How Times Have Changed

The context of this passage in 1 Corinthians 5 is the sexual perversion openly practiced by a member of the congregation, AND the acceptance of that perversion by other members of the Corinthian church.

 

Here is the text in part. It’s important to my point, so please read it thoughtfully: “For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

 

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven . .  . Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.”

 

St Paul could not have been any clearer about their options. He ORDERED them to excommunicate the man openly living in sin.

 

Oh, but how things have changed in today’s church, haven’t they? We now permit men and women openly practicing sexual sins and perversions . . . we permit them to pastor churches, sing in choirs, teach Sunday School and Catechism classes, act as ushers in the church, assist with Holy Communion, and so on. We give flagrantly godless men and women positions of authority and service in the church, although they remain unchanged and unrepentant of their sins.

 

Christian!  Does that not GRIEVE your heart? Meditate awhile on the eventual results of such damnable, demonic examples that these people are to your children and grandchildren, your teens and young adults.

 

God was not ‘suggesting’ through Paul to be ‘tolerant’ of open sin in the congregation. God COMMANDED the church to exclude them from their fellowship.

 

Christian, if your church leadership refuses to obey God's words, then the only thing left for you to do is “come out from among them and be separate.” (See, for example, 2 Corinthias 6:14-18)

 

Christian, this is very serious stuff. Please, treat it seriously. The eternal destiny of your loved ones – indeed, even your OWN eternal destiny – might very well hang on your decision whether to follow God or the culture’s idea of ‘tolerance.’

 

 

Victory over Death

SERMON OCTOBER 27

VICTORY OVER DEATH

 

 

My text today comes from the apostle Paul’s second letter to the Christians at Corinth. Listen to his words, or read along with me:

 

2 Corinthians 4:16-5:1-4 “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

 

“For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.”

 

Let me repeat that last verse for emphasis: “We do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.”

 

I could give you the statistics of how many people – even those in church pews – are afraid to die. But I won’t bother to do that because if YOU are afraid of death, then for you that statistic is 100%. But the question about who is afraid of dying is a reasonable question, especially in this sanctuary because – and I am only guessing now – the average age of those living here at Ashwood is mid-eighties. And for us, death is not so much a distant eventuality as it is a much closer reality.

How many of our friends, family, and acquaintances have died in the last 12 months? Some of you here are ill with a disease that will likely take your life. You might wonder if you even have twelve months to live. And I also know many of you are relatively healthy, and you expect to live not only 12 months, but even another several years.

 

But of the dozens of men and women who have lived and died at Ashwood since it opened in 2015, most of them were relatively healthy when they suddenly died. It was that way for my mother. She ate dinner on July 31. I was told she joked with some of the women in the elevator on her way up to her apartment. And during the night she suddenly died of a brain aneurysm.

 

I don’t want to get any further into today’s message before first assuring everyone that this is a message of HOPE – hope as it is defined by the New Testament writers. Hope, in the New Testament, means to have a ‘confident expectation’ about something God has promised. And so, my goal for today’s message is to leave each of you with a “confident expectation” of God's promise to all of His true children regarding death and what follows afterward. A confident expectation of a ‘forever’ joy, peace, love, and life awaiting you on the other side of the grave.

 

The important phrase I just used is ‘God's true children.’ The New Testament defines God's true children as ONLY those who have placed their obedient faith in the sacrificial and atoning work of Jesus Christ who died on Calvary’s cross and rose from the dead three days later. If you are NOT living today within that specific definition of what it means to be true children of God, then I implore you, please pay attention to this message because the God who loves you ‘to the moon and back’ (to use a modern colloquialism) – the God who loves you to the moon and back wants to appeal to you through this message one more time. Perhaps for you the last time.

 

We all need to know that there are only two groups of people living on this planet: The Lost, and The Rescued.

 

The Lost are those who have willfully rejected Jesus Christ as their only Lord. They’ve never placed themselves under His absolute authority, having confessed to Him their sins, following Him in baptism, and given Him their hearts.

