SERMON JUNE 13 2021
The Problem. The Promise.
You
can listen to this message here: https://youtu.be/zA58FOvddUs
Our
first text today is from the last several verse of Romans chapter seven. The
second text comes from the first verses in chapter eight. This is an important
message of hope and of God’s promise of redemption – even to a people who
stumble and fall again and again in their journey toward the Celestial kingdom.
The
title of my message today is: The Problem and the Promise. And we will get to
the promise later in the message. But now, we find the problem enumerated for
us, starting with verse 15 of chapter seven. The great apostle Paul confesses:
“For what I am doing, I do not
understand; for I am not practicing what I would like
to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. 16 But if I do the very thing I do not
want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. 17 So now, no longer am I the one doing
it, but sin which dwells in me. 18 For
I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the
willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. 19 For the
good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
. . . 22 For I joyfully concur with the
law of God in the inner man, 23 but
I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against
the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin
which is in my members. 24 Wretched
man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:15-24)
I’ve
been walking with Jesus since December 1972. Forty-eight and a half years. That
is one reason I felt so badly several days ago when I was speaking with the
Lord during my morning time of prayer. I’d had a bad several days during which
I pouted and not-so-silently fumed because things were not going my way.
And
when the Lord finally got my attention and opened my eyes to my sin, I could
only shake my head in frustration and near hopelessness. After all these
decades serving Christ, I still find myself all too often acting like I am newly
saved.
Well,
the Lord didn’t let me wallow in my self-recrimination for very long. Scripture
flooded into my thoughts – some of which I am about to share with you during
this message. The point of those texts is all about encouragement – for myself
and also for anyone else frustrated again and again by their spiritual
failures.
And
if those failures leave you wondering if God will forgive you AGAIN for the
same sins AGAIN – I have a DEFINITIVE answer for you from God’s word:
Yes,
He will forgive the penitent – again and again. 1 John 1:8-9 is only one of a
bazillion promises God makes to the penitent: “If we say that we have no sin, we are
deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If
we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
As
I agonized over my repeated failure, the lyrics of a song by Kathy Trocolli, came
to mind. Here are some of the more salient lyrics that spoke to my heart that
morning. Perhaps these lyrics will encourage you, also:
Caught again, Your faithless friend/Don't You
ever tire of hearing what a fool I've been?/Guess I should pray, but what can I
say?/Oh, it hurts to know the hundred times I've caused You pain/Though
'Forgive me' sounds so empty when I never change/Yet You stay and say, "I
love you still"/ Forgiving me time and time again
It's Your stubborn love that never lets go of
me/I don't understand how You can stay/Perfect love embracing the worst in
me/How I long for Your stubborn love
So,
yes. God repeatedly promises to forgive the truly penitent again. Nonetheless,
and as I alluded to moments ago, my failures sometimes leave me wondering if I
am EVER going to get it right. And perhaps you wonder the same thing about
yourself.
Well,
if the experience of Christians throughout history is any clue – don’t get your
hopes up too high about finally getting it right on this side of the grave. We
should expect to constantly struggle against our sin nature.
After
all, what would have been the point of Jesus dying in our place if we could become
pretty much perfect and mature without Him?
And
that’s why it astounds me that some Christians believe that once we are
saved, we are forever from that moment free from sin and its temptation. “We
are ‘born again’” goes the argument. “We are ‘new creatures in Christ.’” “We’ve
died to sin and now live for Jesus. We don’t sin. We just make mistakes and
errors in judgment.”
Listen,
I don’t know how any HONEST Christian can believe such drivel. Not only does
such a fallacious and demonstrably bogus idea fly in the face of the Biblical
record, but it makes a mockery of the Christian struggle against sin and
temptation for the last two THOUSAND years.
St.
Peter is a perfect example. It was Peter who fell into hypocrisy long after
being filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Here is how Paul describes it
in his letter to the church at Galatia: “But when Cephas [Peter] came
to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For prior to the
coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles;
but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself
aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision. The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that
even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.” (Galatians 2:11-13)
Had
it not been for the Holy Spirit’s rebuke through Paul, Peter’s sin might have
caused an irreparable rupture in the early Church.
