Title: Grace, Glory and Guts Part I
Text: Romans 5:1-5
Thesis: We can be happy because our hope comes through peace with God and that’s good because life is full of character building adversity.
Introduction
There is a story about a farmer whose donkey fell into an old dry well. The donkey brayed and brayed in despair and so much so that the farmer was beside himself as to what to do. The donkey was old and the pit was dangerous so the risk of rescuing an old donkey did not seem worth doing so he called his neighbors to come help him fill in the well which would silence the donkey and remove a danger of anything or anyone else falling into the well.
When the donkey felt that first shovel full of dirt splatter onto his back he knew this was not in his best interests and became even more agitated, braying all the more. But then the donkey grew silent. The farmer peered over the edge wondering what had happened. That’s when he saw that with each shovel full of dirt the donkey shook the dirt from its back and trampled the dirt underfoot.
Many hours and many shovel fulls later the donkey stepped over the edge of the well and trotted off.
The story of the donkey is a story of salvation, adversity, perseverance, and hope… as is our text today.
In my bible there are headings that introduce what is to follow in the text. The heading above Romans 5 is “Faith Brings Joy.” It’s a two-fold joy:
I. The Joy of Peace and Privilege
I understand that, though similar, joy and happiness are different.
Happiness has to do with our circumstances. The root of happiness is “hap” which suggests good fortune or luck. When things are good we are happy and when they are not so good, we are sad.
Joy on the other hand has less to do with externals and more to do with internals. Joy has more to do with inner well-being. That’s why you can feel sadness and joy at the same time.
When a loved one dies we generally do not jump up and get all giddy with happiness. To the contrary, we are sad. We have a sense of loss. But despite our sadness, we can also experience inner well-being. We grieve at our loss but we rejoice in our hope.
Most of you know me as a happy person… I do not so easily separate happiness and joy. My experience has been that when I am experiencing inner well-being, i.e., joy, I am also expressing outer happiness.
Some time ago I read something to the effect, “Adversity and sorrow color life but you determine the color.”
We may determine the color based on two very important facts that in turn affect everything else including adversity.
No matter what is happening around us, we are still good with God so we have inner well-being or joy and this is why:
A. We have peace with God.
Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith (justified by faith), we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.
The obvious observation is that peace with God is not the norm. I don’t mean to be remedial but the book of Romans states just how peace with God, apart from Christ, is not the norm. “Everyone has sinned and falls short of God’s glory or glorious standard.” 3:23 However, on the flip-side, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” 6:23
Here in Colorado we’ve been following the Dunlap case… in 1993 Nathan Dunlap returned to the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant where he had previously worked, shot five people and took $1,500 from the safe. He was given the death sentence by a jury and has been on death row since 1996.
In that the August date for his execution is approaching his attorneys asked Governor Hickenlooper for clemency. Clemency is the moderation of the severity of a sentence. They were asking that the Governor reduce his death sentence to life in prison without parole.
Governor Hickenlooper was faced with the decision to either let the decision of the jury stand and allows the state to carry out the death sentence or grant him clemency. The Governor dodged the issue by granting a temporary reprieve, i.e., a temporary suspension of the sentence. The Governor decided the easiest thing for him to do was let the next Governor decide.
We understand what a death sentence means. We understand what clemency means. But what is spoken of in our text is neither. Because of what Jesus Christ has done in taking upon himself the death penalty for us all, God has granted us pardons. God has pardoned us. A pardon is the release from legal penalty. Pardon is forgiveness. Pardon is Just as if it never happened in the eyes of God.
Because of the work of Christ, God the righteous judge, does not bang the gavel pronouncing the death sentence. God bangs the gavel and announces our pardon.
I’m sure Nathan Dunlap would have preferred clemency rather than a temporary reprieve… but imagine what he would feel if he were strapped to the gurney and about to receive his lethal injection if the phone rang and the Governor issued him a pardon… a pardon that erased the penalty and opened the door for him to walk out a free man.
That’s one reason you and I can be very happy on the outside and joyful with well-being on the inside. We now have peace with God.
