God's Sovereign Grace (Romans 9.1-11.36)

Introduction

As little as ten years ago, drone technology was pretty-well unheard of. Now, it is a global industry worth an estimated $130 billion. Small, portable drones are used now in retail deliveries, conservation, agriculture, defence, surveillance, humanitarian and disaster relief, architectural surveys, and in dozens of other sectors. When we can’t see the wood for the trees, they lift our gaze to we can see the wood.

Last week’s and this week’s talks on Romans are what I call drone preaching; looking down with a wide-angle perspective to get the overall shape and flow of God’s word, instead of the more usual step-by-step approach we’re used to.

We covered the first 8 chapters of Romans in half an hour last week. Today, I’m going to attempt an overview of chapters 9-11. These three chapters are all about the most spiritually pressing issue of the day. And it’s this; how do you explain all God’s promises to Israel in the Old Testament now that the Jews are mostly rejecting Jesus as their Messiah?

Basically, the answer goes like this: 1) God’s promise never applied to all Jews, but only those whom God had chosen, whether Jews or Gentiles. 2) God’s continuing faithfulness to Israel is shown in the large minority of Jews, like Paul, who have responded to the gospel and 3) God’s faithfulness will one day be seen when all Israel will be saved.

Chapter 9 is about the past failure of Israel. Chapter 10 is about the present appeal to Israel. And chapter 11 is about the future restoration of Israel. It’s the history of the Jewish people in a nutshell.

But what possible relevance could this have for a church in Italy, 2,200 miles away from the Promised Land, or indeed for us, probably none of whom are ethnic Jews? (I’m one eighth Jewish, and had an aunt who converted when she married a Jew, but that doesn’t count).

To complicate things more, this part of the letter also contains some of the most contested and controversial teaching in the whole New Testament; about predestination, which comes in chapter 9. It raises the uncomfortable question; is everything, down to the last detail of our lives, predetermined?

It does seem to say here that our eternal destiny was fixed and decided before creation. And we can do nothing to change it. We’ll come back to that in a minute.

Background

But first, I have a confession to make. I was bottom of the class at history in school and failed every history exam I sat. All those kings and queens and battles and dates. I hated it.

Some people like history though. A friend told me the other day they read a book about the history of pigs. It was quite predictable until the last chapter - when there was a twist in the tail...

That’s as light as this sermon’s going to get. I'm afraid I need to give you some historical background now. Hopefully, it’ll give you a key to help unlock this letter.

So here we go: On the day of Pentecost, in Acts 2, you might remember that amongst the crowd present, there were “visitors from Rome.” 3,000 people were converted that day, and it is almost certain, therefore, that some of those converts were Jewish pilgrims from Rome.

They were just visiting, so they will have gone back home afterwards. These must have been the people who formed the first Christian fellowship in Rome.

It seems likely that the church will have grown, perhaps most naturally through Jews leading fellow Jews to Christ, and perhaps a few travelling Gentile believers joining them, as the years went by.

History books (outside the Bible) tell us that, about 20 years later, Emperor Claudius threw all Jews out of Rome. Acts 18.2 mentions that incident, saying a married couple called Aquilla and Priscilla were among those who were banished, ending up in Corinth and meeting a tent-making evangelist called Paul.

So now, according to this reconstruction, overnight, the church in Rome will have changed from being large and predominantly Jewish one to much smaller, and entirely Gentile.

Why did Claudius expel the Jews? Secular sources tell us that there was a riot in the Jewish community at that time almost certainly sparked by a controversy about Jesus. The Emperor didn't want any troublemakers, so he just ordered them all out.

When Claudius died in AD 54, his successor Nero reversed that policy and invited all the Jews back.

The thing is, by this time, the Gentiles had been doing quite a good job of leading the church without the Jews, thank you very much. The church had continued to grow and, as always happens, changes had been introduced. New leaders had been appointed. New ways of doing things had formed.

But now, the old guard is back in town. We know that because Aquilla and Priscilla are now in the list of names Paul says hello to at the end of the letter. But they return to find that everything has changed.

So now who’s in charge?

