Garry continued looking at Rom 12:9-21 this morning, focussing initially on Rom 12:10 which tells us to be devoted to each other in love. This kind of ‘brotherly love‘ (made up of two Greek words for love, philia & storge) involves the affection and love a person has for family members and a mutual regard and love which values others.

To be devoted means to be given over to God, to be utterly single-minded in our pursuit of Him. Since we have been adopted into the same family and are now children of God, we belong together and should share with each other (see Gal 6:9-10). This involves honouring each other, giving preference to each other out of the love we have for each other. (Rom 12:10) We are all different (as Paul has outlined earlier in the chapter, Rom 12:4-7), but need to learn to accept and appreciate each other, despite the differences!

In addition to this, Paul calls us never to be lacking in zeal, but to keep our spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. (Rom 12:11) The word ‘zeal’ could be translated ‘diligence‘, and Garry spoke of the nib-makers in Birmingham who revolutionised literacy in the whole world in previous centuries.

In moving from quills to nibs, writing became easier, but was still only available to the rich, for one pen nib cost one guinea, roughly a month’s salary. As manufacturing made pen nibs cheaper to produce, 144 pen nibs could be produced for the same price, and each person working in a factory on a ten-hour shift was expected to make 18,000 pen nibs a day. To do this – a rate of one nib every two seconds – required concentration, diligence, and perseverance. God expects no less from each one of us, as Col 4:5-6 reminds us. We are to make the most of every opportunity, not missing a trick, as the Message version puts it.

God calls each one of us to serve Him with fervour and zeal, something we can only do if we don’t lose our focus and work consistently for His glory. The challenge is for each one of us to be a nib-maker to the King – to be someone who will persevere in the calling of God, no matter how boring or monotonous the tasks may seem, for we have an eternal perspective that gives meaning to the mundane.

In teaching, one of the most disheartening phrases a pupil can say to you is “I don’t get it!” As a teacher, the aim is to pass on knowledge and skill in such a way that the pupil understands and can do, and the phrase “I don’t get it!” means that there is a lack of understanding and confidence. Conversely, a teacher’s job is done when the penny drops the pupil says, “I get it now!” and demonstrates this through their independent work. I can remember my son, aged four, understanding the concept of addition without actually having to literally count, when he grasped the idea that if two plus two equals four, then two thousand plus two thousand equals four thousand and two million plus two million equals four million. It was a lightbulb moment for him and one we cherished because we knew that he’d “got it”!

In the Bible, we see that only God is all-knowing (omniscient). Sometimes that is a reassuring thought, someitmes it daunts us, for we feel frustrated by our ignorance. We place a lot of value in our society on education and knowledge (today is A-level results’ day and many teenagers will be anxiously awaiting results to find out if they have secured the grades needed for the next stage in their lives), but Paul tells the Corinthians, “we never really know enough until we recognise that God knows it all.” (1 Cor 8:3, The Message) There’s nothing wrong with seeking knowledge and understanding, but we have to recognise also that there will always be things we don’t understand, especially when it comes to spiritual truths.

Understanding can often require dogged perseverance; there are many subjects which cannot be understood instinctively and quickly. Sometimes learning means doing what we’re told by a teacher even if we don’t understand why, until one day, the penny drops and we finally “get it”! Jesus said that eternal life involves knowing the Father and knowing Him. (John 17:3) That’s not an academic kind of knowledge, but a knowledge by faith. This kind of understanding produces warmth, not wariness, and hope, not helplessness. We may not “get it” in terms of having all the answers, but we can still “get it” and live a life of love, faith and hope, secure in God’s knowledge, even if ours is incomplete.

What a fantastic Superhero Party we had today, with Dearne Churches Together working alongside the Dearne Area Team and Tesco to provide another great family fun day.

Thanks to all who helped in the kitchen (especially the volunteers from the Salvation Army), cooking hot dogs, pie & peas and fruit and serving drinks.

The Dearne Area Team does a lot of great work in our area and offers grants to local groups.

We had over 100 people join us today, including local councillors, and there were lots of craft activities to do on the superhero theme.

We had some lovely costumes (not all on a Superhero theme, but all very colourful!)

We also had entertainment from Spiderman and Supergirl!

Thanks to all the church volunteers who helped to set up and tidy away and to all who attended, making this a lovely fun day.

