, that this God should care about us. That problem, that is probably the biggest challenge of faith. That it's hard to believe that God cares.
But when you walk in the Christian life, and you experience God's care, I think that speaks for itself. How do we prove that God cares for us? Well, we have to experience it, in order to know. Let me give you some little examples. I think my whole life is filled with examples about God's care. And perhaps some of you have seen the first few chapters of my testimony, and you have seen that actually every word of testimony is an example of God's care. How He took me out of China, how He led me all the way, and all those years in Britain, and on to Canada, and so on. If God didn't care, why would He do all these things?
But it goes on day by day, this example of His caring. Sometimes I sit there and think, how amazing, how amazing is it the way God did it? Let me give some recent examples. During the last training, and I thought about it a lot, you see, we live in the island of Lantau, Discovery Bay, and the training, our full-time training, is in Pingjiao. That was during their training, in fact, you see. And so I have to take the little wooden boat, a junk, and go from where I live to their island. And there is a timetable, it goes on a number of times every day. And to confuse matters, the timetable on the weekend is different from the timetable during the weekday. And holidays, again, different timetable.
Now, one day, Helen, she, I asked her to check the timetable, and she looked up the time. We went to the dock, and we saw the boat going off. I thought, dear me, how am I going to go to Pingjiao for the session? They will all be sitting there, waiting for the session to start, and I wouldn't be anywhere to be seen. The reason was that Helen had looked at the holiday time, the weekend timetable, which is actually five minutes later. See, just to confuse you, they have to change it by five minutes. Five minutes later than the weekday timetable.
So there we were standing on the dock. The boat was gone. Everybody in the team was sitting there, the training team was sitting there waiting for the session to begin, and I was thinking, how am I going to get to Pingjiao now? Going across is only 12, 15 minutes by boat. It's quite near. But what am I going to do? Take off my jacket and swim? And I thought, what's going to happen now? We stood there, and I said, Lord, what are we going to do now?
And then suddenly, I see a boat docked there just next to where the ferry had just left. There was another boat there, which is a Huo Chuan, you know, a boat that carries various goods. And so, Helen asked the boatman, are you going to Pingjiao? And he said, yes, I'm going to Pingjiao. When are you leaving? Oh, we're leaving any moment now. Oh, this is amazing.
You know, in all the years we have been there, on this dock, there has never been another boat by that dock. But the one time when we missed a boat, there was a boat at the dock. I've gone back many times, I have never seen another boat sitting there. How is it then that this boat was there at the very moment we needed it? The King of the universe had arranged it all. He had already foreseen what's going to happen. When you think of the intricacy of arranging this whole thing, so that having missed one, there was another boat waiting.
And we said, can we go across to Pingjiao with you? He said, come on, come on the boat, no problem. And when we got to Pingjiao, we want to pay them. They said, no, no, we are not a passenger boat. We don't want to pay. So we even got a free ride to Pingjiao. Didn't want to take any money from us. So we got to the session on time. Amazing. We weren't even late. It was just on time.
What can you say when you think of these very small things? You think, my God, the King of the universe had foreseen everything. He had arranged everything in advance. And every time I go down to catch the boat, I look around to see if this time there is another of these boats around. There never is. There's never a boat there. Why exactly that day there was a boat to leave right away for Pingjiao? See, He cares. He cares. I experience it all the time. And sometimes His caring so startles me that my mouth drops open, literally drops open in astonishment.
Let me give you another example. I was thinking in my mind about the situation in China. I'm very concerned. We have quite a lot of work going in China which is top secret so we can't talk about that work. But I think a lot about the work in China. And just one day I was thinking about a book about a person in China who had been in prison for quite some time and I had thought it would be wonderful if he had written something about his time in prison so that I could read it. But I didn't know if he ever wrote anything or not. And the thought just went through my mind.
And then I went to the central church in Hong Kong for a meeting and after the meeting his sister said, oh I've just been to the bookshop and I bought two books for you. I thought maybe you're interested, and she handed me the books. I looked at it and literally my mouth dropped open. It was a book written by the very man I had thought about in prison and wondered if he had written a book. I didn't even know whether he wrote the book. And the book was right in front of my eyes and she presented it to me. She said, I thought you might be interested.
