A Sermon Based Upon Romans 8: 26-39.
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Sunday, October 12th, 2014
“….The Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for
words.”
Romans
8:26 (NASB 1995)
There are some things in life that cannot be understood with words.
How do you explain a star? How do
you describe looking up at the Milky Way on a clear night without any clouds or
street lights?
Once, while living in Europe, I got up in the middle of the night in the dead of winter to
observe a comet. It was completely
clear and cold, very cold. When I looked
up I saw more stars in the sky than I had ever experienced in my life. There was more brightness than darkness, and
there was no moon--- nothing but stars.
It was as if everything glistened. There was no darkness at all. The view was beyond words.
But maybe you can remember some other thing in your life that has had a
similar impact upon you? What about a
particular sunset?
A sound in the wind caught your attention.
The rhythmic splashing of the waves on the beach.
The birth of your child.
The smell of grandma’s kitchen.
Your wedding day.
Your first kiss.
Your child’s first day at school.
Some things just cannot be explained, but can only be
remembered and felt, but they cannot be explained. It's profanity to
try.
Here, in today’s text, the apostle Paul is trying to find words to describe
God's love. Like the Spirit who speaks in a language “too deep for words” (v. 26), the love God reveals to us can't be explained, but can only be experienced. Love has a language all it's own, which catches us up in the wonder, grandeur and
glory of God.
WHAT CAN WE SAY TO THESE THINGS
The bottom line for Paul in speaking of God’s love is that nothing, which also includes nowhere we can be or no one who is against us—no thing, no person, and no place, can
ever separate us from God’s love. And
when Paul says nothing, he means it. Nothing
that ever happens, nothing that God has created, nor anything that we could
ever imagine — real or unreal, can ever separate us from God’s love. Nothing,
Neinte, Nada, Nichts!
And even though Paul does not specifically say it this includes, even we ourselves.
We also can’t fully separate ourselves from God’s love either. For
you see, most often, the greatest threat
to knowing and living in God’s love is not what happens to us, but how we
ourselves deal with, interpret or perceive what happens. The big ‘who’ against us, the “who’,
who will most often condemn us, and ‘who’
we always must conquer, can be our own feelings, our own ideas, or our own
thinking. This is why Paul prefaces
what he says in this text by asking us to ask ourselves: “WHAT THEN DO WE SAY
TO THESE THINGS?” (v.31).
Haven’t we all known people who have taken
great pains to do everything in their power to separate themselves from love? These are the kinds of people who will avoid
church, because they are afraid they might be changed. These are the ones who put up a rough,
gruff, hard exterior, to keep other people at a distance, because they fear love
might just enter their hearts. (We’ve
probably done it too). They might either
refuse to work for love, or they might even work against God’s love coming into
the world, into a life, or against love coming into the new age that is still coming,
refusing to let God have his way, or only letting God’s way, be our own way (or the highway). But again, with amazement in his voice, Paul
says that no matter what we do, no matter what we think, we cannot be separated from God’s love.
Love must win, even if we don’t understand this at first. Love will win, even if this world is now
standing against it. This is what Paul
means, when he says the “Spirit helps us
in our weakness” and even “intercedes
for us”. God’s love will and must
win, that is, if we want it to---if we
don’t refuse it within ourselves. Even
when our actions, or events, or people in the world, bring us in direct
opposition with God and his love, God can bring good out of bad
situations---with only one qualification---when
we love him as he loves us. For you
see, God’s love only knows one boundary---the line we ourselves tell love not
to cross. Love cannot violate our space, unless it is freely received. It can't force it's way or it can’t remain love.
Paul found out first hand, what it
means to stand against love, but then to only to fully receive it. He too did not know what love was, at first. He was trying very hard to kill and eradicate
the Christians who preached, taught, and lived God’s love. He tried to stop love from spreading around
in the world, but then love caught up with him.
Paul was not caught, convicted, or forever criticized for his hate, but
Paul was caught by loved himself. In one
amazing moment on the Damascus Road, the Lord Jesus confronted Paul (then Saul),
reminding him of God’s love, asking him to choose love, saying “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9. 5). And like Paul, we too can be, the greatest threat to God’s love in our lives. But when Paul choose love, and to love, instead of choosing hate, choosing to give, instead of taking, and to choose to go and obey (Acts 9.6) instead of staying back, it was this unspeakable love overwhelmed him, gifted him, and called him to love God, to preach love, and to love others, which included forgiving
and loving himself, as God loved him.
KNOWING WE ARE LOVED (no
matter what where, or who)
Maybe that’s the hardest thing to do; to really love ourselves as God loves
us. Maybe the most threatening evil in
the world is not what’s out there, outside of us, or over there, away from us, but
maybe it’s right here in what’s within us, or close by us. Perhaps when Paul asks, “Who
is to condemn us?” (v. 35) and
also asks, “What do we say to these things?” he recognizes that the greatest
threat to any of us are the negative thoughts we have within ourselves?
This was certainly true for comedian Robin Williams, wasn’t it? Who knows what clinical depression was doing
to his mind and heart? Who knows what
kind of negative thoughts or irrational fears were going through his mind when
he learned he had disease that he could not conquer? Maybe he was afraid people would not love
him? Maybe he was afraid that his life no
longer mattered? Maybe he just couldn’t
think at all and everything went dark? Even
though you should never blame a person for having a mental illness, that does
not take away that person’s need for love, or that person’s responsibility to
find and receive love.
