Sermons from the Moorpark Presbyterian
Church So What? by Dave Wilkinson Are you living a double life? Do you pretend to be one thing but are secretly something else? If so, you belong in Southern California -- at least according to the East Coast legend. According to the East Coast legend everyone out this way wants to be a screen writer. Oh, we may pretend to be bankers, engineers, lawyer -- even pastors. But underneath, we each have an idea for a movie. We each believe our movie would be great if only we could get the studio people to pay attention. My idea, for example is about a girl who gets sucked up by a tornado and battles a witch. Don’t steal it. But maybe you have gone beyond dreaming. Maybe you have actually put your idea down on paper, sealed it in an envelope, and shipped It off to Steven Speilberg. If you have, you also know what a rejection letter looks like. You know what it means for your submission "not to be in keeping with the current needs of the studio." But what would you think if you received a letter of rejection like one that was translated from a Taiwanese economic journal. Think about getting this letter. "We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see its equal; we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition, and to beg you a thousand times to overlook our short sight and timidity." Wouldn’t a letter like that make you feel great? I guess that would all depend on what you believed about the letter -- whether or not you bought in to the journalistic equivalent of the"It’s not you, it’s me" dating dump. What happens to us is not as important as how we interpret what happens to us. The second century A.D. Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius understood this fact long before our modern rational-emotive therapists. He wrote: "If you are pained by an external thing it is not the thing that disturbs you -- but your judgement about it." Your judgement may be correct, and you ought to be disturbed. But your judgement may also be wrong." The Apostle Paul understood the relationship between thinking and feeling. He asks us to realistically face the events which occur in a broken world -- to face them head on -- and then he asks us to THINK. Listen to Romans 8:31-39. This morning we will focus on verses 31-34 and explore the remainder of the section in successive weeks.
Romans 8:31-39
Here at the end of Romans 8 Paul challenges us to engage our minds -- to think. He wants us to reflect on everything he has said for over seven chapters and make our response. This is important on a very practical level. For what we think about how God relates to the events of our lives will automatically affect how we cope with those events. J.I. Packer paraphrases Paul’s words in Knowing God: "Think of what you know of God through the gospel and apply it. Think against your feelings; argue yourself out of the gloom they have spread; unmask the unbelief they have nourished; take yourself In hand, talk to yourself, make yourself look up from your problems to the God of the gospel." What is the current place of pain in your life or in the life of someone you love? How do you interpret the pain? Alongside these things, hold up the objective events of the gospel. What do the Cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ say about what you are going through? This section of Romans 8 contains five affirmations that are followed by five questions. We have already looked at the undeniable affirmations in verses 29 and 30. In Christ we have been foreloved, predestined, called, justified, and glorified. Now, beginning this morning, we turn to the questions. Here’s the first one "If God is for us, who can be against us? Who can be against us? Many people and many things, of course! I have had people against me for both personal reasons and philosophical reasons. Not only can people be against us, they are. Theology speaks of three great enemies of the Christian: the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world system is against us because Christianity is an offense to it and is opposed to its God-rebelling ways. The world will get us to conform if it can. If it can’t get us to go along, it will try to do us in. Our flesh is also an enemy because it contains the seeds of sin within it. We are unable to escape its corrupting influence in this life. This is the theme of Romans 7. If that were not enough, we have a powerful enemy in Satan, who is described by the Apostle Peter as "a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). There are plenty of enemies out there and there is even an enemy within. But what are these when they are put into a sentence that begins with the words: "God is for us..."? "God is for us so who can be against us?" God makes all the difference. Paul challenges us to place all the possible enemies we can think of on one-side of an old-fashioned balance scale, as if we were weighing peanuts. Then, when we have all the peanuts piled up on the scale, he throws an anvil onto the other side of the balance. That side comes crashing down, and the peanuts are scattered. God is the anvil. Since God is for us, who can be against us?" Who can stand against God? The answer is "nobody." Nothing can defeat us if the Almighty God of the universe is on our side. If everyone in the world thinks you are wrong and only God thinks you are right, you are in the majority. The great theologian Karl Barth thought long and hard about the message of this great question. And He suggests that we can begin to understand its richness by repeating the four word phrase four different times -- and each time to put the stress on a different word. Listen to how the message changes each time. God is for us. God is for us. God is for us. God is for us. And if God, the Creator, Lord, Judge and Redeemer is for us, who can possibly be against us?
I don't know what your experience was in school. In my elementary school we had bullies. We would plan our strategy of how we would avoid the chief bully and his toadies on the way home from school. But sometimes there was no need for strategy or avoidance --- because we were walking with a friend who was older, bigger, stronger and tougher, and who was on our side. And if we could persuade that friend to accompany us past the corner where the bully stood, we knew we were safe. It did not matter how strong we were, it mattered how strong our friend was. It mattered who was on our side, If he put out the word to the bullies of the school, "Look, if you mess with that guy, you mess with me," we had it made. But this assumes that our protector himself does not change. Nothing can stand against God. But what if God doesn’t want to walk to the corner with us. What if should get tired of us, forget about us, and move on to something else? What if our sins make Him regret that he brought us into relationship with Himself in the first place? Paul deals with this speculation in verse 32 with the second question: "He who did not spare His own Son, but gave him up for us all -- how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?" Paul was a pastor. Paul knew very well that, when life gets hard, we can doubt statements like "God loves you." We may say, "God may be love. But does he love me? How can I believe he loves me when I have lost my job, when my husband or wife has left me for someone else, when I have been diagnosed with an incurable disease? Even when outside things are okay, there are times when I just do not feel that God loves me or even that he cares about me at all." As a people person pastor, Paul knew that mere assurances that God loves us are not effective. So he turns from emotional experience to facts. We can know that God is for us, not because we somehow sense that it is God’s nature to be loving, but because he has given us His Son to die for us. We can know God's nature because of what he has already done in human history.
