“Living On Tiptoes”

A Sermon Based Upon Romans 8: 18-28.

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Sunday,   October 5^th, 2014

“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. (Rom 8:28 NAU)

Many of us can recall, either from history or from history class, Dr. King standing on the capitol steps in Washington, saying in unforgettable words:  “I have a dream….!   King preached: “Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.   And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."  

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.  

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. 

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

“I have a dream today!” King unforgettably preached, though that dream has still not become a full or complete reality.   But we can say, perhaps, that Dr. King’s dream has become more of a common prayer and uniting hope for us, has it not?   It is closer to a reality today that it was in that day when bombs were still blowing up in the streets of Mississippi and Alabama.   What Dr. King lived and died for, was not in vain, and has had a lasting and irreversible impact on our nation as ‘one people, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all’.  

So much of what we say in our pledges, in our vows, in our sermons, speeches, laws, in our constitution and even in our Bible, is much more of a prayer, a hope and a faith, than it is or has ever been a full reality, isn’t it?   I remember reading somewhere that most of the laws of the book of Leviticus, where never, ever, fully lived out or practice.  God called the people to be holy, but they never were ever able to completely live up to it.  In the same way, our political forefathers had high hopes for our nation, but we have seldom lived up to all those ideals.   So why try, right?  Why keep on keeping on, when we are doomed to miss the mark and fail to see the dream come completely true?   We should just forget it, shouldn’t we?   Or should we keep trying?

In today’s text, Paul also faces the realities of the ‘sufferings of the present time’ (v. 18) and the ‘futility’ of some much that is found in the world and in life.   Since things are so bad, so imperfect, and so corrupt, we should just forget it, right?  Wrong!  No, Paul argues that no matter how bad it seems, hope must never be lost.   He says we must keep on loving, keep on doing good, keep praying, keep hoping and keep working for the future, until that day when the hopes of today become the reality of tomorrow.   

The reason for Paul’s hope is expressed in one of the most quoted, and misquoted verses of the Bible, Romans 8.28, where Paul writes, “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”(Rom 8:28 NAU).   However you come to interpret the meaning of this great verse, you must somehow show that it reminds us that more than anything else, the Christian life is a life that focuses upon hope in God’s promise.  And if you are going to be a Christian and live as a Christian, you must learn to live your life on your tiptoes, waiting, expecting, hoping and praying toward what you should do next and as you wait on what only God can do.  

WE KNOW GOD CAUSES ALL THINGS

Perhaps you’ve heard that expression that many speak in times of suffering, trouble or pain: “I don’t understand, but I believe there is a reason for everything.”   While that is not a biblical word, it is a word of hope for many.    Paul does not put it that way, but he does begin very close to it when he begins by saying that “We know God causes all things….”   

This does not have to mean that God pushes buttons and makes everything happens that happens, but it does mean that God is ultimately responsible for everything that could, might, or does happen.   The ancient Jews believed this.   They even believed that God brings ‘evil’ and ‘evil spirits’ into the world, as well the good spirits.   A Christian today, like Paul, would likely attribute the evil in the world to Satan or to Sin, but even here, we must agree with the ancient Jews, that if God is truly God, then everything that happens is either done by him or allowed by him.”

However, this is exactly where a great problem of faith appears.   If God is God, then why does he allow so much evil, suffering, and pain in the world?   This is one of the most, if not the most difficult question, any theologian or Christian has to think about, if they are honest with their faith.  Now, you can be ‘dishonest’ in your faith by neglecting such a question, but you can’t be honest, transparent, and serious.  Without struggling with things we have difficulty reasoning in faith, is a failure of faith.    Peter Rollins, a young Irish Christian philosopher puts it this way:  “…..embracing the fragility and tensions of life...brings with it the possibility of true joy.” (From  as quoted at www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/99140.Peter_Rollins).

