Pastor's Sermon
7th Sunday after Pentecost – A (Proper 12) LSB #656
Text – Romans 8:37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. IN ALL THESE THINGS As a young boy carried his baseball & bat into the backyard for a private practice session, he said to himself over & over, “I’m the greatest hitter in the world.” When he got into position, he tossed the ball into the air, swung & missed. “Strike one!” he cried. Again he said, “I’m the greatest hitter in the world.” He swung a second time. “Strike two!” He looked at the ball & then at the bat & reminded himself once more, “I am the greatest hitter in the world!” He tossed the ball into the air, swung with all his might & missed it completely. “Strike three!” Then, without the slightest change of tone in his voice, he confidently stated, “I am the greatest pitcher in the world.” What is it that makes you feel like the greatest in the world? What events in life cause you to feel like a conqueror? It’s only natural that our accomplishments are the things we focus on, or look to, when we’re evaluating our place in the world. In this life, parades are thrown for the greatest team or athlete, never for the losers. If you’re following the news, the good guys don’t seem to be winning anywhere right now. In Michigan news, a man who had survived colon cancer was out jogging & got mauled to death by a couple of renegade dogs. A teenage girl in Armada disappeared while walking her dog. A couple of joggers found her lifeless body only a few hours later. At the Texas border, close to 100,000 children have been sent by their parents to cross illegally into our nation. Our government is totally unprepared to handle the massive surge & the children are suffering for it. Meanwhile, the human traffickers are making loads of money smuggling the children into our country. Across the world, the Russians are shooting down civilian airplanes & firing artillery into the neighboring nation of Ukraine. The Islamic State of Iraq & Syria is threatening to kill Christians unless they leave their home town or convert. The Palestinians have started another war against Israel by murdering three young seminary students in cold blood. While each of us is intimately familiar with the narrow & specific context of our own life struggles, those paragraphs provide a very broad & general context for our world. Yet, as negative as that broad context is, it’s into that setting that the words of St. Paul are addressed to you & to me this morning: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors…” It would be quite a stretch if someone were to say, “That sounds like victory to me.” And yet, the point Paul is making is that it is precisely in our struggles & suffering that we are more than conquerors. Of course, it’s also easy to understand how people might think those are just the words of another crazy religious zealot. And you know that’s exactly what most of the religious people & church leaders of Jesus’ day thought of Him. It’s wise, to be careful about who we write off as a religious ‘loony tune.’ If our heavenly Father is real, & if He has something very counter-cultural to teach us, it would also be wise to actually pay attention to what the Word of God is explaining to us. Do the words of Paul have staying power, or is he just another ‘flash in the pan’? For that, we’re going to dig deeper into Paul’s words & connect the dots for you, as Paul & his original audience would have been able to do. One of Paul’s major concerns is to demonstrate the continuity between the Israel of old & the people of God all the way to the end of time. Adam & Eve, Abraham, Isaac & Jacob all believed in the same Christian faith that you & I do. Jesus Christ has been Savior from before the creation of the world. In verse 33, Paul wrote: “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?” That word ‘elect’ refers to all people who will be saved & it makes no distinctions. Paul made that point clear in his letter to the church at Galatia: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male & female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28 ESV) When it comes to a soul being saved from sin, none of the physical or social distinctions of this life make the least bit of difference. Salvation is the work of God’s Spirit, & all human beings are descendants of the first pair that Yahweh created. Our heavenly Father’s determination to save extends from eternity past, to His present activity, to the glorious future. What this means is that all God’s promises, including His as yet unrealized promise of eternal glory, are equally sure & certain. As our saintly nature exists in Christ all of our Lord’s promises have already been fulfilled, but since we’re currently trapped in time & space, the realization of those promises remains in our future. Death will release us from this limited & broken dimension. Until then, we already aremore than conquerors even as we are still suffering, still being killed all day long, & regarded as nothing more than sheep to be