Living Holy Lives (1 Thessalonians 4.1-12)

Introduction

Well now, I’m going to say quite a bit about sex this morning.

I can see you’re just thrilled…

I’m not putting any pictures on the PowerPoint this morning by the way.

Perhaps I should take inspiration from a noted sex therapist who was asked to say a few words about the subject at an after dinner speech. So he stood up and said, “Ladies and Gentleman, it gives me great pleasure...” And then he sat down again.

Actually, even though we sometimes find sex difficult to talk about, most of us are fascinated by it. Apparently they found a big hole in the nudist colony wall The police are looking into it! Not surprisingly…

Public Attitudes to What the Church Says 

You sometimes hear it said that the Church is just completely out of touch with reality. In fact, even the Archbishop of Canterbury had to admit as much only this week when he said that ordinary people would be unable to make sense of the decision at General Synod to not proceed with women bishops.

If you ask around, you can find plenty of people who think the Church has an image problem. People might talk about archaic language, boring music, antiquated buildings, redundant costumes, ridiculous structures and I could go on.

Many people think that the Bible’s teaching on sexual purity is hopelessly outdated. If you’re not married, just say no.

“But the world has moved on” people say. “We need to leave this kind of outdated morality behind.”

What is perceived as a “No sex please, we’re Christians” approach is dismissed as unreasonable. “It’s unhealthy” people say. Or worse, “It’s repressive.”

Some voices even within the church question how wise it is to persist with it, given how few people take it seriously in general society.

Consent and Non-Consent

When Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4.6 that “no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister” people, even outside the church, would generally concur I think.

Paul seems to be talking about persistent, unwanted advances, or some kind of exploitation - perhaps even abuse. And clearly, most people would agree that those things are not unacceptable.

But when we read in v3-6 that we should avoid sexual immorality, that we should learn to control our bodies and steer clear of passionate lust, some people ask “Why should we? As long as it’s between two consenting adults what’s wrong with it? Once again,” they say, “the church is out of touch with the real world.”

Let’s make sure we understand properly what the Bible has in mind in these verses. The word translated “sexual immorality” or in other versions “sexual promiscuity” or “fornication” is porneia in Greek from which we get “pornography.”

It’s not talking about all sex – God created sex, in the context of marriage, to be enjoyed and delighted in. What we have here though is an umbrella word basically meaning sex between two people who are not married to each other.

The thing is 1 Thessalonians was written to a community in the first century Roman Empire and a marked feature of life then, and specifically in Greece, where Thessalonica is located, was sexual permissiveness. Then, as now in the West, people did not see unmarried sex as a sin; it was just part of normal life.

Paul was writing to a world similar to ours – except actually most people today would view it as worse. In those days, prostitutes were openly paraded and were even a central feature of temple worship. If you were lower down the social scale, you were the submissive partner and exploitation and even abuse (both homosexual and heterosexual) were seen as fair enough. That was just your place in society’s pecking order. Nobody really questioned it or challenged it.

But in this, as in many other areas of life, the first Christians refused to take their standards from contemporary society. Always beware when people say the church should be more like the world.

Generally it’s like saying the lifeboat would be better off if it had more water inside it.

Why does Paul draw boundaries here about what’s OK in the bedroom and what’s not? People might say that, to be perfectly frank, it’s none of his business. Why should any Christian leader interfere with what consenting adults choose to do? Aren’t there more important priorities like feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless?

God’s Will for Us

Paul gives two reasons for what he says. Firstly, sexual purity is what God wants for us.

In v2 he says “you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.” In other words, “Remember, this comes from the top.”

In v3, he repeats it “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified.” So it’s not about what Paul wants, this is what God wants.

He says it a third time, just for good measure in v8: “Anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.”

What does God want? Verse 3 “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified.” “Sanctified” (some versions use the word “holy”) doesn’t mean “pious” or “religious” – it literally means to be set apart for a special purpose.

If you’ve got 100 apples and you place 20 in a box, those apples are holy.

If you’re sanctified, you’ll stand out from the crowd; so what it’s saying here is that God wants you and me to be conspicuous, to catch the eye, to be different.

Why does God want that for us? Because in his wisdom, as our designer and creator, he knows what is best for us and because he loves us he wants us to avoid what he knows is harmful to us.

Let me illustrate for you using independent research, why God’s wisdom urges us away from human wisdom which is just doing as we please sexually.