 

OR, the Lost have done all those things with their mouths and in their minds, but never REALLY in their hearts. They are among the many of whom Jesus spoke in Luke 13, They will say to the Lord on that day: We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets’; and He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from; Depart from Me, all you evildoers.’  In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Luke 13:25-28).

 

But for those who are in the second group – the Rescued – Scripture promises you that you have NO reason to fear death. None. Zero.

The apostle Paul, speaking of God the Father to the Christians at Colossae – and the Christians here at Ashwood Meadows: (Colossian 1:13-14): “He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Christian – I hope you caught that. Because of your relationship with Jesus, the Father has ALREADY transferred you into the kingdom of Jesus. Already. Not some future experience, but now. This moment. And all you and I are waiting for is to close our eyes in death when we will IMMEDIATELY open them in that eternal kingdom.

What is there to fear in THAT?

Now listen to what Paul said about our immediate entrance into God's eternal kingdom: (2 Corinthians 5:1-8) “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. . . . Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight— we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.”

For many children on the first day of kindergarten, the little boys and girls are full of excited anticipation. Many, to be sure, are nervous. They don’t know what to expect. Some will cling to mom or dad who brings them to the school classroom. Some will cry out loud when mom or dad leaves them with their teacher.

 

I think death for the Christian will be something like that. We will lie on our deathbed, knowing the proverbial sands in the hourglass are rapidly disappearing. We might be a little nervous, but when we remember God's promises to the Christian – only a few of which I have quoted today – when we remember His PROMISES as we draw our last breath, we will have every good reason to take our last breath with excited anticipation of closing our eyes in death and suddenly opening them in eternal life.

But there are those in the pews who might argue within themselves, “I am such a bad person. You don’t know what all I have done in the past. How horrible my life was. How can God really forgive me?”

Well, let’s let the infallible, inerrant, and wholly true and inspired word of God answer that question. Here is what God tells us through Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth – a church FILLED with those with sordid pasts:

 

“Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or anyone practicing homosexuality, no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom. And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11, HCSB) 

Please – all of you seated in this sanctuary, please hear this. This is important: Despite the litany of damnable sins Paul cites in the text I just read – the Holy Spirit immediately focuses our attention on the good news in verse 11: “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” 

I researched the meaning of the Greek words Paul used in this text and were translated into English. “You were washed,” means the person’s sins were completely, thoroughly, utterly cleansed through their initial baptism and ongoing confession and repentance of their sins.

 

“You were sanctified,” means God had purified them from those sins. He Himself had pronounced them ‘pure,’ set them apart for His work. He declared them to be holy because they were covered with the sacrificial blood of Jesus.

 

And finally, Paul tells them, “You were justified,” meaning, God had pronounced them to be righteous, innocent, and without guilt. And if GOD Himself pronounces us to be without guilt – He means what He says and He says what He means. God declares the penitent sinner to be righteous and innocent and without guilt. Period. Full stop. End of sentence. Don’t argue with Him.

For the true Christian, death is like walking through the door leading out of your apartment. THAT is what the death of the body is like for the Rescued, for the Christian, the faithful follower of Christ – walking through the door leading from this life into life eternal. Immediately in the presence of God. No intermediate steps. No such thing as what some call ‘soul-sleep.’ No further cleansing or purging of our sins – just absent, and then present with God.

 

So, why would the Rescued fear death when what we have waiting for us on the other side of that door is what St John wrote for us in the last chapters of Revelation? Eternal health. Eternal safety from our enemies. Eternal joy where there is no longer any death, or sickness, or loss or pain.

 

Listen! Most of you have read the end of the Book! And if you haven’t, open your Bible today and read those last two chapters of Revelation. Then turn back to the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament. Here is Isaiah 25:8-9:

“He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces, and He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; For the Lord has spoken. And it will be said in that day, “Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.”

