Sermons

Today we’re going to be thinking about how to avoid falling down a hole.

Here’s what I mean. One of the things that puts many people off Christianity are the tragic splits in the history of the church. The East split from the West in the 11^th Century. The Protestant reformation was in the 16^th, the Episcopal Presbyterian split in the 17^th century, and the Methodist-Anglican one in the 18^th century. And there have been many more besides.

Our culture is all about enjoying the good things in life. And holding out before us things we don’t have so that we wish we had them. Showing us how beautiful that beach resort is, how shiny that car is, how snazzy that new phone is. Do you remember the queues at the Apple Store in London when they launched their first iPhone?

The world we live in can be a very dark place to be. One of the things that makes it so is when people are selfish. Think only of themselves. When someone scratches your car in a car park, but doesn’t bother to leave a phone number. When you’re queuing to buy 6 items at the checkout with twins in tow, and someone else races to get to the belt first with their £200 trolley-full. Selfishness. Lovelessness.

I don’t know about you, but I have one nagging doubt about God. Do the wrong things that I’ve done during the course of my life mean that God does not love me in the way he would otherwise? In short – are my past mistakes really forgiven? Does God really love me? Or have I blotted my copybook with an indelible splodge or fifty?

Of course we want the answer to be “no”, don’t we? Does God love me less because of my mistakes? No.

As a Christian, do you ever find yourself wondering if you’ve backed the right horse? I do.

We’re so aware these days of all the world’s religions. Are we Christians by an accident of our birth, brought up in a Christian country or in a Christian home? Is the Christian faith better than any of the alternatives? Does it actually put us into contact with the real God? Or is it a phoney – a bit like a dodgy spiritualist who makes us feel better by pressing the right buttons but it’s all one big con? Does following Jesus actually do us any good at all?

“It’s not fair”.

That’s how it feels so often.

So many of the difficulties in life are not problems of our own making. Character traits, habits, situations that we’ve inherited from our upbringing, from our parents, from the neighbours we just happen to have, from our employers, from the general economic downturn. All kinds of difficulties happen to us, and it’s left to us to cope with the situation we’ve inherited.

We continue to ask the question: Can you really believe? We’ve looked at what the Bible says about creation, humanity, and marriage. Today we ask whether you can really believe what the Bible says – about sin.

We come today to the second part of our look at the question: Can you really believe what the Bible says about marriage?

I planned to spend these weeks looking at the early chapters of Genesis long before the government announced the timing for the debate that has made this topic so contemporary. Rather than change tack, it seems to me all the more worthwhile to revisit that question. Can you really believe what the Bible says about marriage.

Today, in the West, traditional marriage seems to be under attack. In March 2011, the office of national statistics released some figures, showing that the marriage rate was at its lowest since 1895. From 1981 to 2009, the number of marriages conducted in the UK had fallen by a third. We’re not talking about church weddings here, just about weddings full stop.

Many people today feel a little lost.

We’re often not sure who we are, or why we’re here. What does it mean to be human? Why are we on planet earth?