Human wisdom says who needs a bit of paper? God’s wisdom replies “Because marriage, represented by a signed certificate, is the most stable sexual relationship there is.

The Office of National Statistics reports that there were almost 120,000 divorces in the UK in 2010 - three times the number recorded in 1967.

The divorce rate for married couples is lower among those who saved themselves until their wedding night than for those who didn’t. According to a survey of those who were married for the first time in the 1980s, there is a 60% higher probability of divorce in the first eight years for those who lived together before marriage than for those who didn’t. 60%!

That’s a lot of pain. When the Bible talks about husband and wife being united together as one flesh the image is like two pieces of paper being glued together, the glue being the covenant or the promises.

When a marriage breaks up, because of adultery for example, it’s not the glue you tear – it’s the paper, and adults and children alike suffer pain and grief.

Last year, the Family Planning Association reported that the UK has the highest teenage birth rate and teenage abortion rate in Western Europe. That is another consequence of sexual immorality and that is another good reason why God wants us to be set apart.

An American radio presenter called Paul Harvey made this comment on one of his programmes. He said, “You know, in every Holiday Inn hotel. there is an AIDS prevention kit in the bedside cabinet drawer. It is called the Gideon’s Bible.”

There were over 383,000 cases of sexually transmitted diseases diagnosed in the UK in 2009, the latest year I could find figures for. That’s a 38% increase on the figure for the year 2000. That’s a lot of Gideon’s Bibles staying in the drawer! But 383,000 STDs are another consequence of sexual immorality and that is another good reason why God wants us to be set apart.

I’m sorry for bombarding you with statistics but I need to say that I am not just voicing opinions – I believe the wisdom of the Word of God is supported by independent research and statistics and the numbers are saying that the Bible is right. The so-called sexual revolution has not brought about happiness and health and an end to repression – just the opposite.

Can anyone honestly say that our secular society, is better off than, say, 50 years ago – a period when the Bible has been largely removed from schools and attacked in the media?

So firstly, God knows what makes for our happiness, and that’s why he calls us to live holy lives. He wants to live well and avoid heartache.

God’s Warning for Us

But there’s another reason and it comes in v6-8. If v3-6 are about God’s will for us, v6-8 are about God’s warning to us.

This is what it says: “The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God.”

Basically, what it’s saying here is that this sort of sin – and in fact the Bible says all sin - has spiritual consequences for us. We may not like to hear that.

But God is holy, holy, holy - and righteous and just and true, and even one sin would be enough to banish us from his presence forever. When Isaiah encountered God in the Old Testament he was so overwhelmed by God’s breath-taking holiness that he thought he was going to die. The Bible warns in Hebrews 10:31, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” That’s scary…

It’s much more comforting to think that God is not that bothered, but that is not what the Bible says.

The truth written down here is this; if people block their ears to God’s word, they actually refuse God himself. Let me read that verse again: “anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God.”

Whenever we think “no thanks” to what the Bible teaches us, we actually say “no thanks” to the Lord, full-stop.

Just a few months ago, a respected, high profile Christian leader entered into a wrong relationship, deserted his wife and children, leaving them in financial difficulties and abandoned the ministry he had spent years building up. I don’t sit in judgement over him. There, but for the grace of God, go I.

My point is this: Not surprisingly, that man didn’t carry on attending his local church or start attending another one. That tells me quite a lot about where he is with God right now. “Anyone who rejects this instruction… rejects God.”

Adultery is about what feels right for me at this particular moment in time. That’s the wisdom of the world. It says, “my body is mine to do as I see fit instead of belonging to my wife or husband.”

I pray he will be restored. Because, however low we fall, with the grace of God there is always a way back, as we’ll see in a moment.

The wisdom of the world says that my virginity is mine to give away as I see fit. Godly wisdom says my virginity is a precious gift that I keep to give away to my future wife or husband. And Godly wisdom bears fruit.

For ten years, Dr. Nancy Moore Clatworthy, a sociologist from Ohio State University, has been researching couples who have lived together unmarried. To her surprise, the data she compiled found that the couples who had lived together before marriage argued with each other more often than couples who had not. And the rate of marriage breakdown was higher as well than for couples who had not lived together before marrying.

Is sexual sin worse than other sins? No. Possibly we attach a greater stigma to sexual sin but the Bible doesn’t because all sin separates us from God.

What Paul says here about the consequences of promiscuity is also true of jealousy, prayerlessness, theft, unbelief, laziness, greed and 101 other things besides.