“We are! We were here first!”

“Excuse me, but you left years ago! We're leading the church now.”

“Look, we only left because we were thrown out. This is our church!”

“It was your church; but that was then - we've moved on.”

Are you getting a feel for the pastoral crisis that was growing? Two different ways of doing church and they are totally at odds. People are getting hurt.

Who would be the best person to sort out such a thorny problem? Someone entirely neutral, who’s not part of that church. How about a Jewish Apostle to the Gentiles, and also a Roman citizen? This is why Paul wrote this letter.

And you can tell this reconstruction is right because all the way through, it compares Jews and Gentiles, "under the law" and "without the law", "circumcised" and "uncircumcised", “Greeks and non-Greeks”, "those who keep one day as holy" and "those who have no special day."

From beginning to end, Romans helps hurt Christians with different backgrounds to get it together in the power of the Holy Spirit.

In chapter 1, Paul says, you both needed the gospel, which is the power of God for all who believe, first for the Jew and then for the Gentile.

In chapter 2, he says, "You're passing judgement on each other, but you condemn yourselves because both Jews and Gentiles are guilty of sin."

In chapter 3, he says, "You are both made right with God exactly the same way, by faith alone, it makes no difference whether you're a Jew or a Gentile."

In chapter 4, he says, "You're both children of Abraham, not just the Jews, because he is the father of all who believe."

He sums up the letter, in the last chapter, as we’ll see, with these words; "Accept one another then just as Christ accepted you... Christ has become a servant of the Jews... so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy."

What has this got to do with us? Well, the church, in every age, including this one, is called to live in love for the sake of the gospel. “This is how the world will know that you are my disciples,” says Jesus, “by the love you have for one another.”

I know there are passionate convictions in All Saints’ over politics; some of us are on the left, others are on the right. In the world it is fashionable to demonise the opposite view. So how are we going to model the unity of the Holy Spirit to a watching world?

We could split the church today, right down the middle over Leave or Remain. Or over “No deal” or “Any deal.” “People’s vote” or “People have already voted.” With differences of opinion so far apart, what will it look like to love one another so well that the world says, “Look, followers of Jesus! That’s how you unify a divided country.”

We have different views about baptism; for believers only. There are sincerely held differing convictions over creation and evolution. The end times. The right church leadership structure. And so on…

All those things are important; but God calls us to purity, to love and to unity.

Romans 12.18: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

Romans 14.19: “Let us… make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.”

Chapter 9

Right, I’m half way through my talk and I’ve hardly started. Chapter 8 finished with the glorious revelation that, since God called us, foreknew us, and predestined us, nothing can separate us from his love.

But just as you’re revelling in that amazing truth, someone asks some awkward questions in chapter 9. What about the Jews, then? Didn’t God call and choose them? Aren’t they God’s elect? And haven’t the Jews now been discarded by God for rejecting Jesus as their Messiah?

The answers come in v6-33. It says, not all on the inside will be saved, and not all on the outside will be lost.

It explains how God chooses those who belong to him. Some are chosen, some are not. But God doesn’t just look at a crowd and take one over the other based on ability (like picking teams for a football game). It is not a matter of performance; it is a matter of position!

From one perspective, this is a very precious truth. If you are a Christian, it means your story with God goes right back… not just to when you were converted, or small, but actually to before you were born, before time even began, before the universe, before creation, to a point when only God was.

It was then that God chose you. He had it in his heart, even then, because he loves you, that he would be glad to adopt you into his family, knowing - like everyone else - that you would turn out a sinner, knowing you could never really deserve it. All this was in his plan from the start.

And he wants us to enjoy this truth as confident and loved children, fully persuaded that he will finish off what has started and will deliver on his promises.

But this obviously raises a big problem; what about those who are not chosen? Isn’t that unfair? And Paul knows this is a problem, so he asks in v14, “What shall we say? Is God unjust?” And he replies to his own question, “Not at all!”

Then he says, “Look. There’s a story in the Bible about this.” Remember in Exodus when God hardened Pharaoh’s heart? God did that to set free a nation of oppressed and ill-treated slaves from that evil man who thought nothing of murdering baby boys on an industrial scale.

