Spiritual Treasures Endure Forever

(If you have found this sermon helpful, please visit us at www.HeritageRestorationProject.org or www.ChristianWisdom.info)

“When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord’” (Luke 5:8). Peter’s response is a very normal and natural response to God. It is the result of both awe inspired by God, and an awareness of our sinfulness in comparison to His righteousness. Adam and Ever, for example, hid and covered themselves after first having tasted sin (see Genesis 3:9-11). But this fallen nature, this shame which is capable of causing us to think that we cannot be reconciled with God, is not where God wishes to leave us

As we see in John 5:45, the natural law accuses us and condemns us. In contrast, God wishes for us to be delivered from condemnation through God’s plan of salvation, Jesus Christ’s substitutionary atonement, his death on the cross satisfying on our behalf the demands of the law. “The strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:56b-57).

As Martin Luther rightly points out in his Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, Satan takes advantage of the power of the law and attempts to use the law for his own purposes, as a device that pushes us away from God. Probably Satan’s greatest fear is that Christ’s ministry of reconciliation will lift from us the burden of our sin and failures, for this burden can cause us to shrink from and reject God’s grace because we feel as if our sin is so great that reconciliation with God is impossible. Satan uses the law (all of natural law as well as the Law of the Old Covenant) as an adversary in an attempt to condemn us and undermine God’s grace, but, thanks be to God, we have an Advocate with the Father, that Advocate who speaks on our behalf being Jesus Christ. As a result, reconciliation with our Creator is not only possible, but is in fact God’s plan for us.

Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s play, “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar”, gives an oration in which he says, “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.” I would take issue with this, and, in fact, the end result of Anthony’s speech was that the people of Rome remembered the good that Caesar had done and forgot the evil.

The Bible tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But the Bible also tells us that God loves us immensely despite or sinful nature (see Romans 5:8). And one of God’s most beautiful promises is that God will never forget the good that we have done, the love and compassion we have shown, the virtue to which we have aspired—those things which have been pure and noble and good in our heart, in our actions, and in our aspirations are in fact kept for eternity in the heart of God just waiting to be reclaimed by us if and when we understand and accept His plan of salvation. All that is worth celebrating, all that is worth remembering, all that is true, all that is noble, all that is beautiful will live in joy in the heart of God forever while that which has caused us shame will be expunged if we accept God’s plan of salvation. Every tear will be wiped away. Sin will be purged, cleansed from us, forgotten, if we are willing to simply confess it to God, and let go of the guilt and shame trusting in the effectiveness of God’s substitutionary atonement to cover our sin debt, rather than striving for the impossible, our own righteousness.

Nothing sinful can live forever. In fact, by definition, that which is sinful is that which cannot live forever because it does not conform to the Word, the natural law, by which it was called into being. Nothing which is contrary to natural law can, by definition, live forever. The opposite is true, however, of the pure and noble and good in in our heart, in our actions and in our aspirations. These things are treasures to be laid up in heave and reclaimed for eternity if we are willing to allow Christ to stand between us and the condemnation of the God’s natural law.

All of us need encouragement from time to time, and, all of us can share encouragement with others. Moments of ministry can be treasures that live after us. We have the opportunity each day to be agents of God’s redemptive love. There are so many things that we can say and do in response to the law of love, the law God has written upon the regenerated heart. Do these things in response to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, for such things are treasures laid up in heaven to be reclaimed as living memories in the eternal now of God’s heaven.