Sermon - Romans 8:26-39 – Nothing Can Separate Us from God's Love

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard

Sermon - Romans 8:26-39 – Nothing Can Separate Us from God's Love

Pitts Creek and Beaver Dam Churches

July 24, 2011

So far in the eighth chapter of the Book of Romans, we have been listening to the Apostle Paul tell us that we are not good enough. We are not good enough to restore the image of God we were created with. We are not good enough to return creation to its original goodness. Since we are not good enough are only hope is that a superior outside force will come and make thing right. The good news is that God has come to counter the effects of sin and restore us and all of creation. God has come in the person of the Holy Spirit.

As the final example of how we are good enough Paul turns to one of his favorite subjects, prayer. Because of sin we are not even able to pray as we should. With this warning in mind let us pray.

“Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)

To begin this morning let's take a look at Romans 8:26-28.

²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. ²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

There are essentially two kinds of prayers. The first is the liturgical prayer. These prayers are written down, sometimes approved by a church council, and often memorized. This morning's prayer of confession was a liturgical prayer, and we use these often in worship. Liturgical prayers are good at using language to express the mystery, the majesty and the otherness of God. The Lord's Prayer, taught to us by Jesus Christ, is a great example of liturgical prayer. In this church we still stay the Lord's Prayer using the King James Translation with it rich Elizabethan English that preserves the majesty of God. But there is a problem with liturgical prayers. They can become mechanical with over use. You say that same prayer over and over again and eventually you are just pronouncing the words. Any meaning in those words is lost. I experience this with the Apostles Creed. I had said it so many times that I could say it aloud in church while thinking about something else. When I became a pastor, four years ago, I decided to give it a rest and and have the congregation respond with less familiar passages from scripture or the Book of Confessions. Lately I have felt a need to return to these important words of believe, and we will be saying the Apostles Creed together more often.

The second type of prayer is often used by churches as a corrective to mechanical liturgical prayers. It is called the spontaneous prayer. These prayers are not written down and are rarely memorized. They come the heart whenever the need to talk to God arises. In spontaneous prayers we address God directly and bring him our gratitude, our requests, our confessions, our problems and our feelings. We authentically bring ourselves to God.

But like liturgical prayer there can be a problem with spontaneous prayers. When God becomes familiar to us and we lose the sense of majesty and mystery that surrounds God. Sometime with spontaneous prays God become a best friend, who always answers the phone, and will listen to your problems for as long as you want to talk.

So which of these kinds of prayers should we use? I think that both are important and there needs to be a balance in church and our individual prayer lives. This is what I want. But what does God want? What kind of prayers does God want to hear?

The Apostle Paul was an avid prayer. He prayed constantly for churches. If anyone knew how to pray it was Paul. But Paul confesses that we really don't know how to pray. I've experienced this in our morning prayers. Every day at 6am we gather for prayer. I often wonder what God wants us to do with this time. Should we meditate on scripture. Should we talk about scripture? Should we pray silently or out loud? Should we limit our prayers to the church and community or pray for the whole world? Should we say the Lord's Prayer every morning? I have to admit, with Paul, that I really have no idea how God wants us to pray.

Prayer should be very natural for us. It is just communication with our creator. We were made to communicate with God. But as a result of sin we no longer know how to pray. We sense that we must pray, and we follow other's example of how to pray, but we really don't know how God wants us to pray because sin has so distorted us.

Our only hope is that God will restore the communication channel with us. We have a basic need to hear God's voice. We long to know what God wants for us. But there is no way that we can communicate with God, the creator of the universe, on our own. Why would our majestic God in heaven listen to our prayers? How could limited finite creatures like us every hope to communicate with an unlimited, infinite God?

Paul's answer is profound. The only way we could communicate with God in prayer is through the working of our triune God. God, the Holy Spirit, enters us and knows our deepest thoughts, feelings and desires. The Holy Spirit then communicates these to God, the Son, who because of his humanity can think our thoughts, feel our feelings, and have our desires. Jesus Christ then uses his divinity to communicate all of these to God, the Father. And so God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, knows our thoughts, our feelings and our desires without us even saying a word. And the processed is reversed as God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, blesses us with love.

So how should we pray? Should we use words that are printed and memorized? Should we just talk to a person named, God? Maybe we shouldn't use words at all. Maybe God is not interested in words, because words are a human invention. Maybe we just need to be silent and let the Holy Spirit act within us by communicating our thoughts, feelings and desires without words.

This is why we use a third kind of prayer. It is a prayer that is neither written down nor consisting of words addressed to God. This kind of pray is called silent prayer. In silent prayer we rest in the arms of God, enjoying his presences and allowing him to communicate to us confident that he already knows who we are.