Was God fair to freeze Pharaoh’s heart? Read Exodus carefully; you’ll see that Pharaoh hardened his own heart seven times before God finally hardened it beyond the point of softening again.

So, does God predestine our lives? Or is the future shaped by our free will? Answer: yes. It’s both-and. Does it have to be one or the other?

Scientists say that light is both a wave and a particle. Logically, it has to be one or the other. But the evidence is that it’s both, even though it’s irrational.

In the same way, scripture teaches that God predestines all things in his irresistible sovereignty, and also God graciously allows us to make free choices that are real and sometimes cause him to change his plans.

I see predestination and free will as a bit like game of chess. The moves are all real; they all affect the run of the game and how all the pieces interact. But the moves don’t really determine the ultimate outcome because the game is between a novice like me and the World Champion.

I can maybe think three of four moves ahead. But God is the Grand Master who sees an infinite number of permutations into the future.

Like all illustrations, it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough for us to understand that the ultimate outcome is beyond doubt, even if the route we take to get there is genuinely open.

Chapter 10

Chapter 10 says exactly that. Look at v9. “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Don’t be fatalistic about predestination. History is not a pre-programmed closed system. The outcome of your life is not inevitable. The Bible teaches that God changes his mind. It says that faith brings to life things that are not. It says that prayer can affect the natural course of events.

So, though chapter 9 says that God has hardened Israel, chapter 10 opens with a prayer that they may still be saved. Not by keeping the commandments; that never works, but by putting their faith in their Messiah. By declaring with their mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead.

Verse 12: “For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile… Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Someone once said, “The world is divided into two kinds of people. Those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't!” This little church in Rome saw the world in binary; Jewish and non-Jewish.

Romans 10 says, “Yes, the world is fundamentally divided into two groups but it’s not Jew and Gentile.” You can be a Jew but lost and a Gentile but saved. Or vice versa. The two categories that really divide humankind are saved and lost.

Jesus says it; either you’re on the broad highway that leads to destruction, or you’re on the narrow path that leads to life. It’s the wheat or the tares, the sheep or the goats. Either Jesus is Lord of all, or he is not Lord at all.

Do you know today which group you’re in? Not sure? Don’t waver any longer. Settle the matter today as to whether Christ is Lord of your life or not.

Declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

That sounds straightforward doesn’t it? If you can genuinely say “Jesus is Lord” [that means, he’s in charge, he’s the boss, not me, and I am placing my life under his authority] and, v9 says, if deep down you believe that Jesus really is alive today… well, then you will be saved from an eternity of being cast out of God’s presence.

Chapter 11

If chapter 9 is about the Jews’ past rejection of their Messiah, and chapter 10 is about their present invitation to believe the gospel, chapter 11 tells us all about their future destiny.

Romans 11 asks three questions.

1. Have the Jews been rejected?

Answer: Yes and no. Yes, many never got over on the stumbling block of a suffering Messiah, so tragically their hearts became hardened. But no, there is a faithful remnant - Messianic Jews. There are now between 150 and 200 Messianic Jewish congregations in Israel and the number increases every year. Worldwide, most Messianic Jews live outside Israel.

2. Are the Jews being replaced?

Answer: No. It’s not like an old tree burned down and a completely new seed planted. Instead, God is joining us Gentiles to his ancient people just like a branch is grafted onto a tree.

3. Will the Jews one day be restored?

Answer: Yes. One day in the future, God’s purposes will come to a completion. Verse 25 looks forward to a time when the full number of the Gentiles has come in – when the gospel has reached every nation, tribe and tongue – and then, in a great revival, all Israel will be saved.

Some Christians see the restoration of a Jewish state in Israel in 1948 as a sovereign move of God in readiness for that revival amongst Jewish people. Others do not. For the record, I do. God never breaks his covenants. And v29 says his gifts and calling are irrevocable.

