The Power of Justice

 

Text: Romans 8:6-11

Focus: Justice (Righteousness)

Function: To help people see that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we do good works.

⁶To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot, ⁸and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

⁹But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. ¹⁰But if Christ is in you, then the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

There are a lot of promises in this passage. I used to use the last verse a lot when I was praying over someone for healing. The verse says that if the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us, then it will give life to our mortal bodies through the Spirit that dwells in us.

I think that applying that verse merely to physical healing takes it out of context and lessens the incredible promise that this verse gives us.

The Spirit of God inside of us gives us a new life and a new way of living.

In Romans chapter 7, brother Paul wrestles with the problem of failure to meet the standards that God has provided for us. He speaks of the futility of trying to please God by abstaining from sin. It is a sin focused understanding of the faith. Jesus forgave our sins, past, present and future, so we don’t have to worry about “Not Sinning.”

Instead we get to focus on the doing of the good. You know the phrase, not biblical, but probably true: “The idle mind is the playground of the devil.” In other words, keep ones self busy, and for the believer who is saved by grace, keep ones self busy doing good.

And that is what chapter 8 is about. It is about more than just doing good, it tells us that the good that we are doing we are doing in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The introduction to the book of Romans indicates that the Spirit of God rests in every single person in the form of a conscience. People have a tendency, before they encounter Christ, to harden their hearts toward their conscience.

When we place our trust in Christ for His restoration in our lives to God and others, the bible promises that God will take away the hard heart of stone and make it a soft heart of flesh.

I believe that this is what it meant to be born from above. Although, I have been sorely disappointed by the way people who profess Christ can still harden their hearts and not forgive, embrace racist ideals, be greedy and selfish.

Jesus said that we will be known by the way we love others.

So, what does all that have to do with the title of the sermon: The Power of Justice?”

Verse 9 tells us that we who profess Christ are living “In the Spirit.” He speaks mysteriously here and describes it like this: The Body is dead, but the Spirit is alive.”

What he is talking about is the tendency that we had before we trusted in Christ to allow ourselves to be selfish, greedy, racist, unforgiving and etc is something that we have died to. We have decided to live lives that reflect the love of Jesus as a testimony to our trust in Jesus to heal and restore us.

We, when we were baptized, symbolically died to our selves and came out of the water as new people who have decided to follow the example of Christ.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit inside of us.

And that leads us to the rest of the verse. The body is dead… ...the Spirit is alive because of righteousness.

And here is where the title of the sermon comes in to play. You have heard me mention this before, the word translated righteousness is best translated as justice.* A righteous person is a person who does the right thing.

We cheapened the meaning of being righteous when we said that it meant simply something that happened to us, by God, when we “got saved” whereby we were now righteous despite our actions.

The problem is the idea “despite our actions.”

That is not what he is saying here. He is saying that our actions determine our right standing with God. When we allow the Spirit of Christ to move inside of our hearts and move us away from a selfish response to a loving response from Christ, then we are being righteous.

And it is the work of the Holy Spirit inside of us that moves us.

I want to harp in this a bit. Christianity changed in the 3^rd Century. The Roman Emperor, Constantine, converted to Christianity. However, history says that when he was baptized by immersion, he refused to let his right hand go under the water because it was his sword hand.

He then claimed to have a vision of a cross above his nation’s banner and a voice that told him to go out and conquer under this sign.

Jesus, on the other hand, said that He could call 10,000 angels to defend Himself if needed, but instead surrendered His life to the Empire as a sign against the power of the Empire.

The Kingdom of God that we serve is not from this world. It is not an human empire.

In the third century, the Church became the “State Church” and was designed to empower the Roman empire. That is where the Roman/Greek concept of hell first came into the Church’s mythology.

They changed the meaning from “people who did the right thing, the Just” to “people who believed the right thing, the righteous.” And then they forgave the transgressions of those who denied Jesus with their actions.

All of that is the sad and embarrassing history of the Church. And yet, throughout its history there has always been a remanent. There has always been people who rejected the concept of empire, as Jesus did and was killed for it.