As the Apostle Paul rested in God arms he heard God's voice. This is what God said:

²⁹ For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. ³⁰ And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

God knew you before you were created. He already knows everything about you. These is nothing that you have to tell God. And this God, who created you, has also chosen you to be made in the image of his son. Even though this image has be completely defaced by sin God will send his Spirit to restore this image and to call you to restore all of creation. You have been been restored and given new life to glorify God because God loves you.

³¹ What, then, shall we say in response to this?

If God is for us, who can be against us?

³² He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

³³ Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.

³⁴ Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died-- more than that, who was raised to life-- is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶ As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

Sermon Romans 8:12-25 Creation Waits for the Children of God

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard

Sermon Romans 8:12-25 Creation Waits for the Children of God

Pitts Creek and Beaver Dam Churches

July 17, 2011
Listen to the Beaver Dam Worship of July 17.

Last week we saw that salvation is more that just having our sins forgiven and receiving a ticket to heaven. Salvation also includes the coming of the Holy Spirit into our lives today renewing within us the image of God with which we were created. The effects of sin had completely erased all of God's image from us. So God sent the Holy Spirit to renew it within so that we can once again hear God's voice, respond to God's call, and obey God's will. Today we will see that this blessing is not just for us but for the whole world. Let's pray.

“Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)

I read an article this past week about a couple of atheists who attend church every week and enjoy it. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/atheists-may-actually-like-these-10-elements-of-church-culture/ That's right atheists who enjoy church! Amanda Westmont and Joel Gunz both call themselves non-believers, but they attend church every Sunday to write a blog for Beliefnet.com. The blog is called, “Year of Sundays”. One of the things they like about church is the food. They love the pancake breakfasts and the Sunday evening spaghetti suppers. They like the beautiful architecture, the stained glass windows, the beautiful artwork. They really like the charity work churches do, everything from feeding the homeless to building awareness of poverty. But their favorite thing about church, for these two atheists is the live music. They love the ancient chants, jazz worship, and the pounding rhythm of praise songs. And best of all, all of this is free.

So how is it that two atheists could come to church every Sunday and love what we do, but never find God in any of it? The Apostle Paul has an answer.

Romans 8:18-23 ¹⁸ I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰ for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³ and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.evidence of the creator in creation. Remember that everything was created good. And so long as we obeyed God's will, creation would stay that way. But once sin entered into the world and we started following our own way rather than God's way both the image of God within us and the evidence of the work of the creator in creation has been covered over and can no long be seen. Creation itself has fallen into sin. This is apparent here in Pocomoke. How else would you explain the problems of drug addiction and alcoholism, the problem of poverty, and the problems of marital infidelity and domestic violence? In a world created by God none of these things should be happening. But sin has obscured the goodness of God's creation and these and other problems abound. And so the atheist are unable to see God even in church.

The mistake that the atheists make is that they believe that the world can deal with its own problems. If we have just the right government program and spend enough money any problem can be solved. But as the country has gone deeper and deeper into debt and has many layers of government programs, the problems are still here and the solutions seem so elusive. The world is incapable of solving it own problems because sin has distorted creation, obscured the goodness with which it was created, has twisted it into a world of problems. The atheists will eventually realize the futility of trying to fix the world's problems with their good intentions. An outside force is needed to restore the goodness of the world. And this is where it gets really interesting. The outside force that the world needs, is us. What the world is waiting for is for God's Holy Spirit to transform us into the children of God so that we will listen to what God says and act upon it transforming the world.

So what do we do? How is it that we become God's agents for world transformation? It starts with prayer. As the image of God is restored in us we have the ability to communicate with God. So with the help of the Holy Spirit we can pray, and listen to God's voice. The Apostle Paul tells us that when we pray to the Father the Holy Spirit lifts us up to God as God's adopted children. Paul says that since we are God's children then we must also be heirs of God's creation.

And since Jesus is also God's heir we must be siblings, and as siblings we share in his glory. That is what all of creation is waiting for. It longs for the day when the children of God emerge and transform all of creation back into the goodness that God had intended. All of creations is waiting for us, the children of God, to come with God's glory.

All of this takes time. But it has already started. Already the Holy Spirit dwell is you. Already you are lifted up to God in prayer. Already you hear God's voice. Already the image of God you were created with is being restored. And God is using all of this so that you will be the instruments that God uses to recreated a fallen world.

The place where all of this starts is in church. Yes we have good food here. Yes our music is beautiful. Yes we have a beautiful historic building. Yes we do good things for our community. But church is much more than all of this. Church is where we come into contact with the risen Christ in the Word of God and in prayer. And it is through this contact that God's Holy Spirit enters us, transforms us in God's adopted children and sends us out to restore goodness to a world that has lost it.