Ending

So there we have it. Having laid out the plan of salvation - the gospel of grace - in chapters 1-8, and having explained how God’s sovereign purposes apply to his chosen people, to whom we have been added through faith, we’re now just about ready for all the practical workings out in the life of the local church, which is the teaching of chapters 12-16.

But before we do, let’s stand and exalt and magnify God’s greatness in the final words of praise at the end of chapter 11. I’m going to read from The Message version:

Is there anyone around who can explain God?

Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do?

Anyone who has done him such a huge favour

that God has to ask his advice?

Everything comes from him;

Everything happens through him;

Everything ends up in him.

Always glory! Always praise!

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 30 June 2019

God's Saving Gospel (Romans 1.1 - 8.39)

Introduction

The epistle to the Romans is the longest letter in the Bible. Actually, it’s by far the longest letter we have from the ancient world by any writer. So what’s it all about, and why is it so long?

Some see Romans as the nearest Paul ever got to writing a complete systematic theology; Paul’s mature theological summary, his magnum opus, like Calvin's Institutes, as if one day he sat down and thought, “I really should write a comprehensive volume that covers the whole sweep of how I see God, man, life, the universe and everything.”

But it is, in fact, a pastoral letter addressing a practical issue in a unique church for a particular reason as we shall see next week.

It would take several years of Sunday sermons to do Romans justice. We could easily lose ourselves for months on end unravelling and getting to grips with Paul’s tightly-packed thinking. When Peter says “Paul’s letters contain some things that are hard to understand” (2 Peter 3.16) he was no doubt thinking of this epistle. It is a demanding read, let’s not pretend otherwise.

But we’re not going to spend 2-3 years going through Romans, though that would be an excellent thing to do. For a start, you'd need a better Bible teacher than me to take you through this letter line by line. Instead, what we’re going to do is this: instead of covering the entire book verse-by-verse, we are going to cover chapters 1-11 in just two weeks. 

This will give us a feel for the overall flow of the more doctrinal part of the letter, before we dig down into the more practical section in chapters 12-16 over a term.

This week, I am going to give you an overview of Romans chapters 1-8. Next Sunday, I’ll do the same for chapters 9-11 which is I believe not (as some say) a parenthesis, a bit of an aside, but actually the key to understanding the whole letter. 

The task I have given myself today feels like having to summarise Tolstoy’s War and Peace on the back of a match box. Where do I start? It’s impossible to do it justice, but here we go…

Let’s start with the basics. The letter is written by the Apostle Paul, and it's after the three missionary journeys we know all about from Acts, and it’s written to the church in imperial Rome which he did not found, and had never visited. 

Why did he write it? He hints at the end of the letter that he is looking for a new western base for the next phase of his ministry towards Spain, but in chapter 1 he says he also wants to give them something to make them strong. It seems he wants to establish contact for their mutual benefit. We’ll explore this in depth in the weeks and months to come.

In a word, chapters 1-8 are all about the gospel. Of all systems of belief, religious or secular, Christianity is the only one that has a gospel.

It’s the only one that doesn’t say, “Once you’ve attained the standard, you get the prize. Or once you’re good enough, then God will love you.”

Instead, Christianity says, “You, like everyone else, have blown your chances of ever attaining the standard, so instead of a prize for good behaviour, here’s a gift you don’t deserve. Take it.” As Tim Keller says, “Christianity is not about being nice. It's about being new.” 

Chapter 1

Before we can ever appreciate the gospel, which means “good news”, we have to understand just how bad the bad news is - which Romans spells out in great detail in chapters 1. It says that whatever we do, and however hard we try, we always end up gravitating down to sinful desires. 

Sin is a spectrum. At the extreme end, it spirals totally out of control. 50 million victims of Stalin. 30 million under Mao. We all know about Hitler. Bodies and fields full of bones in Cambodia and Rwanda, and Bosnia and Iraq and Syria and I could go on. Our species is a finely tuned killing machine. We even make war on our unborn.

2 million children are exploited for sex by perverts every year. More than 300 years after a period called “The Enlightenment” modern slavery is on the rise.

Some of our estates are no-go areas. We have become accustomed to repeated cycles of fatherlessness leading to crime and violence; the schools can’t correct it, the police can’t control it, and successive governments are powerless to stop it. 

