November 5, 2006

Reformation Sunday

A young woman decides to pursue a career in the big city and has to find a job and an apartment.  A couple decides to remodel the basement on their own.  A young man wants to learn Spanish without traveling to or paying for immersion classes.  The motto for these people?  “I’ll do it myself!”  Lots of people live by that motto, and that means there’s a huge market for do-it-yourself and “how-to” books.

I did an internet search to see how many “how to” books are out there.  The search engine listed 3,310,000 “how to” books.  I found titles ranging from How to Sell Your House and How to Draw Animals to How to Watch Football, How to Ruin Your Life,  How to Become a Bishop without Being Religious,  How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend,  How to Make a Pregnant Woman Happy,  How to Do Science Experiments with Children, and How an Idiot Writes a Self-Help Book.  There was one very important title missing, however, covering the most important subject of all, more important than building a dune buggy, more important than feeling great, and even more important than watching football – “How To Be Right with God.”

If you are visiting us for the first time, we are delighted to have you here.  We also want you to know that we exist as a congregation because we are absolutely convinced that God Himself speaks to all of us in the Bible and gives us a clear answer to that most important concern.  After all, if we cut through all the hype about money and the good life and self, what really counts is our relationship with God because that’s going to have a bearing on where we spend eternity.  There are only two options, heaven or hell, and there’s no halfway house.  I don’t know about you, but I would rather spend eternity in perfect, unending happiness in the palm of God’s love than in total misery, pain, and torture under the heel of his anger.  For that reason, it is absolutely essential for each and every one of us to know How to be Right with God.  It all depends on The righteousness God demands and The righteousness God gives.

Today Lutherans are celebrating the reformation of the church.  We do that not to honour a man named Martin Luther but to praise and thank God for using Luther to announce clearly what had been clouded, namely, how to be right with God.  Luther had learned at an early age that God demands that people live their lives and even keep their thoughts in pristine purity every moment of every day.  In other words, Luther learned that God demands righteousness.  God says, “If you want to be close to Me now and forever, you have to demonstrate that you can be as holy as I am.”  This terrified Luther because he knew that he couldn’t live up to that demand.  In fact, he knew that his sinfulness led to just the opposite, creating an ever wider gap, an ever deeper chasm between himself and God.  What could he do to get in good with God?

He toyed with the idea of entering a monastery, but his dad disapproved.  So, off to law school he went.  Then, while heading home at semester break, a big storm came up.  Lightning, thunder, trees crashing.  He promised the saints, “If I get home safely, I’ll become a monk!”  When he made it home, he said, “Dad, I gotta keep my promise.”  But even in the monastery, cloistered away from worldly temptations and pleasures, he found no relief for his troubled conscience.  He almost killed himself one day trying to beat sin out of his body and life.

You see, Martin Luther experienced the reality of these words, “Now we know that whatever [God’s] law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.  Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin” (19-20).  Everyone who tries to score points with God on their own is going to come up short.  The reason?  God doesn’t just say, “Be nice.  Be as good as you can be.  Try your best!”  No!  God demands, “Love me perfectly and love others perfectly, too!”  God demands righteousness!

And He demands that of us!  Don’t try to make excuses as if the errors you have made aren’t that bad, as if your poor judgment didn’t really hurt anyone.  Don’t think that because you are a regular fun loving person who never intentionally harmed anyone, that you escaped God’s glare!  Even one tiny little bit of sin means you have fallen short. 

There’s a story told about a shipwreck.  The captain was a careful man.  The weather was OK.  But the vessel swerved from the proper course, and the ship went down.  A diver went down after her.  Inside the compass box he found a bit of steel which appeared to be the small point of a pocketknife blade.  Some of the rescued sailors said that one of their own had been sent to clean the compass.  He had used his pocketknife and must have unwittingly broken the point off in the box.  That little bit of metal had deflected the compass needle from its proper position and wrecked the whole ship.  One trifling sin, no matter how small it may seem to be, can wreck our whole relationship with God.  We are all guilty.  “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

The evangelist Billy Sunday was getting ready to do a crusade in New York City. So he wrote a letter to the mayor, asking for the names of people he knew who had a spiritual problem and who needed prayer and help. A few weeks later, the mayor sent him a package. He opened it up. And it was a telephone directory for the entire city of New York.  We are all guilty.