For most of us, the most difficult question put to faith is why?  Why does God allow innocent people to suffer, especially children?   Many people have lost hope in God either through watching a child suffer, or even worst, watching their own child suffer.  When we feel this kind of pain, it can be even worse than feeling the pain of injustice, hurt, or harm that might come to us.  How can a loving God create and cause such a world that can be both so caring, on the one hand, but also so cold and cruel, on the other?    As one person suggested, such a God can seem to be worse than a monster.  Monsters are bad all the time and we can hope to avoid them; but a God who says he is love, but allows such evil to threaten and devour seems more like a cruel despot who only lures us in for the kill.

I’ve told you about how my heart cringed, when in my youth, our interim pastor visited a church member who had just lost their young child in a terrible accident.   Because they were our neighbors, I just happened to be there when that pastor came and I will never forget how he looked those broken-hearted parents in the eyes and coldly advised them to accept the will and purposes of God.”   Even as a young boy of 16, I could not believe that this preacher was telling them to do such a thing.  Even if it this were the only true option (and I don’t think it is), this did not seem to be the right time to tell them they had to get used to it.  In all honesty, I don’t think the pastor meant to hurt them, I just think he was naïve, but such naïveté can be very, very dangerous.   This is why you shouldn’t just give anyone a license to preach.

TO WORK TOGETHER FOR GOOD

So how do we, who believe in a loving God, dare keep faith and hope in God, even when bad things happen?   Can we really say there is a ‘reason for everything’ that happens, or is there a better way to believe and hope?   Perhaps we can now look deeper into the kind of hope is Paul suggesting for us in this very important passage.

Right up front we must observe how Paul does not say that God causes everything that happens exactly as it happens, but he is saying that God causes “all things to work together for good.”  Again, Paul is not saying God causes everything, nor is he saying that everything that happens is ‘for good’.    He is saying that God can work ‘for good’ in ‘all things.’  That is very important difference.   But is it enough difference to keep us believing in God? That’s the real question. 

In you drive to Myrtle Beach, you can go through a town called Mullins S.C.  Several years ago, Effingham Baptist Church, a small little rural church, was burned down in an act of racial violence.   They even had photographs in the USA Today, showing pictures of the pastor and church members in stunned disbelief as they survey the gutted building where they had worshiped.    

After some time, a brand new church building stood where only ashes and ruin had been several months before.  After seeing the article in the USA Today, calls started coming in from around the United States with offers of support.  People from across the country drove in to help physically rebuild the church and to offer emotional and spiritual support to this small congregation.   

While many Christian groups were among the supporters, people from a variety of religious backgrounds participated in the rebuilding, including folks from Jewish, Bahá’í, Muslim, and other faith traditions.  After the building was rebuilt, there was an uplifting rededication service and God’s glory filled the sanctuary when the mass choir sang.  Then the pastor, Rev. Shaw, held up the Holy Bible, the one that had survived the flames even though the whole building was destroyed.   In his closing words, this quiet, humble man challenged the congregation to put aside all of this talk about the "black church" and "white church" because as Christians, we are all the church of Jesus Christ regardless of our race. The joyful celebration in the sanctuary continued after the benediction, as everyone adjourned to the tents outside to partake of the home cooked soul food the church mothers had prepared. (The story is told by Keith Cornfield at goodpreacher.com). 

No one ever figured out who set the fire; there were no suspects; and surprisingly few seemed to be focused on legal justice.  Because the reality was that the love that went into rebuilding Effingham Baptist Church was many times greater than the evil that had caused it to be burned down.  God’s grace was evident in using this incident to increase the faith of the congregation rather than to destroy it.  God’s grace shone brightly in the eleventh hour, when it seemed that all hope was lost, and that evil had triumphed in Effingham.  Even Satan’s grand attack could not destroy God’s Holy Word, held triumphantly in the hands of Reverend Shaw and in the hearts of all gathered there that evening.   Here’s the proof: "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."

Our passage from Romans begins as it speaks of the ‘suffering of the present times’, but it ends by saying that nothing can separate us from God’s love.   This passages promises us that regardless of the trials we face: whether it is the destruction of our churches or homes though fire or natural disaster; the devastation of our bodies through illness; the dissolution of our relationships through death or divorce; or the demoralization of our faith through a life full of disappointments, losses and broken promises; none of these things can ever separate us from God’s love.   No, not tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword. No matter how bleak our circumstances; no matter how hopeless we may feel in the depths of our souls: God promises that He will never leave us or forsake us. And even if it is not until the eleventh hour, God will always be there for us.    This is Paul’s word of faith.    

So, we do not have to say that ‘there is a reason for everything’ to have faith, but we can say that in everything God is at work to bring something good, and even that with God’s help, good can come out of anything, no matter how bad it is in the moment.’  That would be a much closer to what Paul is saying.   

TO THOSE WHO LOVE GOD  

But still, is this enough?  Is it enough to say that God allows suffering, death, destruction to come into this world so that he can bring greater good?   Is that a good enough explanation?  Probably not.   Unless love comes into the picture and into our hearts, no explanation works. 

When Paul says that “God is at work in all things to bring good to those who love God”, it sounds like he means that things will work out for the people who love God, but it won’t work out for the people who don’t.   The point seems to be: ‘you’d better love God’ or you are really in trouble.   

But is this really what God is like?   Is God only working good for those who love him back?   Is that the kind of God we serve?   If it is, what do we do with those passages where it says, “The Father makes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on both the evil and the good” (Mat. 5.25).   What do we do with that text where it says, “Love your enemies….Do good to them” (Matt. 5.24).  Would Jesus tell us to do good that God doesn’t do?   Or what about where it says, “even while we were still sinners, Christ died for us?”   The point of the Bible is that it’s not our love that determines God’s goodness to us, but it God’s love that is the source God’s goodness and ours.   “God is at work in all things to bring good”, period.   But it is only those who ‘love’ God back, who are able to see what is happening, and what will eventually happen.   

One of the worst things in the world is a person who can’t see the possibility of ‘good’ when hard times come.  That kind of person does not know love, probably because they have not known love in their life, and for them, believing in love and believing in the good that is still coming, is practically impossible.   My point is this:  When Paul says, God ‘brings good to those who love God”,  he does not mean God is excluding good from anyone, but he does mean that not everyone is capable of believing and trusting that love.   God is at work, but only those who love God can see it.

Recently I watch the movie, Heaven Is For Real.   I must admit, that I was a bit skeptical of the book and the movie.   Then the Southern Baptist Convention started to condemn the book and the movie, “and all heaven books and movies” and it finally made me want to see it.  
(http://www.abpnews.com/ministry/organizations/item/28841-heaven-tourism-critics-welcome-sbc-resolution).   

In their resolution against the movie and the book,  I agreed that no movie can tell us that “Heaven Is For Real”.   Jesus himself told in a parable, that Abraham refused to send someone back from the dead to tell others about Hell or Heaven, so maybe the SBC got this right, I thought.  Then I saw the movie.   The movie was well done.  It is well acted, not overly pious or religious, and it doesn’t try to prove any certain point.  It tells a story.   It tells how a Pastor and a Church struggled to understand how a little 4 year-old boy came to know about things he really shouldn’t know about; what Jesus looks like, what heaven looks like, what his parents were doing while he was in surgery, and how he met his grandfather pops, met his unborn sister, who died in a miscarriage.   How did this little boy know all these things, he'd never been told?   Even the Father, who is the pastor can’t figure it out and he almost loses his job, wondering and talking about it in his sermons?  He consults a psychologist who thinks it’s all illusions, even if it is mysterious.   His wife was not convinced either, until she heard her 4 year old talking intelligently about his unborn sister.  She never told him anything.  How did he know?   The boy did not die.  But, somehow, it appears that he visited Heaven, when he was near death with a fever.   We are amazed.

When I was sharing about this movie, with one of my friends, who is a retired pastor from First Baptist Mt. Airy, he told me that through the years, he had two different people who claimed to have had near death experiences, where they saw something of heaven, and then came back.  He said that the one thing both these “men” had it common, is that when they after they had those experiences, they were unafraid.  Even when they died later, they faced their own deaths with tremendous courage, fearlessness, without worry and with great peace. 