Sin ruins everything and Romans starts by saying exactly that.

Staring hard in the face at the decadent society Rome had become, Paul says the brakes are off in four areas; 

1) mounting sexual impurity, particularly unnatural sexual relationships. 

2) increasing family breakdown (he talks about disobedience to parents and infidelity).

3) a growth in aggressive atheism (he talks God-haters who don’t think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God).

4) soaring antisocial behaviour (he talks about slander, insolence, murder, strife and depravity).

And he says, “You can tell when God’s wrath is over a civilisation because this is what starts to happen. It’s all there in Romans 1; read it for yourself and ask whether you think God is OK with the Western world. 

He isn’t. His wrath is like a pan of milk that simmers away for years – centuries even, because he is slow to anger, and abounding in love. But there comes a day when it suddenly boils over and all the signs are there in our culture that his patience is running thin.

Chapters 2-3

But just as all good, respectable Christians start tutting and sitting in judgement over all those sinners, chapters 2 and 3 say, “Wait a minute! Is your heart always virtuous and pure? Do you always do the right thing? You cannot criticise because you’re in the same sinking boat; we all are. We’re all without excuse for our sin and subject to God’s judgement. All have sinned and fall short.” 

Every person, one way or another, makes a judgement about God: whether to love God or leave him out of their lives; whether to acknowledge and follow his revelation or ignore it and go their own way.

And God has fixed a day when he will pronounce a verdict on each human being for the verdict that they made about him.

But the first two words of Romans 3.21 signal a dramatic turnabout. “But now…” It’s like the collapse of the Berlin Wall on a cosmic-scale. You see, the more your eyes are opened to see your own flaws and sins, the more precious, electrifying, and stunning God’s grace appears to you.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones once preached a whole 45-minute sermon on those two words. “But now…” They are words that announce that everything has changed. “But now… ”God has intervened, not in wrath, though we would have no complaint if it was. Instead, he has decisively stepped in and changed everything by showing grace.

Have you ever been struck by lightning? You don’t want to be! The electrical charge of a lightning bolt can exceed a billion volts. That wouldn’t feel all that nice.

On 2nd July 1505, a young student was travelling to university. On one part of the journey, he met a thunderstorm and, as the rain pelted down, suddenly a bolt of lightning struck the ground just a few feet away from where he was. He was terrified of death and divine judgement. He was filled with dread, and he cried out, “Oh no! The righteousness of God! I’m damned!” 

That man was Martin Luther. And that thought of God’s fearsome wrath consumed him for years. He became one of the most zealous and disciplined monks in the monastery but he was gripped with an obsession about God’s righteousness.  

During mass his thoughts filled him with anxiety and dread. He physically trembled and had panic attacks just thinking about God’s ominous and awesome greatness. So aware was Luther of the darkness in his heart, of his utter unworthiness, that he was sure he could never stand before God and live. 

But one day, tormented by fear and unworthiness, his world was rocked to its core. The discovery he made that day changed the course of history. Like a bolt from the blue, he saw that the righteousness of God is not that terrifying divine rage that could damn him in an instant. 

No! The righteousness of God is the unblemished record, the pure goodness of Jesus Christ that God wants to give us. And Luther made that discovery right here in Romans 3.22: “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”

That’s the gospel and here’s what the gospel does: 

Paul Cowley was brought up on one of the roughest estates in Manchester. His father was an alcoholic. He left school at fifteen. He ran away from home. He lived on the streets. He joined a gang. He got involved in crime and ended up in prison. When he came out he joined the army. His relationships were chaotic. He went through two marriages and two divorces.

In 1994, he walked into a church and signed up for an Alpha course. It changed his life. He gave his life to Christ and was filled with the Holy Spirit. 

Then he started visiting prisoners. He founded an organisation to care for ex-offenders. He set up a homeless project. He created courses to help people struggling with addictions, with depression and debt.

