Tanilba Bay Baptist Church
Worship
  • Medley Get to Heaven - Swing Low - When the Saints
  • Shout to the Lord

      • Romans 5:1–11NIV2011

  • Peace in battle

    One hundred and eleven years ago yesterday, the Anzac forces entered a nation defining battle. They landed on the beach at Gallipoli to the sound of guns and bombs. On that first day alone, approximately 2000 soldiers were injured with about 600 being killed. Many more would be killed in the months that followed.
    I can’t imagine what it must have felt like having bullets fly around you and seeing fellow soldiers being killed around you.
    Many of you will recall the very graphic opening scene of Saving Private Ryan which is of course a different war, different battle and different countries involved, but for about 25 minutes there is a sickening display of men being shot as they ran, seemingly in futile, up the beach.
    Now you can think about the Anzac’s running up the beach on the shores of Gallipoli, or the Americans arriving on D-Day in France, and it’s not a question of peace going through your mind… it’s a question of survival. But is it possible to have peace in such a situation, and what might that peace look like?
    We might not be on Anzac cove, but sometimes it can almost feel that metaphorically we are. It might not be physical bullets flying past us, but the shots from the evil one can be just as dangerous.
    Can we find peace and what would that peace look like?
    I’m going to contend this morning that there is peace to be found, but it doesn’t necessarily come with an absense of hostility, or at least not yet anyway.
    But we’ll see that the peace that we can find as believers is far better than any peace this world can imagine.

    Roman context

    Well, to help us think about this question, I’m going to primarily look at Paul’s letter to the Romans, and in particular, chapter 5 because in this passage Paul is going to pick up on themes of suffering and sacrifice.
    But first, let’s give some consideration to the what’s going on this letter.
    The book we know as Romans truly is a remarkable book because of it’s beautiful structure and clear articulation of the gospel. It’s a letter that Paul has written to the church in Rome, but unlike the majority of his other letters which are written to churches that Paul established, this letter is to a place that Paul had not been at the time of writing.
    Now, probably because he wasn’t addressing specific issues like he does in many of his other letters, Romans then beecomes this amazing outline of the good news of the gospel.
    It starts with an extended discussion about how we are all sinful people. But then it describes how by the work of Jesus, we can be saved - something that we don’t earn, but that we accept by faith.

    Faith

    Now, I want to just dwell on the importance of faith in all of this for a moment.
    In fact, Paul did just that in the fourth chapter which is the chapter before the one we’re looking at now.
    You see, faith becomes the key to all of this.
    Actually, let’s go back to the third chapter. In this chapter, Paul is describing how we go from unrighteous - the state in which each of us exist - to being righteous, and he is very clear, it is by faith.
    And then, to emphasize the point, in the fourth chapter, he uses the example of Abraham, who, as Paul points out for us, was creditted with rightouesness, not because he never did anything wrong, but because he believed God.
    Faith is about belief, but actually, it is more than just intellectual agreement to an idea. You see, by using Abraham as an example, we saw God telling him ‘go’, and even without a full plan, Abraham steps out and follows what God says. It is faith that says - I will follow your lead. Importantly, it is faith that says, even when the world around me and everything within me say to follow a different path, I’ll follow the one that God has placed before me.
    Now when we follow this path in chapter 4 we start to see a little change in the language.
    We now move from the language of going from unrighteous to righteous, to the language of receiving the promise.
    You see, this is what we need to recognise… this idea of becoming righteous is not just some theoretical, abstract idea… it’s something that makes a huge difference in our life. because in this journey of faith, we start to move into this promise.

    Peace now

    That leads us to our passage for the day.
    You see, we’ve been justified through faith, and the promise that we receive is actually going to be peace with God - it’s right there in verse 1!
    But there is something amazing about this peace. You see, if you continue on into verse 2, he again reiterates that it is something that comes through faith, but then it add: “in which we now stand”.
    Now what I love about that little phrase (“in which we now stand”), is that this peace we have promised with God, is not just a future promise that some day we may hope to have, it is actually a pomise that we stand in right now!
    So what is this peace that we receive.
    Well, the first thing we need to recognise is that the biblical idea of peace is not just an absence of hostility.
    Interestingly, if that wasn’t the case, that first sentence of chapter 5 would be false. Because we know that when Paul wrote this, he was not standing in a situation where all hostitilities have gone. We know that Paul very much did face a lot of hostility, in that he was imprisoned, beaten up, run out of town, and just generally treated very poorly.
    But it is true, because this idea of peace is so much bigger.
    You see the biblical idea of peace draws on the Hebrew word Shalom. It describes a wholeness that we see arising out of God’s creative and redemptive ways. It includes things like physical health and emotional wellbeing, but also describes relaiontal harmony and spiritual reconciliation.
    In other words, when Paul talks about having peace with God right now, we’re actually seeing a movement towards the way things are meant to be.
    That peace might not be fully known right now, but yet through faith, we actually do start to see it. And I’ll contend that the more we walk this journey of faith the more we start to experience this peace. We start to see relationships restored. We start to something spiritual stir within us - and a peace come over us, even while chaos surrounds us.
    Now we start to think - perhaps those soldiers marching up the beach in Galliopli, or even the D-day fighters landing in Normandy… just maybe, it is possible they could know the sort of peace I’m talking about now. Don’t get me wrong, I suspect most of them would have been scared out of their mind, and yet, for those walking in faith, there’s another aspect to it.