In 1983 Billy Graham appeared in a TV show with the actress Joan Collins. The interviewer asked “Billy, were you aware that Joan has appeared in Playboy magazine? And Billy Graham replied, “Yes, and I’ve seen it. Someone showed it to me in the barber shop.” And then he went on to preach the gospel.

Even in 1983 you could scarcely avoid seeing erotic material from time to time. Now, with the Internet, it’s much more prevalent and easily accessed.

I like that story about Billy Graham though – it reminds me that we can’t completely remove ourselves from the world. But the gospel is good news and it sets us free from the lust that wants to grab hold of us and take us away from everything that is healthy for our soul.

Nobody here – and I mean no one – will be able to stand before God and boast of our purity and righteousness before him. Remember what Jesus said, “Anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

With that kind of standard, who among us is is ever going to make the grade? Only Christ’s perfect record is good enough – he who was tempted in every way just as we are - yet was without sin.

And his perfect, unblemished record is what he gives to you whenever you come to him in repentance and faith. The Bible says that God loves us. When sinless Jesus died on the cross, all our sins - all of them - were placed on him, and he took the death sentence and experience of hell we deserve.

Believe Christ died for you. The Jesus who saves you is the same Jesus who sanctifies you. Invite him to be Lord of your life today, no matter how many times you have before, and when you do, receive God’s promise to forgive you, and restore you completely and fully.

Living in Love and Humility

Briefly, Paul goes on in v9 and following to say this: “Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, dear friends, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”

I like what William Hendriksen says in his commentary about this passage; He writes, “Fanatics, busybodies and loafers, nearly every church has them.” He sounds really fed up doesn’t he?!

I’m glad to say that I don’t find All Saints’ a refuge for fanatics, busybodies and loafers! Actually, Paul is saying that this church is full of love and that’s one of the things I really appreciate about All Saints’ too.

Not that any church should rest on our laurels – twice in these verses Paul urges his readers to keep on doing the right thing more and more.”

Ending 

Finally, this thought; the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross once said “People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

Let the pure and holy fire of Christ burn in your heart. It is God’s will for you to be holy.


Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 25th November 2012

God's Law (Matthew 5.17-20)

Introduction

I want to begin by asking you six questions. And I am going to ask you to raise your hand if what I say is what you think. Here we go.

Firstly, raise a hand if you think lay people should have a big say in the way the church is run.

Secondly, hands up if you believe that Jesus was really raised from the dead.

Third question, would you please raise your hand if you are confident that you will be admitted to heaven when you die?

Fourthly, raise a hand please if you think that studying the Bible is worthwhile.

Fifthly - and I’m not taking notes - hands up if you think that Christians should give a generous proportion of their income to the Lord’s work, to support good causes and to alleviate suffering in the world.

And lastly; hands up if you believe that sending missionaries to lands that know nothing of Jesus Christ is a good thing. Thank you.

You are probably wondering why I started with those six statements. So I’ll tell you. Jesus said in our Gospel reading this morning, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Please listen carefully now, here’s the link. We know, from the Gospels, that the Pharisees and teachers of the law would have unhesitatingly raised a hand to all six, as many of you have - and I have – and yet Jesus said you’ve got to do better than that to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Here’s what we know about what the Pharisees on these six points.

1. Contrary to what many people think, the Pharisees were actually a dedicated lay movement – none were priests.

2. Unlike the Sadducees, who were the woolly liberals of the day, the Pharisees believed in the resurrection so they were quite sound.

3. Furthermore, they were absolutely confident that they themselves would attain eternal life.

4. They were very keen readers of Scripture; they learned hundreds of verses by heart and they spent many hours in Bible study groups.

5. You can guarantee they would be in Lewis’ good books. They methodically gave a full one tenth of everything they earned to God; from their monthly pay cheque to their garden herbs.

6. And to cap it all off, they were fervent about spreading the faith to other lands. Jesus said to them “You travel half way round the world to make just one convert” – that’s dedication isn’t it?

But I say it again. Jesus said you’ve got to do much better than them if you’re going to enter the kingdom of heaven. Think about that. The Pharisees who were radically committed to obeying every aspect, every detail of God’s law, no matter how trivial it seemed to be, fell short.

I doubt if there are many Christians, me included, who in practice come even close to their attention to detail. It’s a bit of a problem isn’t it? That’s what this sermon will try and explore.

