A Sermon Based Upon Romans 5: 1-11.
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Sunday, September 7th, 2014
…..Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace
with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, (Rom 5:1 NRS)
The story goes that Batman and Robin decided to go camping. They
set up their tent and are asleep. A couple of hours later,
Batman wakes his faithful friend. "Robin, look up at the sky and
tell me what you see."
Robin, who is
used to these midnight lessons, replies, "I see millions of
stars."
"What does that tell you?" asks Batman.
Robin ponders
for a minute. Astronomically speaking, it tells me that there are millions of
galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me that
Saturn is in Leo. Chronologically, it appears to be approximately a quarter
past three. Theologically, it's evident that God is all-powerful and we are
small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful
day tomorrow.
What does it
tell you, Batman?"
Batman is
silent for a moment, then speaks: "Robin, you're an idiot, it
means somebody stole our tent while we were sleeping.”
We don’t always see the most obvious.
Sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees. The truth can be as plain as the nose on our
face, but we still can’t see it. And it
may not even be our fault. Who’s to
blame for not being able to see the nose on your own face? But as this funny joke about Batman and Robin
joke can remind us, we can be misled and deluded by many things, even important
things, so that we fail to know what is most important of all.
God’s peace is one of those ‘most important’ things we must know. Along with God’s grace, it is one of the
foundational realities which enables living the Christian Life. When the apostle Paul began his letters, his
greeting was always two-fold: “Grace to you and peace from God…”
(Rom. 1.7; 1 Cor. 1.3; 2 Cor. 1.2; Gal 1.3; Eph. 1.2; Phil. 1.2; Col. 1.2; 1
Thess. 1.1; etc). I find it rather
strange, that in my many books of theology found in my personal library, many
of which write about the Christian life, seldom is this simple word ‘peace’
mentioned in any important way. There
are a couple of exceptions, like a book on Christian Ethics (By Stanley
Hauwerwas) entitled, “The Peaceable
Kingdom” and a book entiled, “Just Peacemaking” (by Glenn Stassen). In them you can find all kinds of important
words like grace, justification, propitiation, and reconciliation, but seldom
do you see any direct mention or direct discussion of the kind of “peace” that only comes “from God”. Perhaps it is taken for granted, but can we
live the life God has called us to by taking God’s peace for granted?
DON’T TAKE PEACE FOR GRANTED
Paul is writing to Christians in Rome, but he does not take either ‘grace’
or ‘peace’ for granted. He starts his
letter with a wish for both: “Grace to
you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1.7).
Our text from Romans 5 is the fourth time Paul mentions ‘peace’ in this
letter, but it is not the last. He will
mention peace 6 more times in this one letter.
Paul does not take God’s peace for granted.
But we can, and we do. We do not
always realize the importance of having peace until we are at war. When the Soviet Union quickly went to war
with Afghanistan, it was a war in the mountains and hills that nearly broke the
mighty Soviet army, who limped home in defeat.
When the United States went quickly to war in Iraq, we won the war
quickly, but the cost of winning that war so quickly keep coming in, as Iraq is
even more fractured and dangerous today, than it was when the thought there
were weapons of mass destruction. If
you recall, Jesus himself once said before you go to battle, you’d better
‘count the cost’. The cost of losing the
‘peace’ can be a terribly great cost.
We dare not take peace for granted.
This is even more important when we consider what it means to have ‘peace with God’. When Paul speaks of having ‘peace with
God’ he is speaking about a peace God makes possible ‘through’ Jesus by giving
us ‘access’ to God’s ‘grace.’
Yet, even though God gives us access to his grace and peace, does not
mean we are always able to access, ‘obtain’ or ‘stand’ in it, to use Paul’s own
language. God’s peace can be right in
front of us, but we can’t still fail to seize it or realize it in our own
lives. As Paul says later, we must ‘pursue what makes peace’ (Rm. 14.19) so
that ‘the way of peace’ doesn’t
remain ‘unknown’ to us (Rm. 3.17).
In the news recently, came the unsurprising revelation that the very
popular Robin Thicke and his wife, Paula Patton are getting a divorce. Are you surprise? Known for making dirty music videos with nude
women, dancing obscenely with Miley Cyrus, and publically cheating on his wife,
not seeing his wife for four months, is it any wonder? It is believed that Thicke has released a
song “Get Her Back” that openly hints he’s been trying to win his wife back. He said in an interview on NBC and elsewhere,
that his cheating is not the real reason his wife is leaving: “There’s a lot of different reasons, there
isn’t just one. There’s a long list….I
changed, and I got a little too selfish, a little too greedy, and a little too
full of myself.” (http://www.kpopstarz.com/articles/98530/20140707/robin-thicke-divorce.htm) A televised interview was even
more revealing when asked about all those terrible things his wife and others are
saying about him, his answer was: “It’s worst that that! I am those things and even worse”.
