A Sermon for VE Day

Father, to bring glory to our Lord Jesus is to us one of the wonders of life. We delight in His triumph and thank You for the privilege of being in His entourage. Help us as we come around Your Word to understand it.

For the Saviour's sake. Amen. Let's turn to one or two scriptures.

I'd wonder whether as I want to preach an address which I've called a VE sermon, if I should have asked Ruth to have sung We'll Meet Again, Don't Know Where, Don't Know When. Of course, for some of you moderns, you don't understand decent music, but that was pretty good stuff some 50 years or so ago. And for those of us who were just around, it brings back memories.

The Bible has a little bit, but not directly a great deal to say in regard to war. Let's have a look at James. Chapter 4, verse 1. This is the Lord's brother.

And sometimes James seems to reflect statements our Lord made which are not actually written into the Gospels. That's reasonable, isn't it? If He is the human brother of our Lord and for a while was cheery about His ministry, but after the resurrection and Pentecost was won right over, you'd expect Him to reproduce some of the things that our Saviour said. Well, here's a little selection of questions, or at least a couple.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? I think the AV puts it more strongly. What causes fights and wars among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle or that war within you? You want something, but you don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want.

You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. Well, let's move on to another little statement.

This is in John's epistle. And the fifth chapter of the first epistle. John, again, a very close follower of our Lord, known as the disciple whom Jesus loved.

Not that he didn't love the others, but John seemed to be particularly close and physically very affectionate towards the Saviour. And he has this to say. We'll pick it up from verse 3. This is love for God, to obey His, God's commandments.

And His commandments are not burdensome. For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.

Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Now, it's pretty obvious why I want to tackle some subject that's relative to war and remembrance. I want to commence this address by making a proposition and then following it with an assertion.

My proposition flows from my reading. And it is this. There is something in your passage through life which is far more important than winning a physical war.

A victory has been gained on the behalf of humanity into which you can by faith enter. Your failure or your acceptance will govern your eternal destination. I mean, that's basically what John is here saying.

He's speaking of our beloved Lord. I made reference to His death on the cross in my opening prayer. Why did He die? It was a bloody and ghastly spectacle, wasn't it? I mean, Christianity is the only world religion that has as the center stage, its founder, being done to death in such an appalling fashion.

The most painful way that man has ever invented to rob his fellow of life is applied to Jesus. And John is here saying that in effect our Lord was involved in a warfare and He was triumphant because at the last moment when failure seemed to be His, He snatched success. And He's brought from death to newness of life.

Not only does He live, but all those who confess Him, who enter into the spoils of His victory, they live also. And that's why my opening proposition was that there's something more important in life than winning a physical war. But here's my assertion.

Despite that, it is right for us to celebrate and be thankful for V-E Day. But we must not allow, and this is what very often happens in state services, we must not allow the Bible to be abused. You can take a text out of its context and turn it into a pretext.

In other words, you shift its meaning. Now the Bible is full of military metaphor. We're in a battle.

And sometimes, maybe not in a malevolent fashion, maybe because they haven't been very careful in reading out the context on occasions like tomorrow. Those who have an ability to speak to the nation will dip into the Word of God and lift out text which actually do not apply to a literal war in terms of the last world war. But to the equally literal, but with overriding spiritual implications, the victory won by our Lord Jesus on the cross.

Winston Churchill is a man who I honor. But you have to be careful with Mr. Churchill in some ways. Onward Christian Soldiers was his favorite hymn.

And now you understand why it was his favorite hymn, because he was the man who gave the clarion call to the troops, to our country. But it is Christian Soldiers of which the hymn is speaking. And sometimes we have to be very careful when we look back on V-E Day, and indeed when we read some of the stuff that was preached there by the chaplains who did a marvelous job.

That we don't have a sort of Islamic concept coming into Christianity. You know you die in the cause of Allah, therefore immediately you are going to heaven. The holy war idea, basic to Islam, but foreign to Christianity.

My assertion is it is right, and to quote the language of the prayer book, it's meat, it's our bounden duty to give thanks to God for brave men and women of yesteryear. I've stood on the ground of some of those battlefields. As tears in my eyes I've roamed the graves.

Stood in the heart of one of the concentration camps in Germany. Paid my respects in Jerusalem to the memory of the Jews who were so savagely butchered. Was it right to pray for victory in the last world war? Well, when you had a demonized one time painter decorator turned military leader with such mesmeric powers in his auditory.

That he was able to command the attention and confidence not just of thousands but tens of thousands of people. When you had someone who was prepared to build an infrastructure into Europe. With tentacles out to these island homes of ours which would completely have destroyed the democracies that we had known for some generations.

It was right to pray for his downfall and for the demise of the National Socialist Party otherwise known as the Nazis. We came so wafer thin, close to being taken over by that band of cutthroats. But having said all that, as we do engage in reflection this evening we do so thoughtfully.

