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There have been 481 earthquakes greater than magnitude 2.5 in the last week. There have also been metaphorical earthquakes in our lives when the ground beneath our feet was shaken. How strong is our faith? Will our faith enable us to stand up and not fall during these metaphorical earthquakes? How firm is our foundation? Our faith may be able to help us with a 2.5 earthquake in our lives, but will it sustain us in a 5.6 or 7.5 or even a 9.0 magnitude earthquake?
We are beginning this morning a five part series of sermons on foundations of our faith. Jesus taught us that we should build a house on solid ground and I want us to be reminded of what that solid ground is.
In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome he wrote about three stages of salvation: We have been saved, the doctrine of justification; We are being saved, the doctrine of sanctification; We will be saved, the doctrine of glorification. I will preach this morning and next Sunday on the first two and then Zak will preach from the third. Then I will come back and preach on being filled with the Holy Spirit and the last week, on our power over fallen spirits. I trust this will be a helpful series for us.
Today we will focus on the first of these foundations: the doctrine of justification. This is a legal term and can be illustrated by imaging a court scene. You are on trial before God who is the judge. Your life is being reviewed. The devil is the prosecuting attorney and Jesus is your defense attorney.
The devil presents extensive evidence showing how you are a sinner. He does this with video and pictures and tape recordings. Scenes of your life are shown. All you have ever done or said or thought is laid out before the judge in living color. The things of which you are most ashamed and thought were buried in the darkness of the past are brought out into the light. The evidence is overwhelming, you are a sinner. You are guilty and deserve God’s punishment of eternal damnation.
But then just as God is about to pronounce sentence, Jesus, your defense attorney, stands up and says to the judge, “It is OK, I have paid the price for this sinner.” And then God declares you to be innocent, not because you are innocent, but because Jesus paid the penalty for your sin when he died on the cross.
This is justification. You have been made righteous in the eyes of God because of what Jesus has done for you. You are still a sinner, but now the perfect righteousness of Jesus covers over your sin. The perfection of Jesus is what God sees when he looks at you.
As a way of understanding this more fully, I want to make three affirmations this morning: We have been chosen! We have been rescued! We are accepted!
We have been chosen!
My father’s favorite place to eat was a restaurant called Mastori’s. When you were seated at a table they brought delicious cinnamon bread and cheese bread. These alone were a meal. Then came the menu with page after page of options, choosing between pork, beef, poultry, fish, vegetarian dishes. There were more than 300 dishes to choose from and then you still had to choose what vegetable and what kind of potato or rice or pasta you wanted. After this you still had to select a salad and choose among a variety of salad dressings. Then there was a separate desert menu with page after page to choose from.
People like having lots of choices. We want choices in the clothing we buy: different colors, different styles. We want choices in the kind of car we buy, the shoes we wear, the books we read. We want the shelves of our supermarket to be crammed full of choices of every food we can imagine.
And we want to have a choice about what religion to follow. There is a lot on the menu. The headings are: Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Other, and None. And then there are many branches of these. Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant are three branches of Christianity but these branch out into 38,000 Christian denominations. Islam branches out into five main groups which then branch out into smaller groups. The same is true of Hinduism and Buddhism. And then there are ancient tribal religions, folk religions, and many more groups that have been formed and are being formed. There is a lot of religious choice.
So how do you evaluate all the religious options and make a good choice?
Many people choose the religion they grew up with. Most people who identify themselves as Christians are Christians because their parents were Christians. The same is true with Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims. In many cases children move away from their faith when they go to university and begin their careers, but then when they have children, they come back to the faith of their parents.
Sometimes people go church shopping, looking for the church that pleases them most. Some people go religion shopping, exploring other religions and deciding which one they like the most.
Maybe that is how you ended up in the church, or maybe it is that you were desperate and needed help. Perhaps you felt empty and lost and knew there had to be more to life. It could be that you saw in someone else’s life an attractiveness and wanted to have their faith. For any number of reasons you chose to become a Christian. But it is important to understand that before you chose, you were chosen. If you are a true follower of Jesus, you did not go religion shopping and pick Christianity; God picked you.
Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:3–4
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
We have been chosen!