Why did she think I would be interested? How did she know I would want to read this book? And I asked her, so where did you buy the book? She says, oh, in such and such a bookshop. I said, okay. So a few days later I went to the bookshop to look for myself and searched through the whole bookshop, there's no such book. Either they had already sold it or maybe that was the last copy. And I went and looked all over Hong Kong and other bookshops, I could never find that book. First of all I didn't even know there was such a book, but when I knew there was such a book I couldn't find it anyway. There was no bookshop that had it.
So all these years walking with the living God has been an astonishing experience. Big things, small things, big things, small things. Let's take another small thing. Maybe to some it's really a small thing. When we came over to England because I have quite a lot of traveling to do in Europe, including after visiting Liverpool to go to the north of England to visit some friends of mine from student days.
They are now all professors of theology. One is a professor of Old Testament who has written quite a number of books I shared the other day. We studied Hebrew together in Israel. Then I thought of him one day and I just wondered where is he nowadays and I lost track of him. Then I was in a bookshop. I often am in bookshops. I love books. I picked up a book and I saw his name. I said, John Sawyer. I know this name. That's the person I was thinking of. We studied Hebrew together in Israel. I looked at the back of the book. The other side says professor of Old Testament and Hebrew in the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. I said, oh, now I know where he is. He's in Newcastle upon Tyne.
And so on the way to Europe, I hope to visit him in Newcastle. Also in student days, there was a brother in Cambridge and I often visited in Cambridge, though I was studying in London, and he was doing his doctorate in Cambridge in theology. And now he is professor of New Testament in University of Durham and one of the topmost New Testament scholars in the world. So I would aim to visit him since Durham is very close to Newcastle. All conveniently on the same route. And another brother who studied with me at the Bible Institute in Scotland, is only another hour or so by car further north, where he is the principal of a Bible college up there. I think it's called Northumbria Bible College.
So I hope to visit all these dear friends along the way to Europe and to visit other friends from student days also in Europe. Since as you know, I haven't been back to UK for how long? It must be more than 12 or 13 years now. And I don't know when will be the next time we come back.
Anyway, the point is that if I were to travel by train and catch buses and then fly over to Europe and fly back to UK to catch the plane back to Canada and so on, all this traveling is going to be very expensive. So I thought what we could do is maybe rent a car and on a longer rental basis it would be cheaper. So we checked with the Automobile Association. They said we can do better than that. You don't need to rent the car. You can buy a car. I said, what? Buy a car is cheaper? He said yeah, buy a car is cheaper. Because what happens is you buy the car, you use it for one month and you sell it back to them. And everything is fully insured. And the price is actually almost well 40% cheaper than the car rental. And the car rental actually does not include full insurance, only third party. So when you add on the full insurance, it almost doubles the price of the listed rental price. They trick you by not telling you how much the comprehensive insurance is.
So now I am the proud owner of a car, the first new car that I ever own in my life since I usually own only old cars. And I own it for about four weeks. That's all the length of time. I have all the documents of ownership for four weeks. But the thing is, when I looked through the car that they have in this arrangement where it's called buy and sell arrangement, which is done through a French company, the Peugeot, the automobile manufacturers.
Of course, I looked at their cars and it depends, you want the expensive car, the luxury cars, and of course I was choosing the small cheap cars. Not the smallest one, because it's maybe a little bit of a problem for long distance, it's just the second smallest one, which is a 306 model. And on the brochure, the 306 looks quite small. For us from North America, we're a little bit used to bigger cars. And I said, okay, I'll settle for this small one then, it's a lot cheaper.
So when we got to the airport, the agent for Peugeot is waiting for me, and takes me to the car park, and he says, I'll drive you to another car park, I'll pick up a car, and we go. I said, oh, so this is your car. He says, no, that's the one you're having. I look at the car, and I thought, wow, I thought the 306 was a small car, this one doesn't look so small. So I was a bit puzzled, because the price I was paying is for a small car. And this one doesn't look all that small to me. It even has electric windows and everything. And I thought, since when a small car has electric windows in it?