Gen 26:1-11 reminds us clearly of human fallibility and sin, but it also shows us the faithfulness of God. Even though Isaac showed little faith in God at this point, not believing that God would or could protect him, God remained faithful to him. Paul tells Timothy this is a characteristic of God: ‘if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.’ (2 Tim 2:13)

God’s faithfulness to us remains the bedrock and foundation of our lives. It’s the thing that gives hope to us, even when we are finally honest and face our fickle, sinful natures. Nehemiah, writing at a time when the Israelites had been exiled from their land because of their disobedience and sinfulness, said, ‘In all that has happened to us, You have remained righteous; You have acted faithfully, while we acted wickedly.’ (Neh 9:33) We don’t have to despair, no matter how bad the situation is, because we serve a faithful God. We can be mindful of His unfailing love and live in reliance on His faithfulness (Ps 26:3); we can also ask Him by His Spirit to grow faithfulness in our lives, so that we can reflect His nature.

Ultimately, God’s faithfulness is the only thing that can help the leopard to change its spots so we don’t have to live by the mantra ‘Here we go again!’ God’s faithfulness gives us access to a new way of living and allows us to hope even when life feels hopeless. We need not despair, even when we sin and mess up as Isaac did, because we serve a faithful God who gives us a new start and new blessings.

Isaac was the ‘son of promise’, the son through whom God told him all the nations on earth would be blessed (see Gen 22:18). Nonetheless, as Gen 26 makes clear, he had to learn to hear God for himself. He may have been enormously blessed to be Abraham’s son, but he needed to walk with God himself too. There are great blessings from being brought up in a Christian family and knowing God’s truths from being a child, but we have to understand that faith isn’t hereditary. It’s not in the genes in the same way that our hair colouring, eye colour and other genetic factors are. Faith comes from hearing the message of salvation, from hearing and understanding God’s word (Rom 10:17) and one of the key responsibilities we have as Christians is to pass that message on to everyone, especially our families. Parents have a duty and responsibility to bring their children up in the instruction and training of the Lord. (Eph 6:4) Proverbs tells us, ‘Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old, they will not turn from it.’ (Prov 22:6) In this chapter, we see Isaac growing in his relationship with God; we see God speaking to Isaac afresh (Gen 26:2-5, 24) and Isaac learning to obey Him (Gen 26:25).

There are no family passes to heaven! Each one of us has to make the personal choice to receive Jesus as our Saviour; we have to come to God individually by being born again into His family. Isaac was greatly blessed, a miracle child given by God, but he too had to learn to walk by faith as his father had done and appropriate God’s promises for his life. Let’s pray for our families and for the children in our church to find faith for themselves and to walk in the fear of the Lord all the days of their lives.

Sometimes, when we read the Bible, there’s a distinct sense of déjà vu, that feeling of ‘Here we go again!’ The cycle of faith, falling away, crying out to God and repentance which we see in Judges is so repetitive that we feel frustrated at people’s inability to learn from history, but this continues to this day.

In Genesis 26:1-11, we have that same feeling of frustration and repetition, as Isaac falls into the same trap that his father Abraham did when he lies to Abimelek about his relationship to Rebekah, claiming she is his sister because he was afraid. This chapter reminds us that we need to learn from the past, from our own mistakes and from the mistakes of others. Kemi Sungole said, ‘The only way we grow is by learning from the past. Always be willing to learn and grow daily.’ So often, we keep making the same mistakes (and Eccl 1:9 reminds us there’s nothing new under the sun!), but we have to be willing to change and to explore new paths.

Perhaps Isaac would not have made this mistake if Abraham had been more open about his own weaknesses. We tend not to want to show our weaknesses to others, fearing their reactions and wanting to appear strong and capable at all times. Nonetheless, Paul reminds us that he learned to depend on Christ’s strength through his thorn in the flesh (see 2 Cor 12:1-10) and was not afraid to be open and vulnerable to people (see also 1 Cor 2:1-5). James tells us there is great value in confessing our sins to each other so we can pray and know wholeness and healing (James 5:16). When we are open and honest about our weaknesses as well as our strengths, sin loses its grip on us and we can help others to avoid making the same mistakes and falling into the same traps. (Rom 6:11-14).