We Have Reason to Celebrate
Notes
Transcript
We Have Reason to Celebrate
– A VERY Rough Draft –
Opening Prayer – Essentially, “God, let your anointing be upon me as I deliver this message from your word, for “Unless the Lord builds the house, They who build it labor in vain; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain.” And unless the Lord preaches the sermon, the preacher preaches in vain.
Me
I was dead set against becoming an evangelist...
Why this passage is so meaningful:
As I pursued what it means to follow Jesus I had an urgent need to KNOW what we mean by “the gospel.” What exactly do we believe? What am I trusting in? I knew that I ought to be sharing my faith, but what does that mean?
This passage is as succinct a presentation of the gospel that I’ve found. All the essential elements are here.
And as I meditate on this text time and time again what begins to stand out is more than the gospel. What begins to stand out is that this life-saving message of redemption is the basis of our joy. “We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” “We rejoice in our tribulations.” “We rejoice in God.”
Break down ‘rejoice’. Drive home how glorious a joy this is.
Now that last statement in verse two, “We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God’, is what I want to linger on this morning. Specifically, what is our grounds for this ‘rejoicing’ that Paul, the writer of Romans, speaks of? That is, What does he mean when he told the people of God to rejoice? And why? What is it that we have to rejoice about anyway?
‘Rejoice’, ‘boast’, ‘glory’, ‘exult’, ‘exuberant joyful celebration’
Drive home your longing for this kind of joy in God.
We
Invite the congregation to join you in that longing.
Verse two says that we have reason to celebrate with exceedingly great joy, but do we? I know I don’t nearly as I ought – but I want to! Don’t you?!
“Don’t you want ____?”, “Don’t you want ____?”, “Don’t you want ____?”
So, how do we get there?
God
The answer is found back in what comes before: “Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand.”
It seems that having peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ should give us cause to celebrate.
But what does that mean? What does the Apostle Paul, the writer of Romans, mean by peace with God? How does this peace come to us through Jesus? What about it should cause us to have exceedingly great joy?
What it Was Like, What Happened, and What It’s Like Now – From Romans 5:1-11 via v 10
We find the answer in verses 6-11
here Paul shows that Jesus's death on our behalf reconciled us to God, moving us from a place of enmity with God to peace with God.
There’s a recovery fellowship that’s big on personal testimony. Their literature depicts the recovery process as a story describing “what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now.” As I meditated on this text I saw that same basic format emerge. I see especially in 10 a beautiful summary of the whole:
What it was like: “While we were enemies…”
What happened: “... we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son…”
What it’s like now: “...much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”
We’ll take each one at a time:
We were enemies –
Enemies? – “WHAT?! I’m no enemy of God!”
Paul makes no bones about it: in our sin we were enemies of God! He says this in various ways in the passage
Not justified
No faith
No peace – define ‘peace’
No grace
No re-joy-cing
No hope
No love of God
No Holy Spirit
Helpless
V6 Christ died for the ungodly
Ungodly – literally ‘irreverent despisers of God’
V8 While we were yet sinners
Sinners – not just something we do, but who we are; not our actions, but our hearts
Romans 3:10-12
“As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.”
Romans 3:23
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
V9 We shall be saved from wrath
That is, the wrath of God – God’s wrath is rightfully against those who are against him.
Romans 1:18
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,”
Romans 2:5
“But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,”
Romans 6:23a
The wages of sin is death
“But Rob! That’s not reason to celebrate! That’s terrible news!”
And it is! It’s the worst news ever!
DIG
EXCEPT →
The BIG BUT – Though we were enemies of God and deserving of his wrath, We [have now been] reconciled to God through the death of his Son –
Reconciled – To be restored to the favor of God, to recover God’s favor
DIG, DIG, DIG
Through the death of his son –
V6 Christ died for the ungodly; V8 Christ died for us [when we were yet sinners]
The Son of the Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, Author of Life, Sustainer of All Things gave his life for ours!
DIG
V9 Justified by his blood
Justified – Declared righteous, which at bottom means having God’s divine approval.
Justification is an act of God by which he considers our sins forgiven and Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us. Being justified, we have the same love and approval of God the Father that he has for Jesus.
How? →
By his blood –
On the cross God poured out onto Jesus his wrath that our sin deserves, taking his life in place of ours. Having paid the penalty for our sin through the blood of his son, God can now forgive us our sin and restore to the fellowship that our sin destroyed. That is, Jesus died the death we deserve so that we might have our sin forgiven be given eternal life with God through him.
V6 When we were still without strength
Helplessness – In all of this we were utterly helpless to change.
Power of sin imprisons the sinner
Good behavior doesn’t make up for sin debt
We shall be saved by his life –
V1 – We have peace with God
V2 – We have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand
Romans 8:32
“He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?”
Union with Christ
Romans 6:4-5
“Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,”
You
So what do you do with that? What makes peace with God a cause to celebrate?
Drive home the weight of the reality that we who have committed violence against the Almighty God through our sin have received reconciliation rather than retaliation; forgiveness and not wrath; loving Father instead of angry Judge; heaven in place of hell.
So what now? (?Make a request / invitation, not a demand?)
Christian, know who you are in Christ; know whose you are. Go and meditate on how unimaginably blessed you are to be a Christian and cultivate the joy that God promises to give you through Jesus.
Non-Christian, meditate on what’s at stake if you refuse to trust in Jesus and how unimaginably blessed you could be if you do. Know the love that God has for you and that you too could know joy, love, peace, and the many, many blessings of Jesus if only you’ll trust in him for the forgiveness of your sin and for eternal life with the Father through him.
Be reconciled to God.
We
How different would it be for us if we had the overflow of God’s joy in our hearts to direct our ways? Individually? Congregationally? Globally?
Won’t you join us?