What are we to make out of it all?  “When you love God,” and I means, when you ‘really love God’ and you know you are loved by God,  you trust that love will work things out.   It is amazing what ‘love’ will show you, teach you, give you and how it will mold both your living and your dying.   

 I’ll never forget how my own cousin's little daughter, Heather, was struck with Cancer at 4 years old, and eventually lost her struggle.   I recall how she suffered terribly, but also heroically and showed so much love and maturity beyond her years.   Maybe, because all she had experienced in life was love, she could not see anything else.  She just could not see anything ‘bad’ in her impending death.   It was very hard on our family to let her go, but it never seemed to be so hard for her.   Through the lenses of love, she had different view .  It was our job, as adults, not to tell her what we saw coming, but to join with her in what she saw, which was far better.   This is the kind of vision of that can come to those who love God, and know they are loved by God.

TO THOSE CALLED BY HIS PURPOSE

But there is one more thing.   God is not just looking for our love, but God is working for our good.  We can believe that?  Love is powerful; more powerful than death.  We must believe that.  But can we believe in a greater purpose?   This is what I think people are referring to, when they incorrectly say, there is a (good) reason for everything.  They want to find a purpose, a meaning even in the worst of life.

While there isn’t, I believe, a good reason for everything thing that happens (like why I dropped my toothbrush, or why I was injured in a car wreck),  I do believe, in the love and grace of God, we can, with God's help, make meaning and purpose out of the worst things that can happen, as well as the good things.   Because God is a 'work in all things" we can know that even though life can be ‘random’, and many things can rightly be called ‘accidents’, the God who has subjected “creation to futility (vanity, KJV) has also "subjected it, in hope” (8.20).  

When my Father was dying with incurable cancer, rapidly spreading in his neck and chest, during those last couple of months, he could barely talk without great effort and pain.  My Dad had been very healthy all of his life, and his suffering was exceptionally hard for him and for us.  My Dad had claimed to have never had a headache in all his 78 years.   On his dying bed I had to ask him, once more: “Dad, have you had a headache yet?”  He answered negatively, so then, I asked him more personally, “How are you?  His answer was a comfort to him, and to me:  “Whatever the will of the Lord is.”  Then he said it again,  as he fought back the pain in his throat,  “Whatever the will of the Lord is.”  I sure my Dad might have spoken a few more times after this, but these are the last words I remember:  "Whatever the will of the LORD is".

When my Father said,  "Whatever the will of the LORD is", he was putting his trust that God's will and purposes will be worked out, even in his dying.  That doesn't mean that everything in life happens the way God wills.   Jesus would not have taught to pray “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” if everything happened as God will's.   That’s also why Paul says God ‘subjected the world to futility (as risk of being nothing)… in hope (that life might mean something)”.   Everything is not as it should be,  nor is it as God wants it to be, but God is still at work.....  As long as love is at work, God is at work, for God is love.   God allows for delays, detours, and disappointments (for him as well as for us).   The cross of Christ continues to show us that even in the darkness, most painful moments of life are not beyond God being able to work out his purposes.  You can keep loving, keep believing, and keep working out your own faith, even with “fear and trembling”, because God is still at work.

When Martin Luther King Jr., said “I have a dream”.  His dream, just like our own dreams in life, only become lasting and enduring, when they link up with God’s eternal dream----a dream that is still being worked out.   Our lives only matter, our suffering only matters, our goals and purposes only matter, when they link up with God's purposes---purposes that are still unfolding.   That's why we should learn live our lives on tiptoes.   In faith, in hope, and in love, both in both pain and in faith, along with Paul, we all stand on tiptoes, to get a glimpse of how God's dream, God's wishes, and God's will, fully and finally, becomes true, both in our living and in our dying.  Amen.

“Lord, help me to live not only for myself, but for you.   Help me to know that my life matters because I find myself living out your purpose in this world that belongs to you.”  AMEN.