Chemistry was the only science subject I really enjoyed at school. I was terrified of my biology teacher, whose eccentricity and rigid rules left me afraid to explore and ask questions, and the maths involved in physics left me cold. Chemistry, however, was taught by a friendly woman who may have been eccentric but whose passion and enthusiasm for her subject gradually drew me in.

I remember learning a list of the chemical properties of metals, a list I can remember to this day:

1. Metals are malleable and ductile

2. Metals usually have high density

3. Metals can form alloys with other metals and non-metals

4. Metals are generally good conductors of heat and electricity (lead being an exception)

5. Metals are generally solids at room temperature (mercury being an exception)

The list was actually much longer than that, but since this is not a chemistry revision blog, I’d better stop there!

The linguist in me loved the first bullet point most, because it introduced two new words to my thirteen-year-old vocabulary: ‘malleable’ and ‘ductile’. Malleable means the ability to be hammered or pressed into shape without breaking or cracking – pliant, pliable, workable, able to be moulded. Ductile means being able to be drawn out into a thin wire, ‘the ability to be deformed without losing toughness, not brittle.’

I could see these were useful characteristics, particularly as I pondered gold and silver jewellery. The malleability of metals seemed especially useful and practical to me.

As I grew up, I saw that some people seemed malleable like metals. They changed their shape according to the company they kept. Sometimes they were solicitous and kind; on other occasions, they could be snappy and waspish. They could be polite and deferential to my face, but in private, behind my back, could mock and laugh at me. Somehow, malleability in people did not seem so laudable.

When I became a Christian, I discovered people liked to treat God as malleable as well. We like to squeeze Him into our image, to press Him into our moulds, to take one attribute and focus entirely on that, to the exclusion of everything else.

A metal’s ability to change shape does not apply to God, however. He does not change. (Mal 3:6) He’s not like us, chameleon-like in qualities, appearing to one person as loving and to another as mean. All the attributes of God are held in perfect balance, however contradictory they may seem to us.

As I grew up, I learnt a lot about the characteristis of God in much the same way I learnt about the characteristics of metals at school. (I’m a list person!) God is love. He is faithful, good, kind, compassionate, forgiving, merciful, just, jealous, righteous, holy, slow to anger, a consuming fire… the list is much longer than the metals’ one! Some of these attributes (the things that make God who He is) seem contradictory to us and baffling, so we try to persuade ourselves that He’s malleable, able to be squeezed into whatever God-shape we fancy at the time. One attribute God does not possess, however, is malleability. He is, instead, immutable. He doesn’t change. He is who He is. He won’t change for us. We need to accept the reality of who He is, otherwise we are simply worshipping a false god.

Fairness is at the heart of our belief system. We live by the balancing scales. We believe wrongs should be righted. We long for justice and right to triumph.

But this desire for fairness, however praiseworthy, leads us into a cul-de-sac of misery, for there is no way out. We want fairness, but we deserve punishment, for no one has done right, not even one (Rom 3:10). The ‘right thing’ would be to receive judgment and punishment – not only for the criminal, but for us.

What we need, therefore, is something other than fairness. We need the extravagance of grace and mercy. We need the slate wiping clean through forgiveness. We need to find a way out of this impasse!

God offers us this exit. He lavishes grace and love on us. We don’t deserve this. We can’t earn it through the good works we attempt, but it’s poured out liberally in Christ Jesus, so we don’t have to earn it! God lavishes mercy on us, not treating us as our sins deserve, letting us go scot-free. (Ps 103:10)

Mercy and grace are God’s blessing to us, poured out liberally and generously into our lives. We can either receive them freely – as the Prodigal Son did, putting on a lovely coat and feasting on a barbecue of choice meat – or we can spurn them, clinging onto fairness as our modus operandi – as the older son did, frustrated and offended by his father’s generosity.

To us, these are either/ or options. We feel we can’t have fairness and grace. We feel we have to choose between the two. But in God’s world, the paradox is we serve a God of mercy, grace, forgiveness, love, compassion and justice. We don’t understand how this can be. We don’t see how the scales can ever balance. But that’s God. He is above all our understanding. His ways we can’t fathom. But we can rest secure, knowing He will resolve all the tensions and work out all the irreconciliable differences we can’t fathom.

Don’t mis out on grace and mercy because you’re clinging onto a need for justice. Let go of limitations to embrace a God far greater than we can imagine, a God who will see that right is done and who offers us a way out of our man-made tensions.

J-P spoke tonight on Psalm 121, a favourite psalm of his (and many other people!) This psalm was written in the flyleaf of his first Bible by his grandmother and was particularly relevant to him during childhood hikes in the Drakensberg mountains in his native South Africa (mountains which, at 3482 m above sea level, are considerably higher than anything in the UK!) On such occasions, the majesty and awesome power of God the Creator are evident to us and this psalm reminds us that God is our helper and protector.

