More Than Conquerors
Notes
Transcript
Wanting The Wrong Thing
Wanting The Wrong Thing
Most people can point to a time in life when they wanted the wrong thing.
Maybe you wanted the stability of an unsatisfying job more than an opportunity with greater potential but less stability.
Maybe last fall you cheered for the Tampa Bay Rays over the Dodgers in the World Series...
Definitely THE WRONG THING!
We can also see how the daily battle with a sin nature makes us want the wrong things.
In today’s lesson Romans 8:31-39, Paul implies there is a right thing and a wrong thing to hope for in the spiritual life.
We need his reminder because we are so easily deceived as sinners.
We begin thinking that the wrong thing is the blessing, and the right thing is a curse.
The Prophet Isaiah spoke to this eight centuries before the birth of Jesus...
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
The world has always been a confused place.
We perpetrate violence of all manner and call it good.
But we call the peacemakers deceived and utopian.
We don’t keep the Sabbath and we call it spiritual.
But we call people Sabbath keepers overly religious.
We want what our neighbor has and imagine we deserve it.
But we gladly take what God gives with no inclination to share it.
We call the very design of our bodies a mistake.
But we call all manner of depraved activity with our bodies, good.
The Bible is full of such backwards thinking.
Israel wanting false gods and kings...
Rejecting the one true God that delivered them from slavery.
We see King David go from slaying mighty Goliath
to falling into the depravities of adultery and murder.
The climax of human sinfulness was nailing God Incarnate to the cross.
If you ever wish to understand the depths to which human sinfulness will go, never forget this fact...
God became a man, and men killed Him.
Jesus told men the truth about their sinfulness
That they wear their religion falsely, and they blaspheme God
That they love themselves more than God and their neighbors.
He called on them to repent.
Instead, they reviled and crucified Him...
Even as He forgave them in the midst of His execution.
Our stories and our struggles are not new, but in today’s lesson Paul reminds us that even our backwards thinking can be made right.
If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Romans 8:31.
God Justifies
God Justifies
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
To want the right thing is to firstly understand why Jesus wanted the right thing.
God always wants the right thing.
Jesus is God in the flesh, so He always wants the right thing.
When we repent and are baptized we are promised forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:38-39).
The Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son always wants the right thing.
Which means, if we are placing ourselves within the family line, we will want the right thing.
Just one problem
God isn’t infected by sin. We are!
So, doing the right thing in that scenario meant that God had to make a wrong-thing wanting world right again.
So, Christ died, was risen, sits at the right hand of God, who who intercedes for us.
Last week we learned that the Spirit also intercedes for us...
Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
According to the will of God...
The right thing is the will of God, and it is true.
the wrong thing is anything the rebels against the way of God.
The Father is the anchor, the Son speaks the truth, the Spirit takes that truth into the world by dwelling within believing Christians.
Father, Son, Holy Spirit, People, Church, You
Today Paul makes a promise, but if we think that being a Christian means forgiveness while living in rebellion, then we haven’t understood the Word of God.
That sort of approach leads to creating spiritual sounding idols.
We go right on wanting the wrong things, and we ask God to bless the things that are wrong.
Living Life 180
Living Life 180
I once heard it put this way...
The Spirit is given so that we are empowered to do a 180 on the flesh
What our flesh wants is exactly the opposite of what God wants
The Holy Spirit is given to give us clearer spiritual vision
Sean Gladding - Asbury...Biker Story
Similarly, Paul does not promise in today’s lesson that knowing Jesus will make life easier in an worldly sense.
If worldly wisdom is the point, then we can do whatever we want, even though it’s wrong.
If worldly prosperity is the Christian life, then Jesus was a failure.
As was Paul, and 11 of the original 12 apostles who were all killed.
As were the 500,000 Orthodox Christians killed in the Soviet Union
As were the Armenian Christians who were slaughtered by the Turks
The German Christians who confronted the Nazi regime
We follow Jesus because he speaks truth, and that truth very often goes against what we want in the flesh.
When we live truth, we should expect our flesh to be uncomfortable.
If Christian believers are uncomfortable, how much more frustrated will the world be when confronted with truth?
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.
“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.
Now Saul was consenting to his death. At that time a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.
but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.
The glory of Jesus is revealed in the Christian who shares in Christ’s sufferings because there is an expectation...
Now, this may sound really gloomy, but there is an awesome promise to wanting the RIGHT things in Jesus Christ...
What Is Promised
What Is Promised
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
Not death nor life, nor angels or worldly powers, present or future things, nor anything…ANYTHING
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
NOTHING…can separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ.
Jesus brings the truth that gives life meaning, and we are always happier in an eternal truth than a temporary lie.
No matter how good the lie sounds!
Claiming The Conquering
Claiming The Conquering
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I am late to knowing Martin Luther King, Jr. the Christian theologian.
I know him as a great preach and advocate for racial equality, but I had no idea the depths of his theological acumen,
This week I was reading some of his writings and they we dripping with the gospel.
He was even quoting Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin.
Martin Luther King Jr’s theological knowledge, and his ability to express it, would put most pastors today to shame.
I cannot think of a finer contemporary example of declaring that no system gets to call good what God has declared wrong
He suffered persecution, but we miss the most important aspect of his ministry when we fail to see that it was all driven by the Gospel.
In A Letter From A Birmingham Jail he wrote:
I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
And in a 1967
And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to humankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. And I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. […] and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we aren’t moving wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who loves has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.
A conqueror in Jesus Christ, dear friends, casts vision so far into eternity that persecution and death hold no sway.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
The love of Jesus Christ is our victory!
No dictator can steal it...
No government can enslave it...
Paul was in prison for at least two years and under house arrest for at least three years, but there wasn’t a freer man in all the world.
You may be executed like Jesus and the disciples.
You may be 20, and feeling 10 feet tall and bulletproof...
You may be 120 with but a few days remaining...
In Jesus Christ the smallest, the weakest, and the least of all are equal conquerors because we KNOW the future!
Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”
Christian, you aren’t fighting battles that must be won.
You are joining in truth that is already won.
When we battle sin in ourselves and this world we aren’t fighting for the victory
We are declaring that victory is already declared, that Jesus Christ won, and that anything in me, you, or this world that fails to reflect it is a lie.
The flesh and this broken world may wail in opposition, but Jesus and the Holy Spirit pray on our half all the more.
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
When your sinful desires wish to be appeased, declare that Jesus Christ has conquered them already.
When the world persecutes you or turns to evil, remember that sin and injustice are already eternally defeated.
When people of the world recognize the futility of living for Earthly things, embrace them as the Father embraced the prodigal son.
Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.
But we know what Jesus Christ has done.
He has conquered for us, in us, and for eternity.
Now live as holy conquerors in a world that surely needs to know that sin and death have been conquered in the love of Jesus Christ.
Gracious God, like Jesus, the apostles, and other Christians throughout the ages, we know that we may face trials and difficulties of many kinds in this world. Even so, we declare your victory in our lives and for eternity, knowing that what we declare is already won through your Son, Jesus Christ. Now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen