Sermons from the Moorpark Presbyterian Church

A Second Vietnam War

by Dave Wilkinson

Romans 8:35-37

September 13, 1998

For almost two and a half years we have been looking together at Paul’s great letter to the Romans. That comes to about 60 sermons. This morning, as long last, we come to the top of the mountain. We come to words that have been used by God over and over again in the lives of His people to bring courage and hope.

In Cries of the Heart, Indian writer and theologian Ravi Zaccharias tells a great and powerful true story about the impact of God’s word -- and the lengths one man went to to find God’s living water in the midst of a dry, dry spiritual dessert.

" During my ministry in Vietnam in 1971," writes Zacharias, "one of my interpreters was Hien Pham, an energetic, devoted young Christian who had also worked a translator with the American military forces.

He and I traveled the length of the country and became very close friends before I left Vietnam to return home. We were both very young, and neither of us knew if our paths would cross again.

Seventeen years later I received a surprise telephone call that began with, "Brother Ravi?" Immediately I recognized Hien's voice. I was not prepared for the story I was about to hear.

Shortly after Vietnam fell to the Communists, Hien was arrested. Accused of aiding the Americans he was in and out of prison for several years. During one long jail term, the sole purpose of his jailers was to indoctrinate him against the West -- and especially against democratic ideals and the Christian faith. He was cut off from reading anything in English and restricted to communist propaganda in French or Vietnamese. This daily overdose of the writings of Marx and Engels began to take its toll on him. One of the books he was given to read pictured the communist man as a

bird in the ironclad cage of capitalism, throwing itself against the bars of "capitalist oppression" and bloodying itself in the process. Yet still it continued to struggle in its quest for freedom.

Hien began to buckle under the onslaught. Maybe, he thought, I have been lied to. Maybe God does not exist. Maybe my whole life has been governed by lies. The more he thought, the more he moved toward a decision. Finally, he made up his mind. He determined that when he awakened the next day, he would not pray anymore or ever think of his Christian faith again.

The next morning, he was assigned to clean the latrines of the prison. It was the most dreaded chore, shunned by everyone. With much distress he began the awful task. As he cleaned out a tin can filled to overflowing with toilet paper, his eye caught what he thought was English printed on one piece of paper. He hurriedly washed it off and slipped it into his hip pocket, planning to read it at night. Not having seen anything in English for such a long time, he anxiously waited for a free moment. Under his mosquito net that night after his roommates had fallen asleep, he pulled out a small flashlight and shining it on the damp piece of paper he read at the top corner, "Romans, Chapter 8." Literally trembling with shock, he began to read:

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose -- If God is for us, who can be against us? 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? -- Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Hien wept. He knew his Bible, and he had not seen one for so long. Not only that, he knew there was not a more relevant passage of conviction and strength than Romans 8 for one on the verge of surrendering to the threat of evil. He knew this was no coincidence. He cried out to God, asking for forgiveness, for this was to have been the first day in years that he had determined not to pray.

Evidently the Lord had other plans.

The next day, Hien asked the camp commander if he could clean the latrine again. He continued with this chore on a regular basis, because he had discovered that some official in the camp was using a Bible as toilet paper. Each day Hien picked up a portion of Scripture, cleaned it off, and added it to his nightly devotional reading. In this way he retrieved a significant portion of the Bible.

The day came when, through an equally providential set of circumstances, Hien was released. He promptly began to make plans to escape from the country. After several unsuccessful attempts he began again to build a boat in secret. About fifty-three other people planned to escape with him, and Hien was taking the lead. All, was going according to plan until a short while before the date of their departure when four Vietcong knocked on Hien's door. When he opened it, they accosted him and said they had heard he was trying to escape. "Is it true?" they demanded. Hien immediately denied it and went on to distract them with some concocted story to explain his activities. Apparently convinced, they reluctantly left.

Hien was relieved but very disappointed with himself. "Here I go again, Lord, trying to manipulate my own destiny, too unteachable in my spirit to really believe that You can lead me past any obstacle." He made a promise to God, fervently hoping that the Lord would not take him up on it. He prayed that if the Vietcong were to come back again, he would tell them the truth. Resting in the comfort of that impossibility, he was thoroughly shaken when only a few hours before they were to set sail the four men stood at his door once more. "We have our sources, and we know you are trying to escape. Is it true?"

Hien resignedly gave his answer, "Yes, I am, with fifty-three others. Are you going to imprison me again?" There was a pronounced pause. And then they leaned forward and whispered, "No. We want to escape with you!"

In an utterly incredible escape plan, all fifty-eight of them found themselves on the high seas, suddenly engulfed by a violent storm.

"Brother Ravi," Hien concluded, "if it were not for the sailing ability of those four Vietcong, we would not have made it."

Hien had experienced the reality. "If God is for us, who can be against us?"