    Suffering

    Now, as we keep working through what Paul says, we start to see that Paul doesn’t try to side-step the issue that almost inevitably, each and every one of them is going to face suffering of some kind or another.
    It could be easy to say, well, suffering will happen, but let’s just try to gloss over it while we strive for that peace we really want.
    Well, for Paul, suffering is actually not something to shy away from… suffering is actually part of the process that moves us towards where we are trying to get to.
    Let me just re-read verses 3 to 5...
    Romans 5:3–5 “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
    When we suffer, we actually gain.
    Rather than seeing suffering as always bad, see how it changes you.
    This doesn’t mean we seek it out. Paul is not at all suggesting we cause ourselves suffering so we can benefit… for him, suffering is inevitable. It’s going to happen. There might be some question about the degree of suffering and the specific nature of it, but you will suffer in some way or other.
    Now, while we’ve got a bit of a theme of war going, many of you might be thinking - but some of the soldier that came back after the war were a shell of themselves. I understand they used to call it shell shock, although we call it PTSD now. How come the suffering they faced didn’t result in hope?
    Well, here’s the thing… the suffering we face will often have real world consequences, and often that will include pyschological affects… the peace and hope we can gain from suffering, however, can transcend all of this. For the one that journey’s by faith, even when there is an emotional struggle, something mysterious starts to happen in the individual. What it exactly looks like may vary between individuals, but yet this hope starts to rise for them.
    You can have this hope - and far from suffering stopping you from experiencing it, suffering can actually help you in the process.

    Our Guarantee

    Now, in many ways, what I’ve just been saying now can leave us very vulnerable.
    Our natural inclination is to avoid suffering - do whatever you can to avoid it - we’ll even lie and cheat just so we can avoid it. But Paul is saying, when it comes, allow it to shape you… allow it to take you to the place of hope in God whereby you have peace with God.
    But what if the suffering does bring you down? What if there is no hope to be found?
    Well, this is where verse 6 comes in… at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
    The reason we can have confidence in what Paul is saying, is because of an historical event that changed everything.
    Now it’s interesting because it’s almost as if verse 7 is comparing the type of sacrifice that we see in war with the sacrifice of Jesus. Now, he might not be doing that directly, but just look… he says: “very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die”.
    Paul’s acknowledging that there are causes in which people might die.
    In the war efforts, many of the soldiers were signing up freely. They wanted to because they loved their nation and wanted to serve it. They knew that death was a possibility, but they chose to anyway.
    This is to be highly commended, and certainly, yesterday was one way in which we can thank those soldiers who have gone before us for what they did.
    But what Jesus did was different. And Paul spells out the difference for us in verse 8. You see, what Christ did, was that he died for sinners.
    Let’s just get that straight. When we say sinners, what we’re actually saying is people who have turned their back on God… people who are doing things their own way.
    Jesus didn’t sacrifice himself forr people who loved him and were on his side… he died for those who were against him.
    You see, the point of all of this, is that you can trust that their is hope to be found, because the love of Jesus is so strong, he was willing to die for you even when you were his enemy.
    The type of sacrifice that Jesus made is our guarantee. There is hope for this peace that we seek, because of the sacrifice of Jesus.

    The act of salvation

    The beautiful thing about all of this, is that we know that nothing can stop us from enjoying the presence of God.
    Even when God’s wrath falls on this wicked world around us, we are safe - because we’ve been justified by the sacrifice of Jesus.
    You see, the greatest aspect of the peace that we receive from all of this, is that we are reconciled with the creator of this universe. When this happens, well… that’s when we really know what life is.
    We talk about living, but living only really starts when we are in God.
    I’m going to suggest that’s why Jesus liked to refer to it as being born again - you get to come alive in a much more real sense.
    Our salvation is not just a future hope that we’ll get to heaven after we die… rather our salvation is knowing the peace of God right now.

    Application

    So, what does all of this mean for how we live out our lives.
    It means we need to start looking at this world in a very different way to how you’ve been conditioned to look at it.
    You see, we’re conditioned to see this world through the lens of what I can get out of it, and if there is any superficial happiness to be found, then grab it quickly, whatever it takes. We think if there is any satisfaction to be found, it will be by forcing the situation for our own benefit.
    But this is where we need to stop - take the time to listen to what God is really saying, and follow what he says.
    Now, let me just be clear here because it’s very easy to make God say whatever we want him to say. So rather than starting with your own thoughts, start with the Bible. Look at the character of God and Jesus. Start by aligning your character with that of Jesus.
    If you want a good place to start - read the sermon on the mount, starting with the beatitudes. We’ll see tht we start replacing our quest for power with meekness… our love of self with being poor in spirit… we’ll not be afraid of persecution and other hardship. We’ll be seeking peace.
    We follow this path and say, God, I need to you help me in this. I need you to turn my suffering into perseverance, my perseverance into character, and my character into hope.
    It takes faith to do this.
    But when we walk this journey of faith, while there will almost certainly be pain along the way, you will be walking with peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

    Conclusion

    Yesterday we comemorated Anzac Day. It’s a strange day in many ways, because if you know the history of that campaign in Gallipoli, it actually was a failed campaign.
    And yet, in the strangeness of it, we’ve found hope as a nation from it.
    This should be a lesson for us. Our hope doesn’t come from everything just always working out. Our hope comes from the fact that Jesus died and rose again, and that he did it for us.
    My prayer is that you can know the peace that comes from what Jesus did.
    No matter how hard your life gets, there is always hope for the peace that Jesus brings.
    Let me pray...
Tanilba Bay Baptist Church
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