Under his leadership, Alpha for Prisons has spread through the jails in the UK and seventy-six countries around the world. Thousands of men and women, mostly men, have come to faith in Jesus Christ and been found churches who help them reintegrate into society. The ministries he now heads up have the potential to touch millions of lives around the world.

That’s the gospel; a righteousness given to you, and reckoned as wholly yours, that comes not through self-help or short, sharp shocks, or government handouts - but through faith.

Thank God for social action - let’s do more of it - but it’s not enough on its own. The evangelist Vance Havner once said, “If they had a social gospel in the days of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him a bed and a sandwich but he never would have gone home.” 

The gospel of grace gets you home and makes peace between you and God forever.

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 3-4 of Romans explain what this looks like in detail and it’s given a name: “justification.” 

Who has ever heard of a magistrate who passed sentence on a guilty defendant and then did the community service, or served the time or paid the fine himself? I spent ages on Google last week trying to find one example of such a thing to illustrate justification for you – and I found nothing. 

Why not? Because judges never step in and serve the sentences that they pass down to the guilty offenders standing before them in the dock. It just doesn’t happen! 

But one did. Jesus, the innocent one, who will judge the living and the dead, served the death penalty for you and me so we can walk out of court free men and women, all charges dropped, and our case dismissed.

Chapters 3-4 tell us about mercy (which is not getting the spiritual death we deserve). But because God loves us, he wants to give us more than mercy.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 is about grace (which is being given the abundant life we don’t deserve). It says, “We have peace with God.” Anxiety? Sorted. Guilt? Wiped away. Hopelessness? Banished. Dread of God’s wrath? Gone. Estrangement from God? It’s history.

It says that God’s love is just poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. It says, however badly sin messed us up, Jesus is able to set things right.

Oxford-based church leader Simon Ponsonby sees it as like the card game, Top Trumps. Did you ever play that game? Paul in Romans 5 plays spiritual Top Trumps. Our former life as sinners (‘in Adam’ he calls it), and our new life having been given (as if it’s ours) the righteousness of Christ. 

Adam lays down his card “sin.” Jesus lays own his card “righteousness.” Jesus is top trump. Adam lays down the card “condemned” – that should do it. But Jesus lays down the card “justified.” Jesus is top trump. Adam puts down the card “death.” Jesus just smiles and throws down the card “life.” Jesus is top trump. 

Whatever card our old sinful DNA, that we inherited from Adam, lays down Jesus has a card to beat it. “Where sin increased grace increased all the more.”

Chapters 6-7

Chapters 6-7 are all about freedom. Because the gospel is not just something that happened once and that’s it. It goes on with a life-transforming power in your life.

You are being loosed, you are being freed, you are being released from crippling bondage to sin, and from crippling bondage to law. 

What does that mean? Law means trying to appease God by mechanical religious duty. There are people who think that if you just do the ritual right, even if you don’t really like it, God will accept you. He just likes a bit of religion so just placate him and it’ll all be fine. But God hates cold, hard-hearted, grudging religious duty. The Bible says it makes him sick.

It’s why Saint Teresa of Avilla once ran out of her dreary monastery and prayed, “From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, spare us O Lord!” The gospel frees us from all that. Thank God!

And chapter 7 ends by saying that despite all God has done for us, there is a spiritual battle in all of us. How do we win the battle? We win when we believe that God’s promises are true and better than the empty promises of sin.

Chapter 8

Then finally, chapter 8 brings this majestic doctrinal opening half of the letter to an end. It’s all about assurance that the Holy Spirit brings to your heart. 

If you knew that this afternoon you would have to stand before the God, whom the Bible describes as a holy and consuming fire, to learn your eternal fate, would you look forward to it?

An angel opens a door, looks at a clipboard, rubs his hands and says, “Welcome to the final judgement. Please make yourself comfortable…” A big screen starts a countdown. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

This is a recording of the inside of your mind. Everybody you know is a special guest, looking on. What certificate is this film; PG or X-rated?

Your mouth is dry. Your palms are sweaty. You watch the show, you cringe all the way through, then you feel a lump in your throat as you wait for the verdict.