The Law in the Big Picture of God's Word

We’re continuing our series on the big picture of the Old Testament. So far we’ve seen God create the world and we’ve seen that his creation has been spoiled by sin. This world is not the way it was meant to be. It’s all gone wrong because people made and still make bad choices and choose to rebel against God.

We’ve looked at the patriarchs; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who learned to relate to God through faith and who grew through their many mistakes. We’ve seen how God made covenants, or binding agreements, with people and how he released his enslaved people from Egypt.

If you’ve ever tried to read the Bible from cover to cover I suspect you will have been all right so far.

But at this point, the end of the book of Exodus and into Leviticus and Numbers and then Deuteronomy it gets much harder. This is the bit we call the Law.

In Deuteronomy 1 it says that Moses “proclaimed to the Israelites all that the Lord had commanded him concerning them.” And it says that he “began to expound the law.” What is this law all about?

First Things First

A few days after God miraculously set his people free from slavery in Egypt he gave them ten simple rules to live by. We know them as the Ten Commandments.

It’s very important to understand that with God, it’s always this way round. First he sets them free. And then he tells them how to live. God still works that way today.

First he saves you. And only then does he tell you how he wants you to live as a grateful response to him.

That means Christians shouldn’t judge people who are not believers and lecture them about their shocking morality. Christians need to concentrate instead on telling others about the One who sets people free from sin. Only when they have been saved from sin should we talk about how to live God’s way.

When I was in Paris, we ran an Alpha course twice a year. We regularly had the joy of seeing people turn to God through this simple but powerful introductory course to Christianity.

In two consecutive autumn courses we welcomed two women with fertility problems. One had been trying unsuccessfully for a baby for 14 years. Even hormone treatment and artificial insemination were useless. When she got to 40 the doctors told her it was hopeless and that she should forget it.

The other woman had had an abortion when she was a teenager and there had been complications, making subsequent attempts to conceive a child unfruitful.

Both had gone through painful break-ups in unmarried relationships. Both came to the church in desperation. Both came to faith in Christ during the Alpha course. Both were filled with the Holy Spirit on the ‘away day’ halfway through the course. Both became pregnant within a week. And both gave birth to healthy babies (one boy and one girl) the following August.

The thing is both women had domestic arrangements that were certainly not what the Bible would prescribe as the right way to live. Both had messy lives. We didn’t judge them. We just loved them.

But as soon as they became Christians, without us saying a word, both wanted to put their lives right and live according to God’s word. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus sets you free first and then tells you how he wants you to live as a glad response to his saving grace.

That is why Jesus never commended the Pharisees, even though they lived upright lives. They went around criticising others and tut-tutting, placing a burden of condemnation on them, but they never lifted a finger to help people carry it.

And that’s is what Jesus means when he says , “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

One Law, Many Laws

So God gave his people the Ten Commandments. But in fact, that’s just the start. From Exodus to Deuteronomy, there are in total 613 different laws.

Some of the laws are quite straightforward. Do not give a false testimony in court. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Most of the straightforward ones are also repeated in the New Testament and are just as valid today.

Some of them are quite weird. Do not eat shellfish. Do not shave your sideboards. Do not wear garments with wool and linen mixed together.

Most of the weird sounding ones are not repeated in the New Testament and are not binding on us today. Those laws were given so that the people of Israel would distinguish themselves from pagan people around them and stand out. They tell us that our God wants us to stand out from the crowd – but in different ways.

Other laws dealt with the sacrificial system God established to take away sins. These regulations taught the people that God is holy, and that sin is serious - so serious it can only be cleansed by the shedding of blood.

Sin is still serious and God is still holy. But those sacrifices are no longer needed, because Jesus shed his blood as the final and complete sacrifice for our sins.

The New Testament says in Galatians 3:25, “Now that faith (in Christ) has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.”

Does this mean we should just ignore those parts of the Old Testament? No, not at all. They teach us just how seriously God takes sin, and they remind us too of what it cost God to make our salvation possible. Most of all, they point us to Jesus Christ, who loved us so much that He was willing to give His life for us.

Pointing to Christ

When you think about it, God makes it pretty easy for us, doesn’t he? Never mind the 613 laws, just start with the Ten Commandments. It’s just ten simple rules to keep. It should be easy. But we don’t even get past the first one. “You shall have no other gods before me.” That means nothing should be more important to us than God.