Oh, hear that again. Right now, we are on this side of eternity’s door waiting for the fulfilment of the promise our Holy God made to all who are His by faith in Christ. And then Isaiah tells us by the same infallible Holy Spirit, God will swallow up death for all time and wipe all of our tears away. Oh, yes! We will rejoice and be glad in His salvation.

 

You might remember the history of Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha. You’ll find the story in John 11:21-27. The text tells us Lazarus had been dead four days by the time Jesus arrived. Martha ran to meet Jesus when she’d heard He had arrived. We pick up the text in verse 21: “Martha then said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.”

 

Most people our age living in America know the name Harry Houdini. He was a famous escape artist in the early 1900s. He could free himself from handcuffs, chains, ropes and straitjackets, sometimes even when underwater. He escaped from sealed coffins, riveted boilers and a variety of other ‘inescapable’ contraptions. On Halloween night in 1926, as he lay dying from a ruptured appendix, Houdini told his wife that if there was any way out of death, he would find it.

 

What Houdini did not know – as most of humanity does not know, even some in church pews and pulpits – NO ONE has the power to conquer death except the Son of God whose death on Calvary finally and forever conquered death.

 

Jesus raised Himself from death, and it is Jesus alone who will raise every man and woman who has ever died – including Harry Houdini. Christ will raise them all from death. The Bible tells us some He will raise to eternal life; Some He will raise to eternal damnation. And it is only what men and women do in THIS life with Jesus that will determine to what destiny they are raised.

 

To you who have truly made Jesus Lord of your heart, as well as of your mouth and mind, listen one more time to the infallible words of St Paul to all faithful believers. Listen to the words of God that should generate a confident expectation of what lies ahead for each of us when we close our eyes for the last time:

 

(1 Corinthians 15:50-58) “Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; ⁵⁷ but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Are you afraid to die? Please, if you are and not yet a true child of God, ask God's forgiveness of your sins. Make the decision today to place your trust in Jesus’ sacrificial death to pay the penalty your sins so richly deserve. Be baptized. And make it your goal to obey His commandments for the rest of your life.

 

And if you’re already a true child of God, then be of good courage, KNOWING that when you are absent from the body, you are home with the Lord.

 

You can take courage in that because we walk by faith, and not by sight.

 

All We Have Left

 I minister at a local memory-care facility where the residents are in varying degrees of dementia. None can safely live alone.

Paula attends my church services each week. I mention her specifically because of what she asks me each week. Before I play an old hymn on my Bluetooth speaker system, I start our service with prayer, and then read a short verse or two of Scripture that will form the basis for my brief words of encouragement or exhortation.

It is after I read the text from the Bible that Paula always interrupts me with the question: “Where is that in the Bible?”

Oh! I love it when she asks that question. It tells me she was raised in a church that urged the congregation to not only read the Bible, but to also study them. Her weekly question demonstrates that even in her slowly fading memories, her earlier training to verify with Scripture what she was being told still remains active and alert.

But – what about you? What is your relationship with the Scriptures? Do you read and study God's words to you? Do you memorize portions of His love letters to you?

Only God knows our futures, but the time might come for any of us when our memories fade nearly into oblivion. And if you are ever in such a situation as a memory-care facility – wouldn’t you want to be like Paula, still seeking to know, “Where that is in the Bible”?

Please. Do not neglect the daily reading and studying and memorizing God's word. There might come a time when God's word in your heart is all you have left to cling to.

Who Will Deliver Us?

 

My message today comes from the last verses of Romans chapter seven and into the first verse of chapter eight. Please follow along as I read:

 

(Romans 7:15, 19-25a, 8:1-4) “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 . . . ¹⁹ For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in [my body], waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my [body]. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! . . . .8:1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 

 

By his own admission, Paul was not a ‘stained-glass’ saint. He never walked the streets of Europe, Asia, or Jerusalem with a halo glowing around his head. Not at all. Paul was a sinner like everyone else.

 

Please pay attention. This is important, especially because of its application to our lives in Christ. Paul openly admits in this text that he struggled with his sin-nature – just as everyone else on planet earth today struggles. Listen again to what caused him such desperate grief: “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 I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in [my body], waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my [body]. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? 

