“Beyond the Ceasefire”
By Dayle K. Barrett
Sunday, April 26, 2026
Reading: Romans 5:1-17
If you've been paying attention to the news lately, you may have read that sermon title and thought, he's finally going to do it. He is. After all this time, he's finally going to get up there and preach about Donald J. Trump.
That's not happening today, sorry. I'm gonna do what I always do: preach about Jesus and the Kingdom of God that Christ proclaims. I hope you don't mind. I wasn't even going to mention Donald Trump actually, but I was watching the news last night and there was this story, I'm sure you've all caught it by now. A man rushed the White House correspondent's dinner with a gun, shot an officer. And we're still not quite sure, but it's likely that he was going to make an attempt on the president's life. So now it's all relevant and stuff, isn't it? I've kind of got to talk about it, or it's one of those deafening silences whereby not saying something, you're saying something.
So how do we look at incidents like that? What does the Bible say about the Christian response to political conflict? Well, it's interesting. The Bible doesn't really say that much about political divides. It doesn't answer questions about the left or the right because those are modern concepts. They appeared around the time of the French Revolution. The God we serve offers us a kingdom that's above all that, the kingdom of God, which isn't socialism or communism or capitalism or fascism. It's righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
And so, when we read the scriptures, we don't see the prophets or the evangelists or the apostles taking pot shots at politicians to gain political clout with their friends. What we see is them talking about something that's far above all of that. Jesus tells us to give to God what is God’s and to give to Caesar what is Caesar's.
In Romans, Chapter 13, Paul tells us that the authorities are placed there by God. Yeah, even the ones you don't like, placed there by God and that we have to submit to them. In terms of our Christian response, the only real commands we're given are here in the first epistle to Timothy, Chapter two, where Paul writes:
I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all. For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.
Here's the command we're given by God about politics. Obey the law, pay your taxes, and pray for your leaders. We're not asked to like them, we're not asked to loathe them, we're asked to pray for them. And it's important that we do so, friends, so we don't descend into the kind of political violence we've been seeing over the past few years that seems to be escalating month after month. It's important that we remember that the king we serve is not a king of this world. But is a king above it all? When you see us standing at that lectern, whether it's Joanne or Jason or myself, and in our pastoral prayer, we're naming leaders, it's not a political endorsement. We're standing there and praying for our leaders because that's exactly what the Bible tells us to do.
I want to put it to you today, friends, that if you have a problem with one of your world leaders, you should pray for them more, not less. If you think this particular leader is lacking in wisdom, they're even more in need of God's wisdom. If you think they're lacking in love, they're even more in need of the love of God. If you believe they're misguided, they're even more in need of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I'd like to call us today, in this time of tension around the world, to pray for our leaders in earnest. Wherever they are, whoever holds power, that God might use them to make the world a better place.
So why on earth did I call the sermon “beyond the ceasefire”? Well, as much as I don't want to get into the merits of this conflict, it's a useful way to describe the difference that I just described. The difference between the temporal kingdom, the kingdoms of this world, and the kingdom of God, which operates by completely different rules. Because if you've been watching the news, really, you have to have noticed what's going on in a place we know as the Strait of Hormuz, or as I like to call it, Schrodinger's Strait. You're never quite sure if it's open or closed. It's 50 percent open, 50 percent closed until you observe it and then you see what's really going on. This conflict just seems to be going up and down. Every single time I turn on the news, it's completely changed.
One minute it's over, we've met all our objectives and we're gonna have peace and then the next minute, negotiations aren't even happening. One side saying, no, we're talking, but they really want to make a deal. Then the other side says, no, we're not talking with that guy. It's really difficult to know what's going on. We feel like the whole world is standing on our fingernails and toenails, waiting to see when things are either going to calm down or erupt into a truly global conflict. So even though there aren't many shots being fired right now, and there aren't many bombs dropping, what we're experiencing is quite far away from peace, isn't it? It's disruptive. It's affecting gas prices and all sorts of things like that.
