OPEN: Several years ago, a freshman at Eagle Rock Junior High won first prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair with a scientific survey that he conducted. In his project he urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of a chemical known as "Dihydrogen monoxide" because:
1. It can cause excessive sweating and vomiting.
2. It is a major component in acid rain.
3. It can cause severe burns in its gaseous state.
4. Accidental inhalation can kill you.
5. It contributes to erosion.
6. It decreases the effectiveness of automobile brakes.
7. It has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients.
Then he asked 50 people if they support a ban of this particular chemical.
43 said yes
6 were undecided
And only one knew that the chemical is ... water. (2 molecules of Hydrogen/ 1 of oxygen)
APPLY: When you know the answer, the question seems silly.
Water isn’t really dangerous.
Granted it is a major component in acid rain (it’s the rain)
And when it’s in its gaseous state (steam) it can cause severe burns
And if you accidentally inhale it, you can drown.
All of those statements were true. And if you didn’t know any better, you might be afraid of Dihydrogen monoxide". You might ask for this chemical to be either eliminated or controlled by the FDA. You might become afraid of water… that is… IF you didn’t know any better. But when you know better, the fear seems irrational.
In today’s text, we find that Paul is addressing people who have an irrational fear of God.
• They’re afraid that God hates them.
• They’re afraid God is just waiting to judge them for their sins and destroy them
• They’re afraid He wants to rob them of the joys of life.
• And they’re afraid that when life turns sour… He’ll up and leave them/ He’ll walk away.
Paul’s objective in this chapter is to get Christians to realize that that’s not true.
He wants them to see that, if they only knew better, that fear would seem as foolish as the fear of Dihydrogen monoxide.
Now, at the heart of all this fear of God is one basic emotion = shame.
Many times, when people come into God’s presence, they ask themselves: “How could God love me? I can’t hardly stand myself. I’ve done things/said things/ thought things that make me cringe… how could God possibly love me?
• God hates me.
• He’s just waiting to destroy me
• Or at the very least He’ll deny me joy because I don’t deserve that
• And one of these days I’ll look around and He won’t be there.”
They are afraid of God.
Now the Bible DOES tell us we should fear God.
Deut. 6:13 Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name.
Prov. 14:27 The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death.
Psalm 22:23 You who fear the LORD, praise him!…
Psalm 111:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom…
Psalm 115:13 (God) will bless those who fear the LORD— small and great alike.
Again and again and again we’re told to fear God.
But the kind of fear the Bible endorses is the kind of fear that makes me want
to please God
to praise Him
a fear that makes look forward to receiving wisdom and blessings and a safe life.
By contrast the fear Paul is addressing in Romans 8 is a fear that makes me want to run away from God. It’s an irrational, baseless fear. It’s like fearing H2O.
ILLUS: I once read about African natives who would make an idol of their god and then they’d bury in the ground… because if he couldn’t see them, he wouldn’t hurt them.
Now that seems a bit odd. Except that many people do the same thing to Jesus.
They build a wall between God and themselves.
They won’t come to church because they don’t think God would accept them.
He’s in here and they’re out there, and as long as it stays that way… He can’t see their sin and He won’t hurt them.
Yeah, it’s irrational, but it springs from the shame of past sin.
That’s what Paul addresses in Romans 7:14-24
“ I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do— this I keep on doing.
Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.”
Now notice Paul’s words in Romans 7:24 “What a wretched man I am! (repeat for emphasis) Who will rescue me from this body of death? (God couldn’t possibly love me like this)”
What’s the answer to Paul’s cry?
Paul says “…there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1-2)
What Paul is saying is: “If it weren’t for Jesus saving us…
We WOULD be condemned.
We WOULD be under judgment.
We WOULD be denied the love and blessings of God.”
But now that we’re Christians - there is no condemnation.
Our shame and guilt is removed.
A singer named Don Francisco once wrote a song that said it this way:
“Sitting by my window on a rainy afternoon
Everything inside my head was playing out of tune
I was thinking of the fool I’d made of me the night before
In front of God and everyone, I’d sinned and sinned some more
Well I thought of all the things I’d done, I winced at things I’d said
I wallowed in self pity, I hung my weary head
And right when I was so far down that even up looked wrong
That’s when Jesus gave to me the chorus of this song
He said "Satan the accuser has been whispering in your ear
You just tell him you’re forgiven, he’s got no business here
’Cause it doesn’t matter what you’ve done - it matters what you’ll be
There is NO CONDEMNATION when the Son has set you free."
That’s the message Paul wants to drive home to us.
When we accepted Christ’s free gift of salvation He freed us from our guilt and shame.
Through the rest of chapter 8, Paul goes on to say that we’ve been…
1. Freed from sin
2. Empowered by His Spirit
3. Adopted to be His children
4. And transformed to become like Jesus in how we live.
And God did all this (Paul says) because He loves you.