I thought he made a mistake. There must be some mistake. How can I be paying this price for this kind of car? And just yesterday, I was walking outside, and I saw a 306, which was the one I thought I ordered, which was much, much smaller, and was just sitting out here, with the same color as in the brochure. And I thought, how come there are two different 306s, the smaller and the bigger one? I was very puzzled about this. And I'm paying the price for the smaller one, and they give me the bigger one? What happened here?
Anyway, the point of this is, because of driving long distance all across Germany, it's obvious that a bigger car is more stable, it is also a bit safer, and it's also a bit faster. As you know, in Germany, they drive very fast. Many years ago, I rented an Opel, and I was driving at 160 kilometers an hour, which is 100 miles an hour, down the German motorway, and the Germans were passing me like this. I'm looking at my clock, it's 100 miles an hour, and they're shooting past with their Mercedes and their BMWs. I asked them, is there any speed limit on the German motorway or not? They said officially yes, but actually not. Nobody is ever charged with speeding on the German motorway.
So I think the Lord in His wisdom decided that, we ordered a 306, but something that I didn't know was that there are two different models of 306. They gave me the bigger one instead of the smaller one, because He knows that in my physical condition I tire very quickly, and He decided that it would be better for me to have the larger model. This is just His care. How can the King of the universe, running a universe of this size, looking after a billion stars, have time to worry about what size car I drive? Surely this is ridiculous. Surely He has no time to think about this car as a 306.
Does He know all the models of the Peugeot too? Of course, He knows every model of the Peugeot. He knows exactly how the whole engine circuitry works. He knows which one is safe, which is stable. He knows everything. And He decides that His servant ordered a car that is too small for him, and He better get a little bit bigger one. You see? In fact, the name on the side of the 306 is not the one I ordered at all. I ordered what is called the Skylines, which is supposed to be the small one, and this one is called Symbio or something else, and I kept looking at the name. That's not what I ordered. But my God had decided that He had something else in mind for me.
So I show you these things may be very small, but who can't understand the marvel of His ways? So I just refer to these recent things.
Well, more importantly, let's take another example. After I arrived here in camp, I had a friend in my student days from Vietnam, and we became friends while he was studying in Cambridge. And this Vietnamese friend that I only got because I went fishing, you know, I like to do personal work, to outreach to people, and I love to go to Cambridge to fish, you see. I don't mean the fish in the pond, I mean the students, of course.
And you see, Cambridge is very good for fishing because Cambridge, the residential arrangement, is that they put the names of the students right by the door. You can look at the residential quarters, and all the names of students, so I pick out all the Asian names, you see, and then I would go and knock on the door, right? And I have had some very interesting experiences there. For example, I knocked on one door, King's College in Cambridge, and I saw the name Arthur Lee, and I said, Arthur Lee, sounds Chinese to me. Lee could be spelled L-E-E, could be an English name, but L-I would be a Chinese name, right? So I said, this must be a Chinese name, so I knock on the door.
And this man opens the door, and he says, hi, you're very friendly, and I said, so you're Arthur Lee? He said, that's me, come in, come in, have a chat, you know. I said, praise the Lord, that goes fast, you know, I didn't have to argue my way into his room, so he invited me to come in, we had a good chat together, and then he said, what are you doing in Cambridge? I said, oh, I'm at Tyndale House doing some study. Oh, he said, so you're a Christian, eh? I said, that's right, how did you become a Christian? I said, well, he said, don't convert me, just tell me how you became a Christian. I said, okay, okay.
And then, because he was doing medicine, and in Cambridge you can only do your first three years or so, then you have to go to London to work in the hospital, in the teaching hospital. And so, by that time, I had also gone back to London, and I got in touch with him in London again. Look at the ways of the Lord, it's amazing, it turned out that he was living in the same district in London as I was. See, how can you comprehend the ways of the Lord, you can keep on saying coincidence, coincidence, until coincidence is not coincidence anymore, you know. So, we invited him over to our apartment for supper in London, and he walked in through the door, and he said, you continue to tell me how you became a Christian last time, because you didn't finish the story yet, I want to hear the rest of it, you know. And he said, by the way, don't convert me, alright. He wants to know how I became a Christian, but he keeps saying, don't convert me.
