What’s the problem with the veterinarian’s advice? It encourages dishonesty.
I have an honest confession – I
seriously considered skipping this part of Romans. We are discussing Romans in our Bible study
and I wanted to connect our worship time with our study by using the same text
in sermons, but this is a challenging text, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle
it in a sermon. But then I remembered my friend Julie.
She went with us to visit a church one Sunday when we first moved to
South Carolina. The worship that day
included a drama about the gospel, with a bridge to represent Jesus and how he
connects us to God. After church I
commented that I thought it was creative and engaging and I liked it. Julie did not. She was quite troubled about how they had presented
the gospel. So I asked, “Why?”
She said, “They left out such an
important part. They left out sin.” … They left out sin. She was right. They had talked all about the positive –
God’s love, Jesus’ sacrifice, our relationship with God – but they had said nothing about why we needed
Jesus to die for us. The gospel is
incomplete without both sides of the equation – both the blessings of faith AND
the consequences of sin. If I were to
skip this part of Romans, I would be guilty of the same error. This is certainly not one of my favorite
parts of the Bible, but it is nevertheless an important part.
In the verses that come just before
this part of Romans Paul makes a bold statement, “I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for
salvation to everyone who believes…for in it the righteousness of God is
revealed.” Now here in verse 18 Paul
reminds us that in the righteousness of
God we see not only goodness, but also wrath.
It’s a good news/bad news thing.
A
farmer went into his banker and announced that he had bad news and good news.
"First, the bad news...""Well," said the farmer, "I
can't make my mortgage payments. And that crop loan I've taken out for the past
10 years -- I can't pay that off, either. Not only that, I won't be able to pay
you the couple of hundred thousand I still have outstanding on my tractors and
other equipment. So I'm going to have to give up the farm and turn it all over
to you for whatever you can salvage out of it. "Silence prevailed for a
minute and then the banker said ,"What's the good news?" "The
good news is that I'm going to keep on banking with you," said the farmer.[2]
This section of Romans is bad news and good news. The
bad news is that God is righteous and holy and therefore cannot tolerate sin. Sin has consequences. We see this in Genesis 3. God had told Adam and Eve they could eat
anything in the Garden of Eden, but not the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge
of Good & Evil. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and had to live with the consequences. They were banished from the Garden of Eden
forever. We live with their
consequences.
We see consequences for disobeying God in many of the stories
of the Bible. For example, when Lot and his family are told as they are escaping not to look back, but Lot's wife does and becomes a pillar of salt.
We disobey God, too. Paul tells us quite a bit about sin in these verses from
Romans. He describes sin as:
- Suppressing the truth, exchanging the truth about God for a lie (1:18,25)
- Failing to honor God or give thanks to him (1:21)
- Serving the creature rather than the creator (1:25)
- Letting our passions rule us (1:26-27)
- Having “wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice.” Being “full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness” Being “gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” (1:29-31)
I wouldn’t blame you if you checked out and didn’t hear all
that when we read the scripture earlier, because Paul keeps using the third
person pronouns – they and them.
But we could change those to us
and we. Paul is building his case in support of the theme
he began in verses 16-17 of the power of the gospel for salvation, and the
zinger that is coming in chapter 3, the point that drives home his argument
about our need for salvation in Jesus Christ, “all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God.” (3:23)
The very first humans, living in the perfect setting with the
perfect conditions, couldn’t keep from disobeying God, and neither can we. If we are honest, we too are guilty of some
of the sins on Paul’s list.
The good
news. . .yes, there is good news. . . is that God is patient and loving and offers us another way – faith in
Jesus Christ. Through faith in
Jesus, we are reconciled with God. We
are righteous in God’s sight. We are
forgiven. Without it we are subject to
God’s wrath, to the consequences of sin, to spiritual death.
