Darryl Kerrigan loved Bonnie Doon for its serenity,’how’s the serenity, so much serenity’.
After a weekend of vile terrorist activity, and the perverse normalisation of same sex marriage in the USA, through the declaration of the Supreme Court there, we need the reminder that these are days of serenity for the believer.
How can the Christian be serene when the world seems to be going mad and the moral order crumbling under our feet?
We are serene (unruffled, placid, tranquil, unperturbed) because we know that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that one day, ‘every knee will bow…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’, (Philippians 2:10-11).
This does not mean that we are to be idle and apathetic, but the foundation of all our persuasive and proclaiming activity, is a theologically driven reality, expressing itself in serenity.
God is in control, ‘For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods’, ( Psalm 95:3).
Psalm 2 begins with the fevered plotting of the nations to overthrow the Lord and His anointed ( v1-3).
The Psalmist takes us to heaven to show us that God is unperturbed by their plans,’The one enthroned in heaven laughs’, v.3.
God makes it clear that His Son’s reign is assured (v.6-7) and makes an intimate promise to the Son, that the nations and the ends of the earth are His inheritance (v.8).
This is no empty promise, this is a promise made by God the Father to God the Son about His rule of the nations.
God responds to the pathetic conspiring of the nations by pleading with the nations to submit to, and serve the Son as the only way to blessing (10-12).
It was this Psalm which the early church quoted in its prayer in Acts 4:25-26, except now the nations are Herod and Pontius Pilate and the leaders of Israel and the Gentiles ( v.27) and the anointed is, ‘your holy servant Jesus’, (v.27).
The evangelistic activity of the church in perilous times in Acts is based firmly in a conviction about the sovereign control of God, ‘They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen’, ( Acts 4:28).
Things are not out of control and the way we respond to the crumbling of the west and the acts of terror and persecution, will never be marked by desperation , anger or frustration, but by a settled conviction that the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ reigns, and the perverted rebellion of humankind is laughable to God, but also draws His anger, for this is the world into which He sent His Son, the world He loves, the world which has received the revelation of His mind.
All human authority, from that of a parent, employer, a judge, a Prime Minister or President or Monarch, is delegated by God.
We are called to respect all authority, but when the authority acts inconsistently with the mind of God, the delegator, we must repond, ‘we must obey
God rather than men,’ (Acts 5:29), but we will do so serenly, knowing that God will be at work in all things to glorify Himself.
So much serenity!
David Cook.