Walter Wangerin wrote a wonderful book, Paul, a Novel, and there is one part when Paul is in Antioch where a man named Simeon Niger is a member of the community of followers of Jesus. He is identified with the Simeon who carried the cross of Jesus to Golgotha and Paul asks Simeon to tell his story.
“Someone must have told our brother,” Simeon said, “that I am the one who carried that tree, who carried a limb of it out of the city to Golgotha.
“I wish it had been my wisdom, my will, my choice,” Simeon said. “I wish I had known enough and loved enough to beg to suffer the weight of that tree. But I knew nothing, and I did not choose.
“Let me tell you the depth of my ignorance: When I was chosen, I thought it was a Roman that had chosen me.
Simeon goes on to tell how the Roman soldier made him pick up the cross of Jesus and tells what happened as he walked behind Jesus carrying the cross. He tells of Jesus being nailed to the cross and then he tells of his death.
I was there when he died, and this is the astounding nature of his dying, that finally he did cry out, he threw back his head and forced his body forward, he drove his chest away from the cross like Winged Victory, and the veins in his neck stood out, and when he uttered his voice under the black firmament, it was a phõné megalè that he made, a soldier’s cry of triumph!
“He died in triumph.
“And the first one to teach me the meaning of these things was that Roman soldier himself, for he gazed at the dead man, at that poor broken figure on the tree, and whispered, This man really was the Son of God.
“But my second teacher was Simon Peter, because from him I heard the impossible thing that happened next and I knew why I had been walking around for weeks after that death without a heart in my breast, and I learned where my heart had gone: It was with JESUS OF NAZARETH, KING OF THE JEWS.
“On Pentecost Simon Peter talked straight to me and in my language while I stood in the middle of another crowd. He said, This Jesus whom you crucified, and that was me, because I had carried the wood that cursed him. Simon Peter said, This Jesus whom you crucified by the hands of outlaws, God raised up!
“That’s the thing that happened next, and I hadn’t known about it: Jesus was raised from the dead! The curse was overcome. The tree was nothing any more. Simon Peter said to me, Repent, and for the forgiveness of your sins be baptized in the name of Jesus, whom God has made both Lord and Christ.
“And when I was baptized, and when I came up out of the water, and when the Holy Spirit moved inside of me, I, Simeon, a man from Cyrene, realized for the first time who had chosen me. Brother Saul, I did not choose. I had been chosen. But it was no Roman who chose me to carry the tree. It was Jesus! Jesus had chosen me. Jesus picked me. Jesus raised me and made me his own, and when I came up out of the water, I shouted my own cry of triumph in the voice of the shout of Jesus: I shouted, Jesus! At the top of my lungs, I cried, Jesus! Jesus! Lord of my life, I belong to you!”
Simeon was chosen by Jesus and this is a picture for each of us who have become followers of Jesus. We have been chosen by Jesus and now we belong to him.
The reason it is so important to realize this is because the Christian churches of the world are full of people who think they have chosen Christian faith, but far too many are missing out on the experience of having been chosen by Jesus to be his follower. It is possible to choose to be a member of a Christian church without having been chosen by God.
Here is my challenge to you from this first affirmation of the sermon: have you chosen to be part of a Christian church or has Jesus chosen you to follow him? There is all the difference in the world. When you choose to be part of a Christian church, you enter into a religious life that has no power to save you from eternal destruction. Only when you have been chosen by God will Jesus take you safely into eternity. You need to give up religion and become a follower of Jesus.
How can you tell the difference? How can you tell if God has chosen you? Only God knows whose name is written in the Book of Life. What we can do is acknowledge all that God has done for us through the work of Jesus on the cross and then surrender to Jesus and plead for his forgiveness and mercy and love. As the writer of Hebrews encouraged us, we need to: (Hebrews 12:2)
fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith
Surrender to Jesus. Throw yourself at his feet and plead for mercy and grace and discover that you have been chosen by him.
We have been chosen! The second affirmation is: We have been rescued!
If we have been rescued, what is the danger from which we needed to be rescued?
One of my favorite singer/composers is Paul Simon who wrote a song titled: Slip Sliding Away. This is the last verse of the song:
God only knows, God makes his plan
The information’s unavailable to the mortal man
We’re workin’ our jobs, collect our pay
Believe we’re gliding down the highway, when in fact we’re slip sliding away
We go to school, eventually we graduate and enter into some kind of job. We look for someone to marry and start a family. We work to save enough so we can live comfortably in our retirement. We move along down the highway of life but most of us are oblivious to the reality of our situation.