In ancient times, the mountains were often thought to be the dwelling-place of the gods, and in Ex 19:16-19 we see how God appeared to His people on Mount Sinai. Ultimately, however, our help does not come from mountains, but from God Himself. The psalm reminds us that our helper is not just a person, but God Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth. He is the creator of all we see: the magnificence of the mountains, the grandeur of the oceans, the beauty of our world all reflect God’s power.

God not only helps us, but also protects us. He watches over us and looks after us – not for him the post-prandial Sunday afternoon snooze so many of us experience each week! This psalm gives us assurance that God protects us; He provides shade for us during the heat and enables us to live without fear or superstition. His protection is not temporary, but forever. He has our back!

This psalm may seem to some to be naive or simplistic, but actually it encourages child-like trust which should be the goal of all of us (didn’t Jesus tell us that the kingdom of heaven belongs to such children? – Matt 18:3) It’s so easy to get distracted, but we need child-like faith because we are children of God.

Paul speaks also in Eph 6:10-17 about spiritual weapons. All the other items – the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, our feet fitted with readiness from the gospel of peace, the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation – are for our protection, to enable us to stand against the devil’s schemes and the things he does to trip us up and cause us to be ineffective in our Christian walk, but the sword of the Spirit is the way we can fight back. Paul makes it very clear this is not a literal sword, when he tells us this sword is the word of God. We’re not battling with natural weapons. (2 Cor 10:3-4)

The word of God is described as a double-edged sword (Heb 4:12) God’s word is living and active and creative. God’s word brought about creation (Gen 1:3; Ps 33:6) and creates new life in us. As we speak the word of God outloud, the enemy is defeated (see Matt 4:1-11). There is power in the word of God which is available to us as we declare the ‘Amen’ of God’s promises in every situation. (2 Cor 1:20).

Let’s be people of the word of God, for this is the way to spiritual victory. (Ps 149:6-9)

There are 5 items of armour mentioned in Paul’s list, which refer to the armour worn by Roman soldiers.

4. The belt of truth buckled round our waists (Eph 6:14)
5. The breastplate of righteousness in place (Eph 6:14)
6. feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace (Eph 6:15)
7. the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. (Eph 6:16)
8. the helmet of salvation (Eph 6:17)

The belt of truth – A belt or girdle holds things up and together. Before this Roman armour could be put on, the garments had to be bound together. God is ultimately righteous, faithful and true. Because of this, He desires ‘truth in the inward parts’ (Ps 51:6, KJV). We need to know the truth, for it is the truth which sets us free (John 8:32). We need truth to hold us together and keep us strong. Jesus is the truth (John 14:6) and the devil is a liar (John 8:44); we can only hope to stay strong against the enemy if we keep to God’s truth.

The breastplate of righteousness – A breastplate covers the front of a soldier; it protects the heart. God gives us His own righteousness to protect us (2 Cor 5:21). When the enemy condemns us and reminds us of our sin, we can know the righteousness of God which makes us as though we’d never sinned!

Feet fitted with the gospel of peace – Ill-fitting shoes cause us much pain, but the Roman sandals were designed to enable soldiers to walk for miles. God wants us to be people who take the gospel of peace all over the world, entrusting us with this message of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18-21), for Jesus has made peace between all people and between people and God. (Eph 2:14)

And having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Eph. 6:15.

The shield of faith – Faith is the shield we need to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. These darts or arrows may come from other people, from circumstances we don’t understand, from misfortune and even from our own hearts, but as we trust God above what we can see (2 Cor 5:7), we can overcome doubt and walk in daily trust.

The helmet of salvation – Just as a helmet protects the head and brain, so too we need this helmet to protect our thoughts. Our minds need to be protected from self-righteousness, doubt, fear and condemnation; we need to trust in the salvation Jesus has purchased for us. Victory will only come as we fix our minds and thoughts on Jesus (Col 3:2, Is 26:3), choosing to fix our thoughts on all that is true, noble, right, lovely admirable, pure, excellent or praiseworthy. (Phil 4:8)

In our morning service today we looked at Eph 6:10-17, at the ‘Blessing of the Armour of God.’ In these verses, Paul reminds us that we are all involved in a spiritual battle, contending not against flesh and blood (i.e. people) but against the rulers, authorities and powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Eph 6:12) No matter how much the devil may use people against us and against God’s church, the real enemy is not people. We may feel frightened and intimidated by this talk of a spiritual battle, feeling inadequate and helpless, but God has given us the blessing of spiritual armour to help us. He does not leave us to fight on our own!

The armour of God is God’s provision for us, enabling us to stand against all the devil’s schemes. If we want to be strong in God’s mighty power and keep standing, even in the heat of the battle, we have to put on the armour of God. We have to fight with God’s armour and God’s weapons and not with our own. (2 Cor 10:1-5) God’s armour is the blessing we need to overcome the enemy. He doesn’t send us into warfare defenceless (like the soldiers in the First World War who were effectively ‘cannon fodder’ in the trenches), but gives us His Holy Spirit to be with us and spiritual armour to defend and protect us as well as giving us the all-important sword of the Spirit to use to cut down the lies of the enemy.