“What Then Shall We Say to This?” New Years Eve 2014 Holy Communion Romans 8:31-­‐39 Are you better off tonight than you were 365 days ago? To answer this
question, you may need to consult with several people. Your accountant would be able to help you determine your current
financial condition, compared with what it was at this time last year. By
simple comparison, you would know whether your net worth had increased
or decreased. Your doctor would be your best resource to determine your physical
condition. By performing a thorough examination, your doctor could tell you
the general condition of your heart and circulatory system, lungs and
respiratory system, stomach and digestive system, and the rest of your bodily
organs and functions. Through your annual performance evaluation, your boss would tell
you how you have performed at work. You will learn whether you are a
valued employee or if your employment future is on shaky ground. You
might be told certain improvements must be made to keep your job. Some of you sitting here this evening may not have evaluated the past
year. Yet, there is a sense within you regarding where you are tonight
1 compared with one year ago. Some of you certainly feel good about this past
year. Others are ambivalent. Still others are concerned. And some are on the
verge of despair personally, nationally, and even cosmically. But consider these amazing statements. Some people whom the
general public would call “dirt poor” feel quite good about themselves. They
are satisfied with life. Some individuals with terminal medical conditions or
chronic illnesses feel positive about the past year as well as the future. Some
of those who did not receive a job promotion or salary increase believe they
have the best job in the world. Some people who are suffering for the
Gospel under persecution are the most joyful of all, because… well that is
where the Triune God comes in. As we end this year and begin the new, we might want to evaluate our
lives based on net worth, health condition, position at work, or some other
earthly criteria. Our text, Romans 8:31-39 however, offers another method
for evaluation: whence comes your confidence, your faith and hope.
Whence comes your ability to face the suffering of this world?
About the only time I play golf is when we visit with my family each
year. My brother Dennis, brother-in-law Jack, nephew Jon and son Nate and
I try to play at least as often as we can. On many occasions, I will stride up
to the tee off and flop one down ten yards. Knowing I had not played for
2 some time, my sniggering relatives offer me a word of advice: “Lee, until
you build up your confidence, why don’t you drive with an iron at first?” I
responded last time, “I have all the confidence in the world. What I lack is
ability.”
Confidence can be a very good thing. It can also be a millstone around
one’s neck. Being confident simply is not enough. The word “confidence”
reminds us that there are “con artists” who are very powerful deceivers and
dissemblers in our world. They occupy thrones and powerful perches. The
crucial issue is in whom, or in what, is my confidence. Ill-founded
confidence is deadly. Well-founded confidence is proper and good. Jesus
significantly asked on one occasion, “When the Son of Man comes will he
find faith?” Jesus was offering Himself with this question as the answer to
in whom, or in what!
Some Christians have no confidence at all, believing that with one
slip, one sin, they are out of the faith. This was Martin Luther as a monk,
terrified that the righteous God of Law, the demander was “right” in
condemning sinners, and he could not have fear, love and trust in such a
God. Agonizing their way through life, like Luther they hope no sin has
gone unnoticed and unconfessed; if so, they fear they will not get to heaven.
These Christians desperately need the righteousness of God of which Paul
3 speaks in Romans 8:31-39 based not on performance or inner attitude,
performance or even once being sorry for sin, but upon faith alone in the
righteousness given in Jesus Christ.
Other Christians have great confidence but in the wrong thing or
person or power. The lyrics of a popular song say something like: “I am
invincible …” Or there are all the great “Rocky songs.” These songwriters
have far too much confidence—in themselves. The writers should spend
some time in Romans 7 and 8 where the fallibility of the Christian is in
view. When the reality of Romans 7:24 settles in on the believer, selfconfidence is seen to be both foolish and sinful. Wretched man that I am!
Who will deliver me from this body of death? I have come to appreciate my
pastor Philip Fry who would always use this text to remind his hearers of the
deepest of all needs and longings.
In our text, Paul gives us every reason to be confident, not in
ourselves—or anything, person or power in all creation, but in our salvation
and in the sovereign God who is accomplishing it along with a new creation.
Heed well Paul’s words here. They offer hope and confidence in the midst of
a fallen world. To everyone who is in Christ by faith, they are words of
comfort and reassurance. Creation, time, and we all are longing for our
4 redemption in Christ Jesus, so we cry for the Spirit to pour Jesus into our
time and space.