 

Have you ever felt that way – discouraged and frustrated so often by the things that go through your mind and out of your mouth? I’ve been walking with Jesus since December 1972. Nearly 52 years. And hardly a day goes by that I don’t chasten myself for something I KNEW to be wrong, but I did it or said it anyway.

 

I think Paul’s willingness to admit his daily struggle with sin – both to himself and publicly through this letter – I think THAT is part of the KEY to understanding his usefulness for Christ. He had a good and correct grasp of his sin-nature, and how his sin-nature left him in DESPERATE need of God's ongoing mercy and pardon.

 

It's not that Paul in his ‘before-Christ’ life wasn’t living according to the Law of God. Listen to what he wrote to the Christians at Philippi: (Philippians 3:4b-11) “If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.”

 

But then he continues to tell them what he had learned in his ‘after-Christ’ life: “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

 

Prior to meeting Christ, Paul THOUGHT himself to be righteous before God. But now, after meeting the Lord and having his spiritual eyes opened, he saw himself as he truly was without Christ Jesus: Wretched. Some synonyms of the word are ‘despicable’ and ‘deplorable.’

 

That’s an interesting word to come out of the mouth of a Christian – and especially one such as the great apostle Paul. Or is it? I’ve read commentators say that this section of Romans describes Paul BEFORE his Damascus Road experience. I think such an idea is a dangerously wrong-headed attempt to remove the humanity of this great man. If you take the time to look at the verb tenses Paul uses in this text, you’ll notice they are all in the present tense. In other words, Paul was declaring his CURRENT condition. He was telling his readers that he is NOW wretched. He is NOW struggling with wrong when he wants to do right. He is asking who will NOW deliver him from his body of death.

 

I believe Paul used the word ‘wretched’ to refer to himself because of how terrible he felt about how often he lost the battle with sin. But we need to pause here for some important application and guidance from Scripture. Paul FELT himself wretched, but as he explains elsewhere in this letter, he KNEW God saw him differently. For example, here is what he wrote in chapter five:

 

(Romans 5:1,7, 9) “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ . .  . Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.” 

 

Although Paul FELT wretched, he ALSO knew that because of his ongoing repentance, God had forgiven him, God had JUSTIFIED him, God had declared him to be without guilt.

 

By the way – have YOU ever felt so badly about your own sins as to call yourself ‘wretched’? If not, then perhaps you need to check your relationship with the Holy God. And you might memorize this text in 1 John 1:8-10 – “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”

 

Please hear this again: If the great apostle Paul knew he was NOT a stained-glass saint, then we should not fool ourselves into thinking we are better than Paul. To think that is to run the real risk of our pride interfering with what God wants to do with us. And one of the slippery signs of pride in our life is evidenced by how easily we justify and rationalize our sins instead of confessing and repenting of them.

 

And by the way, when was the last time you asked God to reveal to your mind the length and breadth and height and depth of your sins? It is only when we recognize that our sins – ANY OF OUR SINS – are not merely misdemeanors against the Holy God of the universe, but each sin is tantamount to treason against our Holy Creator – only then will we begin to understand Paul’s most mournful cry: “Wretched man that I am!” And only THEN will we also begin to understand why he said what he said next: “Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

 

When Paul asked, ‘Who will deliver me from the body of this death’ he was not asking a rhetorical question. He asked a question to which he already knew the answer – just like the psalmist who wrote: (Psalm 121:1-3) “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; From where shall my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.”

 

Who will deliver Paul from his wretchedness? It is the same one who alone can and will deliver you and me from our wretchedness.

 

Our help, our rescue, our pardon, our forgiveness, our salvation, our deliverance comes ONLY from the One who made heaven and earth. No one else can rescue us from our wretchedness. Not our education. Not the Church. Not our good works. Not religious philosophies or well-meaning opinions.