I'm using this as an analogy, my friends, because I wonder if as we look at this ceasefire, it maps quite neatly onto the way we think about our relationship with God at times. Because what we're seeing right now isn't peace, it isn't a relationship between these two powers. What we're seeing is only the cessation of kinetic conflict, so it's tense. Similarly, when we think about our relationship with God, we might exist in a similar tension - That there isn't really peace with the creator of the universe, that God is only waiting for us to slip up, do something or think something or say something wrong and then he's gonna pour out all of his wrath upon us. Just like what we've read.
We might be living our lives on eggshells thinking that God can't possibly really love us. We're not really in relationship. So, all it's going to take is one thing to throw us into eternal damnation. Because if we think what we have with God is a ceasefire, a temporary truce, we don't live our lives in peace. We live our lives walking on eggshells. But Paul says to us in today’s passage, that having been justified by faith, we have - not a temporary truce, not a ceasefire - but peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
Paul wants us to know that you can not just have peace with God, but you also have access. There's no blockade preventing you from entering the throne room with your prayers and your needs and to take from the resources of abundance that God has to offer all of his children. Because when God enters the negotiation room, He does something very different from the way we do it here on earth. He offers us a gift of grace. In the temporal world, we acquire peace through strength. In God's kingdom, we acquire peace through faith. By trusting in God, by believing in God's promises.
We heard last week Abraham believed in God and it was accounted unto him as righteousness. We too, when we put our faith, our trust, our knowledge in the hands of Jesus Christ, we can have peace in our hearts, knowing that we have entered a true and lasting relationship with the Most High. And yet friends, if you've walked with God for any amount of time, you know that when you have faith, it's going to be tested, isn't it? When you believe in God, when you decide to rely on God for your salvation, there are going to be times where that faith is put to challenge.
They're going to be reasons for you to wonder whether the promises that God made to you are really true. And the difference between this ceasefire situation and this peace situation is what happens during that time of trial.
A little warning for anyone who's ever thinking about entering the ministry. If you let people in your neighborhood know that you're a pastor, you will be asked the deepest, most theological questions while you're trying to enjoy your Sunday lunch at the local pub. It will happen. At least once a month, I'm asked something like, “Dayle, why do bad things happen to good people?”
Really? Right now?
And here's the thing, I used to give very pastoral, nuanced answers to this question. “Well, God has a plan for us all and it's a broken world and we just need to rely on God's grace and favour…. Which is all true, by the way. But after reading Romans, I'm coming across a bit different. Last time someone asked me this question, I turned to them and said, “when's the last time you met a good person?”
Who are these perfect human beings that you're talking about to which bad things are happening? Because Paul's story isn't that we're good and God rewards us for our goodness. Paul's story is that we're utterly depraved and we have nothing to offer God and God gives us a free gift of grace anyway. Romans starts with this whole litany of things that we're all doing wrong.
We can all find ourselves on the list. In Romans, Chapter three, he doubles down on the idea that we're all sinners. He says:
As it is written, there is none righteous, no not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have altogether become unprofitable. There is none who does good, no not one. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced deceit.
The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.
Rousing motivational speech from the apostle Paul, right? You're going to add that to your morning affirmations, aren't you?
But Paul is telling us here, that we do not go to this table with cards in our hands. We don't go into the negotiation room with God with something to offer God. We go completely reliant on God's love and grace. And when we do that, when we put our faith and our trust in Jesus, it doesn't make all the challenges and the little skirmishes and problems we face in life go away, but it gives them a different colour. Because now we look at them and instead of those things bringing us down or dragging us back into wrath, Paul says that those tribulations produce perseverance; and perseverance produces character; and character produces hope; and it does not disappoint because we know the love of God has been poured out into our hearts.