What’s God going to say? Will it be “Welcome home, well done” or will it be “Well, that was disappointing”? Or worse still, will it be “Who are you? I never knew you?” 

Romans 1-8 explains that, if you’re a Christian, God does not consider your performance. He considers Christ’s performance. That’s what it means to be in Christ; everything that is true of him becomes true for you.

And according to Romans 8, if you are a Christian believer, because of Jesus, no matter what the film of your inner life contains, the words ‘not guilty’ are indelibly tattooed onto your soul. No condemnation means no condemnation.

And according to Romans 8, you are completely set free from the power and penalty of sin and spiritual death and able to be led by the Holy Spirit.

And according to Romans 8, you are loved from all eternity, a child of God, adopted and made an heir of all the riches of heaven.

And according to Romans 8, God has given you all you need to be sure that you belong to him. Your eternal security is anchored in him, stretching back into eternity past, before time began - and before you existed.  

And according to Romans 8, you are foreknown by God from before creation, predestined by God and chosen by God to be like Jesus.

And according to Romans 8, God is on your side and nothing can defeat you. God has declared you to be inseparable from his love for all eternity.

Ending

This is a true portrait of who you are in Christ - and all of that is from this magnificent section of the Bible we call Romans 8.

That’s the truth. That’s the gospel truth. Believe it. Treasure it. Savour it. 

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 16 June 2019

Come, Holy Spirit (Acts 1.12-14)

Introduction

You’ve got to admire the British adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes who, just four months after double heart-bypass surgery, and aged 59, ran seven marathons in one week on six different continents. He would have run one more, but bad weather in Antarctica prevented it. Just the idea of running one marathon in Antarctica boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

Fiennes said afterwards that his biggest test was marathon number 4 in Singapore because of the tropical climate. With temperatures reaching 32°C Fiennes barely finished the course – but he did it, before going on to run three more over the next few days.

It goes without saying that you cannot achieve a feat like that without some very serious preparation. Every marathon runner trains hard – how much more this man, given the scale of his challenge and so soon after major surgery?

The evangelisation of the entire planet, from a standing start, was an almost infinitely more difficult objective for the early church than those 7 marathons in a week. We’re talking about by far the most ambitious mission in the history of the world.

Just 120 people (that’s the precise number given in v15) who have no map or compass, let alone aeroplane to reach every nation of planet Earth. How did those charged with that challenge prepare for the mission?

Acts 1 tells us that they did three things; simple things, that are not beyond any of us here this morning. It says that they gathered, they waited and they prayed.

1. They Gathered

When it says in Acts 1.12 that the apostles returned to Jerusalem after the Ascension, we know that they went together and stayed together.

Here’s what we read: Acts 1.12-14. “Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem.” They’re just across the Kidron Valley from each other. It’s a short walk. “A Sabbath day’s journey” is about 1 kilometre.

“When they arrived,” it says, “they went upstairs, to the room where they were staying.” And it tells us who was there; “Peter, John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James.”

No, not that Judas. Not Judas Iscariot. This is another Judas. Rotten luck if your name is Judas. You introduce yourself as one of Jesus’ apostles. “Oh yeah, I think I’ve heard of them. What’s your name again?” “Judas.” “Oh, I’ve heard all about you.” “No, not him, I’m the other Judas.”

Sometimes you just get stuck with something, through no fault of your own.

Verse 14 says that the women are there as well. And Mary, the mother of Jesus who is also a woman, obviously, but who is in a category of her own.

• She is the chosen one, the special one, who brought him into the world.
• She pondered things in her heart at the time of his birth.
• She saw how he astounded the temple scholars when he was 12 years old.
• She witnessed his first miracle at Cana.
• She was there at the cross, there for her boy until the bitter end.
• And now, she’s a follower and humble disciple of her own son.

Some of you here today are mothers with sons. I’m sure your boys are all wonderful individuals, and you’re very proud of them, but how many of you would publicly worship your son as the immaculate son of God? But Mary did.

And Jesus’ little brothers are there too, notice. Some of you have a big brother. I bet every one of them are great guys who you look up to and admire! But how many of you would stand up and say, hand on heart, “My big brother is without sin, he’s definitely worthy of praise and worship?” But Jesus’ brothers did.