But
Peter was not alone in his propensity to stumble in his walk toward the
Kingdom. Let’s look also at St. Paul – the one who wrote at least 13 of the 27
books of the New Testament. It was this Paul who cried out in those last verses
of Romans 7 I read at the beginning of this message:
“For what I am doing, I do not
understand; for I am not practicing what I would like
to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. . . . For the good that I want, I do
not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. . . . Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of
this death?”
Christian,
hear this please: The Holy Spirit is telling us through His inerrant and
infallible word that Christians should NOT EXPECT a life that always reflects Jesus
to be easy. Our attempts to imitate Christ are inherently fraught – inherently
because we are HUMAN – our attempts to imitate Christ are inherently fraught
with ups and downs and successes and failures.
If
it were not that way, then the Lord Jesus would not have had to warn the
Christians in those seven churches listed in Revelation chapters two and three,
some of whom had lost their first love, and others were following heretical and
openly immoral teachers and leaders in their congregations.
So,
our sin nature will be with us and will dog us until we close our eyes in
death. But the good news in all that – and this is important – the good news in
all that is that ALL Christians who persevere in living for Christ to the best
of their frail human abilities WILL stand clean before our God. Here are His
words of promise through Jude:
“Now to Him who is
able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of
His glory blameless with great joy, 25 to
the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our
Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time
and now and forever. Amen.” (Jude
24-25)
So,
Christian – Be encouraged by Paul’s words to the Christians at Philippi – the
same Paul who was wracked with sorrow over his own sin nature:
“Not
that I have already . . . become perfect, but I press on so that I
may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of
by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold
of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting
what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press
on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus
. . . however, let us keep living by that same standard to which
we have attained. [Philippians 2:12-16]
In other words, Christian – God
is telling us to keep on keeping on – keep on SLOGGING on, keep moving toward Christ.
Stop staring in the rearview mirror at where you’ve BEEN and what’ve DONE. Keep
your eyes focused on where you are GOING, fixing your eyes on Jesus and His
cross through which He purchased – past tense, a fiat accompli – our full redemption,
forgiveness, and eternal life.
The problem occurs if we stop
keeping on, if we give up slogging forward. It is then that we begin to backslide
and no longer live to the standard of faith and maturity that we have already
attained by God’s grace.
Listen to what God inspired Paul
to also write to the Christians at Philippi: For I am confident of this
very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the
day of Christ Jesus. (Phil 1:6). God was
speaking to ME also. And to YOU also.
That was all the bad news. That
all was the problem – our sin nature and the danger we face if we become so
disheartened by it all that we listen to Satan’s whispers to give up. BUT – and
please now hear this, the Problem melts in the presence of God’s Promise.
What is that promise? God does
not leave us at the end of chapter seven of Romans. Oh, no. God showers us with
His unqualified grace, His unchangeable Promise that we find in Romans 8. If we
think God is done with us because of our repeated failures, listen to Paul again:
Therefore there is
now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of
death. For what the Law could not
do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin,
He condemned sin in the flesh, so that
the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk
according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4)
I sure hope you paid attention to that message
from the man who himself had every reason to wallow in self-recrimination. But
he did not, because He knew the one who loved him enough to forgive him of
every sin, every time.
He knew the one “who gave
Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present
evil age, according to the will of our God and Father . . . (Galatians
1:4) He knew the one who is “the
faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the
kings of the earth” and “who loves us and released us from our
sins by His blood.” (Revelation 1:5)
Christian, seek God’s work in your life so that
you – that WE – will come to know Jesus like Paul knew Him. We need to always
remember God DOES NOT CONDEMN any penitent child of His.
Never.
So let me close with this
final exhortation: We all have a problem. It is called our sin nature. BUT we
all are offered God’s promise, that being: No condemnation to those who walk
humbly and in repentance each day with the Savior.
God knows the good that He still
plans to work through your life – even at your state of health and your age and
your life-circumstances. God still knows the plans He plans to still work
through you and with you – even as susceptible as you are to failure.
God will not give up on
you. Don’t YOU give up on God. If St. Paul did not get hung up by his failures,
but he kept trusting God to forgive, cleanse, and renew Him – then you and I
can do the same.
We can trust God’s stubborn
love to never let go of us. Even when we don’t understand how He can stay with
us, even when we don’t understand how His perfect love still longs to embrace
the worst in us.
Oh, with His help I will trust
His stubborn love. And with His help, so will you.
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