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Brexit. Yes, we’re really going there. Four times.
Let me say straight away, I’m not going to tell you whether I voted Leave or Remain. And I’m not going to tell anyone which side I think they should support. I’m not going to declare The Good Book Company’s position on the matter (we don’t have one, other than “Jesus is Lord”). I’m certainly not going to tell you what side I think God supports, because I don’t know.
What I do want to do, in four short-ish blog posts, is use a 3,000-year-old divinely inspired poem, Psalm 46, to think about what God might suggest that Brexit shows us about ourselves, and about our world, and about our hopes and our dreams. I want to suggest that, whichever side of the vote you fall, our reactions to Brexit have revealed, among others, four things about us; and I want to look at Psalm 46 to see how God speaks into each of those things.
None of these four are wrong things, if we look for them in the right place. But what if we (and I include Christians, including me, in this) haven’t been? What if the fear and anger and worry and division is a sign that deep down we are seeking these things in places and from people where they could never been found, not fully and sufficiently?
This is not the last word nor the best word on Brexit. But in a culture that is increasingly divided and increasingly agitated, we need God’s word to speak into this—and that’s what I’m aiming to do here.
So here’s the first thing Brexit shows us: we are all looking for certainty in the big things in our lives. It really shakes us when things we’re relying on suddenly change. I read recently a newspaper columnist saying that we used to be a confident country, but we’d lost our way. What I think she meant was that this used to be a country that was doing what she wanted, and she was confident would keep doing what she wanted, but that now it had decided to do something different. All that had seemed unchanging to her had been shaken by chaos.
And that’s a horrible feeling, on a personal level and a national level. It makes us fearful—and fear leads to all kinds of things that we would find unattractive in others but excuse in ourselves when we’re afraid: name-calling, smug superiority, assumptions, aggression, anger.
But the problem is that on a national level, and a personal level, it’s very hard to find the kind of certainty we long for, because it’s very hard to find something that won’t change. No relationship, no career, no house or trust fund, no political party or set-up is beyond being swept away. That’s what you’ve experienced if you voted Remain and found that the majority of the country didn’t agree with you—or in voting Leave and then finding that Parliament may end up not delivering what you were expecting it to. And that shakes us… it makes important things uncertain… it replaces confidence with fear. And wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to live with certainty, to know that what matters most in life can never change, no matter what happens?
Into this speaks Psalm 46:2:
“We will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.”
That’s a supreme confidence. The psalmist can get up in the morning, look out of his window, and see that the most unchanging things in this world are collapsing—that the nearby mountains falling into the sea—and notice that the floor is shaking with an earthquake; and he can see all that and say: ‘I’m not afraid. Things will be OK.’
Imagine walking through life with that kind of confidence. How do you get it? You have to have something to rely on that is beyond the mountains and the seas—outside of this creation, so that it’s untouchable by any change within creation. Verse 1: “God is our refuge and our strength, an ever present help in trouble”. Here is a confidence that is very realistic about life—it brings trouble—but always confident in life, for it can say God is with me, and he’s bigger and stronger than the mountains and the seas, and he’ll never change.
This world can fall apart, but he will not, because he never changes.
If you know God is unchanging and is on your side, then you have a deep certainty, a deep confidence, that can’t be touched by leaving or remaining or mountains falling. What a way to live. To get up every morning and say, “I am confident that I will come through, that nothing can take from me what I most need, because God never changes and he’s holding my hand.”
But we need to look in the right place for it. Not Westminster. Not Brussels. Not ourselves and the kingdoms we build. But God. And only God.
This blog is one of a four-part series, and is an adapted extract from a sermon given at Grace Church Worcester Park, sw London, on 10th March 2019
Carl is Editorial Director at The Good Book Company and is a member of Grace Church Worcester Park, London. He is the best-selling author of The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross and God's Big Promises Bible Storybook, and also serves as series editor of the God's Word for You series. Before joining TGBC, he worked as a journalist and then as a teacher, and pastored a congregation in Hull. Carl is married to Lizzie, and they have two children. He studied history at Oxford University.