They didn’t believe in him during his ministry. It was classic sibling rivalry. They teased him. They confronted him. They said he was out of his mind. But now he has appeared to them risen from the dead and they too have gone from being sceptics and cynics to full-on believers.  

So there are 120 people in this room including Jesus’ family. It may not be very many given the scale of the task ahead of them, but in one room, that’s quite a crowd. That’s a pretty full room.

The upper room would be on the first floor in a flat-roofed building of simple structure. There’s precious little ventilation, no air conditioning, you’re just under the roof, so it’s probably sweltering up there.

This is, by the way, the very first mention in Scripture of the post-Ascension church – and you find men and women together. We sort of take this for granted, but it is still extremely counter-cultural in the Middle East to this day. In synagogues, even in the 21^st century, and of course mosques likewise, you find the men are separate from the women.

In the Judaism of the First Century, only men were allowed to sit at a rabbi’s feet to learn, but we know that Jesus gave women too access into that privileged inner circle. Mary of Bethany was commended for doing just that instead of being busy in the kitchen.

Throughout Jesus’ ministry, women:

• ministered to Jesus’ practical needs, supporting him from their own means
• women stayed with him to the end while most of the men fled
• women were the last at the cross
• women were up first to tend the grave on Easter Sunday
• women were the first to meet him
• and women were the first to testify that he was alive

2. They Waited

So, they all gathered together, men and women, and then they waited.

At their last meeting with Jesus, shortly before the Ascension, Jesus gave them some careful instructions: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptised with water, but in a few days, you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit.”

So, they wait. And they wait. Hours pass. Nothing happens. Days come and go. Still nothing.

Do you like waiting? I bet no one does. I don’t like waiting around at all. I start to fidget. Waiting for buses, waiting for trains, waiting for late people to turn up. When I was a kid, waiting for Christmas was like physical torture. It felt like a breach of my human rights! I’m a doer. I don’t like wasting time when there’s work to be done. But they waited, and waited, and… w a i t e d.

The Norwegian theologian and author Ole Hallesby used to talk about mining in his country in the early twentieth century. There were long periods of time, he writes, when deep holes are being bored with great effort into the hard rock. To bore the holes deeply enough into the most strategic spots took steadiness, patience and lots of skill.

Once a hole was drilled, they put a stick of dynamite into it and connected it to a fuse. To light the fuse and watch what happens is easy and exciting. You see immediate ‘results.’ It goes kaboom, and pieces of rock fly off in every direction.

And then Hallesby says this: “The more painstaking work requires skill and patient strength of character, but anyone can light a fuse.” How many of my prayers are like “fuse-lighting” prayers, the kind I soon give up on if I do not get immediate results?

Handling the tedium is part of what makes for effective prayers. Those who really believe in the power of prayer will cultivate a patient prayer life of “hole-boring.”

3. They Prayed

Which brings us to the third thing they did – they prayed. They weren’t wasting their time as they waited. They invested their time in prayer.

In fact, it says “they all joined together constantly in prayer.” So this was dedicated, continuous and organised. It seems to have been 24/7, possibly with shifts covered by several teams, sleep and comfort breaks and so on.

And the basic prayer seems to have been, “Come, Holy Spirit” because when God sent his Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, that rolling prayer meeting stopped; the prayer was answered.

Since the days of the early church Christians have prayed for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Every week at Holy Communion, we ask the Holy Spirit to come. Many songs have been written about it, from Come Holy Ghost Our Souls Inspire to Spirit of the Living God Fall Afresh on Me. All the great revivals and awakenings were preceded by concerted prayer for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus expected us to ask for the Holy Spirit when he said, (in Luke 11.13) “How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Ending

So, as we gather and wait and ask… and wait and ask… and wait and ask… as we have been doing in 10 these days of Thy Kingdom Come, may God refresh and renew and anoint and empower his church again for the mission he started then and that he has called us to complete.

Let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees and Saint Mary's Long Newton, 9 June 2019