You can take your life for granted, you can take love for granted, and you
can take the peace you have in your heart, life and soul for granted too. Just a month or so ago, a deputy from Yadkin
County Sheriff’s department wanted to meet me at church to inform us about some
new crime prevention resources. While we
were talking, she shared about a book she’d read entitled “The Quiet
Room”. It’s a true story about a young
woman who one day, while finishing up summer camp as a counselor, started
hearing voices in her head and was eventually was diagnosed with
Schizophrenia. Lori Schiller tells that one night, while she
was feeling a little confused over a boy she’d like at camp, suddenly a sense
of darkness came over her and she hear a voice booming in the night: “You must die! You will die!” The voice in her head would not let up. She got up out of bed and started running,
running, and even jumping for hours, even until the sun rose. The voices cursed her, calling her names and
telling her she was worthless.
Eventually she and voices collapsed in exhaustion. But they didn’t go away. The came to her again and again. The ‘peace of mind’ she once was had was
gone. It took her years of medical
treatment to tame the voices that once ruined her peace (From Lori Schiller and Amanda
Bennett, The Quiet Room, Warner Books, 1996, pp 4-6).
LASTING PEACE ONLY COMES FROM
GOD
While we should never take ‘peace of heart’ or ‘peace of mind’ for granted,
for we never know when we might lose it, there are many different ways to think
about the meaning peace. If you grew up like I did, during the days of
the Vietnam War, you’ll recall all kinds of confusion about “peace” as many
protested that war violently, others burned their draft cards, and many, even
the those who supported the war, struggled with whether or war is ever a ‘just’
cause. A major ‘peace movement’ grew
out of that war, which was for some an excuse to be anti-government, but for
others it was a real desire to ‘Give Peace a Chance’, as John Lennon sang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_Peace_a_Chance).
Peace is the desire of most, but just what kind of peace, and at what
cost? Sometimes we forget that the
political reason Jesus was crucified under roman authority was for the sake of
keeping the ‘peace’ (Matt. 27.24). The Roman Peace was known as the Pax Romana, and lasted for over 200
years, beginning at the time of Augustus (27 BC) to the death of Marcus
Aurelius (180 AD). If it had not been
for ‘miraculous’ long period of peace, the apostle Paul would not have had the
Roman roads to travel upon to share the good news. But do you know how this so called ‘peace’
was won? It was a result of imperial
might and muscle, violence, bloodshed, and putting the fear of spear into the
hearts of people. Surely that is the
way to one kind of peace, “Peace Through Strength” as one American president
has called it. But that kind of ‘peace’
is not the dream of the Bible, nor is it the lasting peace Paul means.
The Biblical word for peace has different meanings too. The Old Testament word, “Shalom” means
wholeness, completeness, and returning to the ideal state of the world as God
created it to be. Even the most
religious city in the world, Jerusalem,
is named after this desire for peace.
The Hebrew name Jerusalem is made of two Hebrew words: Shalom
(Salem) or peace, and Jeru (to rain down), which refers to
a place where God’s peace rains down. As
you can tell by reading the newpaper, this is wishful thinking, because
Jerusalem today is one of the most conflicted and threatened places on the face
of the earth. Is God’s peace that
elusive?
When Paul writes “we have peace with
God” he is not talking about the same kind of peace that remains elusive,
abstract, or impossible in the world.
This is not the kind of peace that the world never has, but this is kind
of peace that only comes from God. Even
the word the New Testament uses, eirene
(used as a common Greek name today, Irene), does not simply mean the cessation
of conflict, fighting or war, but it means the presence of something that
brings or gives peace no matter what is going on. This is why Jesus was able to say to his
disciples: “My peace I give to you… not
as the world gives . Don’t let your
hearts be troubled” (Jn. 14.27).
God’s peace comes as a gift from God no matter the situation we may find
ourselves in.
God’s peace is different. The Christian Life is built upon a different
kind of ‘peace’ than the world gives and then quickly may take away. A ‘lasting peace’ is the kind of peace that
can only come from God. A great example
of the difference of God’s peace comes right from our text in Paul’s own
words. When Paul speaks of having
‘peace’ in the same breath of saying that he can even ‘boast in our sufferings’ because he knows that ‘suffering produces
endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and
(that) hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our
hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5); when Paul talks like this
you know immediately that he is talking about an entirely ‘different’ kind of
peace than the world gives.
God’s
peace works differently. The
other thing we can quickly observe about God’s peace is how it works
differently, not through strength, but through God’s love. “For
while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly….God
proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for
us….” (Rom. 5:6,8). The peace of God is different because it is
based upon a whole different way of looking at life, looking at the world, and
looking at us. It is a peace that is
based upon what God has done to show his love to the world, and to us, even
while we were his ‘enemies” (5:10)’.
That is how God’s love is different and works differently than any other
kind of peace. In the Christian
understanding of ‘peace’ true, enduring peace comes only from God,
because it is a peace that is grounded upon God’s loving forgiveness revealed
through “our Lord Jesus Christ’ (5:11).
OUR PEACE IS KNOWING GOD’S
PEACE
One of my favorite religious sayings is said to have come from Laotse, who was perhaps Buddha’s
teacher, or maybe even was The Buddha. The
saying goes:
If there is to be peace
in the world, there must be peace in the nations.