Let God speak through His word—Law and Gospel. Says St. Paul:
The Law will guide you through these and even more fundamental questions
based on God’s demands and His good and gracious will for you according
to His commandments. The Gospel will then, after the Law has killed all
forms of self-righteousness, return you God’s promises in Jesus Christ. Put
this way, we can let God dig to the depths of sin and suffering, death and
despair; then God can and does lift us up to be more than conquerors
through Him who loved us and gave us eternal life—we can face 2015, put
2014 to rest, and even face the prospects come what may! So consider again
these truly blessed questions and answers!
Based upon the premise that God is “for us,” Paul presses us to
consider the implications. “If God is for us [as He most certainly is], who is
against us?” Paul is not suggesting that we have no opposition. There are
many opponents more powerful than we are—death and cares of life, angels
and rulers, things present, things to come, powers, heights, depths, and many
things lurking in our broken creation—especially the Enemy. We all know
that the Christian will have many adversaries. Paul’s question is designed to
5 point out the puniness of any opponent in light of the fact that God is our
proponent through His victory on the cross.
One of my favorite movies, “The Bear,” has in the final scenes a little
grizzly cub being attacked by a mountain lion. The life of the little cub
seems to be in great danger as the mountain lion moves in for the kill.
Suddenly, the baby bear rears up on its hind legs letting out the fiercest
growl it can muster. Amazingly, the mountain lion shrinks back! The camera
then slowly draws back to reveal just behind the cub a massive grizzly,
reared on his hind legs, delivering a fierce warning to the mountain lion. The
cub’s enemy was great. But in the protective shadow of the great grizzly,
that mountain lion was nothing with Mama Bear behind! With the giant
grizzly as its protection, who was this mere mountain lion? With God on our
side, who could possibly be an opponent who would cause us to shrink back
in fear? The sovereignty of a God who is “for us” provides a new
perspective on anyone or anything, which threatens to oppose or destroy us.
He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all,
how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32)
The certainty of God’s faithful provision for all of our needs is in
view in this question. It is an argument based on the greater and the lesser: if
God did not hesitate to give us the greatest gift of all, certainly He can be
6 counted on to freely give us lesser gifts. The Bible renders Paul’s words this
way according to one translation:
Since God did not spare his own Son, but gave him up to benefit us
all, we may be certain, after such a gift, that he will not refuse anything he
can give.
Human minds will never fathom the sacrifice, which the Father made
to bring about the redemption of His chosen ones. For the Son, it meant the
rejection of the nation Israel, the physical agony of the cross, and the
ultimate pain, the separation from His Father, which was the penalty He paid
for our sins. For the Father, it meant giving up His Son, allowing sinful men
to nail Him to a cross, and having to pour out His wrath on His beloved One.
The Son willingly endured the agony of the cross in order to do the
will of His Father and to bring glory to Him. The Father willingly gave up
His Son so that by means of His sacrifice the Son might be glorified (see
John 17:1-5; Philippians 2:5-11). Imagine the heart of the Father as He heard
the plea of His Son in the Garden of Gethsemane. Amazing love, how can it
be, that Thou, My God, should die for me? Says a popular hymn!
Some kinds of theology, using the term loosely, try to make the cross
of Christ the measure of our worth to God: “We were worth so much to God
that He sent His Son to die for us.” This misses the point altogether and is
7 really a half-truth. It turns the spotlight, the focus, from God to man. The
cross of Calvary is not the measure of our worth; it is the measure of God’s
love. That is what Paul wants us to see here. The cross imputes worth to
sinners who receive the gift of salvation. The cross is not the evidence of our
worth but the source of our worth. We are worthy because Christ died for us.
Christ did not die for us because we were worthy. And this is the source of
our final boast for 2015!
The expression “more than conquerors” needs to be pondered. The
Bible does not promise to make “survivors” of us, but conquerors. We do
not merely grope along in a ceaseless miserable struggle with sin, but we are
filled with hope in the God of hope who fills us with His Holy Spirit, so that
we abound in faith and joy and peace in our believing. It is not enough to
muddle through life merely enduring our adversity. God does not promise to
take us out of our afflictions, but He does promise that we will emerge from
them victorious. We will be victorious in the sense that we will grow in our
faith, hope and love. We will conquer in that we will become more like
Christ due to our sufferings. We will conquer in that God’s purposes will be
achieved through us and others will see the grace of God at work in our
lives. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen!
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