This sermon is adapted from Alan Storey's book "Foundations for Discipleship".
Last Week
Last week we looked at the question: "How are we saved?"
Paul sums it up beautifully in Ephesians chapter 2:
"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast."
- Ephesians 2:8-9
We see grace in creation – we are created for good. We see grace in the law that shows us how we should live. We see grace in Jesus – God's boundless love revealed to us. We see grace in the cross; because of his boundless love Jesus is rejected by humanity. We see grace in the resurrection – in spite of our rejection of him, God raises him up to continue loving us.
Faith is simply saying yes to what God has done for us. Less than the blinking of an eye, the turning of our heads, or lifting a feather – a simple Yes – to what God has done. As we receive the gift offered to us.
In Charles Wesley's hymn Where shall my wondering soul begin? He writes:
"Believe: and all your guilt's forgiven,
Only believe – and yours is heaven."
Only believe – and yours is heaven."
- Charles Wesley
This Week
This week we ask, having accepted the free gift of God's grace:
What are we saved from?
What are we saved for?
What are we saved from?
Recognition:
Part of the grace which God gives us, in which we see the need to turn to him and ask for help, is the reality of the world in which we live.
The reality that we are unfortunately not all we think we should be, and we are not all that we can be.
We see this in our marriages, we want to be good husbands and wives, but we often mess up – do and say the wrong things. (Wives tell me it's the husbands, and husbands say it is the wives.)
We see it in our relationship to our children and parents – our love, as well intentioned as it is – is never as perfect as we would like it to be.
The problem goes on and on.
Paul writes words that express our frustration with the human condition:
"For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do —this I keep on doing."
- Romans 7:18-19
We are good enough to know what we should do, but for some reason we keep on doing that which we shouldn't.
Paul goes on to say:
"Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."
- Romans 7:20
It is as if a different personality is at work in us – forcing us to do things we do not want to do.
The problem is, the actions that we do that we know we shouldn't, seldom or never affect only us. They are connected breaking open into the world around us leaving a network of broken relationships, resentment, hurt, injustice, beginning a cycle that ends in destruction.
And the temptations to do them are powerful.
In the Genesis story, after sin has entered the world, the LORD warns Cain:
"But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door, it desires to have you, but you must rule over it."
- Genesis 4:7
* * *
I guess – part of our problem is the fact that we think we have made a house pet of this beast that seeks to destroy us. We have become so familiar with it that we no longer recognise it for what it is, instead of us taming it, it has tamed us.
* * *
It sneaks into our lives…
St Augustine writes:
"My sin was all the more incurable because I thought I was not a sinner."
- St Augustine
We live with it, but we're so used to it that we can not imagine things being different in any way.
We fool ourselves with sin – measuring ourselves against each other. "Well I'm not much worse than so and so."
We deceive ourselves saying: "It wasn't me, it was my sinful nature that did it."
Effects:
The effects of this sin are disastrous.
Sin is never personal.
My actions always effect others.
Even some of the smallest things I do, the tiniest decisions I make leave a legacy for the world in which we live.
The things that we do, that create heaven on earth for us, sometimes create hell on earth for others.
Ultimately sin divides us, breaks us up.
(Brian Gaybba) outlines four major areas in which sin divides us.
God
It divides us from God. In the first story, the story of Adam and Eve, when Adam and Eve have sinned they are ashamed and they hide from God.
Alan Storey writes:
"In our relationship with God, trust and joy are replaced by fear and suspicion."
- Alan Storey
When we separate ourselves from God we begin to lose sight of who we are and who we can be.
Each Other
It is quite obvious that our sin creates distrust and breaks down the intimacy that we should be able to have with each other. Our relationships are full of suspicion. We can trust no one – sin has divided us.
Inwardly
The Psalmist writes:
"While I kept silent,
my bones wasted away…"
my bones wasted away…"
- Psalm 32:3
Something gets unsettled within us. We begin to live with a kind of angry resentment, the torment of guilt. The distress of knowing that we are not quite who or what we should be.
Environmentally
Sin divides us from our environment, and I'm not just talking about ecology here. I am talking about our working environments – our sin is never personal, it always leaves a legacy with which we will have to deal at some point.
We are seeing the results of that sin in our ecology – our selfish use of energy and resources is dirtying our planet – to the point that many suffer because they have no water to drink. It is either too polluted or just not there…
Conclusion
Jesus saves us, by grace, from these divisions, as through the cross he reconciles us to God, to each other, to ourselves and to the environment in which we live.
What are we saved for?
As he entrusts us with his message and action of reconciliation to the world, Paul writes, speaking of how Jesus reunites us with God:
"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation."
- 2 Corinthians 5:18
Just as the sin which we were subject to once divided us, now that we are saved from it, we are to take up the job of being Jesus' disciples.
We are saved in order to serve – God does not just meet our needs, but uses us to meet the needs of others.
We are saved to reconcile:
People to God
Instead of suspicion and fear – Adam and Eve hiding in the garden, John writes:
"This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the Day of Judgment"
– 1 John 4:18
There is no longer that fear and suspicion between people and God, but a simple and joyful trust, that looks forward to God's day of justice because we are in a loving relationship with him.
People to People
One thing that happened in the Early Church was the clash of cultures, Jews were brought into religious communities with gentiles. The one group didn't like the other group very much, and here they were in church together, Paul writes:
"For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility"
- Ephesians 2:14
In Christ the most unlikely people are brought together.
People to themselves
In Christ we are set free to be the people we were created to be. I spoke last week of how we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Think of how Jesus sets people free from their diseases, from possession so that they can be themselves.
People to the environment
"For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross."
- Colossians 1:19-20
God reconciles "all things" to himself. Our whole environment, we are so good at thinking of ourselves as isolated individuals that we have forgotten we were created for community, as stewards of the Earth. We live in relationship, and God restores our relationships to each other, to him and to the world.
Conclusion
We are saved from sin. Sin is that which seems like a living personality in us, a beast that attacks us. It is our ability to do what we shouldn't do – when we know what we should.
Sin has consequences: It divides – dividing people from God, from each other, from themselves, and from the world in which they live.
Jesus' saving us unites us, restores us and makes us whole – uniting us with God, with each other, with ourselves, and with the world in which we live.
When we come to appreciate the reality of our sinfulness and the consequences to which that will lead. We realise the fact that we are drowning and need someone to save us.
That salvation is offered to us as a gift – it is only up to us to say yes to that gift.
And then we will begin to see the Kingdom of God in this place.
AMEN
No comments:
Post a Comment