This powerful. life-changing section of Romans 8 contains five affirmations that are followed by five questions. The affirmations are in verses 29 and 30. In Christ we have been foreloved, predestined, called, justified, and glorified. In verses 31-34 we looked at four of the five questions. "If God is for us, who can be against us?" "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?" "Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?" and "Who is in a position to condemn?" I’ve made some copies of this sermon available on the back table or you can download it from our web site.

The final, all-embracing, and climactic fifth question is in verse 35: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"

Some people accuse Christians of being unrealistic about life. Some of us probably are. But the Apostle Paul is very realistic. When Paul answers the final question by declaring that nothing "will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord," he is not closing his eyes or shutting his ears to the hostile and destructive forces that surround us at all times -- no more than Hien Pham forgot about the real danger and degradation he faced when he read Paul’s words and rediscovered his faith. Paul knows all the adversaries first hand. But can they separate us from the love of Christ? No!

The first circumstance of life that might be thought able to separate a Christian from the love of Jesus Christ is "trouble" or, as the older King James Version has it, "tribulation." The Greek word is thlipsis, which has to do with pressure.

The English word tribulation comes directly from the Latin noun tribulum,

which meant a "threshing sledge." In the ancient world at the time of the grain harvest, the stalks of grain were brought to the threshing floor and a wooden threshing instrument, like a sled covered on the bottom with strips of metal, was dragged over the stalks to separate the heads of grain from the chaff. This instrument was called a tribulum because it pressed out the grain. This vivid picture produced the idea embodied in our word tribulation, because circumstances frequently press down on people so forcefully and unremittingly that it seems to them that they are being threshed like stalks of grain.

Perhaps you have experienced such harsh pressures. Life has been hard. You may have been abused as a child, have lost your job, have been deprived of a husband or wife or other family member, have undergone severe illness. Your strength may be almost gone. But, says Paul, you must know that no tribulation, however severe, will ever separate you from Christ's love.

The second circumstance of life that Paul thinks of as a possible separator is "hardship." The Greek word here is stenochoria, and it is composed of two separate words, which mean "narrow" (stenos) and "space" or "territory" (chora). The idea is that of being confined within a narrow and oppressive space.

In our area many more people experience distress of this nature than outright pressures. Take the example of a man who is in a dead-end job. He entered his company with hopes for advancement, but he is now in his late forties and has been passed over for promotions several times. It is getting to where he cannot make a good lateral move, and he knows he will not move up much in the company, if at all. Meanwhile, he is married, with a family to support and a mortgage to pay. He sometimes thinks of being free of confining circumstances. He looks at pictures of the West Indies with longing. But he knows that he cannot break free and still honor his commitments.

Or imagine a woman who is in her late twenties early thirties with two or three small children who make tremendous demands on her, who has to survive on a rather limited budget, and who feels there is no future for her apart from the present circle of school, supermarket, and baby-sitters. Maybe you don’t have to imagine that woman. Maybe you are that woman.

How are you to triumph in such narrow circumstances? The best way is to realize that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has fixed his love on you and that nothing is ever going to separate you from his love. Then you discover that no matter how narrow your life may feel to you, you don’t need to have a mid life crisis and kick over the traces. This is because, as a child of God, you really don’t have a mid-life. You may be in narrow straits now, but you are an heir of heaven. One day your horizons will be as vast as the universe and as soaring as the stars. Nothing will deprive you of this destiny, because nothing, not even hardship, will be able to separate you from Christ's love.

Then there is persecution. Now very few of us suffer much outright persecution today, though Christians in other parts of the world endure it. But there are subtle persecutions, and there will undoubtedly be stronger and more outright persecutions if the present secularizing trend of western life continues. Persecution may be as subtle as being shunned by those who regard themselves as quite sophisticated and Christians as being hopelessly "out of it" and dull. "Persecution" may mean being passed over for some honor or promotion. At times, particularly when Christians stand against some great national sin, believers may even be sued in court to hush them up or render them ineffective. Persecutions may separate us from a more lucrative worldly future or a more attractive image before the world. But persecutions, whatever form they take, will never separate us from Christ's love.

Paul then moves on to more physical things: famine, nakedness, danger, and sword. Though your body is destroyed or deprived, are you separated from Jesus Christ? No.

Most of the ancient world experienced famine at one time or another. Famine could result from lack of rain and the failure of crops; from natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires, floods, or locust plagues; or from war. Since those factors still exist today, hunger has not been eliminated for much of the world's population. It is happening right now in Africa. Hunger is a terrible thing. But even this cannot detach us from Christ, says Paul.

Neither can poverty. Nowadays the word nakedness usually implies the state of undress normally associated with sexual activity or pornography. But in Paul's day it had to do more with poverty so severe a person is unable to buy the clothes he or she needs.

Peril and sword, the last of these seven terms pushes the violence to their furthest limit. They look at circumstances in which Christians are executed or murdered for their faith. This happened in the early church. Stephen was an early martyr. So was James. Others followed. There was soon a trail of Christian blood to mark the progress of the gospel from land to land and through history.