 

Only the One who made heaven and earth can rescue us from ourselves, and from the grip of sin. God alone can forgive us and change us and wipe away all of our sins. Every last one of them. And THAT is also why Paul tells his readers only a few verses later: “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 

 

Did you get that?  NO condemnation. No guilty verdict from the Judge of all the earth. Oh! How can anyone realize the utter depth and height and breadth and length of the promise?  Those who live and then die ‘in Christ Jesus’ will never, throughout ETERNITY, face God's wrath for their sins, however minor or major those sins have been. “No condemnation for those in Christ Jesus” is Almighty God's VOW to receive every penitent sinner who follows Christ. There will be no stopovers in a fictitious place called Purgatory.

 

 

As I prepared this message of God's patience with us and His forgiveness, I thought of the lyrics of a song by Kathy Trocolli. I’ll play the song at the end of this message, but I want you to hear some of the more salient lyrics that speak to my heart. I hope they 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

But what does it mean to be ‘IN’ Christ Jesus? Well, first of all, no one can be in Jesus unless we know who the real Jesus is. And we cannot know who He is unless we believe what the inerrant, infallible, and fully inspired Word of God tells us who He is.

 

Regardless of what most of humanity will opine, Jesus is not a philosophy, or a set of church doctrines, or a concoction of myths and spurious history.

Jesus is Almighty Jehovah God who took on the flesh of a human in the Virgin’s womb, lived a sinless life, died on a cross as the ONLY atoning sacrifice that God the Father will accept as payment for our sins, and then raised Himself from the grave. Listen to what Jesus said of Himself in this regard: (John 10:18-19) “No one has taken [My life] from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”

 

C.S. Lewis famously said it well: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

 

But there is more to being ‘in Christ’ than just knowing Him from Scripture. We can’t be ‘in Christ’ unless we ALSO know Jesus as our Lord. And what does it mean that we make Jesus the Lord of our life and lifestyle? It means that we fully – not partially – strive to obey Him in whatever it is He wants us to do or not do.

 

That’s essentially what it means to say, “Jesus is my Lord.” Surely one of the more frightening warnings Jesus gave us is this text in Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”

 

Those who sat in the churches of Laodicea believed a dangerous idea that God was okay with them. But God was NOT okay with them. Unlike Paul’s abject humility before God, and his open shame over his sins, those who attended church at Laodicea had none of those qualities. Contrast Paul’s ‘wretched man that I am” with what Jesus accused those in the Laodicean church (Revelation 3:17-19):

 

“Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.”

 

Let me close this message with this last comment: Luke records a conversation between Jesus and a Pharisee with whom Jesus was having dinner. While they were eating, a sinful woman entered the house and began weeping in His presence, wetting the Lord’s feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair. The Pharisee was offended and said to himself that if Jesus was who He said He was, He’d never let that sinful woman even touch Him.

 

The Lord then said to the Pharisee: (Luke 7:41-47) “A moneylender had two debtors: one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.  When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So which of them will love him more?” [The Pharisee] answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.” And He said to him, “You have judged correctly.” Turning toward the woman, He said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave Me no kiss; but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss My feet. You did not anoint My head with oil, but she anointed My feet with perfume. For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

 

I believe Paul loved Jesus as much as he did because Paul KNEW from where he’d come. And Paul KNEW how wretched he remained because of his sin-nature. But Paul ALSO knew that God loved him so very much as to completely erase every one of his sins.

 

“He who is forgiven much, loves much. He who is forgiven little, loves little.”

 

Of how much has God forgiven you? Of some misdemeanors? Or of wretched treason? I hope you will let the Holy Spirit speak deeply into your heart, because only when you and I admit we are treasonous sinners will that text in chapter eight mean to us what it SHOULD mean to us: “No condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”

 

God LOVES you. God loves me. Calvary’s cross is undeniable evidence of His ongoing love for us. May the Holy Spirit, please, Lord, cause us to humble ourselves before the Savior’s feet, washing them – as it were – with our tears and wiping them with our hair.

 

Oh, how He loves you and me.