slaughtered. In that context, Jesus’ call to follow Him in discipleship is a radical & totally counter-cultural move. However, given the only alternative to following Jesus is ending up in the fiery furnace, our Savior’s call should be radical. His invitation to eternal life cannot be allowed to appear as just another path among many that all lead to the same place. That is a lie & is totally devoid of reality. Jesus Himself stated, “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Other religions teach that you can & should be saved if you are successful & righteous & good. If you achieve goals such as those, then the gods will look upon you favorably. The question always left unanswered in false religions is this, “How much is enough?” Christianity flips that question on its head by answering, “Even nothing is enough. Simply trust in Jesus.” St. Paul wrote in one of his letters to the church at Corinth, “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions & calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10 ESV) To that we can add, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” When those are the teachings of our Savior, there is never a reason to ask, “How much is enough?” In spite of our own personal struggles & suffering, no matter how much chaos warfare may exist in our nation, or around the world, Jesus’ victory is sure as proven by His resurrection from the dead. And we are conquerors through Jesus’ death & resurrection. It’s in Jesus then that we find life even when surrounded by troubles & trials. Satan, our conscience, & certainly the unbelieving world, will be pointing to our afflictions as proof that God has given up on loving us, or that His love is a figment of our imagination. Yet the Apostle Paul assures us, that even when sin is collapsing our entire world around us, we are still more than conquerors. Christ’s death on the cross made it appear that Jesus was the world’s biggest loser. However, for those who have the life of God’s Spirit within, it’s clear that as Jesus gave His life in order to save us from hell, it was the greatest moment of glory ever to occur in this fallen world. The next such moment will occur when Christ returns to raise our bodies from death & usher us into heaven. In the meantime, the enemies of our salvation will press us hard, with all might & power, to throw away faith & trust in the Son of God as Savior. To begin connecting the final dots for this sermon we’ll look at verses 38-39 of Romans 8: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The verses we’ve been considering, from Romans 8, wrap up the first half of Paul’s letter. One of the ways he demonstrates continuity with the Israel of old is in his connection to the book of the prophet Habakkuk. Paul started there already in chapter 1: “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God into salvation for everyone who believes… For the righteousness of God is being revealed in it from faithfulness into faith, just as it was written, ‘But the righteous person will live from faith.’” That last phrase is a quotation from Habakkuk 2:4 written to God’s people about 600 BC. Habakkuk was actually challenging God for allowing His own people to become so wicked that His Word among them seemed to be paralyzed & unable to accomplish His will, at least as Habakkuk saw it. Yahweh’s answer was that He was going to deal with their faithlessness by allowing the Babylonian invasion & conquest of Judah, the southern kingdom. Habakkuk then complained that God would allow so wicked a nation to swallow up those more righteous than themselves. Chapter 2:4 then, is Yahweh’s answer. He draws a contrast between Babylon & Judah. “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.” (Habakkuk 2:4 ESV) Living by faith is eternal life with God by Yahweh’s promise. So because our Lord was recognizing that some of the people in Judah were still faithful, yet because they were outnumbered by the faithless, they too would have to suffer the exile. However, whether in good times or in bad, in this world, the child of God always lives by faith. And it is certainly true that our heavenly Father disciplines those He loves. Sometimes, what we see as tribulation or distress is our Father’s discipline handed to us out of love, because we had strayed from the path. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors…” Yahweh’s discipline is always meant for good, as Paul wrote: “…we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.” You & I were called by God’s Holy Spirit into the marvelous light of His kingdom. Our salvation rests upon His eternal mercy & grace, as well as His unfailing faithfulness. We have been adopted into Yahweh’s family in order that Jesus might be the firstborn among brothers. What a blessing it is to be more than conquerors, not just when we’re the greatest, but also & even when our suffering is the worst. That means we have nothing to fear. Amen. |
AuthorPastor Dean R. Poellet Archives
February 2025
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