Paul’s appeal to his Roman citizenship shows us that Christians can use the law of the land when facing injustice or illegal actions against them. There are organisations in our country today that help Christians in this way (e.g. The Christian Institute and Christian Concern.) Sometimes, the help may be for an individual (e.g. the Ashers, who were faced with legal action against them because their bakery refused to make a cake which supported homosexual marriage) or for groups of people (e.g. the current action being taken by 122 church leaders against the Government’s edicts closing all places of worship during the first two lockdowns in 2020.) Whatever the individual case, these organisations work with Christians who are increasingly concerned that laws are being misinterpreted against Christianity and that discrimination is made against those who seek to follow Christ.

We may like to believe that the United Kingdom upholds good laws and that those laws will be there to protect innocent citizens, but we need to be aware that there may well be times when we need to either seek the protection of the law or to reform laws which are not in line with God’s ways. Issues connected with euthanasia, abortion, gender and freedom of speech are all areas of concern to God’s people in our society today.

We all appreciate the many benefits we enjoy in our country, including law and order, the right to vote, access to healthcare and educational opportunities. Other issues may well need to be discussed, challenged and worked through, and there will be a range of responses to difficult questions. Sometimes, however, change will only come when God’s people rise up and declare His ways above the world’s way. Historically, all sorts of legislation such as the abolition of the slave trade and the protection of children and adult workers from exploitation and human trafficking have come about because God’s people have campaigned and lobbied for change.

We need to pray for Christians working in Parliament and local councils and for organisations working both to uphold the law and reform the law. Paul benefited from Roman law. We too benefit from many laws which protect us, but we must also be aware that the enemy seeks to destroy freedom and oppose truth, and this can happen when unjust laws are passed. We don’t live in a vacuum. The prevailing culture around us is not necessarily amenable to Christian truth and we must be prepared to stand for truth, even at personal cost.

When we read the Bible, we see that God uses everything in life for His purposes; nothing is wasted. This is particularly evident in the life of Joseph, when we see how even misfortune (being sold into slavery by his brothers, being unjustly accused of impropriety by Potiphar, languishing in prison when the one he had helped forgot all about him) is unable to stop God’s plans to save Israel being fulfilled through his interventions. Everything Joseph went through prepared him for the moment when he was required to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams and become responsible for the administration of food storage and distribution in Egypt.

Throughout the Bible, we see God at work in preparation when perhaps we feel nothing much is going on. Moses spent forty years as a shepherd in Midian and must have often wondered what his early life in the royal palace in Egypt had all been for, but when the right time came, God used his previous connections and the lessons he had learnt since then to mould him into the leader who would see God’s people freed from slavery. David’s time as a shepherd came in extremely useful when there was a giant of a Pharisee to defeat; unfazed by the lion or bear which preyed on his flocks, he was confident in God that this was an enemy who could be defeated (unlike the rest of the Israelites who saw only the size of their enemy.)

In the New Testament, we see how God takes fishermen and makes them ‘fishers of men’ and how he was able to use Paul’s background to make him into a formidable apostle. Tom Wright comments that “Paul was, in short, well qualified for the work God had for him: a Jew of the strictest pedigree and highest biblical training; a Greek speaker and thinker thoroughly at home with the world of ancient philosophy and rhetoric; and a Roman citizen – who knew his rights under the law and was determined to use them as necessary.” (Tom Wright, ‘Acts For Everyone Pt 2’, P 163) Just as God used the historical events at play in the world in bringing forth His Son at that particular ‘set’ time (Gal 4:4), so too he used all that Paul had been through to equip him for the work to which he was subsequently called.

God uses everything for good in our lives, even the events and circumstances which we would happily erase from our history. We can, therefore, be confident even when our lives are not apparently ‘on track’, when we feel that nothing is happening and we are in the wilderness. Who we are, what we go through and what we become are all in God’s hands, and He doesn’t make mistakes.

A disproportionate reaction is a reaction to an event or occurrence which seems out of proportion to the event itself. People’s reactions to spiders, for example, can be disproportionate to the actual threat posed; people with a real phobia of spiders may scream and become hysterical even at the sight of a small, harmless spider, whereas others may not even notice them! Usually, if we have disproportionate reactions to something, it’s because we can’t see it in a rational or measured way; we are influenced unduly by our fears or by the way we have been taught to see that event.