How it must have Hurt

 I started reading the seventh chapter of John this morning and did not get very far when the Holy Spirit stopped me at verse five. Here is the context:

“After these things Jesus was walking in Galilee, for He was unwilling to walk in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill Him. 2 Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was near. Therefore His brothers said to Him, “Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing. For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world.” For not even His brothers were believing in Him."

“Not even His brothers were believing in Him.”

And I suddenly wondered, “What did they think about their mother’s story of Jesus’ conception and birth? What did they think about Joseph, who corroborated it? Did his brothers believe it was a lie? And if a lie, what did that make their mother, Mary? Did they think, as the Pharisees thought, Jesus was born from fornication? (John 8:41)

Oh! How that suspicion must have torn at Mary’s heart. And at Joseph’s, while he was alive.

And then my mind took me to a modern application of the text. How hurtful it is – certainly not to the same degree – but still, how hurtful it is when families scoff when we tell them what Jesus has done for us, how He has changed us, how He has healed us . . . .

How hurtful it is when they rationalize it all away – even when they see the changes in our life.

Will the Judge do Right?

 My text today is found in Genesis 18:25. The context of this text begins in verse one when three men approach Abraham as he is sitting outside his tent. Conservative theologians are virtually all agreed that two of the men are angelic beings. The third man is the pre-incarnate Christ. Such appearances are usually called ‘Christophanies” – from the Greek combination of two words: ‘Christos’ which means Christ and ‘phainein’ (FAY-nee-en) which means ‘to appear.’ We find Christophanies in Genesis 16:7-10 when the Lord meets Hagar, and again in Judges 6:11-14 when the Lord meets with Gideon, and in Daniel 3:24-25 where we find the fourth man in the blazing furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

 

So, back to the context of chapter 18 and which moves seamlessly into chapter 19. God tells Abraham He is about to destroy Sodom because of the evil He has seen of the city and its environs. You might remember from reading the story yourself, that Lot and his family were living in Sodom at this time. And so, these chapters have a lot to tell us not only about God, but also the chapters hold application to our own lives in 2024, and I might at some time later return to these two chapters. But for today, I want to focus on verse 25.

 

God has just told Abraham what He intends to do to the city, and Abraham – concerned perhaps not only for the entire city, but especially for his nephew Lot and Lot’s family – Abraham speaks to the Lord: (Genesis 18:25, NIV) “Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

 

Listen again to that last sentence: “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”  Another way of asking it might be, ‘Is God good and right and just at all times, in all circumstances, and in all places?”

 

I want us to pause here a while, because that’s the question all humanity has asked at some time in their lives. And I suspect that there have been – and ARE today – many in church pews and pulpits who ask the same question: Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

 

First, let’s briefly examine who IS the judge? This is so important a question that we dare not gloss over it in my message now. The Judge to whom Abraham spoke and of whom we ask the same question is no other than Almighty God, Creator of heaven and earth. The one who with the breath of His mouth set planets in motion. Who with the breath of His mouth instantaneously formed out of nothing all plants and insects and air and sea and land creatures.

 

And why did He do all that? Why did He create everything we see and can’t see? He did it because of His great love and unsurpassed affection for all of humanity which is the crown of His creation. And that includes you and me, by the way.

 

St John tells us, (1 John 4:8b, 10) “God is love . . . . [and] “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 

 

And what is it the Psalmist cried out in the eight Psalm? “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty! You make him to rule over the works of Your hands.” (Psalm 8:3-6a)

 

Oh, we need the Holy Spirit to plant this truth deeply in our souls: God IS love. And I repeat it for emphasis: God is love.

 

Let me try to illustrate that incomprehensible reality it this way: My body has somewhere around 30 TRILLION cells. And every single one of them has an X and Y chromosome. It is that X and Y combination that makes me a male. I can never in ten million years be anything other than a male. My ‘maleness’ is written into my genome.

 

Similarly, every woman in this room and on this planet as two X chromosomes written into all 30 trillion of their cells. It is those two X chromosomes that make you a female. You can never be any other gender than what God made you at your conception.