So years passed, must be 20 years passed, this time I was in Hong Kong for the full time training, and I thought about Arthur Lee. He's from Hong Kong, but I wonder where is Arthur Lee nowadays, you know. So I thought, look at the phone book, but have you seen the Hong Kong phone book? One, two, three, four, five volumes up here, and then you look under Lee, you know how many Lee's there are in one phone book? And I don't know what Chinese name he uses, but Arthur is no use, you know. And so I tried to look at one of the phone books, I gave up, there were so many pages on Lee, and Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee.
Then some years later, I was looking through an academic directory, and I saw the name Professor Arthur Lee, and I thought, surely this can't be the same Arthur Lee, can it? I mean, there are so many Arthur Lee's in Hong Kong. So I tried to get hold of him. I phoned the number given and I asked, I'd like to ask Professor Arthur Lee some questions. I said, what? That's him. So you see, it's truly wonderful.
And so I phoned him. By this time, he was head of the Faculty of Medicine and head of the Prince of Wales Hospital in Shatin. I phoned him and he said, oh, how about we have lunch together? So I said, okay. I said, where would you like us to meet? He said, what about the club? I said, what club? He belonged to some posh club I never even heard of. The Hong Kong Club or something, some club where all these big shots go to, you see. And so we went there for lunch and then of course, I'm not very familiar with clubs. So after lunch, I was trying to pay the bill. He says, you don't need to try, you can't pay here anyway. I said, wow, you got me on your territory, got me defeated the first time. And by this time, I asked him and he has come to know the Lord. He's a Christian now. So the ways of the Lord are truly wonderful.
But I was referring to my Vietnamese friend, and I was fishing and then I saw this Vietnamese name and somebody told me to look for him. So I looked for him and then we had a talk and I said, where do you stand now spiritually? Because I knew from another friend that he was very hungry. He said, well, he said, I'm a Buddhist but I'm not satisfied with Buddhism. It doesn't answer my questions. It doesn't meet my needs, you know. He said, what has Christianity got to offer me? I said, well, let's give it a try. Let me tell you what there is, you know. What about God as Redeemer? How about that?
And I told him some of these things about God as Redeemer. He said, that sounds right to me. That sounds right to me. And you know what? He just came to the Lord there and then. The Lord had already prepared his heart. He came to the Lord right away. He just knelt down, committed his life to the Lord. He stood up. He was a new man.
At that time he was doing engineering because he was on scholarship at Cambridge. So he was obviously a very brilliant student. He was in his first year at the time. And I still remember at the end of the first year he was about to do his exams. And all of us were studying for exams at the time of course. And there was my friend Tuan. I think I'll be meeting him on Tuesday because I just phoned him yesterday to arrange a time to meet. He was walking around saying hello to everybody, very cheerful. And I asked him, I said, don't you have any studying to do? I mean the exams are coming up. He said, oh I finished already. I said, what? Finished five days before the exams? We haven't hardly got anywhere yet with the studies. And he's finished. He's strolling around, you know, relaxing with the exams coming up. I said, no wonder this guy is on scholarship.
But there came the blow. He failed one subject. And he was stunned. He never failed an exam in his life. And he was stunned. And he said to me, I think God is speaking to me. I said, so what is God saying to you? He said, I think God is saying to me that I must leave Cambridge. I said, why do you draw such a conclusion? There's nothing unusual to fail an exam. He said, if I had failed any other subject than the one I failed, I would not worry so much. But he said, my best subject is thermodynamics. And that's the subject I failed. That's impossible. It's not possible for me to fail my best subject. He said, therefore God is speaking to me.
So he said that God wants him to leave Cambridge. I said, what about your scholarship? He says, forget it. If God wants me to go, I go. I obey God. I thought, this man has only just come to the Lord. How many Christians would be willing to give up everything, his scholarship, everything to follow the Lord? He said, I will go. I was amazed.
And then he talked to other Christians and the other Christians all told him, you are overreacting, you are over emotional, you are being silly. You know, it's no problem. Because he was intending to finish the three years and was in his second year. So all it means is he does an extra year. It's no real problem. He's on scholarship the whole time. But he was very clear somehow before the Lord that he must leave Cambridge.
And he said to me, why are all these Christians telling me to stay on the course? Why is this place in Cambridge, this subject engineering, so important to all these Christians? Are they so in love with the world? Wow. I couldn't open my mouth. He is a young Christian rebuking all the Christians.
