“Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? ” (Mark 8:34-36)

A paradox is “a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a truth.” There is always the element of contradiction in a paradox, something that just doesn’t seem to make sense. The paradox that Jesus teaches His disciples here is “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

Peter found it hard to accept Jesus’s teaching about His impending suffering and death (see Matt 16) and many of us continue to find God’s ways paradoxical and hard to accept. God’s way of working was at odds with the world’s way of working and it still is; Jesus is the stone that makes us stumble:
“The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread.He will be a holy place; for both Israel and Judah he will be a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare. Many of them will stumble; they will fall and be broken, they will be snared and captured.” (Is 8:13-15)

We will never truly understand God (who is transcendent); His ways and thoughts are far above ours (Is 55). Nonetheless, Jesus has shown us how to live in the manner of a servant, putting the needs of others before His own.

The Cross is perhaps the place where we see the paradoxical nature of God’s plans most evidently. To the human eye, the Cross was the place of failure and weakness, but in actual fact, Jesus’s ‘secret ambition’ was to ‘give His life away’ (Michael W. Smith, ‘Secret Ambition’); He knew the principle that death precedes life:
“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:24-25)

The Cross, as Paul teaches us in 1 Corinthians 1, shows us the difference between God and man: “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” (1 Cor 1:25)

We need to understand the divine principles of surrender and obedience, that God’s power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9), that it doesn’t depend on our human reasoning and understanding but on God’s grace. As we learn to respond to God as Abraham did when asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac, we learn to ‘live to lose’ (Aaron Shust) and find that things are not always as they appear to be. We save our lives by losing them; we find life by walking on the narrow road, not on the wide road; we win by losing. The challenge is to surrender and believe.

“Come lose your life for a carpenter’s son
For a madman who died for a dream
Then you’ll have the faith His first followers had
And you’ll feel the weight of the beam
So surrender the hunger to say you must know
Have the courage to say, “I believe”
For the power of paradox opens your eyes
And blinds those who say they can see.

When we in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
When we in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong
So we follow God’s own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable
Come be a fool as well.”
(‘God’s Own Fool’, Micahel Card)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvejyvnEidY

So what reasons did we come up with, then?

We can rejoice in God because He is:
* faithful
* loving
* forgiving
* kind
* life-giving
* in complete control, working all things together for good
* just and fair
* omnipresent & always with us, never leaving us or forsaking us
* omniscient (yet loves us, even though He knows everything about us!)
* merciful
* compassionate
* unchanging
* slow to anger
* tender-hearted
* both transcendent and immanent (above all and yet close!)
* Saviour
* Healer
* Provider
* Protector
* the Creator
* our Shepherd & guide
* patient
* not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance
* peace & the bringer of peace
* relational (the triune nature of God reflects His heart for relationships)
* personal
* righteous
* the One who brings reconciliation
* our Defender
* preparing a place for us
* working in our lives to conform us to the image of Christ
* our Father

There are so many reasons to praise God and it’s good to list them, to remind ourselves of them, to have objective reasons for praise. That way, no matter what our mood or circumstance, we can give thanks continually for everything (see Eph 5:20 and 1 Thess 5:18)

One of my current favourite songs is Aaron Shust’s ‘Long Live the King’ which has the lines:
“There are always days when I don’t feel like singing
There are always days when I don’t care at all,
But I know the King of all Creation reigns completely
Over every moment, great and small.

Long live the One who gives us life and peace and hope for tomorrow.
He’s given everything we needed from the palm of His hand
I’ll give my everything to the One who pledged to cancel my sorrow,
All I have is Yours – Long live the King!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElHMMxoz3iQ

We are not progressing very quickly through Romans 5, but maybe that’s because we are finding so much in the chapter! Yesterday, we still only made it to verse 11, and we certainly lingered on that verse!

“We also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” (Rom 5:11)

Garry encouraged us to list reasons that we can boast (or rejoice) in God. Firstly, we made lists of all that God has done for us (yes, that’s why it’s taking us so long!) and then we also listed all that God is, before looking at how our experience of God matches up with the Bible’s revelation of God.