 

And so, when God tells us He IS love, that means (to use human illustrations to try to explain the Divine) that means ‘love’ is written – so to speak – into God’s very BEING. He can never be anything other than Love. And therefore, it is IMPOSSIBLE for Him to DO anything or to PERMIT anything into our lives unless it is based in His love. That includes His judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah as we find it in Genesis 19.

 

Yet, it many in history, and even today in many pews and pulpits, have believed and believe something quite different about God. Instead of a loving and merciful Father, they perceive God as an austere inquisitor; A no-nonsense Being who always scans the earth, waiting for someone to mess up so He can toss His lightning bolts around.

 

Even the Twelve Disciples had a perverted idea of God. You might remember their question of Jesus when they encountered the man who’d been born blind. They asked Jesus: (John 9:2b-3) “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” 

 

It's the same corrupted idea of God that Job’s three ‘counsellors’ had. Early in the story Eliphaz accused the suffering Job: (Job 4:7-8) “Whoever perished being innocent? Or where were the upright destroyed? According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble harvest it.”

 

Now, let’s pause a moment here to make some clarification. I am NOT saying God does not judge and punish sin. I am NOT saying God will not discipline the sinner – even up to and including death. We see that truth evidenced throughout Holy Scripture, including the passage in 1 Corinthians 11 that I shared with us all last week surrounding the receiving of Holy Communion in an unworthy manner. So, yes, God WILL judge sin. God MUST judge sin. Otherwise, He would not be love itself, nor would He be just. Nor holy.

 

But that might beg the question: HOW does His judgment on sin – even to include death of the sinner – demonstrate love?  Well, perhaps I can illustrate the answer to that question this way: Which of you would stand idly by and let your child be murdered? Would you not do everything in your power – including killing the one who was trying to destroy your child – would you not do everything in your power to protect him or her?  Of course, you would. And why? Because you LOVE your child. And so, God – who IS love – does whatever is necessary to protect His beloved – up to and including the death of those who would destroy them.

 

The idea of God as an inquisitor is as far from Biblical truth as east is from west. The truth of the matter, if we are to fully believe His word, is that God is always, and under all circumstances, compassionate, merciful, and . . .  well, love itself.

 

And after our lives are over, we will fully recognize what we cannot in this life fully understand: Nails did not hold Jesus to that cross. Love did. Consider what would be our inescapable fate if Jesus had become disillusioned by the mob at the foot of the cross. Many of them, only days earlier during His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, many had hailed Him as the coming king. But now they were clamoring for his torturous death.

 

But back to the question: Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?

 

I don’t think anyone here knows what I am about to say because I rarely talk about it. But the theme of my message today makes this a good time to talk about it:

 

I am in pain every waking moment; From the time I get out of bed in the morning to the time I go back to bed, hoping for a good night’s sleep. I’ve had this terrible back pain for many years. And sadly, I know many of you can identify with what I am saying because you also live with constant and chronic pain. And you also know how exhausting on the body and on the spirits constant pain can be.

 

My point? Last week near dinner time, my pain level was hovering around seven out of ten, despite having taken my prescription pain medication. I said to Nancy, “I am so very tired of this pain. I can’t hardly stand it sometimes.”

 

Her face reflected empathy, and she said what I immediately knew was the voice of God. She told me to remember Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh.’ And then she added, “Thorns hurt.”

 

Even as she was speaking, my mind took me to 2 Corinthians (12:8-10) where Paul confessed to his readers: “Concerning this [thorn] I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

 

And from there, the Holy Spirit reminded me of Paul’s comment to the Christians at Philippi. Writing as a prisoner of Rome for the sake of the gospel, he wrote: “I will not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:20b-21)

 

Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Of COURSE, the God who IS love will do right – even when we do not understand the ‘whys’ of what happens around us or to us.

 

By now, most of you know Roger. I don’t think I will ever forget our introduction.  Roger shook my hand and the first words out of his mouth were these: I’m Roger, and I’m dying.”