You see, if you really want to know how to be right with God, then like Luther you have to begin with the realization that you and I don’t measure up.  We could assemble the best defense lawyers and still our mouths would be corked if left to stand before God on our own.

Yet, even with that some people are foolish enough to think that God isn’t concerned about sin.  That’s how some people in Paul’s day thought, too.  They figured, “Hey!  God threatens to punish sin, but we haven’t seen it.”  Paul addressed that objection here.  Sure!  God delayed punishment for centuries, but that doesn’t mean He was unconcerned or incapable of doing anything.  No!  God delayed punishment on sinners in order to demonstrate his patience.  God had a big, big plan.  In his incredible mercy He decided to store up his punishment for one spectacular moment in history.  That way he could “demonstrate his justice … so as to be just and [also] the one who justifies (declares innocent) the one who is of faith in Jesus (26).

The one word in Scripture that troubled Martin Luther the most, that just about pushed him over the edge, was “righteousness.”  God is righteous and holy, and Luther knew, “I’m not, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”  Luther’s superiors recognized he was on the verge of going nuts.  They said, “We’ve got to keep this Luther guy busy, or he’s going to lose it.”  So they told him, “There’s a new university opening up.  Take the job as a professor.”  But in those days, the university curriculum included religion.  Luther was assigned to teach the Bible.  For the first time in his life he discovered Scripture’s full message.  Not just half of it.  Not just the bad news.  He discovered statements like this, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from [God’s demands], has been made known, to which the [Scriptures] testify.  This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (21-22).

So, God not only has and demands righteousness.  He also gives, yes, credits righteousness to our account!  The apostle explains how that was possible – and I gotta tell you this is big!  It’s the most magnificent, momentous, marvelous, miraculous event in all history!  This is what Christianity is all about.  This is why we exist.  This is why we know we are going to live forever.  “[All] are justified (declared innocent) freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus (24). 

The apostle connects two vivid picture terms.  As soon as we hear the term “justified,” we are transported to a courtroom scene.  Guilty as all get out, there we stood before the judgment throne of God himself.  He had a perfect right to declare sinners like us to be guilty, send us to hell, and toss away the key.  But into that courtroom bursts our Lord Jesus.  He said, “Heavenly Father, You want people to be perfect.  I did that.  Accept my perfect life in place of their imperfection.  You demand payment for their sin.  Accept my payment in place of theirs.”

Which takes us to the second picture – “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement.”  This phrase reminds us of the OT Day of Atonement.  It transports us to the Israelite community before the birth of Jesus.  God wanted to teach them that the payment for sin is death.  So He told them, “Instead of Me killing you for your sin, I will allow you to take a goat or lamb, kill it, drain the blood into a bowl, then have your representative go to the little room in the temple where I show my holy presence, and sprinkle the blood over the cover of that gold box with Commands inside that expose sin.  That will picture what the Saviour will do.  He will come to shed his blood as a covering over your sin so I don’t see it any more.”

That’s exactly what Jesus did.  And He did it for you.  That’s how to be right with God.  God gives righteousness to us through Jesus.  For family devotions, Martin Luther once read the account of Abraham offering Isaac on the altar in Genesis 22. His wife, Katie, said, “I do not believe it. God would not have treated his son like that!”  “But, Katie,” Luther replied, “He did.”

An Englishman by the name of Ebenezer Wooten had just concluded a preaching service in the village square. The crowd had dispersed, and he was busily engaged in loading the equipment. A young man approached him and asked, “Mr. Wooten, what must I do to be saved?” Sensing that the fellow was trusting his own righteousness, Wooten answered in a rather unconcerned way, “It’s too late!” The inquirer was startled. “Oh don’t say that, sir!” But the evangelist insisted, “It’s too late!” Then, looking the young man in the eye, he continued, “You want to know what you must DO to be saved. I tell you it’s too late now or any other time. The work of salvation is done, completed, finished!  It was finished on the cross.”  Believe it!

When it comes to being right with God, there simply is no self-help, “how to” book.  We don’t need one.  We’ve got the Scriptures to tell us how it happened.  We’ve got the Saviour who made it happen!  We are right with God!   Amen.

This sermon adapted from sermon preached by Pastor Jim Huebner of Grace, Milwaukee.WI.

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