So we need to pray that everyone who comes into our doors will find Jesus Christ here and be transformed by the Holy Spirit right here in this church. I hope that the two atheists writing for Beliefnet will one Sunday come to Pocomoke and worship with us and be surprised when they find out that our worship is more than just music, and architecture, and food, and good works – find out that our worship is worship of a living God who is Lord of our lives.

Let's take a look at how God is using his adopted children to transform the world, Here is a portion of the most recent blog post by one of our atheists, Amanda P. Westmont. Listen to what the Holy Spirit is doing for this atheist.  http://blog.beliefnet.com/yearofsundays/2011/07/spiritual-journey-update.html

“Two weeks ago, I had one of the worst days I can ever remember having. I’d spent the afternoon up to my eyeballs in pure, unabashed ugliness. I honestly thought it couldn’t get any worse, but then a police officer pounded on my front door, read me my rights and accused me of committing a felony. I went from feeling LOW to feeling LOWLOW. Of course it was all just a big misunderstanding. A tit-for-tat taken one titty too far. Fortunately, after a few words and a few tears, the police officer agreed with me, shook my hand and left...

(Then) there was a Facebook note from Donna Van Horn, one of the pastors at The Bridge, inviting me out for the drinks we’d been talking about having since I first met her on that perfectly imperfect Sunday in March. There was no way she could’ve known what was going on with me, but she somehow managed to reach out to me at the EXACT moment I needed her to. I immediately penned an enthusiastic, if profanity-laden, acceptance and sent it off to her with a complaint that she was making it really hard for me not to believe in God anymore...

I’ve had every reason to hunker down. To shut out the world and keep myself safe. But if these Sundays have taught me anything, it’s that reaching out is the only answer. I had to ask for help. I didn’t ask God or Jesus or Buddha, but I put the word out on my blog and simply asked for support. And I received. Literally hundreds of prayers, blog comments, e-mails, Facebook wall posts, calls from old friends and even flower deliveries rolled in. I was literally overwhelmed with love.

Because of the heathenous things we write on this blog, Joel and I are probably the two most prayed-for souls in all of Portland, Oregon, but this was the first time I ever really FELT those prayers, welcomed them even. And the constant fear I’d been living with dissipated enough that I was able to get back to my life...

I do know I’m going to start reading the Bible and see how I feel about it. I’m doing this not as a road to accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior, but because a) I write a religion blog and my Biblical ignorance is becoming embarrassing, b) I’ll be reading along via The Bridge’s bi-weekly Bible study group called Red Letter Pub, which means there will be Bibles AND booze, and c) I’ll take advantage of ANY OPPORTUNITY to hear Donna Van Horn speak. She’s a quiet one, that pastor, but if I learned anything by accepting her invitation and having her over to get sauced on my patio with the other Church Ladies of The Bridge, it’s that virtually everything that comes out of her mouth is golden. I don’t have to believe in Jesus to want to surround myself with people doing their damnedest to live like him...”

Ms Westmont, like all of creation is groaning under the weight of sin, hoping that one day she would have a glimpse of God's glory. Lets all pray that she will find God in the Bible study at Bridge church and that she too will be transformed by the Holy Spirit into what she was created to be, and that through her God will transformation our fallen world. Amen.

Sermon Romans 8:1-11 – The Spirit Dwells within You

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard

Sermon Romans 8:1-11 – The Spirit Dwells within You

Pitts Creek and Beaver Dam Churches

July 10, 2011
Good morning. Last week I had the great pleasure of attending the Presbyterian Big Tent in Indianapolis. Several Presbyterian groups held their annual conferences at the same place and at the same time. I saw some old friends that I haven't seen in a while. We worshiped, studied and ate together. I had breakfast with the Multicultural Church Conference and heard about their efforts to help our churches reflect the ethic diversity of their communities. I attended two sessions with the Evangelism and Growth Conference hearing from a speaker from Intervarsity, a Christian outreach into colleges and universities. And I had dinner with our Presbyterian immigrant congregations and experienced their great cultural diversity. It was a wonderful experience and I thank the church for allowing me to do this for my annual study leave.

Today we are here to listen to the Word of God. So lets pray. “Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)

Earlier this week many people were glued to their television sets watching as a judgment was handed out to a young woman. This woman had been accused of killing her own two year old daughter and dumping the body in a swamp. She had also been accused of lying to the police. She stood up in court waiting for judgment to fall. This is what we can expect when the day comes and we stand before God making an account of what we have done with our lives. An accuser, Satan, will be their reminding God of everything we have done which we should not have been done and everything we have not done which we should have done. And God will pronounce judgment upon us. When this happens there is little we can do. We may try to point out all the good things we have done, but it won't be enough. So we will expect that a just God will judge us harshly.