Paul argue here from the big to the little. If I give my son a new 1999 Mustang convertible when he graduates from Moorpark High School next Spring -- which I have no intention of doing -- I am not going to say to him: "You have to buy the right rear hub cap yourself. Go check out the junk yards." If I’ve given the really big thing, I am not going to get stingy with the relatively small things. I want my gift to be total and perfect.
If Paul had just asked, "Will God give us all things?" we might be unsure, How can we be confident that he will? Wouldn't we be right to think that even God might have limits to his grace and generosity? That might be reasonable were if it weren’t for the fact that God has already given us his Son -- not merely to be with us in some mystical way but he gave him over to death so that we might be rescued from the judgment due us for our sins.
"God is for us’ is much more than a theological statement. It's something we can build on because of what God has done in history to prove it. God did not just say, "I love you." He showed us. Look at verse 32, He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all -- how will He not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? After what he’s already given, the rest is spare change. The third question moves us into the legal area. "Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?" Now we’re in God’s’s court of law, asking whether someone might exist somewhere to accuse us and make it stick. Who could do that, Paul asks, since "it is God who justifies?" Earlier Sheri read a great, mysterious scene in the Old Testament Book of Zechariah (Zechariah 3:1-5). A high priest named Joshua, is standing in the temple, preparing to present the people's sacrifice. Satan is also there accusing him. Joshua is dressed in filthy clothes, symbolizing his sin. The devil is arguing that Joshua is unfit for his office, because he is a sinner. But God is also there, and he rebukes Satan through an angel, who says: "The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?" Then we are told how Joshua's filthy clothes are removed and how he is clothed with rich clean garments. Who can accuse Joshua? The answer is clear: "No one, no one at all." Because God has justified him.
Remember that God knows the law perfectly. The law is God's law and God, who knows that law, has declared us not guilty because of the sacrifice of Jesus. So we don’t have to worry that some smart lawyer is somehow going to find something in us or in what we have done that has not been covered by the blood of Christ. There is no technicality, no loophole that will make it impossible for God to justify us. God knows every requirement of the law. He also knows us in every detail. He knows our outward sins and our inward sins. He knows the sins of our heart as well as the sins of our minds. He knows the sins we would have done had we been given the chance to do them, and he knows the sins we sought out opportunities to commit. He knows our sins against others and our sins against ourselves. Nothing is outside the scope of God's knowledge. Knowing all this, God has justified us. And the reason he has justified us is that he also knows every detail of Christ's work and is fully aware of its value. He is aware as John writes in his first letter, that the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). Those who are in Christ do not need to fear condemnation -- not now, not ever.
There are many who will try to condemn. Some other people will be very happy to condemn you. We need to listen to people to see if indeed we are doing something wrong. But does their condemnation matter? Who are they compared to God? Is anyone really able to change God’s verdict? Or you may try to reverse the verdict on yourself. You may feel that God has let you off too easily. You may feel that you need to pay more thoroughly for what you’ve done. You may wish that purgatory existed so you could do some hard time. But you don’t have the power to overrule God’s verdict. He has declared you free from sin and adopted you as His beloved child. Verse 1 of this great chapter reads : "There is therefor no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." You may feel that you deserve punishment from God but you’re not going to get it. You’ll just have to deal with that. Satan will try to condemn us. Scripture calls him "the accuser of the brethren" He will try to bring all our sins to God's attention. But who is Satan compared to God? Reason it through. Is there anyone who is able to bring an accusation against us and make it stick? This is the fourth question. "Who is in a position to condemn?" The answer is only Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ does have the position and authority to judge us and condemn us. But the good news is that Jesus has chosen a very different role in our lives. The only one in position to bring us down is the one who is the most on our side. He died for us and now he is our champion. I like the way JB Phillips translates this verse "Who is in a position to condemn? Only Christ. And Christ died for us, Christ rose for us, Christ reigns in power for us, Christ intercedes for us." The fifth question is the greatest of all. "Who or what shall separate us from the love of Christ?" We will look at this question in a couple of weeks. .
For now, I’d like to return to the question Paul asks at the beginning. I want to ask it of you: "What do you say to these things? What is your response?" God is for you. Do you believe that? God gave His Son for you. Can’t you trust Him with the small stuff? Can anyone bring a charge against you? Do you believe that God has already adopted you as His beloved child? Is anyone in a position to overthrow God’s "yes" in you life? Can other people? Can Satan? Can you? Will Jesus? What do you say to these things? The answer to this first question does not grow out of God but out of us. The answer comes with what we do with what God has done. So what do you say? |
||||||||||||