One of the guys on our Kairos team is a Franciscan monk. St. Francis of Assisi, Mother Theresa and many other Saints rejected imperialism and materialism and remained faithful within the State Church. And then there were groups like us, the Anabaptists. The Brethren, Mennonites, and Amish come from the “re-baptizing” position. People were baptized into the faith of the Count of the County during the days of the Church Territorial Concept. And the Anabaptists believed that baptism should be the choice of the adult, not the child, into the faith of their choosing, instead of their birth and began re-baptizing people. It was considered an act of political rebellion and they were persecuted for it and fled to the US where we were free to practice our faith as we saw fit.

And the whole idea was the rejection of Empire, just as Jesus did.

Empire gave excuses for people to not love their enemies. It gives Christians the excuse to call refugees “Illegals.” And that is not the term Jesus has for them. Jesus commands us to consider them as neighbors.

You hear me speak of the refugees on our borders as “neighbors” because that is the only name Jesus gives us for it. Jesus Himself was a refugee whose parents drug Him across the border to seek political asylum. And if we call the refugees on our borders the name “Illegal,” we are calling Jesus an illegal.

Calling them illegal dehumanizes them and gives us the excuse to harden our hearts. And It happens when we place our allegiance to the nation/state above our call to love our neighbors as ourselves. We can be patriotic and still love our enemies as our neighbors.

Jesus died rejecting empire. We follow His example and say this: “All people, everywhere are our neighbors and we love them as we love ourselves.”

Now, I refuse to get political. We need secure borders, especially to prevent the Fentanyl that is flooding our Southern border and killing the weakest members of our Society.

So, pray for the politicians to find a just solution so that we can enjoy God’s blessing in our land for treating the least of these as we treat Jesus.

One of the things that has dismayed me about the Political rhetoric is how Christians have lowered themselves to unloving, bitter and non helpful responses. We are supposed to be known for the way we love others, not how clever we can retort to make the other side look weak.

And that is the problem with mixing empire, politics, with our faith. I want this to be a neutral place where we look at what the Bible says about justice, not empire. I promise to bring you the teaching of Jesus on this matter.

However, today we are looking at the teaching of the Apostle Paul.

He tells us that when we do the right thing, the Spirit of God is leading us. Oftentimes through self-sacrifice, I might add. The sacrifice component being that we are following Jesus who sacrificed Himself for us. We believe Jesus when He said that our reward is in heaven, not on earth.

And When we do the right thing, we are righteous, and that is the power of Justice, or righteousness.

And the conclusion? Let the Spirit of God fill you.

*For more on this see: https://revnerd.blogspot.com/2011/06/dikaios-right-word-translated-wrong-way.html

The Power of Light

 

Text: John 9:1-11, 35-41

Focus: Light vs Darkness

Function: to help people discern spiritually

9:¹As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. ²His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” ³Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” ⁶When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, ⁷saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. ⁸The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” ⁹Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am he.” ¹⁰But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” ¹¹He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.”

(And then there is an interesting exchange between the man, his parents and the leaders resulting in the healed man’s excommunication from the church.)

³⁵Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” ³⁶He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” ³⁷Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” ³⁸He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. ³⁹Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” ⁴⁰Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” ⁴¹Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

Brother Johns speaks of the Light of the world coming in Jesus. He gives to us an interesting perspective on some of the ancient Jewish spiritual beliefs and practices. The Jewish people held special meaning to light. John starts out his gospel declaring for the first time, and is reiterated here in this passage that Jesus Christ is the Light of the World.

So, let is talk about, “The Light.”

The seven days of creation are interesting. They are not scientific, but symbolic. Because, on the first day we see that God creates light and darkness and separates the two entities. On the third day, God created the Sun. So, when the Jewish people are talking about light, they are talking about spiritual light, or goodness as opposed to spiritual darkness, or evil.

So, here is Jesus, the good, incarnated as Jesus the Nazarene, an historical figure who walked planet earth and showed us how to live. He reinterpreted the Old Testament law of judgment and punishment to a law of love and forgiveness given to us by God and expected of us, by God again, to be given toward other people as well.

