Romans 7:15-25a & Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 There’s a story I heard once about a man who bought a treadmill. He was determined to get fit. He told everyone about it and watched videos about it. He even bought special running shoes. But the treadmill sat in the corner of his living room, quietly gathering dust. Every time he walked past it, he felt a little pang of guilt. He wanted to use it. He meant to use it. He planned to use it. But somehow… he didn’t. One day his friend came round, looked at the treadmill, and said, “Ah yes - the world’s most expensive clothes hanger.” The man laughed, but he also sighed. “I don’t understand myself,” he said. “I want to do this. I really do. But I just… don’t.” And I think Paul would have nodded sympathetically at that moment. Because in Romans, Paul describes something we all probably recognise, that strange inner conflict between what we want to do and what we actually do. He says, “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I...
There’s hopefully a moment in our lives, sometimes early, sometimes late, when we realise that God didn’t wait for us to be sorted out before loving us. He didn’t wait for us to be holy, or confident, or prayerful, or even particularly interested. He loved us while we were still… whatever we were. That’s the message of the part of Paul’s letter to the Romans that we heard (5:1-8): “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” It’s one of the most amazing sentences in the Bible. It tells us that God’s love is not a reward for good behaviour; it’s the starting point for a new life. That passage from Romans tells us what God has done for us, and then the reading from the gospel of Matthew (9:35-10:8) tells us what God now invites us to do with Him. Matthew paints a great picture of Jesus moving through towns and villages, teaching, healing, encouraging, sometimes challenging. But perhaps the most incredible line says, “He saw the crowds, and had compassion for them, because they...