Dave preached last night from Romans 5:1-8, looking at the peace with God we now have through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans can be a difficult book to understand at times, but there are some wonderful truths in it. We are encouraged by the fact that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1) and that we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us (Romans 8:37). Most of all, though, we are encouraged by the fact that while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly (Romans 5:6).

We were all separated from God because of sin and as a result of this, man has a fundamental need for peace with God. Isaiah 57 says:

“But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud. “There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.” ” (Is 57:20-21)

The sea is always moving and restless; moving because of the forces of the moon and the gravity pulling it this way and that. In the same way, people dimly recognise the original purpose for which they were made, aware through conscience that God has made us for great things, yet also aware of the pull of sin. Man is never satisfied, always seeking escape from the restlessness within. Peace is the need of all men – both those who are near and those who are far away (Eph 2:17) That peace is available through Jesus – who came into the world, as Paul reminds us in 1 Timothy 1:15, to save sinners.

Christ alone has opened the way to the Father. He bore our sins in His body on the cross (1 Pet 2:24) and gives us His peace (John 14:27). This peace passes all understanding and guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:7)

It’s taken me a little while to sort out photos recently – apologies for the delay. Here are our birthday people for November!

And here are some belated photos from Bonfire Night: (just to prove there are embarrassing photos of me out there as well!)

This morning, we looked at John 11, the famous passage dealing with the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead. As we worked through the story, looking at the different characters and their responses, we saw that there are times when Jesus does not appear to do what we would expect Him to do and when He does not appear to answer all our questions. When informed of Lazarus’s illness, He did not come immediately to help him. By the time He did arrive, Lazarus had been dead for four days. There must have been tremendous confusion, regret, pain and bewilderment in that household.

Both Martha and Mary express the view “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” They cannot see beyond the fact that Jesus could have prevented Lazarus’s death. They are still looking at hypothetical situations – what would have happened if Jesus had been there – rather than at what will happen now that Jesus is here.

We are like that so often. We spend our time looking back. We can live in a world of regrets. We may lament opportunities missed in the past. We may be sad at things we have done wrong. But we need to move on from hypothetical situations to where we are right now and understand that right now, Jesus is with us and that can make a difference and does make a difference.

The fact that Jesus is moved by the grief of others reminds us that we have a high priest who is able to empathise with us in every situation we face. (Hebrews 4:15-16) When we go through sorrow, the Man of Sorrows will never drive us away. But for some with Martha and Mary, His compassion and grief did not help the situation. The Message version translates John 11:37 as “Well, if he loved him so much, why didn’t he do something to keep him from dying? After all, he opened the eyes of a blind man.”

That can be our position so often. We can be very demanding in our attitude to God. We say He is Lord, but we think that means He must do everything we want Him to. We say we believe He answers prayer, but we usually mean by that that He has done what we wanted Him to do in a specific situation. It is difficult for us to admit that we walk a narrow path and that the way to life is actually through death. We don’t like this truth.

At this point in the story, we can go in different directions. We can decide that God doesn’t really love us that much, or He would spare us this suffering. We can decide that God does love us, but we don’t want to go any further if this is the path we have to tread because it’s too painful. Or we can decide that God loves us and even though we don’t understand, we will continue to trust and believe.

By trusting and believing, Martha and Mary witness a miracle that is greater than the miracle of ‘ordinary’ healing, if there is such a thing. They see that Jesus really is the Master. Not even death can get in the way of what He does. He will prove that in even more dramatic ways later on in the story John tells, when even His own death cannot be the end of the story, when the fact that He is the Resurrection and the Life means He will rise from the dead and break the devil’s hold on death.

But before we reach the climax of the raising of Lazarus, we learn the difficult lesson that belief has to precede understanding: as Anselm said, ‘credo ut intelligam’ (I believe in order that I may understand). Belief, faith, actually facilitate understanding, rather than understanding actually leading to faith. There is a bigger question than not having all the answers. Perhaps the bigger question is what do we do with all our unanswered questions? Do we weep uncontrollably like Mary? Does grief paralyse us, rendering us incapable of doing anything? Do we attempt to carry on like Martha, with an unassuaged ache in our hearts? Do we allow cynicism to make us bitter towards God, saying, in effect, ‘If You love us so much, why don’t You do something then?’ – or, as the sons of Korah put it in Psalm 44:

“Get up, GOD! Are you going to sleep all day?
Wake up! Don’t you care what happens to us?
Why do you bury your face in the pillow?
Why pretend things are just fine with us?
And here we are—flat on our faces in the dirt,
held down with a boot on our necks.
Get up and come to our rescue.
If you love us so much, help us!” (Ps 44: 23-26)

There is a way forward in God that rests in Him even when we don’t understand, that trusts in who God is even when all evidence seems to point in the opposite direction. As Tim Hughes says, in his song ‘When the Tears Fall’, ‘I’ve had questions, without answers’. We all have. But as the song goes on to say,

“When hope is lost, I’ll call You Saviour
When pain surrounds, I’ll call You healer
When silence falls, You’ll be the song within my heart

I will praise You, I will praise You
When the tears fall, still I will sing to You
I will praise You, Jesus, praise You
Through the suffering, still I will sing”
(Tim Hughes, ‘When the Tears Fall’)

The song says it far better than I can. Listen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWUimGv_xrU

This week’s Bible study looked at the first part of Romans 1. In the introduction, Paul introduces himself and writes about the dual lineage of Jesus Christ, who is both a ‘descendant of David’ and ‘Son of God’. In discussing verse 4, we saw that the word ‘appointed’ acknowledged what was already true: Jesus did not become the Son of God at His resurrection, but His resurrection confirmed His identity.

The faith of the Roman church was being reported all over the world (vs 8) – a reflection of Jesus’s words in Luke 11:33 – “No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light.” We are called to be different, not for the sake of it, but to be who God created us to be.

Christians are God’s ambassadors (2 Cor 5:18-21) and Peter urges us to always be prepared to give an answer for the hope we have when asked (1 Pet 3:15). We are all called to be witnesses to what God has done for us.

Romans 1:11 talks about the impartation of spiritual gifts, so we spent time discussing these (looking also at Acts 1:4, 2:28, 1 Cor 1:7, Romans 12:6-8 and 2 Cor 9:14-15).

In conclusion, we read that Paul was “not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom 1:16). That kind of boldness and faith in the power of the gospel is what we all need to have.

On Remembrance Sunday, it is perhaps inevitable that our thoughts turn to war and peace. Stephen spoke from Micah 4:1-5 about the peace God ultimately promises us, that day of the Lord when ‘nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore’ (Micah 4:3)

Peace treaties after wars often fail to deliver all they promise, but the warfare Christians engage in is not the same as the wars of this world. The walls of Jericho fell with no weapons. The sound of praise is our battle cry.

Our security is not found in the weapons of war (often touted as a ‘deterrent’ and thus, ironically, as our means of peace). Our security is in God who will allow us one day to sit at peace; moreoever, in this life we live, let us live for God’s glory, not our own glory. Jesus is the route to perfect peace and the one of whom the angels said ‘Glory to God and peace on earth.’

Dave began today’s sermon by reminiscing on the joys (or otherwise) of Virol and cod-liver oil:

For those of you who are too young to remember these food supplements, Virol was a malt-based, thick, toffee-like substance packed with vitamins and guaranteed to do children good; cod-liver oil had an equally vile taste. Reading the Old Testament prophets can be a bit like taking those things: good for us, ultimately, but not necessarily a pleasant experience!

Nonetheless, the hope we find in Jeremiah 31:31-34 is good news indeed. Here, we see the new covenant promised. In order to understand the wonders of the New Covenant, we have to look at the old covenant, explained in Exodus 24:6-8. On the one hand, God promised to be Israel’s God, to cause them to prosper, to protect them and to deliver them. In turn, they were to be his people, to obey Him and to keep His law at all times.

But Israel, Jeremiah tells us, broke the covenant. Countless times this was the chief feature of the covenant – that it was broken. Similarly, Paul wrote in Romans 7 about the difficulties we face keeping the covenant, not only because of the wrong things we do, but because of the sin in our very natures.

The new covenant is a covenant of sovereign grace. It accomplished what the Law and the old covenant could never do. The new covenant will last throughout eternity and is based upon the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We need to do more than ‘turn over a new leaf’; we need a new life, and that life is possible through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. The new covenant is that covenant in His blood that we remember every time we celebrate Communion. By God’s grace we believe and experience the wonderful truth that our sins are forgiven and we have God’s law written on our hearts.