So today, during Lent, we are going to turn our hearts to spiritual matters and try to discern what is meant by Jesus being the light of the world, the goodness that is come into the world.

You see printed in the bulletin the question for pondering: What does Jesus mean to you?

Let us take a moment to try to answer that question.

Let me start: Jesus, to me, means that I can love everyone, even my enemies.

I read this meme on Facebook. The real test of your faith is whether or not you can love Judas.

(hear answers to the question)

For me, when I forgive someone, that is a plea for their salvation. Salvation is complete, by the way. When Jesus saves us, I am not talking about delivering us from the destiny of hell and changing our destiny to heaven, but I am talking about healing us and restoring us to God and to others.

Salvation is entire, when the light of the world creeps into the darkness that might have crept into our souls, it heals, redeems and restores us to a right relationship with God and others.

Remember that I told you last week that there is a condition on answered prayer, that when we pray, we stand forgiving everyone who has harmed us.

When I think about that, I realize that this calls us to have faith in both a better resurrection and a more complete life here on earth.

Forgiveness sets us free. It releases us from bondage to what the other person has done to us.

Jesus was willing to forgive and Jesus tells us to follow His example and die to ourselves. Then we can experience the freedom that forgiveness offers.

Forgiveness does not have to excuse the other person’s behavior. It just tells God that on your account, you do not want God to judge them for their sins against you. Or, for that matter, their sins against others.

That does not mean that we have to let them back into our lives if they have not repented from their actions, or if the pain they caused was so traumatic that it poses other stress related difficulties. Jesus doesn’t command us to re-traumatize ourselves again and again.

However, my theology professor said that a restored relationship was not possible without a change of behavior.

But I don’t believe the men who murdered Jesus repented of the indifference to human life exhibited by gambling over his clothes while He was suffering right above their heads.

Their cruelty was wicked and evil and very, very traumatic. And Jesus forgave them. He even excused them because of their ignorance. And perhaps a legitimate excuse for another person’s behavior toward us will go a long way to healing and perhaps reconciliation.

And that brings my back to the topic of today’s sermon. Jesus is the light of the world that dispels our darkness. It is a miraculous thing that His love and forgiveness brings inside of us and through us. His power can heal the deepest hurts because the light dispels the darkness.

Now I broke the passage down into two parts with a parenthetical explanation in the middle.

The first, with the explanation, is the story of the man’s healing and the ludicrous way that the religious leaders tried to explain away a tremendous miracle. They are embarrassed by the simple answer of the man when he asked them how they, the spiritual leaders, couldn’t admit that a miracle just happened.

And after all that, Jesus has a personal encounter with the man who was healed and Jesus asks the man to believe in Him.

The word, to believe, Pistis in the Greek, always takes the preposition “into” behind it. And the word is probably best translated as trust.

Jesus asked him to place his trust in Jesus.

Trust Jesus.

In a few months we will be marrying Sam and Chris and in the wedding vows is the phrase, “And thereunto I place my trust, or faith.” It seems to change every time I use it because it means the same thing.

I like the idea of trust for wedding vows. I Trust in You is the promise that is made. It is beautiful.

So, Jesus is the light of the world. The light dispels darkness.

And Jesus asked the man, like He asks us. To place our trust in Him. If we do, it will become easier for us to be light in the midst of the darkness around us.

The Power of Love

Text: Romans 5:1-11

Focus: Redemption

Function: to help us see how God loves us and we should love others

5:¹Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

⁶For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. ⁹Much more surely, therefore, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. ¹⁰For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. ¹¹But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation

Good morning and welcome to the third Sunday of Lent. Today we are going to focus a little bit on theology. I get a little bit distracted preaching sermons on “what we should believe” instead of sermons on what we should do.

I confess for many years I confused Jesus, the Word of God with the bible, the Holy Scriptures. And in one way, I was taught that since the Bible was the revelation of God, it had to be perfect, since God is perfect.

And the problem with that is that the Bible itself does not claim to be perfect. And understanding it that way makes it a lot easier to reconcile the competing understandings about God that we see given to us in the Holy Scriptures.

