Charles Spurgeon once preached what in his judgment was one of his poorest sermons. He stammered and floundered, and when he got through felt that it had been a complete failure. He was greatly humiliated, and when he got home he fell on his knees and said, "Lord, God, thou canst do something with nothing. Bless that poor sermon."
And all through the week he would utter that prayer. He would wake up in the night and pray about it. He determined that the next Sunday he would redeem himself by preaching a great sermon. Sure enough, the next Sunday the sermon went off beautifully. At the close, the people crowded about him and covered him with praise. Spurgeon went home pleased with himself, and that night he slept like a baby.
But he said to himself, "I’ll watch the results of those two sermons." What were they? From the one that had seemed a failure he was able to trace forty-one conversions. And from that magnificent sermon he was unable to discover that a single soul was saved. Spurgeon’s explanation was that the Spirit of God used the one and did not use the other. We can do nothing without the Spirit who Paul says in Romans 8:26 “helps us in our weakness.”
We are in week 8 of this 15 week series called The Roman Road to Savior. In week one I said that Romans is perhaps the greatest letter ever written. That is because it so clearly communicates the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and can and should serve as a road map for all Christ followers to follow as they try to live the life that Christ teaches us to live. That is why I have entitled this series The Roman Road to a Savior. I believe Paul’s teachings in this beautiful letter will lead us to a deeper more meaningful walk with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ In week five, I told you that Romans 5:5, which reads “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us, was perhaps the greatest sentence ever written. Well now we our half way down our Roman road to a Savior, and this week we make a stop in what is generally regarded as the greatest chapter in the Bible. This is the chapter in which Paul just lays it all out. It is in this chapter that we get the heart of the Gospel. God has not only sent his one and only son to die on a cross for the forgiveness of our sins, but has also put his Holy Spirit within us who enables us to live the life that Jesus teaches us to live. And as if that was not amazing enough, God has also adopted us as his children, and promises to always protect us, and to never leave us,
I honestly do not know if I can do this greatest chapter ever written justice with only one sermon, but because this series butts up against the season of Advent, and I am going to be gone one week I am going to give it a try. I may come back to this chapter in January to try to make sure we get everything out of this amazing chapter that God intends for us to get. Paul begins this chapter by talking about life in the Spirit verses life in the flesh. He is not continuing to talk about the battle within that we explored last week. The flesh he talks about is our body and our earthly desires. The Spirit is the Spirit of God. So, that battle that he is talking about in Romans 8 is the battle between living a life that is led by our flesh, our bodies, our earthly desires, and sinful desires, and living a life that is led by the Spirit of God. I want to make something clear here. Even though all of humanity has inherited the Original Sin that I have talked about throughout this series, all of our desires are not sinful. For example, our desire to be loved is not sinful. God, who is love, created us to be loved. That is why Jesus teaches us that above all things we are to love God with all of our heart, all of our strength, all of our mind, and all of our soul. And, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. There is nothing wrong with desiring to be loved. Yet, if we allow our flesh to lead us, our desire to be love will turn into lust. Lust is not love. And if we give into lust we are opening ourselves up to a lot of pain and heartache. Giving into lust is just one way that we tend to let our flesh lead us. There are many other ways, but no matter how we let our flesh lead us the result will always be the same. In verse 6 Paul wrote, “The mind that is governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.” In other words, if we insist on being our own guide down this road called life, our life will surely be filled with trouble, heartache, and the stench of death. However, if we allow the Holy Spirit to guide our lives we will be able to experience new life in Christ and the peace of God. In order to explain this further, Paul reminds us that we have been adopted my God. In verses 14 through 17 Paul explains that if we live a life led by the Spirit of God, then we are indeed children of God. Before our adoption, we were slaves to sin, but now because of our faith in Christ we are sons and daughters of God. I have told you before that even though I love Paul, but he can sometimes frustrate me. This is one of those times, because in chapters 6 and 7 he said that we had become slaves of righteousness and of God, and now says we are not slaves at all, but rather free children of God who can call God daddy or papa. After years of studying Paul, I have come to my own conclusion, this is Randy’s understanding of Paul and not something I read. I believe that Paul, like any good preacher, uses words and illustrations that best help him make the point he was trying to make. Any apparent contradiction from letter to letter, or in this case chapter to chapter are not theological contradictions, but are to be read only in the context of the subject he is writing about. So, while I do believe that Paul believed that we should be slaves of God and righteousness, he does not want us to view ourselves as slaves. Instead we are to view ourselves as children of God, who strive to live life in the Spirit. Before I move one from this point I do not want us to miss the significance of what Paul is saying when he says we can cry out Abba Father. Abba was a respectful, but intimate way to address one’s father in the Aramaic language. Jesus called God the Father Abba Father in his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. Paul is saying the we have to right to address God in the same way Jesus did. Through our adoption we have become sons and daughters of God which makes Jesus not only our Lord and Savior but also our brother. As sons and daughters of God we are also co-heirs with Jesus of the kingdom of God. I told this chapter was amazing.
I really wanted to two take two weeks to preach on Romans 8, because it almost seems like Paul switches subjects in verse 18. However, as I read this chapter over and over during the past few weeks I have become convinced that he did not switch subjects at all. He spent verses 1 through 17 teaching us that as Christ followers we should live life in the Spirit, and now he is going to teach us the benefits of life in the Spirit. Paul starts the second half of Romans 8 by saying that for those of us who choose to live life in the Spirit, nothing we experience on Earth is worth comparing to the glory we will experience when we experience the glory of God. Paul, once again gets a little wordy for my taste in verses 19-25, but his point is that God’s Spirit that sustains us as we eagerly and patiently wait for our adoption and the redemption of our bodies. Paul is not saying that we are not already the children of God, but he is referring to our resurrection when our bodies are redeemed and returned to their original state of perfection in the image of God. When our bodies are returned to this glorified state, it is then that we will be able to experience the fullness of our resurrection. So, the first benefit of living in the Spirit is that God’s Holy Spirit is our source of sustainment and strength as we await the second coming of Christ when our bodies will be redeemed and restored to their original glory as reflections of God Himself.