So often, God works in our lives in a particular way and that reminds us of a particular attribute of God. For example, when we moved into St Mark’s, that was, for us as a congregation, a definite reminder of God’s faithfulness to keep His promises. We already knew that God is a faithful God from His word, but we saw that afresh in our experience.

There are times, however, when our experience may lead us into places where we feel we are NOT experiencing God in the way the Bible leads us to expect. There are times when we may feel forsaken, rejected, abandoned or lost. All the more reason, therefore, that we root ourselves in what we know to be true about God and can declare, like the psalmists, the truth about God, even if our hearts don’t seem to be experiencing that truth.

We looked at various psalms which give us good reason to find that God is our joy and our delight (Ps 43:4), but also at psalms of lament (eg Ps 10, Ps 13) where the psalmist may start from a position of desolation and loneliness, but ends by declaring – by faith; it’s all by faith, not by sight! – truth about God. We can trust in God’s unfailing love, even if we may feel forgotten (see Ps 13:1, 5). Rejoicing in God is a choice that we make.

Stephen spoke on Sunday evening about the Holy Spirit who is given to each believer to help us in everyday living. He spoke about the Holy Spirit being there to:
1) help us
2) guide us
3) lead us
4) stand for us
5) speak for us
6) show God’s power through us

In John 14:16-18, Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit living in us and being with us. He is able to be all things to us in all circumstances (rather like Batman’s utility belt helped him to be equipped for every situation!) The Holy Spirit teaches us and reminds us of all Jesus has said (John 14:26-27) and gives us the courage to speak in difficult circumstances (such as Acts 6-7, when Stephen was given the words to speak out before his stoning.) God’s power working through Peter allowed the lame man to be healed (Acts 3) and gave him the words to speak to rulers (Acts 4:8-11). This same power is available to us all (Acts 2:17-19), since God’s Spirit has now been poured out on all people. May we get to know God better and understand that the Holy Spirit lives in us to help us in every way.

Mark preached from 2 Corinthians 2:14-17 on the ‘fragrance of Christ’ this morning, opening with the provocative question ‘What do you smell of?’

Paul begins these verses ‘Thanks be to God’, reminding us that we should always start with thanksgiving. He is thankful for the triumph we have in God, reminiscent of the triumphal processions of the Romans, where the conquering army’s victory parade would be celebrated with burning spices – a pleasant smell for the conquerors but the ‘smell of death’ to the captives. In the same way, we have been given the ‘aroma of Christ’ and our role is to diffuse that fragrance gradually (rather as Mark did with his aftershave for us all to smell!)

We are not responsible for how others respond to the fragrance: some will respond to Christ; others will reject Him. But we are called to be diffusers, spreading the aroma of Christ wherever we go.

Romans 5 talks about the many blessings of salvation: peace, grace, hope being the ones initially mentioned.

Peace with God means that we are in harmony with Him; there is no longer enmity between us. We have found favour with God (Luke 2:14) and with that comes the peace of Christ (see John 14:27). Peace doesn’t necessarily guarantee peaceful circumstances (see John 16:33), but we can be at peace with our circumstances, even when they are painful or difficult, as Christ Himself demonstrated on the cross.

Peace is also one of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22) and is available through Christ. We are able, through faith, to stand in the grace of God, working with God but accepting His gift of grace, knowing that His peace is available to us at all times.

Later in the chapter, we looked at the three things we can rejoice or boast in: the hope of the glory of God (vs 2), in our sufferings (vs 3) and in God Himself (vs 11). The glory that God has prepared for us is almost more than we can imagine, but we have the hope of a glorified body (see 1 Cor 2:6-10 and 1 Cor 15:42) and the hope of being transformed into God’s image (see 2 Cor 3:18).

This hope of glory acts as an anchor, giving us perspective in our present sufferings. The suffering that God allows into our lives produces good things: perseverance, character and more hope!