You don’t have to be afraid of God hating you because God so loved you that He gave His only begotten Son…
So Paul says: “… I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 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. Romans 8:38-39
In fact, this idea that “No power on earth can separate you from the love of God” is such a major theme that Paul repeats himself. A few verses before this, he asks:
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?…”
“Noooo… in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Romans 8:35-37
God loves you.
He’ll never leave you or forsake you.
So why would we think that He would?
Well… we sin.
We do things/ think things/ say things that make us cringe.
As that song I quoted says:
“I thought of all the things I’d done, I winced at things I’d said
I wallowed in self pity, I hung my weary head…”
And he got “so far down that even up looked wrong”
I’ve talked to plenty of people who say that’d love to come to church but they think they’ve sinned too much. They don’t think God could, or would, ever forgive them for what they’ve done. Many have been Christians… but they’ve failed somewhere along the line, and they walked away because they didn’t think God would love them ever again.
In the previous chapters of Romans, Paul told the believers at Rome that becoming Christians involved:
1. Believing in Jesus (Romans 3:22)
2. Realizing they were sinners (Romans 3:23) and
3. were buried in the waters of baptism (Romans 6:1-5)
4. (confessing Jesus as Lord is addressed in Romans 10)
They’d become Christians. They’d been forgiven of all the sins of their past.
But then they’d sinned again.
Suddenly, into their minds comes the fear that all the sins of their past will come back on them like a waver from the sea. Was there any basis for their fear?
OH NO.
Paul asks “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?” Romans 8:33
And then he says “It is God who justifies.”
Then he repeats the question in a different way: “Who is he that condemns?” Romans 8:34
And then he says:
“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.”
You see, when we first became Christians - Christ forgave ALL our sins.
Our sins have been removed from us as far as the East is from the West. They’ve been buried in the very depths of the sea… and they’re not coming up for air.
What Romans 8:33 and 34 is saying is:
“there will never come a when we’ll have sinned so much that God will hate us and will NEVER be willing to forgive us of those sins.”
Jesus died to get rid of those sins
God gave His son so we’d become justified,
and Jesus is up in heaven right now interceding for YOU.
There’s never going to come a time – if you want forgiveness – that God will abandon you.
You’re His child. He wants to forgive you.
ILLUS: Do any of you have children? If they did something terrible in their lives would you be willing to forgive them? I’d hope so because that’s the example God models His forgiveness for us after.
So, if I’m a Christian, how do I get forgiven AGAIN.
Do I have to go down into the baptistery every time I sin?
Well, that’s as odd a thought as saying that you want skin as soft a baby’s and so you have to through the birth canal. Your mamma wouldn’t be too happy about that.
No (as Christians) what we need to do is explained in I John 1:9. Addressing Christians, John writes: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
That’s it?
Yeah, that’s it.
You confess your sins. You don’t make excuses. You don’t blame someone else.
You simply admit YOU did wrong.
ILLUS: In the Garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit, God asked Adam to explain himself. Do you remember Adam’s reply?
"The woman you put here with me— she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." (Genesis 3:12)
It’s not my fault, it’s my wife’s fault.
And – more to the point – it’s YOUR fault God. If you hadn’t given that woman to be here with me, I wouldn’t have eaten of the fruit and this problem wouldn’t have been an issue.
If Adam and Eve had just confessed their sin, maybe things would have turned out differently for them. But they both blamed somebody else. They both refused to take personal responsibility for their decision. They both refused to confess that they had sinned.
Throughout the Bible we see this played again and again.
God gives people a chance to “fess up” – admit that they’d sinned. And most of the time, they fail.
As Christians we need to learn to confess our sins.
We tell God we have sinned
We need to admit we’ve hurt Him by our thots/ actions/words.
And then we need to commit to not doing that sin again.
And what happens when you do that?
Jesus is faithful – He will forgive you sins and purify you from ALL unrighteousness.
That’s the promise.
God doesn’t want to stand over you in judgment, He wants to stand beside you in love. And since your sin is the wall that stand between you and His love He wants to give you the tool to remove that obstacle.
CLOSE: A preacher named Ron Rose told a woman who came into his office complaining that his sermons always being about forgiveness and grace. She said he needed to come down harder on the sinners and in her words, "nail them."
After her rant, Ron asked, "So, you’ve got forgiveness and grace all worked out in your own life?"
"Well, Ron” she replied, “there are some things you can’t turn loose of, things that don’t deserve grace, or forgiveness. That’s just the way it is. I know it’s that way in my family."
She leaned over my desk and revealed a heart hardened by resentment and bitterness, "No, forgiveness is not an option. I’ve been hurt too much."
The grudge was too embedded. And her spiritual life was powerless and trapped in the wilderness. Lack of forgiveness had turned her into a critical, judgmental woman.
Then the preacher went on to say “She wanted me to make everyone else as miserable as she was.”
But God didn’t send His son to die for us to make us miserable.
He sent Jesus to die for us so that we’d be freed from the power of sin and live lives empowered to rise up to be true sons and daughters of God.
We all know John 3:16 (say it with me) “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
But we don’t often hear the next two verses:
“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:17-18)
INVITATION.
