God is still God

Today in many parts of Wales St David’s Day will be celebrated and for us in the church it is not a celebration to be ignored, however the actual church celebration of the day has officially been moved to tomorrow as today we mark the First Sunday in Lent. 

However, it isn’t actually too difficult to combine the two things I don’t think. David was notoriously austere and that’s something we often associate with Lent. He spent his life seeking to grow ever closer to God and sharing the gospel message through words and through service to others and again those things are important Lent messages. 

David, from the little we really know about him, seemed to have given up a fairly wealthy background to focus on serving God and through his life he lived on very little dedicating that life to service, to founding monasteries and becoming Archbishop of Wales. Sometimes he would apparently stand in freezing water up to his waist reciting scripture as some sort of special penance or discipline. What David unquestionably did was continue to review and seek to build his relationship with God…. 

It’s always a good time to do that, but Lent offers us a special time to review, refresh and renew that relationship, and you’ll be pleased to know that that doesn’t always involve the need to stand in freezing water reciting scripture ! 

In the Old Testament reading this morning (Genesis 2:15-17;3:1-7) we have the account of the serpent leading the woman astray in the Garden of Eden and the woman being tempted to eat the forbidden fruit and share some with Adam too. 

With this act their eyes were opened to see things they’d not seen before but their relationship with God changed forever. 

In Paul’s letter to the Romans (5:12-19) he addresses this very incident saying how sin had come into the world through Adam and through disobeying God. However, another man, Jesus, had offered the answer to this sin through his life, his death and his resurrection. He didn’t come to live in the world to make us perfect but he did come to offer a reminder that God loves us, whoever we are and whatever we might have done, and to offer a way back into a relationship with Him. 

Paul writes at the end of this section (and I’m using the Message Bible here), ‘Just as one person did it wrong and got us all in this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble he got us into life ! One man said No to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said Yes to God and put many in the right.’ 

I heard a joke this week. ‘What’s orange and sounds like a parrot ?’ (pause) The answer is a Parrot ! Sometimes we look for complicated answers to easy questions and today we’re invited to answer that question of ‘where do we stand with God’. 

Are we accepting the invitation of Jesus to keep getting closer to God or are we doing our own thing ? Lent is another chance to review, refresh and renew that relationship… 

And then in the gospel (Matthew 4:1-11) we heard of Jesus being tempted. There’s another joke actually about a woman who went out and bought a really expensive dress that they couldn’t really afford and so her husband asked her why she’d bought it and she said the devil told her to. Quickly he replied, ‘well didn’t you say, get behind me satan’ and she said, ‘Yes I did, but he told me it looked good from that side too !’

Anyway back to more serious things and it’s good for us sometimes to reflect on the temptations and consider the ways in which they are relevant to us and certainly there are some hugely important lessons in thinking about our need to depend on God for everything always and also to trust the power of the bible and prayer to guide us and strengthen us, but there’s a lesson that we sometimes skirt over a little bit from this account and that is the very simple recognition that we all need to take time out in the wilderness occasionally just as Jesus did. 

For us that wilderness experience is a chance to reflect on where we are with God, a chance to listen to what he might be saying to us through our thoughts and perhaps in the words of others, a chance to open ourselves up before him recognising again that we need him for every part of our lives, recognising that his love for us can transform us as we seek to serve him more closely. 

Lent is often used as a rather secular season to look at things in our lives that we need to give up, perhaps only just for a short time, but it must be more than that. It isn’t a convenient season just to use but a chance to do something that will change us forever… 

Sometimes we look at the world and assume that we can do little to change the problems around us. Sometimes we look at the church and assume we can do nothing to reverse what seems like decline in so many places. Sometimes we look at our own lives and forget that God is interested in each one of us, that he loves us more powerfully than anyone else can and that he offers life in all its fulness for all his people. 

We travel through Lent as part of our Christian journey, and we travel reflectively and we travel seeking a chance to put things right with God, but we travel also with the knowledge that Easter awaits, that we live day by day in the joy of the resurrection with God, who is unchangeable and loves without limits… 

The missionary Gladys Aylward told of her harrowing journey out of China in the late 1940’s as the Communists took power and she woke one morning with no hope at all of reaching safety... 

A 13 year-old girl who she knew tried to comfort her saying ‘don’t forget what you told us about Moses in the wilderness’. Gladys replied, ‘but I’m not Moses’ and the young girl said, ‘no you’re not, but God is still God.’

What an incredible story and lesson to reflect on for Lent – God is still God. What does that mean to us ? How do we respond ? 

And so let’s journey through Lent in the wilderness, praying more, reading the bible more, worshipping more, spending more time listening to God and being ready to celebrate Easter when it comes really knowing and enjoying the enhanced, life giving, life transforming relationship with Him that God offers us and being ready to serve him and share those things with others so that we may grow, others will grow and our churches will grow.

Review where we are in our relationship with God. 

Refresh ourselves and that relationship through prayer and the bible and fellowship.

And renew our relationship with God that we may know him more and serve him more faithfully. 

AMEN