So I said then, where are you going to go? He said, I'm going back to Leicester. That's where he was staying. And I said, what are you going to do in Leicester? He said, I don't know. I'll just go and find myself a job and wait on the Lord, what the Lord wants me to do. I said, okay. So we remained in contact all the following years.
And then one day he told me, the Lord has been giving me leading now. I said, yeah, what is the Lord leading you to do? He says, I'm going to study physics. I said, why do you want to study physics? He said, because I want to understand the universe. I want to understand how God has made this universe, the King of the universe. How did He create this universe? What are the laws by which it functions? I said, that sounds good to me. Sounds good to me. Well, he not only graduated from physics, he did his PhD, his doctorate in physics in Leicester. And this is from his student days. Wonderful, isn't it, how the Lord works.
And so I came here and I kept thinking to myself, where is my Vietnamese friend now? I don't know where he is. I've lost touch with him for 12, 13 years, you know, I think at least that long, maybe longer than the last time we met. And I was upstairs, you see, after Brother Kim had directed me to where we are supposed to stay. And then immediately I was thinking about my friend, you see, and then I decided to look for the phone book.
And I thought he might be somewhere in Chester area, because the last time he was living, the last time I met with him, he was living in that area. And I picked up the first phone book on the top of these three or four phone books there, and it says Wrexham, you see. So I thought, well, he doesn't live in Wrexham. But I don't know why the Lord said, look at it. I said, okay, I read, Wrexham. Okay, what's Wrexham got to do with it? I don't know. I opened the phone book and his name is there. I said, amazing, Lord, his name is here.
So that is why yesterday you saw I was very busy phoning. I was trying to get through to him. And I phoned and he picked up the phone. And so immediately I said, do you recognize my voice? And he hesitated because so many years now. And so we have arranged, he will come to Liverpool to see me on Tuesday. He's working with Shell company in their research department. The ways of God are so amazing, isn't it? I don't know why. I'm usually a fairly rational person. I have no idea why I would look in a Wrexham phone book for his name. But the Lord just said, look. And so I look. There was his name. Just marvelous, isn't it?
So He cares. He cares not just about me, but He cares about all these wonderful people. He cares about each one of you. God as Redeemer. Why would He redeem you if He didn't care for you? Other people may not care about you. God does. God does. He doesn't care what you are, whether you are like Arthur Lee, you know, some great doctor, working head of the hospital, head of the department, so on. He cares for the likes of us, no matter what people we are.
Before coming to Liverpool, I thought about people I knew here before, and one of the people I thought about was Peggy. And I was thinking, where is Peggy? I never heard any reports from the co-workers about Peggy because they didn't know Peggy, apparently. And I said, I wonder, after all these years, where is Peggy? And then when I come to the camp, who should I see here? Peggy is here. I thought, amazing, isn't it? This is amazing.
So you can see the wonder of God's way. His caring. And then also, I haven't seen Uncle Lau for so long. So long ago. And I only heard reports about him coming to the Lord. And I was so happy. Until last night, I heard him praying. You see? Wow, my heart was so warm. I couldn't hear most of what he was saying. But I could hear him saying all the time, calling the name of Jesus. And the way he called the name of Jesus, as Helen was saying to me, wasn't it sweet the way he called the name of Jesus? So sweet, you see? I said, that's right, it's so sweet. In other words, I can see that Jesus has become precious to him.
So you can see, God cares for each one of you. He just has everything in His control. It is so wonderful. And I could go on and on with these examples, you know, it's non-stop, it's just amazing.
And sometimes also, you know, in the Christian life, you run into difficulties which you really need the Lord to help you out. Is He there to help? He's always there. It's wonderful how God works.
And this time, with the last training, the seventh training, when we started the training, we seemed to run into trouble right away because those who came from overseas to Hong Kong for the training, the Hong Kong government refused to give them visas. And it dragged on and on like this, refused to give visas. So our date of commencement was arriving. We had to start the training. And so the other co-workers said, what are we going to do about the training? And I said to them, ask them all to come over. Even if they have to come on tourist visas, we have to start on time. That is the time we start the training.