So frequent and so vivid had this been, even by the time Paul wrote Romans, that Paul feels compelled to point out that martyrdom is a prophesied fact of life for believers. He quotes Psalm 44:22. He reminds us that the people of God 'face death all day long" and are "considered as sheep to be slaughtered." But then, in verse 37, we are told that nevertheless we are all "more than conquerors."

Sheep that conquer? We can think of lions that conquer, or wolves or polar bears or wild buffalo. Edgar Allan Poe even spoke of "the conquering worm," meaning that at last death comes to all. But sheep? The very idea of sheep as conquerors seems ludicrous.

In contrast to the world and its power, Christians are indeed weak and despised. They seem as helpless as a flock of sheep. But they are in fact conquerors, because they have been loved by the Lord Jesus Christ and have been made conquerors "through him."

The victory of Christians is described here as being more than an ordinary victory. In the Greek text a single compound verb, hypernikomen, lies behind the five English words "we are more than conquerors." The middle part of the Greek word is the simple verb nikao, meaning "to overcome" or "to conquer." The famous statue "Winged Victory" in the Louvre in Paris is called a Nike, which means "victory." This is the name given to the goddess of victory in Ancient Greece -- not to be confused with the goddess Adidas. The first part of the verb, hyper, means "over and above," or "more than" - as in hyper sensitive, hyper kinetic and hyper space. When we put the two parts of the word together we find Paul saying that believers are all "super-victors," or "more than conquerors" in Jesus Christ. There is no place for a Christian in the cult of victimization that permeates our society. Because we aren’t victims. We are more than conquerors.

One reason why in Jesus Christ we are "more than conquerors" is that we fight against an enemy who is more than human. This is the note on which Paul ends his letter to the Ephesians. He reminds the Christians at Ephesus that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 6:12). We’ll look at these verses in detail next year. In this Ephesian passage Paul is thinking of the devil and his hosts, and he is saying that our battle, however human it may seem, is actually supernatural. Hien Pham was not just dealing with communism or human guards. He was locked in a battle with spiritual forces of wickedness that lost the fight in the men’s room. It is a spiritual battle. If our enemies were mere human beings or mere natural forces, our victory, if we achieved it, would be a natural victory. But our foes are supernatural, and therefore our victories are supernatural, too. We are more than conquerors.

The second reason why Christians are more than conquerors is that the victories achieved by God's people are eternal. This is a very important point -- one we need to remind ourselves of constantly.

We are creatures of time. We live in a perishing world. Apart from spiritual battles and spiritual victories, everything we accomplish will pass away. No matter how great an earthly "victory" may seem in the world's eyes or our own, it will not endure. I am very caught up in the present home run race between Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa. I am very impressed. But 300 years from now, no one will care who hit how many home runs -- let alone in eternity. A landslide election victory and soaring popular polls dissolves into the threat of impeachment. Great monuments will crumble. Works of art will decay. Fortunes will be dissipated. Heroes will die. Empires will fade. Even great triumphs of the human intellect or emotion will be forgotten. Not so with spiritual victories. Jesus said "I have appointed you that you should bear fruit and that your fruit should remain. At the close of his great chapter on the resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15, Paul gives the meaning of the resurrection for our own lives, "Therefore be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord you work is not pointless.

No two places in the world could be less alike than a Communist reeducation camp in Vietnam and a quiet manse in the Scottish countryside. But in that manse another believer also became more than a victor through faith.

I want to end worship with a great hymn written by a Scottish minister of the last century named George Matheson. He lived from 1842 to 1906. Matheson was blind. He lost his sight in his later youth. His blindness gives great power and pathos to the words of the hymn, which clearly refer to it. But the occasion for the hymn was not the blindness but, in his own words, some "extreme mental distress," which had brought him great "pain." A story that grew up around this hymn, that his fiancé left Matheson when he lost his sight. Maybe. Maybe not. But something happened -- something so painful that he never told it to anyone.

Matheson wrote this hymn from the depth of the pain on the evening of June 6, 1882, when he was alone in the manse in Inellen, Scotland. He looked at his "extreme distress." And he looked at the promises of God’s word. Then he wrote:

O Love that wilt not let me go,

I rest my weary soul in thee;

I give thee back the life I owe,

That in thine ocean depths its flow

May richer, fuller be.

O Light that followest all my way,

I yield my flickering torch to thee;

My heart restores its borrowed ray,

That in thy sunshine's blaze its day

May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,

I cannot close my heart to thee;

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

And feel the promise is not vain

That morn shall tearless be.

0 Cross that k liftest up my head,

I dare not ask to fly from thee;

I lay in dust life's glory dead,

And from the ground there blossoms red

Life that shall endless be.

No one can read those lines without knowing that George Matheson knew the love of God in Christ Jesus and was assured that, whatever his circumstances, that nothing could separate him from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

At times we may feel pressed down like Hien Pham. We may feel stuck in a small apace like George Matheson. We may face threats to our well being or even to our lives. But that is not the end of the story. Jesus is. And nothing, nothing, can separate us from His love.