But how many of us, honestly, have never put anything above God? It could be your job, it could be your holiday, it could be your family, it could be golf or football, it could be food and drink, it could be your church, it could be anything… the moment anything or anyone replaces God as first in my affections I break Commandment number one.

All of us are lawbreakers. Everyone who has ever lived has been a lawbreaker. The problem with the Law is it tells you what to do but it doesn’t give you the power to obey with your heart.

When winter passes and the springtime sun starts shining, we start spring cleaning because we see just how grubby our homes get over winter. God’s Law is a bit like the light that reveals how dirty a room is.

That’s why Jesus says in v17, “I haven’t come to abolish the law”. It’s really good to be able to see dirt and dust in your room. That’s why he says in v18, “Not one dot of an “i”, not one cross of a “t” will disappear from the law until kingdom come”.

God’s Law is the light that reveals how dirty our lives are compared to his holiness. Thank God for that. But God’s Law is not the broom that clears up the mess. The broom that clears up the mess of our patent inability to obey the law is Jesus - how we need him!

A Matter of the Heart

What God wants is love from the heart; love for him and love for others. That’s why Jesus whittled down hundreds of laws and commandments to just two; “Love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. And love others as you love yourself.”

In other words, it’s a matter of the heart.

So does your righteousness surpass that of the Pharisees? Or is your religion, like theirs, only about ‘dos and don’ts’ with no affection for God and no love for others?

Let’s pray...


Sermon preached at Saint Mary's Long Newton, 18th November 2012

Peace For Our Time (Remembrance Day Sermon 2012)

Habakkuk 1.1-4, 13-17 and John 14.23-27

On 18th November 1961 in an upstairs room in a modest two-bed semi in Essex a young mother gave birth to her first son (there's a picture of it, the house - it's the one on the right with the porch). He wasn’t much to look at, and he cried round the clock but she loved him as only a mother can. That baby boy was me. And I came into the world just 16 years after the end of World War II.

I was born into a very different world than I would have, had the generation before mine not risked and, in many cases, laid down their lives to defend these islands from the cruellest tyranny Europe has ever known.

That is why we do this every year. We do not wear poppies just to remember death but also to savour the better life we enjoy at their expense. Their bravery and sacrifice bequeathed us the legacy of a continent at peace – and we are grateful.

I want to talk about two sorts of peace this morning.

One spring evening in an upstairs room in Jerusalem, Jesus said looked at his twelve closest friends and most loyal followers and said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” It was the evening before he died.

The peace Jesus gives, he said, is “not as the world gives.” That is to say, the world offers one sort of peace. And Jesus gives something else.

What sort of peace does the world give? What does the peace, that is not like Christ’s peace, look like?

To answer that question, look at our very best efforts to contain war.

World War 1 (1914-1918) was a conflict that was so thoroughly awful that it was called the war to end all wars. 17.6 million people died or went missing in just four years. 21.2 million more were wounded – and that’s just military casualties, not counting civilians. When it ended, people said “We must learn how to work together to make sure it never happens again.” The war was officially ended with a treaty signed in Versailles. They set up an organisation called the League of Nations so that international conflicts could never be allowed to escalate out of control again. 

On 30th September 1938, just 20 years after the end of that war, our then Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew back here from Munich. He stepped off the plane waving a piece of paper signed jointly by himself and Adolf Hitler hours earlier. He said, to great cheers from the gathered crowd, “the agreement signed last night… [is] symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.”

Later that night outside number 10 he said “it is peace for our time… go home and sleep quietly in your beds.” 

That’s the peace that the world gives. It wasn’t peace for our time and it was anything but a time to sleep quietly in bed. In fact, the very next day, as the newspapers carried the headline “Pact with Hitler is only a beginning” Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. 

Within a year, Britain was at war with Germany; a conflict that spanned six years. In the Second World War, there were 24 million military casualties and approximately 49 million civilian ones. In other words, this war was over four times more deadly than the war to end all wars, two decades earlier. 

So much for the peace that the world gives…

On the 26th June 1945, within two months of the end of the Second World War, there was a summit of world leaders in San Francisco.

The outcome of that historic gathering was that the United Nations was formed.

They issued a charter in which the following resolutions were affirmed.

We the peoples of the United Nations [are] determined

· to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind…

· to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours…

· to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security

These are beautiful words. These are commendable goals. This is the peace that the world gives. The problem is, sadly, like the Treaty of Versailles, it doesn’t deliver the peace we all yearn for.