We are the donkey stepping over the edge of the well and trotting off… we are free from sins death sentence and can trot off with a smile on our faces and joy in our hearts.
Another reason we can be happy on the outside and joyful with well-being on the inside is because…
B. We now have a new position of privilege
Christ has brought us into this place of underserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory. Romans 5:2
Sometimes we do not recognize privilege when we see it or have it. Cheryl Benard writing in her book, Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women’s Resistance said, “I have the impression that our children (Afghan Children) are much more excited about going to school than children in other countries are. They think of it as a special privilege. Going to school, being with other children, getting books and pencils - all of that is like a dream for them.”
Whenever we speak of the privilege of getting an education we also infer the lack of privilege in not receiving an education.
Earlier I spoke of the difference between being under a sentence of death and then being pardoned. The word pardon implies guilt.
Whenever we speak of advantage we are implying disadvantage. When we speak of profit we are implying there is also loss.
So when we speak of privilege we are implying that there is an opposite of privilege or what we might call the exclusion from privilege. We have not always had this privilege. Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory…
Alex Haley, author of Roots wrote, “The first time he had taken the massa to one of these "high-falutin’ to-dos," as Bell called them, Kunta had been all but overwhelmed by conflicting emotions: awe, indignation, envy, contempt, fascination, revulsion—but most of all a deep loneliness and melancholy from which it took him almost a week to recover. He couldn’t believe that such incredible wealth actually existed, that people really lived that way. (goodreads, ¯ Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family)
Kunta’s observation was that for him, life was a life of privation. But for the rich is was a life of plenty. It was a contrast between the lack of privilege and privilege.
Our text says Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory… a place where we can hardly believe people really actually live this way.
I’ve spoken of having watched The Discovery Channels Deadliest Catch in the past. It is a reality television program about crab fishermen from the Port of Dutch Harbor, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. They fish for King Crab in the Bering Sea where they face the horrific challenges of forty foot waves, hurricane gale winds and massive icebergs. But eventually the scene changes and you see these fishing boats idling into the Port of Dutch Harbor. The image suggested by this text is the ushering of a ship that has been tossed at sea, quietly slipping into a safe harbor… a safe haven.
When we break this verse down it essentially speaks of how when we become followers of Christ we are ushered into or introduced to a place of privilege… the meaning literally is Christ ushers us into the presence of God, a safe harbor where we experience undeserved grace rather than a sea of condemnation.
The reason we experience inner-calm or inner well-being and inner joy is because what once was, is no longer the case.
• Once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! Ephesians 5:8
• Once you had no identity as a people; now you are God’s people. Once you received no mercy; now you have received God’s mercy. I Peter 2:9-10
Once you were hopelessly trapped like the donkey, sentenced to death in an old well, but now in Christ, you are free.
Conclusion:
You ask, “How can this be?”
Illustration: I am one of those people who shudder when a server asks me if I’d like any steak sauce with my steak. When you are looking down at a deliciously, wood-fire grilled rib eye you do not put steak sauce on it. As you likely know, I enjoy my coffee black. I think coffee in any other form is a sacrilege… you do not add cream or whip cream or mocha or caramel or pumpkin spice or anything to it. Steak is best and coffee is best when it is uncompromised.
That’s what God’s grace is like… uncompromised grace alone is as good as it gets. So though it pains me a bit to use the following example, I hope you get the point.
When you have a cup of black coffee and add white cream to that coffee you have brown coffee. Once the cream is added to the coffee there is no undoing it. When coffee and cream are mixed you have an in dissolvable union.
When we are in Christ an in dissolvable union is formed. It is our in dissolvable union with Christ that opens the way for pardon and peace with God… which ushers us into the privilege of being a Child of God and the hope of glory.
Let’s pray.
Next week we pick up with the second portion of our text in Part II of story of the donkey and the story of adversity, perseverance and hope.
20130602 2nd Sunday After Pentecost C
Title: Grace, Glory and Guts Part II
Text: Romans 5:1-5
Thesis: We can be happy because our hope comes through peace with God and that’s good because life is full of character building adversity.
II. The Joy of Problems
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials… Romans 5:3