My friends, I came to tell you today that if you would only put your trust in Jesus, it's not that all the problems of this life are going to go away, but you're going to be able to walk through them with peace and the knowledge that God is on your side. Instead of walking around on eggshells waiting for the world to collapse, you'll have peace in your heart knowing that God is with you until the very end. Because God doesn't just offer us a ceasefire, He offers us peace, not through strength, but by faith.
If you ever want to make a deal with somebody, you have to know what you have and what they have. And as we've watched the news, we've noticed that different ideas of who's holding the cards when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz has changed the whole situation, right? In order for us to negotiate, we both have to have two things: something to gain and something to lose. Because if I'm in too strong a situation and I have nothing to lose, there's no reason for me to negotiate with you. Why would I do that? I could just defeat you and meet all of my objectives and give absolutely nothing up. But if I have nothing to gain and I'm in too weak a position, I also don't want to negotiate with you because I'm going to come to the table and give up everything and not get anything out of the deal.
We've seen this play out over the last few weeks. One minute we're talking, one minute we're not talking. But how does God negotiate a peace? It's absolutely wild. It's almost otherworldly. God doesn't come to the table with something to gain and something to lose; God comes to the table with nothing to gain and nothing to lose! For what does he get by forgiving us? What does God get by entering into relationship with us? A righteous and holy people? Only if he makes us that way.
What does God have to lose if he doesn't enter into communion with us? Is someone going to hold him to account for not being forgiving enough? No. God sits at the table because that's God's nature. Because it glorifies him to do as he will; because it pleases him to pour out his love and his peace and his grace upon those who would receive it. God does these things because he made a promise to do so, and he is accountable only to himself. While we go to a table and we want to talk about leverage, about who's holding the cards;
about who has the power to shift the conflict in their direction, Paul says this about Christ: “While we were still without strength, while we were in the weakest possible position, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.” He says here, that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
God laid himself down, allowed them to persecute him and abuse him and betray him and nail him to an old, rugged cross with nothing to gain, with nothing to receive, with nothing to lose, but only that he might be glorified as the God that he is and might rule through his people. In the kingdoms of this world, we have peace through strength. In the kingdom of our God, we have peace through faith. It would be wonderful if that's where it ended. If all God had to do was forgive us of our sins, we no longer had to face His wrath, that would be enough. But my God is a God of abundance, isn't He?
A God that wants to give you so much more than you deserve. That not only does God wipe out the debt, but he also fills the account with good. And this is why Paul says that the gift is not like the curse. The curse placed you in debt, but God does way more than bring you back to zero. He doesn't just want you to survive. He doesn't just want you to escape the wrath, he wants you to live in his abundant grace. Jesus said it like this, “I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” Not just peace, my friends, but access, relationship, entering into God's presence where he can give you the gift of his kingdom - righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
So, what do we do? How do we attain this gift that comes from God and what do we do with it? Well, of course, Paul teaches us that we need to put our trust in God, that we need to recognize that we are those people he writes about in chapter one and in chapter three, that we come to the table with no cards in our hands, no leverage with which to hold our thumb up at God. And when we come to this table in this way, we ask then to put our faith and our trust in God's promise.
That's the only way we're going to live in peace. Because if we go thinking that it's our goodness that's going to bring us into the presence of God, we'll find the negotiation won't go very well at all. But if we go humbly, if we come to the table with nothing in our hands, and we trust, we go in good faith knowing that God is going to do what He said, then this is what we're offered.
He says:
Therefore, just as one through one man, sin entered the world and death through sin, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ abounded to many. If by one man's offense death reigns through the one man, much more those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.
God wants to offer you an entire kingdom, my friends. God wants you to enter into the kind of relationship with him where you will rule and reign this earth on God's behalf. Not politically, not for the left or for the right, not for one ideology or for the other, but for the good that transcends all the things that might divide us. Then instead of living in tension and in fear that things might come to a wrathful point at any moment. We might live in the abundance of peace, of knowing that God is with us, and we are never alone. For this gift from God, for this life abundant, we say thanks be to God. Amen.