This is my sermon from last Sunday. The reading was Romans 8, 1-11. There is a bit where I read from a book, the text of which is probabaly a bit long to quote on "Paper" without permission - sorry.
I promised my wonderful administrator Sue Shay that this sermon would have the Pet Shop Boys Boyzone, Veggie Tales and carpet bowls in it.
And it will, but let us not forget that it is a sermon on Romans chapter 8.
I am most grateful to Nigel Warren for his excellent talk on Romans 7 last week, and it falls to me to carry on with the first 11 verses of chapter 8.
Let’s just remind ourselves of verse 24 of chapter 7, which I will read in the New Living translation
Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
This has good news and bad news – we are miserable sinners, but God has saved us through Jesus Christ.
The trouble is, sometimes we get stuck on the bad news – cue the Pet shop boys;
When I look back upon my life It's always with a sense of shame I've always been the one to blame For everything I long to do No matter when or where or who Has one thing in common, to It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin It's a sin
As Nigel mentioned last week, the whole of the first 7 chapters of Romans is about how humanity has fallen in to sin, and consequence s of this fall.
Which is all bad news, but now at the beginning of Romans 8 is the triumphant conclusion to Paul's explanation of the way in which God reconciled men and women to himself through the death and resurrection of Christ.
What God's law had been unable to do, because of human weakness, God himself had now achieved, by sending his own Son to deal with sin. To do this, it was necessary for Christ to enter the sphere where sin was operating – the sphere of humanity: he therefore came 'in the likeness of sinful flesh, like us in everything except in not succumbing to sin. Those who are 'in Christ', who have been baptised into his death and resurrection (6.1-11), now share Christ's victory over sin and death, and the Spirit of God fulfils in us what the law required – true love for God – since the Spirit controls our actions.
Paul has a wonderful turn of words.
Chapter 8 verse one has an enormous “Therefore” - all that has come before this, all the expositions of depravity and sin, and human frailty, everything about how no one is righteous, how God is a just judge, and how we need to be justified like Abraham by faith, everything is leading up to the end of chapter 7 – the good news is that God has saved us from sin and death – all of that turns on the one word “Therefore …” It’s like a doorway to the next stage in Paul’s exposition of the Christian life through Romans.
And it is a very important Therefore, because it keeps us focused on the good news, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus – do you believe that?
I will readily admit that I don’t often talk too much about sin, but it is hard to preach on Romans and avoid that subject. The NIV uses the term “sinful nature” to translate the Greek word “sarx” which literally means “flesh”, as in the footnote. Unfortunately this has meant we tend to dwell excessively upon our sin, when reading this passage, instead of celebrating our redemption.
Paul contrasts life 'according to the flesh' and 'life according to the Spirit'. In Hebrew thought, there is nothing judgemental about the word 'flesh': it denotes weakness ('All flesh is grass', Isaiah 40.6), while 'Spirit' refers to the power of God.
To live 'according to the flesh', however, is to live as though temporary existence is all that matters, and to be concerned only with the physical, not with the spiritual. We need to get away from thinking about carnal lustful type sins when we hear this word, as Paul’s contrast is more than just sin vs. purity, it is the transient vs. the eternal, the finite vs. the eternal.
Flesh, inevitably, is doomed to die, whereas the Spirit is the source of life. It was the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead, and the same Spirit of power now at work in the lives of all who belong to him, will give life to them also.
Will give life to them also – a key phrase – there is no condemnation, even when we are battling, apparently against ourselves. That is at the heart of verses 5 to 8. It reminds me of a song from the 1990’s Christian band “Eden Burning” who characterised this inner struggle in terms of a joust – the fleshly and the spiritual inner man warring with each other inwardly.
Let me bring you up to date though and read you a paragraph from the book that David Gregory reviewed for us the other week, the biography of Shane Lynch, of Boyzone.
The chancer p196
Now not all of us have been as tied up the occult practices and rock and roll lifestyle as someone like Shane Lynch, but we all have our own inner battles, and these are the ones God wants to help us with. He wants our minds to be open to the guidance and control of the Spirit. This control is not by making us like automatons, but by influencing our decisions and behaviour so that our moral life is transformed – as Paul will say in Romans chapter 12, by the renewing of our minds.
The best way of ensuring we do continue to live according to the Spirit is not to cut ourselves off form the world, but to seek god, to listen out for his word to us daily, as we go through life.
The thing is, as soon as you think you’ve arrived and become static, you cease to be in touch with the Spirit, who wants to be refining us a little more each day. Once you say, “OK I’m sorted now,” you effectively stop that process.
And there are many elements of ordinary people’s lives that can make us fall into that trap.
Here is the Veggie Tales bit.
Another book I have read recently us this one, “Me Myself and Bob”, the biography of Veggie Tales creator Phil Vischer.
It tells of his early life, how he grew up in a Christian home, that was to become a broken home, and how he then retreated to his basement and his fascination with animation, resulting in a career in computer generated cartoons.
Phil began with a Christian approach – he wanted his company to be the Christian equivalent of Disney, but he freely admits in his book that he let his success run away with him, so that his decision-making was clouded by selfish desires and a lot of money!
Many of us have benefitted from the ministry of veggie tales over the years and so It was sad to learn that Phil lost control of it following a law suit that resulted from Bob the builder buying out Barney the dinosaur – see how quickly you get swallowed up in corporate dealings, even when you started off on the right foot.
Phil Vischer is a very self-effacing man, very humbled by his failures, yet also rejoicing gin the second chance God has given him – for a book about a venture that failed this is a pretty good read!
OK so we’ve had the Pet Shop Boys Boyzone, and Veggie Tales, that just leaves carpet bowls.
Well, when you bowl a wood, it has of course a bias in it, so that it does not go straight.
This is a picture, if you will, of the human condition; we have a bias in us which means we cannot go straight upon the path that God intended us to take.
If we try to go straight for the jack, we will veer off to the side. But if we are guided by the Spirit we will be able to overcome the bias – or rather Christ in us has overcome the human bias to sin – so that we can achieve our goal of a life the is led by the Spirit and proclaims the good news that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