Realizing as I mentioned a little while ago that the Bible has very little to say about war in terms of its origin. In terms of why does God allow it. To the question what causes war, the nearest answer the Bible comes to is what you find in that reading from James.

Because the Bible sees war not as a separate sin in and of itself contained in a sort of unit. The Bible sees war as a consequence of a disease which has many symptoms, many manifestations. This is the reason why the blessed Lord when he was on earth tantalizingly enough says so little about the political situation in his day.

I mean here you had a parallel. The Roman occupying force. Palestine under the jackboot of Caesar.

And when the Christ of God walks the streets of Palestine he rarely if ever deals with the subject that is very much at the forefront of the thinking of most of the Jewish people. Why is that? Because you see there are two levels of responsibility that we have. And it is so easy for us moderns to fail to recognize the distinctions that Jesus was drawing.

The most important thing is the problem behind all sinfulness not just the manifestation of sinfulness we call war. The important thing is not the conquest of Caesar's armies or the repulsion of Caesar's armies. Not even the repulsion of the Nazi forces.

The most important thing is the repulsion of sin through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. And being ensured that in that victory you have a right for it spoils. Not through your desert, not through your achievement, not through your military strategy but simply because as a sinner you come to Christ and say no one else can help me but you.

So when we think tomorrow and indeed throughout the whole of this week of the great deliverance in Europe. We're also mindful if you think it through the philosophical better at a theological level. That there is still a war.

There is still a danger. There is still an enemy which sometimes seems as hidden and as silent an enemy as was the Nazi threat at the beginning of the war. When our American friends were having great problems in even realizing that there was such a thing as a danger.

What causes war? Nations like individuals are not governed by common sense. Preach Martin Lloyd-Jones during the period of the Second World War in a courageous sermon in London. I repeat war is sheer madness.

There is nothing to be said for it. Why then do the nations fight and prepare for war? The answer is that they are not governed by their minds and intellects but by the two-thirds that is underneath the surface. The part of the iceberg that you do not see.

Greed, avarice, national pride, the desire to possess and to become greater than others. You see we are all responsible for the breakdown of society. Plato got it right when he talked about the state being the individual written in capital letters.

You see this is the great distinction between Marxism and Christianity. How do you write the world? Marxism says you do it through society as a whole. Christianity says that is utterly impossible.

You can only redeem society as the aggregate of individuals are redeemed. As the war within their own heart is quelled. As they move from the forces of unrighteousness into the camp of the forces of righteousness.

This is one of the reasons why I have always preferred to be a preacher than a politician. Though the temptation to the latter has always been strong. Because ultimately the answer to the problems of man is addressed only by the Bible.

What man needs is a change in his heart. Was it right to pray for victory? Well I have already answered that question in part. You could hardly sit back while genocide policies were being carried out in the center of Europe.

It was right to pray for men and women on the front line. Isn't it interesting how the monarch in those days, King George VI was calling the nation to prayer. Time and time again he asked for a day of prayer.

In 1940 I put the information at the back of notes and news. September the 8th, another day of prayer. Sunday September the 15th.

And so it goes on. The request of those who had authority and influence that the nation should come to prayer. And not only was this request made.

But there were those amongst the generals who were prepared to accept that sometimes the positive outcome of a military skirmish which seemed that they were staring the jaws of defeat in the face turned out to be one of victory. As a result of the prayers of the people, thus General Darby's order of the day from the military garrison in Malta. With God's help we will maintain the security of the fortress.

And what about General Eisenhower's comment in regard to the D-Day excursion and its postponement by 24 hours. The consequences of that decision could not have been foreseen by anyone. If there were nothing else in my life to prove the existence of an almighty and merciful God, the next 24 hours did it.

The greatest break in a terrible outlay of weather occurred the next day. And the invasion went ahead. You see, it is right to pray against evil.

It was right to pray for our troops, for our men, for our women on those particular occasions. Does any good come from war? That's an interesting question to be raised and to be faced. And the answer has to be yes.

Maybe within the overarching sovereignty of God, that is why He sometimes allows such bloody things to take place as the first and the second world wars. You see, there was a manifestation of sheer guts at the human level. Not so.

Do you know the King of Nepal? He sent a telegram to Churchill, certainly to the leaders of the Western Front. And he pledged, when we were in trouble in France, the support of that tiny little kingdom with these words, does a friend desert a friend in time of need? If you win, we win with you. If you lose, we lose with you.

There is a tendency sometimes when pressure is on a nation, on an individual, for the best to come to the surface. Brazil and Bonn, the people who used to, perhaps they still do, produce good quality letter paper, writing paper. They had a competition after the war to judge what they perceived to be the most moving and stirring and brave letter that ever came from the front.

This is the one that gained their supreme admiration. It comes from Private Ivor Rowberry, who was part of the 2nd South Staffordshire Regiment. Dear Mum, tomorrow we go into action.

As yet we do not know exactly what our job will be, but no doubt it will be a dangerous one in which many lives will be lost. Mine may be one. I am not afraid to die.

I like this life, yes, for the past two years I have planned and dreamed and mapped out a perfect future for myself. I would have liked that future to materialise, but it is not what I will, but what God wills, and if by sacrificing all this I leave the world slightly better than I found it, I am perfectly willing to make that sacrifice. Don't get me wrong though, Mum, I'm no flag-waving patriot, nor have I ever professed to be.

England's a great little country, the best there is, but I cannot honestly say that it's worth fighting for. Nor can I fancy myself in the role of a gallant crusader fighting for the liberation of Europe. No, Mum, my little world is centred around you, and includes Dad, everyone at home and my friends.

That is worth fighting for. And if by doing so it strengthens your security and improves your lot, then it is worth dying for too. I want no flowers, no epitaph, no tears.

All I want is for you to remember me and feel proud of me. Then I shall rest in peace knowing that I have done a good job. Death is nothing final or lasting.

If it were there, if it were, there would be no point in living. It is just a stage in everyone's life. To some it comes early, to others late, but it must come to everyone sometime, and surely there is a better way of dying than a rotting of old age.

Besides, I've probably crammed more enjoyment into my 21 years than some managed to do in 80. My only regret is that I have not done as much for you as I would have liked to do. I loved you, Mum.

You were the best mother in the world. What I failed to do in life I am trying to make up for in death. So please don't worry or fret, but smile, be proud, be satisfied, goodbye, and thanks for everything.

Amazing when you read the letters that were sent from the front. Very frequently a reference is made to God. As one of the most prominent chaplains said, there are no atheists on the front line.

War sometimes brings out within individuals, within nations, what the French would call an esprit de corps, a spirit that, alas, does not prevail in easier times. Interesting, my friends, is it not, that on VE Day, the great VE Day, tens of thousands thronged the mall, hundreds of thousands swelled the inhabitants of central London. There was no security, no police, yet tomorrow they are numbered by the thousands to control the crowd.

I leave it with you for your thought, but it is interesting, isn't it, that in a time of crisis very often characteristics come to the fore which show a better spirit that there is latent within the personalities of people and societies. Should we desire peace? Well, that seems to be an absurd question. Let me put up another one alongside it.

Do we deserve peace? Back to Lloyd-Jones preaching in Westminster in the heart of London during the war. He was reflecting on the peace that there had been between the First World War and the outbreak of the Second World War and at least credit for his bravery in suggesting that the peace that there had been was an undeserved peace. On what basis? Well, he said, well, look what has happened during the peace.

That First World War was a war to end all wars. We started a new style of hymn, composed new hymns to be sung in our churches and in school assemblies. We talked about a new breed who would be noble, great and bold with light of science in their eyes.

The war to end all wars? Ah, says Lloyd-Jones, preaching in the late 1930s. During the peace, we dishonoured the name of God. Lord Field Marshal Montgomery, who I believe was educated in the nearby Lansing College, he made this comment on one occasion.

Having won the war, unfortunately we lost the peace. Do we deserve peace? What would be your theological reason, your biblical reason for praying for peace? You see, if I'm right in drawing this distinction between our responsibility as citizens as being secondary to our responsibility as creatures whom God has made, then arguing in the second category, our desire for peace should be because within that context, men and women might more carefully live their lives. For the concern of the Christian church and the basis of the gospel is not for men and women to enjoy life in unlicensed, unbridled freedom and sometimes by their very enjoyment bring others into deprivation and poverty.

It is not for men to bankrupt the Old Testament of the Ten Commandments and say that they do not apply anymore. The objective of us living on planet earth is to bring honour and glory to God. And so we have to ask ourselves the question, when we pray for peace, are we praying for peace for the right reason? When the Acts of the Apostles was being written, you remember there was great persecution and then there was a lull after the persecution and praise was offered to God for the lull.

Why? Because that created a situation in which the gospel could go out here, there and everywhere. Now it's on that basis that you pray for peace, that the peace can be exploited for the honour and for the glory of God. But if as a result of the peace, our nation is in a state of disarray, if economically we're spiralling downwards and there are some who are suffering more than others, if we have on our legislature that which is contrary to the word of God, then what is the point of peace? I dare suggest this sort of message will not be preached on the BBC tomorrow.

But tell me, am I right? Is not this the plain teaching of Scripture? Peace is a gift from God to be used for the honour and for the glory of God. So I leave you the question, do we deserve peace? Look at Paul when he writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy and chapter 2. He speaks, to some degree, referring to the responsibility of Christians to pray for the political situation. I urge then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for everyone.

For kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all God's glory. Godliness and holiness. You see the point? Why are we praying for peace? So that we may live godly and quiet lives.

Not just because of a cessation of violence, meaning less injury to the human frame. Obviously it does that. But that is not the supremely important thing.

That is the by-product. We want peace so that men may follow godliness, peacefulness in their attitudes to others and live quietly. Will there ever be an end to war? You see, tomorrow the possibility is that we will get so caught up with the thought that the Second World War was successfully terminated that we will forget.

That in the last 40 years there have been so many other wars. So many other bloody conflicts. So much more genocide.

That really your thanksgiving has to be somewhat baited, somewhat muted because of the disgraceful state of society in various parts of our world. And so the question comes, will there ever be an end to war? J.F. Kennedy, a man who had Churchillian ability in auditory, he said, man must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. But what does the Bible say? Again, you are not going to like it, some of you.

But the Bible talks about wars and rumors of wars increasing. It talks about evil men waxing worse and worse. It talks about the mystery of iniquity, the making absolute of evil forces which will eventually be let loose in an unprecedented fashion.

And then some of the horrific descriptions in the book of Revelation will be fleshed out and become literal. You see, the Bible is not an optimistic book. Not in terms of man's ability to control his own environment.

It really does require you to shut your eyes to so many biblical texts. To believe that the Bible teaches that society is going to get better and better and better and man will bring in his own utopia. That's what was believed in between the First and the Second World War.

But clearly that is not the case. I could demonstrate it all evening by bringing you illustration after illustration. But in various parts of the world, we have not learned the lessons of 50 years ago.

Ne jamais, never again. That's what they say in Buchenwald. You can read it in French, you read it in German, you read it in English.

Never again will we allow genocide than what is happening in Bosnia and Serbia. What is happening in Rwanda. And where are the United Nations? Where is the ability of men and women to stop these sort of things? Why is it that we see pot-bellied pictures of African boys and girls? It's a disgrace.

You know it, I know it. In the name of God, then why is the world in the condition in which it finds itself? And the answer is that man has not submitted to the authority and to the rule of God. And until he does, there will be no peace.

Now, I said that the Bible is pessimistic in regard to the future from a human point of view. But fortunately, the Bible does not leave it just there. Because it refers to what our creedal statement made reference to.

And that is the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. What will finally eliminate conflict from our world. Psalm 46.9 says of God, He causes wars to cease to the ends of the earth.

Isaiah 8 says of Jesus, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor. The mighty God. The Prince of Peace.

And we believe, and the Bible clearly states, that the Lord Jesus caught up and returned to the Father 40 days after His resurrection. Shall so come in like manner as on the first advent. But with this difference, it will not be Jesus incognito.

It will not be the cry of a babe in Bethlehem's manger that disturbs the stillness of the evening. It will be the Christ of God who comes in all His power, in all His glory. Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

And His government will increase. And the peace for which He died will be brought throughout the whole earth as the earth is flushed, is cleansed of every vestige of sin. The nations of this world shall become the territory of God's Christ.

And He shall reign forever and ever. Without that hope we are doomed. Without that hope I for one do not want to live.

Without that hope life is senseless. But with that hope behind the Christian church, provoking the Christian church into evangelism, there is sense, there is reason for our existence on planet earth. That does not mean that we engage in an evangelical cop-out.

We should be there at the forefront of humanitarian relief. We should be there at the forefront of thought. We should be trying to change society even though we recognize that we are up against the most hellish evil forces imaginable.

Knowing full well that the day will come when He shall return and the victory of Calvary shall be complete. Should we thank God tomorrow for the past victory in Europe? Indeed we should. But we should thank God even more for the victory achieved by the Christ of the cross.

And in our thanksgiving we should repent that we who were given peace have not deserved the peace that came to our nation or to Europe. And He would be a bold spokesman for any political party or for any church establishment who would ask Europe to come back to a point of repentance and confession. And ask for God's forgiveness and for His grace to take us on from this century into the next, having learned a lesson.

From where do wars come? They come from the evil that is within man. How is that evil dealt with? Through an acceptance of forgiveness through Jesus Christ and the imparting of His spirit into your life which gradually changes your nature to be like His nature. Thank you, O my Father, for giving us your Son, and leading your spirit to the work of every son.

Jesus, my Redeemer, reign the hope of days. Precious blood of God Messiah, our hope in His name. Thank you, O my Father, for giving us your Son, and leading your spirit to the work of every son.

When I stand in glory, I will see His face. Let us serve my King forever in that glory place. Jesus, Lord, we know your truth has set us free.

You send your hope in me. Thank you for saving me. What can I say?