If there is to
be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace
in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be
peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home.
If there is to be
peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart.
I never think about peace without thinking about this wonderful saying,
but there is something missing in it. Did
you catch it? It doesn’t tell us where ‘peace
in the heart’ comes from? For a Christian the only source for the peace the
human heart desperately needs, and peace that the home, the community, the
cities, the nation, and the world needs, is the ‘peace’ that comes from God’s
heart.
How do we get to the peace that is in God’s heart? This is what the ‘cross’ is about. This is what makes Christianity different
than any other religious faith. The
cross of Jesus Christ reveals to us the peace that is in the very heart of God.
This is why, when Paul talks about
peace, he must speak about Jesus dying ‘for us’ on the cross. Three times, at the end of this text as Paul
explains ‘having peace with God (5.1), using the word ‘reconciliation’
(5.10, 11). He is reminding us again
that ‘while we were (still) enemies, we were reconciled to God
through the death of his Son’ (5,10).
This means that the source of our peace does not come from our hearts,
but it comes from God’s heart: “In Christ, God was reconciling the world
unto himself, not counting their trespasses against them (2 Cor.
5.19). When God ‘sends his Son into the world’
it is not to ‘condemn the world’ (John 3.17), because when God
shows us his heart and the heart of everything, it is that “God so loved the
world that he gave his only son….” (Jn. 3.16). The
source of our peace comes from what God does for us, when he gave us his
Son.
How does God’s peace with us, become our peace with God? God’s
love ‘has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit…given
to us’ (5.5), says Paul. Because
Christ died for us even while we were sinners (5.8), Paul says, “we will be saved through him
from the wrath of God….” (5.9)….we “will be saved by his life”
(5.10)…”But more than that, Paul concludes,
“we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we
have NOW received reconciliation” (5.11).
If you want peace in your heart today, right now, will you take God’s
heart of reconciliation into your own heart?
A Jewish book called Wisdom says, “…the peoples saw and did not
understand, or take such a thing to heart, that God’s grace and mercy are with
his elect, and that he watches over his holy ones” (Wisdom 4.14). Will you understand what the peoples did not
understand? Will you take ‘such a thing
to heart’? Without knowing God’s heart
of peace, we can’t be at peace. But
because though Jesus, God reveals his heart and ‘proves’ that He is at
peace with us, we can ‘have peace with God’, we can live at peace in ourselves, and we can
be at peace with each other.
Rock guitarist Jim Hendrix led a promiscuous life, indulging in drugs
and behaving outrageously on and off the stage. At the
end of a concert in 1970, Jim smashed his guitar. According to Robert McGee and Donald Sapaugh
in “Search for Peace”, the audience screamed and applauded, but suddenly the
frenzied applause stopped. Jim had fallen on his knees and was staying in that
position motionless. He broke the stillness by asking, “If you know real
peace, I want to visit with you backstage.” But apparently nobody responded
to his startling invitation. Several days later, he died from an overdose of
drugs. Peace, real peace eluded Jim Hendrix.
But
"God can take life's broken pieces
and gives us unbroken peace"
(Wilbert Gough). Horatio Spafford found
out. He was a real estate baron and an extremely wealthy man. He was a
tremendous Christian and a close friend of Dwight L. Moody. He lived in Chicago, and during the Chicago fire of 1871 he lost his business. In
that fire his only son was killed. It seemed like his life was covered by a
canopy of dark clouds.
His
wife was under tremendous stress, and so he sent her and their four daughters
to England, which was her home
country, for a vacation. He told them he would join them two weeks later. He
put his wife and four daughters on a ship to send them across the ocean. But as they were in sight of land on the
other side, a terrible storm hit, and all four of Spafford's daughters
drowned. Only his wife survived. She sent a telegram to him with these two
words: "Saved alone."
With
the heaviest of hearts, Horatio Spafford got
on that ship, made his way across England,
got his wife; got on board the same ship to come back. On the way back he asked
the captain to show him the spot where that ship went under and his daughters
drowned. When the captain got to that spot and showed it to him, he went out on
deck and wrote these words:
When peace like a river attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows
roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has
taught me to say, It is well, it is well
with my soul.
(As
quoted from a sermon by James Merritt, “How
to Keep Your Head When Others Lose Theirs”).
Spafford could only have written that song because he knew the Prince of peace, the Lord Jesus Christ. In contrast to Jimi Hendrix, through Jesus Spafford knew that God was not against him, even when fires came and the storms howled. Through Jesus, Spafford knew God’s heart and could face those difficult moments and the future. Through Jesus, Spafford was able to have peace because even when he did not feel peace, he still had “God’s peace” in his heart. Oh, the peace I find in Jesus
If
you want peace, real peace, eternal peace, everlasting peace, you can come to the
Prince of peace, the Lord
Jesus Christ and you can give his ‘peace a chance’. He’s
still the one who knows and shows God’s heart.
Amen.
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