As Casey Anthony stood before the judge, a jury of her peers said that there was not enough evidence to prove that she had murdered her child. The judge then adjudged her “not guilty”. She will soon be released from prison. In the same way when we stand before God waiting to be adjudged, Jesus Christ will stand up on our behalf and tell God the he has already paid the penalty for our sins. For all who believe in Jesus, trust in him with their lives, God will adjudge them not guilty, and we will be free to enter heaven. This is the bedrock foundation of our faith and the good news that we are to proclaim to a world that desperately needs to hear it.

The first seven chapters of the Book of Romans deals with this reality, but in the eighth chapter the Apostle Paul give us something new to think about. Let's listen to what he says.

Romans 8:1-11 ^NRS Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ² For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. ³ For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ⁵ For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. ⁶ To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ For 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, ⁸ and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. ⁹ But 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. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹ If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

We have been assured that when we die God will declare us “not guilty” and we will go to heaven. All we have to do is to believe in Jesus Christ by trustimg Jesus with our lives. It is important to understand what will happen when we die, but it is also important to understand what is happening now as we live. Salvation means that not only will we be saved from our sins after death, but we are also saved from sin while we live in this life, in this time, in this world.

Paul wants us to remember that we were created by God, in the very image of God, and that all of God's creation is good. Since we were created in the image of God it is only natural that we would listen for God's voice and respond by molding our wills around God's will. This is what God had intended when he created us. But as a result of sin the image of God that was given to us at creation has been worn away and no long exists. The image of God in our lives has been tattooed over so many times by sin that it can no long be seen. It is buried under too many coats of paint. As a result we no longer care about what God wants and we only follow our own desires. We hear that God wants us to go to church on Sunday, but some respond “why bother?”. We are told not to lie and cheat because these displease God, but some don't care what God wants and do it anyway. Sin causes us to follow our own wills and do whatever we want to do. The image of God is gone from our lives, we are slaves to sin. Paul calls this condition “flesh”. Calvin called it “total depravity”. Whatever you call it it is the same, our inability and unwillingness to listen to and follow the will of God.

But Paul says there is good news. We are not condemned to live our lives in this fallen state because God sends his Spirit to restore the image of God that God has created in us. The effects of all those years of disobedience are wiped cleaned, fixed and painted. We are made like new and the image of God is restored to it previous luster.

We are in the process of restoring the Dickerson Memorial Manse. New paint is going on the walls. A new floor is going in the kitchen. Its former beauty it coming alive with light and color as it is restored to it former glory. So too with us as the Holy Spirit comes upon us cleaning and painting and restoring the image of God we were created with. As a result of the restoring work of the Holy Spirit we can once again listen for God's voice, know what God wants, and follow God's lead. The Holy Spirit breaks through all that separates us from God. The evil powers that keep us in their grip are destroyed. Our slavery to sin is broken. We are given freedom to live. And all of this comes to us as a gift, the blessings of heaven.

The Holy Spirit is the gift that we received after Jesus' death and resurrection. We receive this Spirit in our baptism and it comforts and guides us in our new lives. The Spirit dwells within us helping us to listen to God and obey his voice. The Spirit assures us that we will receive all of God's promises, that there will be no condemnation for all who believe in Jesus Christ. So Christ's death was not only a payment for our sins leading to a not guilty verdict after we die, but it is also the victory over sin and death that allows us to now live our lives in a way pleasing to God.

And this opens for us exciting new possibilities. Once we abandon our own limited and flawed dreams and desires and embrace our destiny an exciting new world opens for us a we follow God wherever God may lead. The Spirit is offering you a new life lived in the presence and in obedience to God. Embrace this new life now and experience the abundance God has prepared for you.

In a few weeks Casey Anthony will walk out of prison. She will be free having been adjudged “not guilty” She has been given a second chance and an opportunity to live a new life. Will she continue live as a slave to sin, or will she accept Jesus Christ into her life and believe in him. Will she allow the Holy Spirit to guide her by molding her will around God's will? If she does she will enjoy the fruits of abundant life and never again have the experience of being judged with her live in the balance. Or will she return to her old life, with the image of God obscured, following her own desires and ignoring God? If she does this surely she will face God's judgment.

A lot of people were praying for justice for Casey's daughter Calee. Many are now disappointed believing that justice has been denied. It is easy to pray for justice for a two year old victim. It is much harder to pray for the transformation of a bad mother. But this is what we are called to do. We all need to pray that God will send his Spirit upon Casey Anthony, restoring what he had created, so that she will live her life not as a slave to sin as she has done, but as a child of God leading her to new life lived in the Spirit of God.

God Almighty, we pray this day that your Spirit will come upon us, restoring us and renewing your image within us. We pray this blessing on all who are slaves to sin. And we ask that your Spirit help us to listen your voice and obey your will to your glory. Amen.