If it did, there would be no conflict zones anywhere in the world today. War would be a thing of the past.

The truth is, not a single month has passed by since the setting up of the United Nations when there hasn’t been a war somewhere.

This is the peace that the world gives.

And, of course, war and violence is not just a modern phenomenon. Habakkuk, in our first reading cried out; “Lord, why is there so much strife and violence and you do nothing about it?” He wrote those words over 600 years before Christ. About that time, a prophet called Jeremiah was saying “Peace, peace you say – but there is no peace!” It has been the same sorry story throughout human history.

Jesus said that there will be “wars and rumours of wars and nation rising up against nation” until the end of time.

Why is it that we, as a species, the human race, are so manifestly unable to deliver the peace we all so long and yearn for?

We see from a very young age that small children fight over toys. My entire childhood there was a running feud and a bitter dispute between my brother Richard and me on who should have the top bunk bed. We have only recently negotiated a truce! As we get older, the toys and beds become land, and positions of power and natural resources like oil.

We find too that we clash with each other in our marriages and families, sometimes with irretrievable breakdown. We fight at work. We fall out with the neighbours.

There will always be wars and rumours of wars, as Jesus said, because the human heart itself is not what it should be.

Jeremiah, again, said “The human heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”

So this is the peace that the world gives; momentary, illusory and ineffective.

But remember the words of Jesus.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

What is the peace that he gives? In what way is it different?

To answer that question I want to introduce you to a young man called Cyril Barton. On 18th July 1943 he wrote the following letter to his mother to be opened in the event of his death. 

Dear mum,

I hope that you never read this but I quite expect that you will. 

I am expecting to do my first operational flight in a few days. I know what operations over Germany mean and I have no illusions about it. By my own calculations, the average life of a crew is 20 flights and we have 30 to do in our first tour. 

I am writing this just to tell you how I feel about meeting my Maker. All I can say about this is that I am quite prepared to die. It holds no terror for me. I know I will survive the judgement as I have trusted in Christ as my own saviour. I have done nothing to merit glory; because he died for me, it’s God’s free gift. At times I have wondered if I have been right believing what I do and just recently I have doubted the veracity of the Bible. But in the little time I have had to sort out intellectual problems I have been left with a bias in favour of the Bible. 

Apart from this though, I have the inner conviction as I write, a force outside myself and my brain, that I have not trusted in vain. All I am anxious about is that you and all the rest of the family would also come to know him. I commend my Saviour to you. 

I am writing to Doreen separately. I expect that you will have guessed by now that we are quite in love with each other. She too will find the blow hard to bear. But there is a text that we have often quoted to each other and it is written in the Daily Light she gave me. Romans 8:28 – We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. It’s true. 

Well, that’s covered everything now. Love to dad and all. 

Your loving son, Cyril. 

On 30th March 1944 Cyril Barton's Halifax bomber was hit by enemy night fighters. Two fuel tanks were punctured, the radio was disabled, the starboard inner engine was on fire and the intercom lines within the plane were cut. 

A misinterpreted signal resulted in three of the crew bailing out. Cyril was left all alone with no navigator, no bombardier and no wireless operator. As he crossed the English coast his fuel finally ran out and with only one engine working he approached the village of Ryhope, near Sunderland. If he had bailed out then, his stricken aircraft would have crashed into a row of houses so he stayed on board to steer it towards a pit head instead. 

He was pulled alive from the wreckage but he died before reaching the hospital. He was only 22. It was his 19th mission.

He was posthumously awarded the highest honour for gallantry, the Victoria Cross.

“I commend my saviour to you” he wrote to his mother and from the grave he commends his saviour to us all today. If anyone merited the Victoria Cross it was Cyril Barton – but his greatest reward, his eternal reward, was in Christ.

As a young pilot, Cyril Joe Barton knew he was staring death in the face every time he took off on a wartime mission. How could he face death with such courage, with such nerve, with such… serenity?

He knew the peace that Jesus gives, that the world cannot give, and it settled his fearful heart.

But his death was still a bitter blow to their parents, one from which they never fully recovered. As far as I know, they never shared their son’s faith and never tasted the peace that Jesus gives and that the world cannot.

Do you have that peace? Have you discovered it? Put your life into his hands today, as Cyril Barton did, and then ask Christ to help you bring his amazing peace to others.

“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, [for] you were called to peace” (Colossians 3:15).

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 11th November 2012