Starting in verse 26 Paul tells us that the Spirit also helps in our weakness. There are a few ways that the Spirit helps us. Here Paul is talking about prayer. I hope I am not going to shock anyone by saying this, but we are not God. Our brains are capable of incredible things, but they are finite compared to the thoughts of God. Because we have finite minds, it is impossible for us to know exactly what we should pray for all of the time. Therefore, the Spirit intercedes for us, when the words we need to pray just will not come to our mind. Many of our Pentecostal brothers and sisters use this verse, Romans 8:27, as one of the verses in the New Testament that teach us that we are should pray in tongues. I happen to believe, that speaking in tongues in a real gift that some Christ followers have, but it not a gift that all Christ followers have. Nonetheless, I do believe, and I think this is Paul’s point, that if we are truly living a life led by the Spirit the Spirt does intercede on our behalf because our finite minds cannot possibly ask God for everything we truly need to walk through this life on our journey to our true home in heaven with God.
Paul finishes this amazing chapter with 11 truly incredible verses. If I wanted to, I could probably get three our four sermons out of these 11 verses. In 8:28 Paul says that “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, and who have been called according to his purpose.” Just as our Pentecostal brothers and sisters love verses 26 and 27, our Calvinist brothers and sisters love verses 28-30. Maybe this is why Romans 8 is called the greatest chapter. It seems to have something for every type of theologian or belief system within all of Christianity. I do not want to get bogged done in what God knew about us, and when he knew it. It is enough to know and believe with all our hearts that God knew us before we were born. He knew every sin we would ever commit, but that does not stop him from calling us his children. And it certainly doesn’t stop him from working for our good,
Paul closes this amazing chapter with words that have brought a lot of comfort to me over the years. I absolutely love Romans 8:31 “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” Paul goes on in the following verses to say that no one can condemn us because it is God alone who justifies, and God justified us when He gave up his one and only Son for all of us. For those of us who chose to be Christ followers, for those of us who choose to live by the Spirit, we have a savior that not only bled and died as a ransom for our sins and defeated death to give us eternal life, but now He sits at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us. Do you understand what that means? The one and only Son of the one and only God is working for our good. As we walk through this broken world, as we endure sicknesses, financial hardships, relationship problems, as we endure fill in the blank with whatever battle or hardship you are facing right now, if you have decided to follow Christ and live in the Spirit; Christ is also working on your behalf. It may not seem like it at times, but it is true. Remember what we learned in chapter 4. We must not only believe in the triune God, but we also must believe God’s promises.
For some people God’s greatest promise is eternal life. And, I can understand that. There are days where I sit a day dream about the moment that I will leave this disabled body behind, and go to heaven where I believe I will spend eternity with a perfected body. I have achieved most of my goals here on Earth, but one of the few I have yet to achieve is to run a marathon. I love to run. My asthma and Cerebral Palsy keep me from running a lot anymore, but I still hold out hope that I will one day run a marathon. No matter if I do or don’t you can bet your bottom dollar that when I get to heaven I am going to go on a thousand mile run with Jesus and my two disabled step sons Jon and Zach.
As awesome as that is to think about, for me heaven is not God’s greatest promise. For me, God’s greatest promise comes at the end of the greatest chapter ever written. In Romans 8:37-39 Paul writes “No, in all these things we are more than conquers through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither the present nor the future, neither any powers, neither height or depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Now that is a promise!
When Paul writes “No, in all these things,” in verse 37 he is referring to verse 35 where he writes “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or the sword? This is what I was talking about earlier when I said that no matter what hardship or battle we are going through Jesus is working for us. In fact, he is right there in the battle with us. This is what I consider God’s greatest promise. Because of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have the promises of the forgiveness of our sins and eternal life. Those are awesome promises. But for me, the fact that God sent His Holy Spirit to do life with us, well, it just does not get any better than that.
I shared some weeks ago that some of the struggles I have faced in this life. As if having Cerebral Palsy wasn’t enough I have faced discrimination, have been called names, spent weeks in the hospital, and went through a painful divorce. And those are just a few of the things I have faced since I started seminary in 2001. My path to the pulpit has been long and hard, but every time I thought I was defeated God would bring this chapter to me. It was almost like he was whispering in my ear, you are more that a conquer. You are more than a conquer. And then sometimes it seemed as if he was screaming. YOU ARE MORE THAN A CONQUER! YOU ARE MORE THAN A CONQUER! But, God was not telling me that I was strong. He wasn’t a coach giving me a pep talk before a big game. He wasn’t really telling me anything about myself. I believe God has brought me to Romans 8 time and time again to say you are not defeated, because I am not and will never be defeated. God was saying, your pain, your wheelchair, your 100 plus job rejections, your marriage, your health, those are things of the flesh. Come back to living in my Spirit, because when you are living in my Spirit in all these things you are more than a conquer.
God want’s us to live in His Spirit, because life in the flesh leads to death. Death of our hopes, death of our dreams, death of our joy, death of our happiness, death of everything. Life in the spirit, however, gives us hope, determination, strength, power, joy, and life to the fullest. God does not promise an easy life. There will be trials, but when we choose to live in the Spirit in all these things we are more than conquers! Amen