In the week right after Robin William’s suicide, Time Magazine Online
linked me to a very interesting article written on a religious website, called
Patheos. The article caught my attention
because it was entitled, “Christianity
Can’t Replace My Zoloft!” It was
written by a Christian named Brandon Robertson, who admitted that he suffered
with depression and was being treated with medicine, even though he was a
Christian. Some of the things Brandon
shared in that article are important. He
said he was first prescribed meds for his depression his freshman year in
college. Brandon became a Christian at
age 12, and was told that Jesus would free him of his anxiety, depression, and
suicidal thoughts, but it didn’t work. What people were telling him even brought him more anxiety and more
depression. Because of well
meaning, but uniformed believers, his problem had become not only a mental problem, but
was also a becoming a religious one.
But as Brandon studied more psychology and theology, he learned
something that has been liberating for him.
He said, “Jesus hasn’t taken away his need for Zoloft “ and he has learned
that "none of us will ever find full satisfaction or wholeness in this
life." He came to realize that that "Jesus didn’t come to make us happy nor to give us a better quality of life, nor
to meet all our needs. No, Jesus came
to love us as we are, to give us a mission that includes our gifts and our
brokenness." Sometimes, Brandon admits, "it is his illness, his sickness, his needs and his struggle that enables him to
have a message and a mission in the world, not only to learn to cope himself,
but to help others grow and cope as well." He said, "the message of the cross is not to offer us comfort and satisfaction,
but it is to show us love, amplified in suffering, which calls us to join, not
run from, the pain in this world. " Brandon concludes, “There
isn’t a person in the world who has ‘perfect peace’ or ‘total wholeness’ and
that’s a good thing.” We would not
care at all, if we didn’t all (even Christians) have problems like everyone
else. (http://time.com/3111329/christianity-zoloft/).
Brandon’s discoveries are certainly not answers that will enable a
mega-church to grow, but they are answers that will grow a faithful and true
church, reminding you and me, that no matter where you are, no matter how much you
are struggling or how much you are suffering in this moment, that God is not
against you, and God has not abandoned you.
For when Paul says that “nothing
will separate him from God’s love”, he didn’t say this because he avoided
all these threats, but he was suffering from them, right in that very
moment. For you see, in the Bible, as in real life, the Kingdom is never fully here, but is always
coming, and never fully comes. Do you
know why? We live in a very imperfect,
fragile, and incomplete world, and we are not yet who, what or where we one day
will be. When we still suffer and hurt,
even after coming to know Christ, we must not think for one moment that God is
against us. We must affirm love and we
must affirm life, no matter what we are going through.
KNOWING HOW TO LOVE (no matter
what, where or who)
Do you know why it is some important to affirm that we are loved? Listen to the one more important thing
Brandon Robertson said about Jesus and Zoloft.
“The truth is, I will probably
always need my Zoloft. I am not limiting God’s power to heal me,
but I’m admitting that maybe ‘healing’ would be the worst thing God could do.”
Do you know what would make somebody who struggles with an illness say a
thing like that? Brandon is saying that
when you know that you are loved, no matter what you are going through, this is
where you also learn to know how to love others, no matter what they are going
through.
Brandon continues: “It’s in
the falleness of this world, that God is most present. It’s in
our suffering that our motivation to work for the kingdom is fueled. It’s in
our brokenness that faith give us hope for a better day. And, perhaps most importantly, for the sake
of love, I might add, that it’s also in our own loneliness, that we learn how
to love and serve God and to love and serve others. Only when we truly know how much we are
loved, no matter what happens to us, will we be able to love and keep on loving,
no matter what comes to us in life.
Most of you recall how upset Real Estate Tycoon Donald Trump was when he
heard the Samaritan Purse care workers infected with the Ebola Virus were
coming to back to the U.S. for treatment.
Just before their return he sent out series of panicky tweets. July 31:
“Ebola patient will be brought to the U.S. in a few days … KEEP THEM OUT OF
HERE!” Aug. 1: “Stop the EBOLA patients from entering the U.S.” Later on Aug.
1: “The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back. People that go to far
away places to help out are great—but must suffer the consequences!”
In response to Donald Trump and the Angst over helping the American Health
Care workers, Pennsylvania Baptist
pastor John Piper, composed a poem inspired
positively by the Samaritan’s Purse workers (and their love) and negatively by
Donald Trump (who had little love in his heart for anyone but himself). The poem is called, Ebola, Summer 2014:
Today a thousand dead. And
more To die. A common ache, like
flu,
Then nausea, a
fever-soar, A hopeless clinic
interview: “There’s nothing we can
do.”
The bleeding has no bias.
These: A child, a chief, a friend, a
nurse, Liberian, and Leonese, From Guinea, Texas, taste the curse— And kindness, from the Purse.
Samaritans, six thousand miles
From home and care, subdue their fears,
And wonder if a sneeze
defiles, Or if a healthy fluid
clears The curse. Perhaps their
tears.
But now two treasured ones,
struck down, Contagious still with death—and love—Fly back to us, our joy, our
crown, A touch of grace, a gentle
dove, Yet through a plastic glove.
While in our land we see
today Another virus spreading,
dumped, More deadly, in the soul. They say,
“Why bring them home?” Though
you be stumped,
No comments :
Post a Comment