We may not like to think about God having wrath. We much prefer to focus on God’s goodness and
kindness and love. But that is an incomplete picture of God. God cannot just let sin go, but God’s wrath is not like human
anger. God’s wrath is an expression of his love. Without wrath, God would not be righteous with
complete integrity. God’s wrath means:
- · God cares about us,
- · God refuses to let us stay in our self-destructive behavior,
- · and by becoming flesh in the person of Jesus, God himself bears the consequences for our sin.[3]
King David knew that God is merciful, even in his anger. In 2 Samuel 24 we read that David did
something God had told him not to do, and God gave David a choice of three
punishments:
- · three years of famine,
- · three months of enemy attacks, or
- · three days of infectious disease spreading through the kingdom.
David chose the last one, not because it was shorter, but
because God is a God of justice. David
said, “let us fall into the hand of
the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into human hands.”
(24:14)
God is merciful to us beyond our understanding.
So what are we to do in response to these challenging words
from Paul?
1. Admit our need for salvation. If we think we have no sin, we fool ourselves
and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8)
But it’s not always easy to see our sin.
We get comfortable with it. We’re
used to it. If you’d like to ask God for
some help with this, there’s an exercise, a spiritual inventory available.[4 below] I first went through this
inventory many years ago. It’s
challenging but helpful.
One of the sins that’s easy to fall into is arrogance. I’m as guilty as anyone. I can remember listening to a sermon in which
the pastor was talking about big sins like murder, adultery, and I remember
thinking, well, at least I don’t have to worry about any of those. I’ve never done anything really bad like
that. Almost immediately it was as if
someone had smacked me, like in those V8 commercials. Duh!
Thinking I had no sin was in itself a sin.
Jesus even tells a parable about this in Luke 18. Luke says Jesus
told this parable to make a point to people who trusted too much in their own
righteousness and looked on others with contempt.
Jesus said, “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a
Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself,
was praying, ‘God, I thank you that I am
not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax
collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But
the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was
beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be
merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his
home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be
humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (9-14)
The Pharisee was being self-righteous and
arrogant thinking he was better than the tax collector. We need to admit our sin and our
need for salvation, and we need to acknowledge
and honor God and give God thanks continually. Be thankful.
One summer a 13-year-old boy was having a tough week getting
along with his parents. By Saturday, the
boy was tired, so when his mother scolded him for missing a chore, he snuck out
of the house and rode his bike to his friend’s house. He knew his parents would be looking for him,
but he spent almost the entire day at his friend’s house playing board games
and building model cars. Around five
o’clock, he mustered the courage to get on his bike and ride home and face the
inevitable grounding. He headed down the
street weaving in between parked cars.
Then he heard his father’s voice from a passing car. “Randy,
let’s load your bike in the back of the car and I’ll drive you home.” The boy jumped in surprise, and looking
around he saw his father leaning his head out the car window with a kind look
on his face. Randy knew his father had
been driving around looking for him, and he held his breath waiting for his dad
to get angry. After the bike was loaded
and both of them were sitting in the car, his father said, “Son, your mom and I
had two tickets to see The Sound of Music
downtown. We thought maybe you’d like to
go with me tonight. Would you like
that?”
“Uh, sure,” the boy squeaked, still uncertain whether he was
going to be in trouble.
“Ok. We’ve got to
hurry. Let’s get home and get changed.”
The father didn’t say a word about the boy having disappeared
all day. By the time they’d changed and
were headed downtown, the boy began to feel reassured that his father’s
intentions were entirely benevolent.
The boy had expected punishment, but his parents had realized
that their relationship with him needed restoration. The boy was relieved, and also deeply
grateful. So the next time it was his
turn to do the dishes, he did them without being asked. He had been unable to get the chores done out
of a sense of duty, but gratefulness moved him to action.[i]
We too can
be grateful. We fully deserve to
be punished for our sins, but instead God sent us reprieve. Instead of tickets to a musical, God gave us
Jesus, and forgiveness, and grace.
May our gratitude also move us to action.
[3]
Shirley Guthrie Jr., Christian Doctrine (Westminster
John Knox Press), 260-1.
[4] Adapted from http://www.antiocha2.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Rick-Warren-Spiritual-Inventory.pdf
[i] Adapted from Randall Working, From Rebellion to
Redemption
The above was preached in worship at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Galveston on Sunday, February 21, 2016.
The above was preached in worship at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Galveston on Sunday, February 21, 2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment