The pastor visited Tweetsie on Friday, but much of the time he was thinking about our 162nd Anniversary, and about the epistle lesson, Romans 8:26-39.
Click the more link below to read the sermon.
I worked most of last week on a sermon that would celebrate 162 years of ministry at New Philadelphia Moravian Church. Initially I wrote an o.k. sermon that was filled with stories about a church and people that I have come to love. When I came here 20 years ago in 1988, we had one man in the congregation who was alive in 1888. Today we have several people in attendance who have been at this church more than half of the church’s existence. I even included stories told me by individuals who remember people coming to church by horse and buggy. One story was about the little girl who watched the men smoke their cigars right up until the bell rang. She watched as they carefully placed them in the trees on the front lawn—so they could resume their smoke after church, then ran around and switched them. Writing that sermon was great fun, but the title that I had given that sermon haunted me, “Celebration and Continuation.” I went to Tweetsie on Saturday for the first time in my life. I enjoyed being there with my family, especially with my granddaughter. While taking the train ride, I decided that the best way to celebrate an anniversary of a church that we love is to continue the work of that church. The only way to continue the work that was begun here on July 25th, 1846 is to celebrate the Good News that is the same for us as it was for them. I started viewing the assigned lesson in a new light. In the passage before us this morning, Romans 8:26-39, St. Paul has set down at least four reasons for Christians to celebrate everyday.
1. The first cause for everyday celebration is that we absolutely positively cannot finally and completely mess up our lives just because we are not fluent in the language and practice of prayer.
In verses 26 and 27 Paul writes:
The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs to deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the Saints according to the will of God.
Paul’s logic in these verses is interesting. First he assumes that we are weak, not just physically weak, but spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and volitionally weak. Weak in all the ways the human being is always weak. He is right. Paul established our weakness in Romans 7 when he said:
18 For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Romans 7:18-19
The only cure for our weakness is Christ. Yet even in Christ remnants of the weakness remains. I have yet to meet the person who will disagree with the charge of weakness.
Next the apostle assumes that our weaknesses will drive us to prayer.
Again Paul assumes right. Our weaknesses do drive us to prayer. God is strong. We are weak. The only way to lay hold of God’s strength is to pray. If we are tempted by sin, and if we hate it as we must, we pray that God will, “deliver us from temptation.” If we are unsure of what God would have us to do as the result of a particular circumstance, we pray for guidance. If we have trouble sleeping, we pray for a night’s rest. If we feel badly and fall sick, we pray for good diagnosis and a speedy recovery. If we are out of work, and need money, we pray for a job or for some relief from debt. Paul assumes that our weaknesses are going to drive us to prayer.
Third, Paul assumes that because we are weak, when we are driven to prayer, we will be fearful that we will mess up the one thing that helps us in our every weakness, prayer itself. Weakness in prayer is the ultimate weakness because prayer is the means through which we receive God’s strength.
Paul then assures his reader that God has a solution for our weakness in prayer. He says that though we don’t know how to pray as we ought to pray, “the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” These those sighs are nothing less than God’s soliloquy to God, for “(God) the Spirit intercedes for us (with God) according to the will of God.”
This is nothing less than perfect communication, God pleading with God’s self on our behalf. The idea that God will not answer God’s own prayer on our behalf is foreign to Paul, and it ought to be foreign to us.
Does that mean that everything will always go right in our lives? Does that mean we will avoid difficulty, and hardship, and heartbreak. Does it mean that we are immune to the affects of bad choices and sin? No! But it does mean that in the midst of difficult, hardship and heartbreak God is still working in us, and through us, and for us. That is the context in which Paul adds verse 28: “In everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.”
Some years ago an older minister told me about his struggle with the call to preach. He had gone off to war, and done some things he was ashamed of. He confessed them to his pastor, and his pastor told him that God would never be able to use him. He determined to live a Christian life. He went off to college with ministry still in the back of his mine. Then a young evangelist visited the campus of his college. He preached there every night for a week, encouraging the students to consider Christian ministry. In the course of the week, this man gained an audience with the evangelist, and laid out his story before him. He told him that he wanted to go into the ministry, but was afraid that God could not use him. The evangelist said, “That is not right. God will use you, and all that you are, including your mistakes.” And he quoted Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.” (KJV)
This is a true story, the young evangelist was Billy Graham, and if I named the pastor, many of you would recognize the name.
How many of you have a GPS—a Global Positioning System, in your automobile? I do—though mine is the low-tech variety. When I get lost, invariably my GPS, my wife, begs me to stop and ask directions. Usually she says something like, “Remember that time you didn’t ask directions and almost drove us into the river….” Or something like it. Someday I am going to get a hi-tech GPS.
As Christians we have a GPS already—a God Positioning System. Sometimes we mess-up and take a wrong turn. and travel a wrong road. This causes us pain, and those around us pain. It causes God pain. When we take a wrong turn we have a GPS, a God positioning system, that will get us back on the right road. The sooner we stop and ask God for redirection, the better off we are.
You have heard it said, “You can’t get there from here!” That is not so with God. God starts with us where we are, and get us where God wants us to be.
2. We celebrate the fact that the good plan that God has for us is already accomplished in the mind of God, and once God decides a thing that thing is a done deal.
In verses 29 and 30 Paul writes:
29 For those whom (God) foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.
Now this text is about God’s foreknowledge and predestination and it has been hotly debated for four hundred years. The debate centers in the word, “foreknew.”
Calvinists say that what God foreknows, he foreordains. They say that before the foundation of the world God looked out over the mass of humanity and foreknew or chose some for salvation, leaving the rest to perdition.
Arminians say that what God foreknows he sees in advance. They say that before the foundation of the world God looked out over the mass of humanity and foreknew or foresaw their choice or rejection of Christ, and then called those whom he already knew would choose Christ.
I want to leave foreknowledge an open question, and concentrate on the word predestination. This is the only time that the scriptures use the word. There is no argument among Calvinists and Armenians about what those who belong to Christ are predestined to. We are “predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s son.”
What does that mean? It means at least two things.
First, it certainly means we are predestined to heaven and to a share of God’s glory. In Romans 5 St. Paul says that since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and we “rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” Earlier in this chapter, in verse 16, he says that:
When we cry, ‘Abba, Father,’ it is the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided that we suffer with him, in order that we might be glorified with him.
We are “predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s son,” and that means sharing God’s glory.
Second, it means we are predestined to sharing in Christ’s character, his wholeness, and his dedication to the will of God. The late A.J. Gossip commented on this verse saying, “God’s goal is to produce in us a race of Christs….”
In the New Testament, justification is the process by which God pronounces us righteous in Christ, and sanctification is the process by which God makes us righteous. This passage does not mention sanctification. Paul jumps from justification to glorification. I believe that Paul leaves out santification because in this section of Romans 8 he is primarily concerned with what God does, and not with our response.
In the first verses of Romans 8 St. Paul has introduced the idea of sanctification saying, that those who are in Christ are no longer just “in the flesh,” but “in the Spirit. In Romans 12, Paul gets around to sanctification in a big way, and he asks his readers for their cooperation. He writes:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (or “reasonable service” KJV). 2 Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1-2
Paul then talks about what this means in practical terms. Among other things, he says we are not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, that we are to recognize the gifts of others, that we are to hate what is evil, and hold fast to what is good, that we are to be generous and forgiving, and that we are to pray for our enemies, never returning evil for evil. Midway through chapter 13 he sums it what it means that we have become “living sacrifices:”
9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Romans 13:9-10
3. And that leads us to the third thing that we celebrate. Though we know we are lawbreakers, and we fear a trial before God, we already celebrate a verdict of “Not Guilty.”
Throughout history, human beings have feared a final judgment. We are afraid that our sins will catch up with us, and that we will be pronounced guilty of crimes against God and humanity, and suffer for it eternally. As Christians we know that we are all sinners, and that “the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) Yet, according to St. Paul, we don’t have to wait until we stand before the great white throne of God to know whether we are approved or rejected by God. For those of us who belong to Jesus Christ, the judgment has already taken place, and the judgment of our lives has already taken place, and the judgment is “Not guilty!”
The scene in the next several verses is a courtroom. The heavenly court is gathered. God the Father is the Judge. There is no jury for God is judge and jury. Satan is not mentioned here, but in a similar scene, the author of Job refers to Satan as the adversary, the prosecuting attorney. Paul does not bother to mention the adversary because in this scene, the prosecution is silenced. But who is on trial? We are on trial. What have we done? Our crime is implied, more than specified. The crime that is implied is not one of the hundreds and thousands of sins, great and small, that we have actually committed, but the death of the God’s son. Jesus has died. He is the victim of the crime. Yet there is no Corpus delicti—no proof that a crime has been committed. How can a crime have been committed when the victim who was killed has been raised from death? Indeed, it is the victim himself, now victorious, who stands at the right hand of the Judge as our advocate, pleading our case.
Hear now those verses with this courtroom scene in mind. Paul writes:
31 What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies; 34 who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us?
4. There is a final thing we celebrate. We celebrate the fact that absolutely nothing in the universe can separate us from God’s love.
I refer to verses 35 through 39 that I regard as among the most precious in scripture. These verses became real for me when I was an associate pastor at The Little Church on the Lane. It was one of those rare Sundays when I got to preach. Herbert Weber, my senior pastor, was out of town. During the Sunday School hour I was called to the hospital. A man was dying. His family had gathered to him. He died. They were crushed. I did all that I knew to do, I shared these verses with his wife and two sons. Then I prayed with them and returned to church. During the singing of the first hymn, I was surprised to see the entire family enter the church. They were the living proof of the scripture that we had shared. I felt the reality of that text of scripture as I seldom had before. Here it now. Live in it. Rejoice in it. Celebrate it.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The best way to celebrate a thing is to continue the life of that thing. We celebrate New Philadelphia” 162 years of ministry when we understand and celebrate the love that God has for us in Jesus Christ.
Finis