So they came from Malaysia, from wherever, into the training, all on tourist visa. Only three months, after three months, what happened? So we continued applying for them. Hong Kong government continued to refuse. And this is because apparently there's a change of policy. We had the training in Hong Kong for many years already. But because 1997 was coming up, they had already placed their communist officials in the Hong Kong government departments. And now they refuse to grant the visas.
Now I was born in China. I grew up in China under the communists. I lived for several years, seven years under the communists. I know the way their mind works. Three months is a very short time. And if the visas are not approved, they have to leave Hong Kong. And what are they going to do then? How to carry on with the training? And I think some co-workers were getting a bit anxious. And those in training who had these tourist visas were getting quite anxious because there are quite a lot of them there.
So I waited before the Lord, the King of the universe. Who rules Hong Kong? China? I don't think so. My God rules in Hong Kong. He also rules in China. So as the time was approaching, I said, Lord, your dear ones are here for the training. Their visas are going to run out. Some official there is refusing to give the visa. He said, write a letter.
So I wrote a letter to the Hong Kong government. I said, we have had our training in Hong Kong for so many years in the past. We've never had any trouble. This time you refuse to give the visa. I must assume that there is a new policy in operation in your immigration department. And I assume that this policy is hostile to Christianity and to the churches. I said that if this is the case, then I have to make it publicly known, not only in Hong Kong, but throughout the world, in all our churches, that with 1997 coming up, you have now become hostile to the churches of Christ in Hong Kong and everywhere else. And if we do not receive the approval, we will have to understand.
# King of the Universe (Part 2)
We also need wisdom in how to deal with the situation. Because after all, in the end, the interests of His people are affected. Well, our time is almost gone, but if I were to give you more of these amazing examples of the Lord's doing, it could be here for many days to come. I will simply settle with one or two more points before we close.
Perhaps we can turn to Isaiah chapter 40, and we can look at verse 22, and also verse 23. Yes, there you see in verse 23, you see, these officials, they thought they could block the purposes of God and prevent the training from going on. But He brings the princes to nothing. He makes the judges of the earth useless. After all, He is the one who controls the earth. Not the princes, not the judges, not the rulers, not the governors.
Verse 22 says, He who sits enthroned on His throne above the circle of the earth. This statement, verse 22, the circle of the earth, has been a source of wonder for scholars. Because it was alleged that the earth was flat and square. But the Bible says long ago that it is a circle. It's round, you see. So you can see that long before the scientists discovered that the earth is a circle, the Bible said so, even in the time of Isaiah.
Now I have to close in a few moments and I'd like to turn to Philippians chapter 2, one more passage before we close. Philippians chapter 2, and we read from verse 5. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Here every knee will bow to Him who rules over all things. Now this is where we come to redemption at the deepest point. Here the point is that this God who rules over everything chose to become a slave. We often speak of Him becoming a man. He became much more than a man, or much less than a man. He became a slave. In some English translations you have the word bondservant, which is not a very good translation. The Greek word means slave. What does a slave control? He doesn't control anything. God controls everything. But Jesus who was in the form of God, as it says here, means in the position or status of God. He put aside His position of Lord of everything, Lord of the universe, King of the universe. And He took on the position of a slave, who controls absolutely nothing.
Why did He do that? I think this is the most amazing thing of all. That He was willing to be nothing in this world. Born into a stable. Lived the life of a very ordinary man as a builder, often translated as carpenter, but actually He was a builder, one who builds houses and other things. And went on, it says, to become obedient unto death. Now that's why I said this is the most mind-boggling of all. You see a slave is somebody who has no freedom. He is under the control of everything else. So from the position of being supremely free to do His own will, He accepted a position in which He was never free to do His own will. Obedient means you always listen to somebody else. And obedient to what extent? To the extent that when He was required to go to the cross by the Father, He gladly accepted that too.
And Paul says that this mind, this kind of attitude, be in your thinking, as it was in Christ. Now we have never been master of everything, probably not master of very much in all our lives. So for us to become humble is already so difficult, in spite of the fact that few of us have been master of anything. But He who was master of the universe surrenders His freedom, His mastery, to become a slave.
Now to understand this, we have to understand what His work was to do. You see, to save us from sin, He has to accept what sin does to every person. And that is, to make you a slave. You lose your freedom. To live under sin is to lose all freedom. Have you noticed that?
Now the anatomy of sin, we can say it's a very big subject but I hope just to touch on it for you to understand sin from another angle. Because sin is usually defined in terms of breaking the law, and that is also true, but that is not for us the most practical and realistic way of looking at sin. Sin is fundamentally, I repeat again, the loss of freedom, whether the freedom is external, like being trapped in a queue, or inwardly where you lose the freedom to be joyful, you see, the freedom to have peace in your heart. Somebody takes the peace away from you. You see, you are feeling quite good and then somebody insults you. What happened? You lost the peace and the joy in your heart. You see, one careless word. That's why the Lord is so strict about this. You will account for every careless word you have spoken. If I say one careless word to you, you feel very unhappy. I have sinned against you. I have taken away your joy, your freedom.
You may not have had great joy, but you were feeling better than what you felt after I talked to you. On the other hand, if I said one kind word to you and you felt, ah, you feel certainly so good, so nice. I have done you a favor. I have given you the freedom to rejoice for a moment, you see. I wish we could be kinder in our words to one another, you know. One word of encouragement, one word of comfort, ah, it does so much to people in a world that is sometimes so cruel, so hard.
You know, I always remember that a survey was done as to why some supermarkets do better than other supermarkets, you see. And the survey result was surprising, very simple. Why do some people keep going back to the same shop or to the same supermarket? They discovered, you know why, the simple reason is the cashier smiles at you and says, have a nice day. Here's your change, come back again, have a nice day. Just those few words and people feel good, you know, and they come back to that same supermarket. Whereas you come to the supermarket, you give the money, the cashier grabs the money, slams back the change, next one. You want to go to the supermarket? No thanks, I had enough of this one. Once is enough, this grumpy face of this sales girl is enough to put you off for good. You don't want to go back there again, you know.
And that is why in the big supermarkets they coach all their staff. It's not by accident that they are all so nice. They are trained to be like that. It is good for business. Oh, it's very good for business. Yeah, I notice British Airways has improved a lot now. They obviously have some good coaching because I remember in the past going British Airways, wow, these air stewardesses, why, they are like, I don't know what, you know. There's no smile, they just say, what do you want, you know. If you want your beef today or chicken? Beef, okay. After that you say thanks very much. But now they smile, is it alright for you? Everything happy? You'd like a drink? Oh, the atmosphere is very different, you see.
So you can see human beings are very sensitive to all these things. One gives you joy and the other gives you unhappiness. And sin is what takes away the joy. When a person is rude, he is actually sinning against you. When a person is kind, he is actually bringing joy and blessing to you. That's why the Lord says you will give account for every careless word you speak which has hurt somebody. Every careless word is very hurtful.
I like to bring it down to this very practical level of the Christian life. We can give high-sounding definitions which nobody fully understands. The Christian life is very, very practical. God is so kind, He is so considerate. He cares for our salvation and our redemption. And Paul says here, let this kind of thinking be in your mind. This is the way we need to live.
In fact, if you see the cashier so miserable, maybe she had a bad day too, she is taking it out on you. Why don't you say, you look nice with this dress you have on today. Startled. Yeah? Do I? I like your dress, it's nice, where did you find it? And suddenly the person starts smiling. I've done that once or twice too, because they don't expect you to comment about them, they're sort of a bit stunned by this unusual statement. And then you see that she starts smiling, and the next customer comes by, she's smiling at that customer too. You have done a little bit of work in the battle against sin.
So redemption. He loved us and He gave Himself for us. We can speak of this very theologically and nobody quite understands what that means, or we can put it into everyday life and all of us know what that means.
So we have to close here, our time is gone, and I thank the Lord for this opportunity to share with you all. And I hope that the King of the universe will become much more precious to you now, both as Creator and as Redeemer, but especially as a Redeemer. To rescue us from the dreariness of everyday life, the boredom, the misery, the routineness that crushes the human spirit, and in His love sets us free into a quality of life that is really different. He redeems us in this very practical aspect. If we say we are redeemed from sin but we live with a long face and we have no joy within, we don't relate to other people, what kind of redemption are we talking about anyway?
The King of the universe, how wonderful He is. Imagine if you had met Jesus on the road, you would never be the same again. You feel somehow refreshed because He sets us free. Let's close in prayer.