Leadership matters: what does God say about Brexit? (Part 4)

Brexit shows us that we need good leadership.

What our leaders say and decide and do affects the shape and path of our lives. The last few years have shown us that leadership matters.

To use an example from a different but no less controversial context, I happened to be on a flight from London to Boston the day after Donald Trump was elected as US President in November 2016. Boston was one of the most anti-Trump cities in the States, and as I listened to Bostonians talking on their phones just after we landed, there was no doubt that they knew that leadership mattered, for better or (as they saw it in that case) for worse. I was tempted to wander around offering them the chance to come back under a constitutional British monarchy again, but I thought that might sound a bit smug.

Who leads us matters. And Brexit has shown us that the greater the stakes, the more we need a leader we can trust to lead us well, and it has shown us that we don’t seem to be able to find one.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have that kind of leader?

To be able to follow a leader you can not just trust, but love?

Well, you have one.

What do you want in a leader?

Here’s what we want in a leader…

We need them to be able to lead because they have legitimate authority.

We want them to know how to lead because they have sufficient wisdom.

We want them to lead with integrity, doing what’s best for us even at cost to themselves.

That would be a leader who you can follow even when they say something you find confusing, or lead you through circumstances you find unsettling, because you know they have the authority, the wisdom, and the integrity. And that’s exactly the leader God is offering you—because he’s offering you himself.

A few hundred years after Psalm 46 had begun to be sung in Jerusalem, and after Jerusalem had fallen to invaders and was a shadow of its former self, with the promises of Psalm 46 seeming further away and less likely to be fulfilled than ever, this is what God told the inhabitants of that city:

‘Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war-horses from Jerusalem, and the battle-bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.’ (Zechariah 9 v 9-10).

It’s a clear of echo of Psalm 46 v 8-10:

Come and see what the Lord has done,
    the desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease
    to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the shields with fire.
He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God;
    I will be exalted among the nations,
    I will be exalted in the earth.’

… except now it’s speaking of a human ruler, a King—a man who is both the all-powerful, victorious God, and also a gentle, humble human who rides a donkey.

It’s Jesus.

Here’s a ruler with authority, all the legitimacy that flows from the world belonging to him because he made it.

Here’s a ruler with wisdom, because he knows every atom in existence and every hair on your head and every moment of the past and the future.

And here’s a ruler with integrity, who loves people so much that he was prepared to hang on a cross in Jerusalem in order to do what was best for his people—who was prepared to die in order to open the gate into his eternal city forever, and who promised to rise from the dead and then did exactly that three days after he died, proving that he always delivers; always does what he says.

Here’s the leader we need and can love to follow—one with total authority, perfect wisdom, and complete integrity.

We won’t find the leader we need for life by looking to Westminster or to Brussels or indeed into our own heart. We’ll only ever be disappointed if we look there. We find him by looking to the Creator God who hung on a cross because he loves us.

You know that, probably, if you’re reading this blog. But do you know that, live that, love that—love him? Brexit has shown us that perhaps, and perhaps often, our love of Jesus’ Lordship goes skin-deep, and beneath that we’d really rather be in charge ourselves, or live and grumble and groan like there’s no one at all in charge.

Jesus is Lord. Embrace that, embrace him, and you’re able to take Brexit seriously, but not too seriously.

God says "enough"

Christian, you don’t need to be fearful, angry or upset about leaving or remaining. What Brexit shows we’re looking for is being held out to us. And here’s the way to enjoy it:

‘Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’ (Psalm 46 v 10)

The word ‘Be still’ in the original Hebrew has the sense of ‘Enough.’ It’s as though God sees the ups and downs of this life, and he just says: ENOUGH.

Enough.

Know that I am God, says the Creator, and the best thing that can happen is that I am exalted, because I am the one that can give you what you need.

I will win.

I will build my city.

I will be exalted.

And one way or the other, he says, in ways that you can’t see, I was doing all that through the referendum, the result, and all that’s happened since.

What does God say about Brexit? He says, Brexit is not the mountains falling into the sea – and even if it were, Be still, and know that I am God, and look to me for all you need, for you’ll find it here.

This blog is one of a four-part series (read the previous post here), and is an adapted extract from a sermon given at Grace Church Worcester Park, sw London, on 10th March 2019.