 

As many of you know, Roger has stage four cancer. He knows his time on earth is short. But because he knows that he is dying, his spirit was open to questions of eternity. We spoke later that afternoon, and I baptized him last month on September 1. And while Roger knows his earthly life has been shortened by a disease spawned in hell itself, he now knows his eternal life is ensured by the blood of Jesus in whom he has placed his faith.

 

Certainly, he’s fighting his cancer. Certainly, he pleads with all of us for our ongoing prayers for strength and encouragement, and of course, healing – if that be God's will for him in this time. But one might ask, did God give Roger cancer? Did God give me chronic back pain? Did God give YOU whatever is the physical trouble with which you suffer? Did God give the apostle Paul that thorn in his flesh?

 

We know God is utterly sovereign over all the affairs of nations and people AND individuals. But whether our illnesses or injuries or whatever – whether such things are God's PASSIVE will for us (as in the case of Job where He permitted Satan to afflict the man), or whether He actively brings such things into our lives – we MUST know, we MUST remember these two eternal and never changing truths:

 

1) God is love. It is impossible for Him to act in any way other than with, in, and through love.

 

2), Our omnipotent and utterly sovereign Father, who controls the end from the beginning, who never blinks, who always acts in love – our God will ALWAYS cause ALL things that come into the lives of those who belong to Him by their baptismal faith – He will always cause all things to work together for good.  Always. At all times, in all situations, and in all circumstances.

 

Isn’t that what He tells us in Paul’s letter to the Christians at Rome: (Romans 8:28) “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

 

And isn’t that what the Psalmist alluded to when he wrote: (Psalm 119:67) “Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep Your word.”  And again in that same chapter (119:75) “I know, O Lord, that Your judgments are righteous, And that in faithfulness You have afflicted me.

 

As I begin to bring this message to a close, I want to remind us of something Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth as he began his second letter. This is the same letter in which Paul told them of his thorn. Listen to what he said in chapter one of this letter: (2 Corinthians 1:3ff)

 

 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God" 

 

Listen also to what he wrote to the Philippians: (Philippians 1:20-21) “I will not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

 

I do not know WHY my back pain gets so bad sometimes I can hardly think of anything else. And yes, I am so grateful to God that I have access to medication that helps mitigate the pain. Nor do I know why YOU have such chronic pain or illnesses that sometimes it’s all you can think about.

 

But will not the Judge of all the earth always do right? And don’t we all want to proclaim as Paul proclaimed: Whether by life or by death, Christ will be glorified in our body. Whether suffering a painful thorn or a debilitating illness – Christ will be exalted. Whether in prosperity or need, we want Christ to be exalted.

 

What is it again He told Paul who asked Him THREE times to remove that thorn? “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”

 

Oh! We have to get that. Our strength in Christ, our fruitfulness for Christ, our FAITHFULNESS for Christ is perfected by our weaknesses because – and ONLY because – of God's grace.

 

Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? It was Job who said – the same Job who in one moment lost his ten children and his fortune – and then shortly thereafter lost his health to excruciating sores all over his body – it was Job who looked toward heaven and shouted: (Job 13:15) “Though He slay me, I will trust in Him.”

 

It was the same Job who also looked at his three phony counsellors and said: “But it is still my consolation, and I rejoice in unsparing pain, that I have not denied the words of the Holy One.” (Job 6:10)

 

That is a message for me. And you. And for all in the pews and the pulpits who sometimes wonder, “Shall not the Judge of the whole earth do right?”

 

Christian!  Stay in the fight. Persevere through the ‘fog of war’ as it is called. Keep seeking the Lord. Keep chasing after the Lord as a child lost in a supermarket calls out for Mommy until she rushes to him, picks him up and embraces him in her arms.

 

The Judge of all the earth is Love itself. And He will always, always do right, at all times, in every circumstance, and in every situation.

 

Hang in there. We WILL understand it all ‘By and By.”