Sermons

Picture people who have fallen into the sea. Wherever they look, there is no boat to pull them out. Power, wealth and good deeds alike can do nothing in the face of the crashing waves but stop their mouths.

Yet, unknown to them, a rescue ship was already speeding toward the scene. The law was given so that men and women would come to see they are unable to keep it by themselves, and only after that recognition does the faith that waits for the Messiah take root. Jesus Christ is that righteousness of God, prepared before the ages began, and he saves without distinction all who have lived by faith, from the Old Testament until now.

Salvation comes not by works but by faith alone. Before the God who rescued them from death, even holding up prayer, offerings and devotion as something to boast of counts for nothing. To remember the grace of being declared righteous, giving thanks in all things and praying without ceasing: this is the life that befits God’s people.

The apostle Paul speaks of the sins of those who had tasted grace yet could not give up the pleasures of the world. Those who did not fear God, and those who would use him to meet their own needs, cannot receive his holy grace.

There is no one righteous, not even one. When the word sin appears in the plural, it refers to the many wrongs people commit; in the singular, it points to an unseen being, Satan. Ever since Adam became a sinner, every person has been born with Satan as their father, and each goes on sinning without recognizing it as sin.

At first sin brings a sense of shame, but with each repetition it leaves a person more numb. No human strength can overcome Satan, so Christians must put on the full armor of God. The apostle Paul met the God who had given him life and then longed for others to be restored. In the same way, leading souls who wander in darkness is how God’s people answer his grace.

Paul sharply rebukes the Jews, who teach the Gentiles from a faith that has dwindled to outward form. They answer that their disobedience actually displays God’s righteousness. Why, then, should they be reproached for it?

Being the chosen people who had received the law only made them proud. It never grew into true faith. No matter how a son sins, his father’s goodness is not erased. In the same way, human falsehood and unfaithfulness cannot shake the truthfulness of God in the least. Human sin cannot bring God’s plan to a halt.

Though Israel rejected the gospel, God did not cast them off altogether. He raised up Paul, himself a Jew, to bring it to the Gentiles. Jew and Gentile alike, all are under sin, and repentance comes not through excuses but only by looking to the cross.

As he was about to go to Pharaoh, Moses asked God how he should answer when asked for God’s name. Forty years as a prince and forty as a shepherd had trained him, yet for all that he had no confidence in himself.

God gave the law to the Jews, but they made it a source of pride and mocked the Gentiles as blind. They preached against stealing and stole, forbade adultery and committed it, and went so far as to rob temples. They held circumcision to be the sign of salvation, but where the Word is not lived out, that circumcision is no different from uncircumcision.

Those who teach must first ask themselves whether they are living by that Word. A merely outward faith only dishonors God, and true circumcision is the one received in the heart by the Spirit. The greater the grace received, the more closely words and deeds need to agree, and that is how God is glorified.

When the Samaritan woman raised the question of where to worship, Jesus told her not to quarrel over it. True worship, he said, belongs neither to Jerusalem nor to Mount Gerizim; it is worship offered in spirit and in truth by those who know God as Father.

This does not make the place of worship unimportant. What matters is knowing fully the One to whom worship is offered. Because God shows no partiality, treating people differently for what they own or the position they hold is nothing but human sin. In his love, God sets one starting line for those whose faith is weak and another for those whose faith is strong, so that everyone may cross the finish line and win the race.

Even in seasons when the faithful cannot come to church, each can still worship wholeheartedly wherever they are. No one should compare themselves with others and count themselves unhappy. Standing in the place God has appointed, they must keep only thanksgiving and hope in their hearts and lay everything else down. Those who run in this way will cross the finish line without fail and be embraced in the arms of God.

Paul turns to those who judge others. Anyone who passes judgment on others while doing the very same things merely believes themselves to be perfect, when in truth they too are capable of that same sin. Such are those who do not see God’s kindness and patience as an opportunity to repent, but instead turn them to their own advantage.

Going to church, reading the Bible and praying give no one the right to condemn those who do not. To boast of them is to boast of doing what ought to be done in any case, and God looks not at the goodness that shows on the outside but at the heart. Like the guest who was invited to the wedding feast yet did not wear the wedding garment, such a person receives grace and forgets how weighty that grace is.