The crowd’s reaction to Paul’s testimony about God sending him to be a witness to the Gentiles seems disproportionate to us as we read this account (Acts 22:21-30). They shouted and screamed at him to the point where he could not continue speaking; they threw off their cloaks and flung dust into the air. Their speech was hostile (“Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!” Acts 22:22). It can be difficult for us to understand at all why their reactions were so violent, and even if we begin to grasp the historical context of the Jewish people, we are still left with responses which cannot really be rationally explained (because God’s purposes were always that the Jewish people would be a light to the Gentiles and that all people would be blessed.)

When we face reactions that seem so out of proportion – a mother snapping at a child’s misdemeanour, a boss yelling at an employee who is only a few minutes late, a friend bursting into tears over what we thought was an innocent comment – we need to understand that what we see is usually only the tip of the iceberg. Jesus said that we speak out of the overflow of our hearts (Matt 12:34), and reactions or responses reveal what is going on much deeper within us. Our reactions reveal the dashed hopes, irrational fears, anxieties and worries which we may well conceal most of the time from other people, but which ultimately influence us to the point where we cannot hide them forever. If a reaction is disproportionate to the event, we need to dig deeper. What is the underlying fear? What is the real issue? It’s too easy to focus on the actual ‘blowout’ or response. Instead, we need to ask God to search us and help us to understand what is really going on: ‘Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.’ (Ps 139:23) That way, we can move forward in asking for and giving forgiveness, in understanding what makes us and other people tick, and ultimately in reacting in ways that reflect the self-control which is a fruit of God’s Holy Spirit in us. (Gal 5:22-23)

Some reactions on an individual and political level are also disproportionate: the fierce antipathy towards Christians shown by some individuals and some countries, for example, reflects not only personal bias but a hostility that has spiritual roots, for the enemy does not want to see God’s kingdom come on this earth. Paul reminds the Ephesians that ‘our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’ (Eph 6:12) We need spiritual wisdom and discernment to understand reactions like this and need to use spiritual weapons to defeat this opposition. (2 Cor 10:5)

For three years I lived in the beautiful city of Oxford as a student, where the vast majority of students travel around on bicycles. Unlike where I live in Yorkshire, Oxford is relatively flat and caters for its many cyclists with cycle lanes; the cycling rate in Oxford is triple the UK average, with 36.6% of people in Oxford cycling at least once a week.

There was just one problem. I didn’t know how to ride a bicycle. This skill, usually acquired by children before they leave primary school, had completely passed me by (which is actually a polite way of saying I had lacked the determination and desire to learn.) I had had a bicycle with stabiliser wheels as a child, but had never graduated to riding solo without them and had managed quite adequately in Yorkshire without a bike.

For the first year I lived in Oxford, I was based in a college that was at a walking distance from anywhere I needed to go and so I walked everywhere. But in my second year, I would live out in rented accommodation, which was further from the city centre, and unless I wanted to spend money on bus fares (which I didn’t have) or spend most of my time walking long distances, I needed to get cycling. So, in the summer holidays before my second year started, I had the unenviable task of learning to ride a bicycle at the age of eighteen.

The principles of learning to balance well enough to ride a bike were exactly the same at 18 as they were at 5 or 6, so what was the difference for me? Fundamentally, the difference was motivation. I now had a reason to learn this skill, whereas before, the indignity of falling over regularly as I learned had seemed greater than the pleasure of independent riding.

My Dad took me to the local park (just as he had done when I was a child) and we started the process again. This time, there were no stabiliser wheels to lull me into a false sense of security. This time, it was just me and the bike.

I can’t remember how long it took, but I learned to ride a bicycle. I learned to balance and pedal. I returned to Oxford and rode on the streets filled with traffic there just like any other student.

Learning to ride a bicycle is considered one of those life skills which (like swimming) is fundamentally important. Both these skills must be learned; they are not natural or instinctive. Some people grasp them more easily than others, but all of us learn to do these things through trial and error. All of us have to overcome fear to do so – the fear of falling, the fear of drowning.