In reality, we are like someone floating in an inner tube down the Zambezi River heading toward Victoria Falls. No matter how beautiful the day and how pleasant the surroundings, the Zambezi River is taking us closer and closer to the falls and our imminent destruction. As we get closer and hear the roar of the falls and see the mist rising in the sky, we can paddle all we want, but the current of the river increases and is relentless and before we know it, we are swept over the falls and are plummeting to our death.
In Romans 5:10 Paul wrote that we were once God’s enemies, deserving of his wrath. This is the message of Paul in the opening chapters of his letter to the church in Rome. He begins in Romans 1:18-19
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
Who are the wicked Paul is talking about? He begins with a list of terrible behaviors including idolatry, various forms of sexual immorality, envy, murder, deceit, and then to show just how wicked these people are he adds: (Romans 1:32)
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
We would agree with this but then he goes on to say that those who think they are good moral people and stand in judgment against the obviously wicked people of this world also deserve the wrath of God. This is where it becomes clear we are included in the list of those deserving God’s wrath. Paul continues. Self-righteous, religious people who think because of their religion and behavior they are good deserve the wrath of God. That is also us.
And then just in case we have been able to rationalize our way through these categories, Paul cuts off any potential escape by saying the whole human race is sick and deserves the wrath of God.
Romans 3:10
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
This is our predicament. No matter how good we are, we are not good enough. No matter how much we try, God is beyond our reach.
It is as if the task is to reach the stars. Some people may be better than others. Because of how good they are, some may stand on top of Mt. Everest while others may be so evil they stand in the depths of the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean. But the best of us will not be any more able to touch the stars than the worst of us.
We are heading swiftly toward Victoria Falls and there is no escape. We are doomed and nothing we can do will make any difference.
It is in this reality that what Paul shares in Romans 3:21-24 is such good news.
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
We all, everyone of us, every single one of us, without exception, deserve the wrath of God, but God has provided a way for us to get out of the trap we find ourselves in. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God but we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
We all deserve the wrath of God but then God made known to us a way of escaping the consequences of his wrath. Although we are sinners, we are viewed by God as being righteous because we are viewed through the blood of Jesus shed for us that covers our sinfulness. God is holy and the purity of his holiness burns away any impurity. For us to exist in his presence means we must be pure. This purity cannot come from us because we are sinners, but it comes from Christ. The purity of Christ is given to us so we can be pure in the presence of God. This is justification, the first stage of salvation.
Is this just the Christian solution to the problem of being separated from God? What about other religions?
From the beginning of time mankind has understood there is a divine being and that we are separated from that divine being. And so, through the ages, men and women have tried to bridge that distance. Sacrifices of grain and animals and even humans were made to try to appease the god they knew was there.
Some of these attempts became formalized into world religions. Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Christians all recognize that we are distanced from God, however God is defined. Hindus and Buddhists want to become part of the consciousness of God. Muslims and Jews and Christians want to be in heaven with God. (Actually, for Muslims, Allah will still be distant from Muslims in paradise, but there is still a desire to live in the paradise created by Allah.)
All world religions want in some way to have intimacy with God and religions have been developed that help us to work our way to this intimacy. Follow the Eightfold Path of Buddhism and you can hope, eventually, to escape the cycle of reincarnation and become part of the consciousness of god. Generate more good karma than bad and be reincarnated in a higher life form and eventually become a Brahamin and then, Hinduism says, you might be able to become one with god. Islam has its Five Pillars and by obeying these pillars, there is a hope that a good dossier can be presented to Allah at the end of your life and you will be taken into paradise.
In Judaism there is the Law given to Moses by God. The Law is perfect and perfect obedience to the Law leads us to God. The problem in Judaism is not the Law. The problem is with us because we are unable to obey the Law in its perfection.
In each of these religious systems there is something we must do to reach to God. Each of these religious systems requires that we expend effort to reach God and that effort will always fail.