God repays each person justly, according to what they have done. To those who patiently do good he gives eternal life; on those who do not obey the truth but follow unrighteousness he brings wrath. Since the only opportunity to repent is now, while we are still in the body, we must put on the garment of salvation that Jesus Christ has given and live holy lives today.

Upon those who knew God and still rejected him, God revealed his wrath. He neither punished them outright nor brought them to repentance; instead he gave them over to their shameful desires. Sodom and Gomorrah, the decadence of Rome and the sexual immorality of our own day all bear witness to this.

Even rebuke and anger show that love lies beneath them. To be left alone, with no response at all, is the more fearful punishment. Without the Holy Spirit at work to bring a person to repentance, no one can walk away from sin by their own strength.

Because God’s people know the Kingdom of Heaven, they must be more watchful than the world around them. Satan labors without ceasing to make them stumble, yet those who rely on the Holy Spirit are well able to resist his temptations. Fixing one’s eyes on the world and on other people leads to a fall, but looking to Jesus Christ reveals how little that world is worth.

When the heavens and the earth were created, light drove back the formlessness, the emptiness and the darkness. God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, yet Adam and Eve gave way to Satan’s temptation and broke that command. Ashamed of their nakedness, they then hid from God.

A heart that refuses the light remains captive to confusion, emptiness and darkness. What may be known about God is already within people, but once gratitude is lost, the pleasures of the flesh and idols move in to take its place. Just as Adam laid the blame for his own wrongdoing on Eve, people find fault with the work, the spouse and the health God has given them, and so evade their own responsibility.

Even those who deny God are without excuse, for what may be known about him is plainly displayed in all that he has made. We must therefore not forsake his love or suppress the truth, but love the light all the more and live lives of thanksgiving.

An epidemic has shaken relationships and lives alike, and a season drags on in which people cannot freely come to worship. Here, the sermon says, Christians must look honestly at themselves and ask whether they were ever truly people who felt their need of Christ and the gospel.

Paul was well aware that the believers in Rome already had faith, yet he earnestly longed to preach the gospel to them. Once people have attended church for many years and assume they already understand, their hearts grow hard and grace slips away. The gospel is a word that such people need to hear for themselves first, even before the world does.

Like Paul, who was not ashamed of the gospel, the faithful must live by their faith in Christ. Receiving Christ by believing, and seeing that faith grow until it shows in one’s life, are both part of the process of salvation. The sermon urges them to hold fast to an enduring faith that looks not to people or circumstances but to God alone.

Paul introduces himself as a slave of Jesus Christ. In Roman society, where slaves were not even regarded as human, this was a position he chose for himself: a place with no way of escape and no life of his own. What he proclaims is that the Messiah, foretold by the prophets over long ages, came from the line of David and rose from the dead. This is Christ, the heart of the gospel.

The law cannot save anyone. The more one strives to keep its 613 commandments, the more sin only piles up, and the blood of bulls and goats does not take sin away. Like a guardrail, the law is simply a warning that to leave this road is to die. Salvation is heeding that warning and believing in Christ, who is the safe way.

The names of those God has chosen have been written in the book of life since before the creation of the world. If God has called someone, he called that person because he needed them, so the called must look honestly at the life they are now living by their own free will. To remain in Christ whatever the temptation, as Paul did, is faith; it is obedience; it is salvation.

On the road to Damascus, Saul is surrounded by a powerful light and falls to the ground. A voice speaks from heaven: it is Jesus, the very one he is persecuting.

In that moment everything Saul had guarded comes crashing down. His standing as a Jew, his Roman citizenship, his learning in the law are no longer anything to boast of. The man who had counted Jesus a heretic and persecuted him now falls to his knees before the truth that this Jesus is the living God.

Paul’s was a life that laid aside the privileges of the world and was spent for the gospel. When the Jerusalem church was afraid of him, Barnabas stood up for him, and the man he raised up went on to proclaim Christ with all that was in him, to the very end. Grace he had received freely, he repaid with his life.