These skills, once learned, become part of us. No matter how long we go between doing these things, when we return to them, we don’t have to re-learn from scratch. We remember how to do them, to the extent that ‘it’s like riding a bike’ has become an idiom for saying that once you learn something this fundamental, you never forget.

In the Christian life, there is much we have to learn by trial and error. A life of faith is not without its falls and trips. We can land on our faces, spattered with mud, just as we do when we first learn to ride a bicycle, and at that point, we have two choices. We can either get up again with God’s help, learn from our mistakes, ask forgiveness when we have sinned and be transformed by the incidents… or we can give up, as I did as a child, preferring the false security of stabilisers rather than the freedom that comes from a learned skill and the freedom that comes from faith.

Paul says that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. (Rom 5:3-5) After a fall, cyclists are urged to ‘get back on the bike‘ and start again. We need to be the same in faith, not allowing suffering and sorrow to be the defining framework of life, but allowing the grace, hope and love of God to define who we are and how we live. Get back in the saddle and get riding!

Resilience is defined as ‘the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness’ and in scientific terms as ‘the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.’ It’s a word not found in the Bible, but its presence nonetheless permeates the whole book.

God wants to develop resilience in us so that life does not break us or deform us into unrecognisable shapes. He gives us strategies for dealing with the stresses of life so that we can live whole, integrated lives that are pleasing to Him.

Prayer, the truths of God’s word, the virtue from obedience and fellowship (and the encouragement from this) are the key ways resilience is formed in us. As we allow our minds to be renewed by the washing of His word, as we listen for the guidance of the Shepherd, as we learn obedience through suffering and are encouraged in faith by God’s people reminding us of holy truth, resilience and elasticity are grown in us.

Trials, suffering, opposition and persecution can easily dent our confidence, weaken our resolve and leave us feeling broken and defeated. But resilience picks us up, dusts us down and prods us on.

David prayed, ‘create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit in me.’ (Ps 51:10) His actions – lust, adultery and murder – had diverted him from the person God wanted him to be, but the story doesn’t end with defeat and ignominy (and ours doesn’t have to either, even when we stumble and fall.) Steadfastness is the Biblical name for resilience, and repentance and trust the keys to walking this way. Ps 112:7 says of God’s people, ‘they will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.’ Being steadfast keeps us in perfect peace (Is 26:3) and the grace of God sustains so that ‘after you have suffered a little while’ we will be restored, ‘made strong, firm and steadfast in God.’ (1 Pet 5:10) Resilience is necessary to keep going, but God is the source of our resilience. We may not have this quality naturally, but we can access it as we hide ourselves in God.

There is a saying ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, and in church circles, this can mean that we become so used to Biblical truth that we fail to appreciate the radical nature of the gospel and can lose focus and become distracted. Our goal as Christians should be to praise and glorify God and to teach and preach the gospel, making disciples of all nations. Dave spoke tonight from 2 Cor 5:17, a verse that reminds us that we are new creations in Christ Jesus.

Before salvation, we were without Christ and without hope. We can attend church services and still be without Christ, for salvation requires that we are born again of God’s Spirit. (John 1:12) When this happens, we are ‘in Christ’. Before salvation, the natural state of all humans is to be ‘in Adam’, affected by his disobedience and sin, but in Christ, we are rescued from sin and given eternal protection (just as the cities of refuge used to provide sanctuary to anyone who had killed inadvertently, protecting them from vengeful relatives.)

To be in Christ means to belong to Him as the branch belongs to the vine (John 15). Runner beans supposedly grow better near sweet peas, but the two things retain their own identity even so. But when we are in Christ, we are given a new identity and no longer have to live according to the old ways. By faith, we cling to the cross and can be changed from within as God’s Spirit lives in us. God’s work is not simply to reform us, but to do a work of re-creation in us. He brings transformation to us and therefore we can live in newness of life. So often, we fail to do this because we do not grasp the radical nature of what God has done and that the chains of sin have been totally broken. When we understand that the old has gone and the new has come, we can live in the light of God’s promises and claim those promises for our own lives.