Rev’d Jonathan Gale
Psalm 121
Assurance of God’s Protection
A Song of Ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to the hills—
from where will my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 He who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
8 The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time on and for evermore.
Revelation 21: 1 – 8
The New Heaven and the New Earth
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home* of God is among mortals.
He will dwell* with them;
they will be his peoples,*
and God himself will be with them;*
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ 6Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. 7Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. 8But as for the cowardly, the faithless,* the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.’
John 17: 1 – 17
Jesus Prays for His Disciples
After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, 2since you have given him authority over all people,* to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. 5So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
6 ‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; 8for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. 10All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. 12While I was with them, I protected them in your name that* you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost,* so that the scripture might be fulfilled. 13But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.* 14I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.* 16They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 17Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
Our reading from John’s Gospel is the High Priestly prayer of Jesus for his disciples before the final chapters of his life. What would Jesus pray for in a very public setting and when time is running out? We’ll look at some of his words a little later.
I want to say right up front what I am talking about today. It’s about finding safety in God, especially as we experience God in the Body of Christ, the church.
But there are a few things we need to know before we wax lyrical about safety in God. It means just that: safety in God, not safety because of God or safety next to God. Safety in God.
If I were to say that God is going to protect you from everything that is harmful, well, unfortunately you’d be in your rights to say to me, “You’re on the wrong bus. The Magical Mystery Tour left some time ago and it’s not been seen since.” If that sounds harsh, let’s think about it.
Jesus prayed to the Father for his disciples in John 17
14 I have given them Your word and the world has hated them; Of course Jesus is not speaking about the physical world. He means the values, the ethos of those who are worldly as opposed to godly.
So he prays to the Father …
14 I have given them Your word and the world has hated them; for they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I am not asking that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one. 16They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
The clue is in the middle bit 15 I am not asking that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one.
As King David said in Psalm 23 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies; Not somewhere where there are no enemies. In the midst of them.
God does not protect us from any and every thing. That is wishful thinking and has to do with the question of why God allows evil which is not what we’re talking about today. The point is God does, and God has good reason for doing so.
To be kept from the evil one implies the evil one is around to be kept from.
So we are not kept safe because of God. In other words it is false to say that because God hates evil, I will be safe from any harm. Not so.
Neither are we kept safe next to God. God is not our personal bodyguard there to ensure we have safe passage wherever we go.
These things are self-evident. We have all been harmed at times. Clearly, neither God’s character nor our association with God enable us to twist God’s arm into being our insurance policy.
We are in the world (and Jesus said he wasn’t asking the Father to take us out of it). If we’re in the world, we’re going to be harmed occasionally. It’s the nature of the place. Worldliness has yet to be completely expunged.
But we are not of the world. As Christians we are not characterised by worldly values.
Do you know what a zorb is? It’s a very large transparent inflatable plastic ball with an inner sphere so that there is a buffer of air between the outer shell and the one into which you crawl before rolling down the hill. You can bump into all sorts and remain safe in the process. That doesn’t mean we are 100% safe from harm, but pretty close to it. If we’re flung from it, we’re sure to get hurt, but if we remain in it, we have a good chance of getting by unscathed.
When I say that we are kept safe in God, I am referring to our retaining and maintaining a closeness to God that ensures that we are free of drifting from God. Whatever might happen to us, being in God’s will is the safest place to be.
But being in God implies being in Christ, and that implies being part of the Body of Christ. Scripture does not use this term from the church lightly. There is a real sense that the gathered believers make up Christ’s body here on earth. You see when Jesus left the earth he placed his entire strategic plan for the world in the hands of a motley crew of partially-educated fishermen. He has no Plan B. We are it. In a very real sense we are his hands and feet designed to carry out his will. Together we make up the Body of Christ.
Now when Jesus prays that we will be protected from the evil one, the safest place to be in the midst of a culture that ignores the Gospel, hence playing host to the evil one, is in the church – the Body of Christ.
Even today’s Psalm, which says 5 The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
is not speaking about complete safety.
These words are followed by 7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
Of course this doesn’t prevent us from praying for safety on a car journey or in any other situation. God does look after us, but at times he allows us to go through suffering.
If you were at the Ash Wednesday Imposition of Ashes service you would have heard the story of the horrendous car accident my father experienced. Here was a missionary who had taken a day off to replace a cooker and pots for a school feeding scheme for poor school children that my mother ran, a man so careful he had seen the car approaching and had pulled off the road and was stationery when it hit him so hard his front right wheel was jamming him into the left rear corner of the vehicle. If there hadn’t been an ambulance travelling behind him he’d have died for sure.
Was that a terrible thing to happen? Of course it was. Was God protecting him? Apparently not – at least not from the young unlicensed driver in someone else’s car with yet another person’s child in the car with him.
But I tell you what … God kept him from the evil one. The love and prayers of hundreds of Christians impacted his and others’ lives hugely. The accident opened up a number of doors closed to him in ministry before that. And here’s the thing: he was built into his local church, St Mary’s, in the village of Richmond.
This broken man, like shattered sea glass, was moulded by the love and ministry of those he was already intimately connected with in the Body of Christ, into something more beautiful than he had been before. His fruitful ministry lasted into his eighties. My Dad was loved by many – not all – he was too frank for that, but loved nonetheless. The approval of all in sundry didn’t mean a great deal to him, but the approval of God did.
And he would have been the first to tell you just how good God is. It would never have entered my father’s head that God had not protected him during his life.
God is more interested in the broken, the abused and the hurting than he is in keeping the fit and flourishing in the manner to which they have grown accustomed.
For those of us relatively unhurt by the world, there is true safety in being in the place that pleases God,
- a place of safety from the evil one,
- a place of safety from worldliness,
- a place that looks back on this tiny piece of time we call our current lives and rejoices in a life that has its origins in that mysterious construct, with a nonetheless very practical expression – the Body of Christ.
- A place where with John the Apostle we will be able to say,
21Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home* of God is among mortals.
He will dwell* with them;
they will be his peoples,*
and God himself will be with them;*
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
We don’t follow God because we want to be safe. We follow God because God is God. But it would be strange we were not to avail ourselves of the safety we have in God.
Both in the Old and New Testaments there is a strong picture of a group of people who live out values different from the world’s values, an alternative society – God’s people. And they are a people redeemed, bought back from disaster by God’s goodness. In Christ and in the Body of Christ in particular, we are that group of people.
Amen.