The New Testament does tell us that God inspired the writers of the Old Testament, but it doesn’t make that claim about itself.

I bring all that up because today we are going to be looking at one of the unique doctrines that the Apostle Paul teaches. And that is the atonement theology.

Verse 8 from today’s text brings it out: “At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly…”

He goes on to point out the significance of that event. And he helps us to see it from an human perspective. He says it this way, you would hesitate to give your lives to redeem, for example, a terrorist, or a rapist, or some other kind of wicked person whom you cannot abide.

People don’t do that. They may give their lives, he says, for a good person, or a leader, you know, like the Secret Service protecting the President, or something like that. I can imagine that ll of us would give our lives for our loved ones, or for a child if it came down to that.

And from that human perspective, he tells us that Jesus Christ gave His live in exchange for the punishment of the wicked people that we don’t believe deserve mercy because they have not shown mercy toward others.

It is the story of redemption and how the Holy Spirit works in the lives of people to restore them into a right relationship with God and others.

God works through mercy. God’s redemptive power comes out when mercy is given to someone who either doesn’t believe they are worthy, or is given to someone that we don’t believe is worthy.

The specific phrase about whom receives the mercy is” “His enemies.”

Remember, there are three things required of us. Doing Justice, walking humbly with God and Loving Mercy.

We love Jesus because of His mercy. We love Jesus because of His mercy shown toward us.

The doctrine of substitutionary atonement teaches that God cannot abide the presence of evil since God is Holy. And the only way that people could be reconciled to God after the sin of Adam was through God’s own sacrificial death which Jesus accomplished on our behalf at Calvary.

Let me emphasize one part of the doctrine. Because of our sin, the ones we commit and the one inherited from Adam our ancestor, God’s awesome holiness would destroy us if we were in God’s presence. And through the sacrifice of Jesus, God forgives our sins, we can’t do it ourselves, and we are now safe in the presence of God.

I think that I have experienced the presence of God before in my worship and prayer and I do believe that it is an awesome power. Scriptures record people falling over as if dead, and others as being full of fear and trembling.

But as I mentioned at the beginning, there are competing doctrines about this stuff, some might even call them inconsistencies. And part of the problem with the doctrine is that we see Satan himself in the presence of God in the book of Job. We have a demon in God’s presence in the book of 1 Kings and both of then are not killed by the awesome power of God’s holiness. Not that there are cracks on the doctrine, but throughout the scriptures we see God speaking to and inspiring people to follow God long before the sacrifice of Christ paved the way for them to be in the presence of God.

I don’t say that to upset your faith in some of the foundational principles but only to serve to remind you Jesus is the Word of God, not the Scriptures.

And the neat thing about all that is the way it leads us to the story of redemption.

It was and still is the mercy of God that draws people back to right relationship with God and with others.

In the passage, Paul is speaking of how the ungodly are brought back into the kindness and love of God.

Romans 2 tells us that it is the kindness of God that leads people toward repentance.

He is speaking about people repenting from unjust actions and unloving attitudes.

And God gives us an example of just how far we can go in our process of love and forgiveness.

In the passage we are reminded that Jesus forgave people even when they were actively murdering Him. That is a powerful statement of faith in God and the power of God for resurrection and redemption.

So we learn to forgive regardless.

Let me give you a secret. Do you want answers to prayers? I would never promise you a magic king of Genie in a bottle kind of god to worship and serve. But Jesus did give us a condition on prayer in Mark 11:25 where He tells us to forgive everyone before we pray.

Jesus forgave us when we were not thinking of Him. He forgave us even if we were alienated from God. His love, the power of His love, brings us back to God and keeps us there.

And that sort of leads us to the beginning of the passage when he is talking about suffering and how it brings hope. It is a spiritual experience if we are open to it. And it has to do with the associated pain and then the forbearance required to forgive our enemies.

But in the end, it is the love of God that wins out over God’s judgment. And by the example of Christ, knowing the power of the resurrection, we can do the same.

That is the power of love given to us by God to redeem us.