Are you looking for good moral teaching? There are many religions that have good moral teaching. Are you looking for a religion that has an ancient tradition? There are many that you can choose from. Are you looking for a religion that has a community where you can belong? There are many religions that provide this. Are you looking for a religion that will make you a better person? You can find many religions that will do this. Are you looking for a religion that will help you live a disciplined life and break off from destructive habits like drugs and alcohol? Again, there are many good options from which you can choose.
But if you need to be rescued, then Jesus alone can save you.
My father said to me many times that Christians are exclusive because they say that salvation is possible only through Jesus Christ. This is very frustrating and there are many in the world who are critical of Christianity because of this. If Christians do not want to be exclusive, they say, why don’t they agree that Buddha and Mohammed and any other guru who comes along, as well as Jesus, are all ways to reach heaven?
This would be true if Christianity was a matter of a council of men and women getting together and making a decision about what was true and what was not true. But the truths expressed in Christianity are not a function of what we believe, they are a function of what God has done. Of all religious leaders in history, only one has died and risen from the dead. The rest have all rotted into dust. Only Jesus has defeated death and can take us with him into eternal life.
It is like complaining that only a rocket will take you to the moon. That’s terrible! Why be so exclusive? Why can’t we get to the moon in a hot air balloon? Why not a catapult? Or a bicycle?
There is no exclusivity in Christianity, all are welcome, but it is necessary to put your trust in the one God provided for us. This is not an ice cream shop with 30 flavors. This is not a rack of clothes with many colors and designs. You can’t pick your savior. God has given us our savior.
We have been rescued by Jesus, God in the flesh, who has done for us what we are incapable of doing for ourselves.
We have been chosen! We have been rescued! And we are accepted!
Louis Zamperini is an Olympic athlete who competed in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. During WWII he flew in the US Army Air Force as a bombardier. His plane had mechanical difficulties and crashed in the Pacific Ocean. Eight of the eleven men on board died in the crash and Zamperini survived for 47 days in the open sea. He and two others were in a life raft with little food and no water and subsisted on rainwater they were able to collect and small fish they ate raw. They caught an albatross and used some of its meat to catch fish, all while fending off constant shark attacks and nearly being capsized by a storm. They were strafed multiple times by a Japanese bomber, puncturing their life raft, but no one was hit. One of the men died after thirty-three days at sea.
On their 47th day adrift, Zamperini and his remaining crew mate reached land in the Marshall Islands and were immediately captured by the Japanese Navy. They were held in captivity and severely beaten and mistreated for more than three years until the end of the war in August, 1945.
Zamperini became a follower of Jesus in 1946 after his return to the US when he went to a Billy Graham crusade. He returned to Japan and went to the prison where the guards who had so cruelly mistreated him were being held. He forgave them, hugged them, and gave each of them a New Testament.
This is a great story and the reason I tell it is to say that being rescued is not enough. After 47 days at sea Zamperini was rescued, only to be abusively treated for 38 months.
We have been rescued by Jesus, but then what? The prodigal son came home to his father, hoping that he might be permitted to be one of his father’s hired servants. He needed to be rescued but what he received was far more than being rescued. He was accepted as his father’s son and restored to the family.
The wonderful news for us is that when Jesus rescued us from eternal death, we were adopted into his family where we became the daughters and sons of God.
Let me return to the verse from Ephesians I read earlier. (Ephesians 1:3–5 )
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
This is what I read earlier. We have been chosen. But now listen to the next verse:
In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—
We have been chosen and we have been adopted.
Paul wrote in Romans 8:15–17
For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
This is the foundational truth upon which we stand. We were chosen! We were rescued! We are accepted!
In the bulletin there is an insert of foundational truths taken from Richard Lovelace’s book, Dynamics of Spiritual Life.
This is a summary of this foundational truth you can proclaim each morning as you set out on another day.
Because of my relationship with Christ, when God sees me, he sees me not as a sinner but as his perfect and holy child. The blood of Christ covers my sin.
I can trust God. He will not reject me. His love is not dependent on my behavior. Nothing I do today will make him love me more or less tomorrow. I am his special child, loved and accepted with no strings attached.
This is amazing truth and I encourage you to read this aloud in the morning before you set out for the day. As a follower of Jesus, you have been chosen, you have been rescued and you are accepted.
