A crown to lay down
Romans: the Gospel Great and Glorious • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 25:12
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There is the story of Winnie the Pooh and piglet that is quite sweet. Winnie the pooh and piglet are off in the 100 acre wood out for an adventure then they stumble across some tracks, one track of a rather large animal and one track from a smaller animal. The tracks lead them to another set of tracks that lead them toa third and then a fourth set of tracks! The group that they are following, likely hephelumps and woozels, had grown to be a massive mob and piglet and Pooh are terrified.
Of course their fear was totally unfounded as Christopher Robin explains at the end of the chapter.. They were going in circles and the tracks that they were folloing were were their own! growing greater each time they progressed around the circle.
Now this story has a great deal of wisdom to it. A wisdom that mirrors the buddist and hindu teachings about reality.
THey say that reality is like piglet and pooh going around and around and around the clum of trees in the 100 acre wood. Reality seems to be one sort of thing- but in reality it is something very different.
In thier case they see reality as basically being composed of suffering and misery. A relentless cycle of pain and remose that is completley unending.
And I have to hand it to the philospers who realized this. It takes a fair amount of congent selfawareness to recognize that there is something so very wrong with our world.. Something so very wrong that we can’t fix it by try harder.. being better people. or learning how to eat beyond beef burgers.
Now the buddist and hindu solution to this challenge is to seek elightenment- a multilife process where one comes to see the world for how it really is and to be able to atlast leave it. Now those that are enlightened can at last depart from the relentless misery of life and enter nirvana. But nirvana is not a place of happyness it is nothingness. A complete lack of existence.
So from winnie the pooh to buddist monks all agree that when we are lost there is a problem. We as christians agree with that aswell.
We too with the buddists look at human existence and say there is something hidden that is dreadfully wrong. A cycle of suffering and misery, of pain and remose that seems inexcapable. But our solutions to this profound problem are very very different.
Our text for today is Romans 6:15-23. Lets read it together.
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Here Paul agrees with Christopher Robin and our buddist friends. Something is dreadfully wrong in the hundred Acre wood! But for Paul the problem is not that reality is broken, but that we are! Humanity has a problem.. We are slaves to sin. and selfish and destructive tendancy that not only dwells in each human hart but also RULES each human heart. We are slaves to sin.. and the most amazing part of this is that 95% of the time we don’t seem to notice. We act selfishly, proudly, jugdmentally And generally do far more hurt to ourselves, those around us and creation its self than we could ever do good. but we do all that not realizing the implications.
We are indeed just like piglet and Pooh following an ever growing trail of distruction through the hundred acre wood.. Not ever realizing it is of our doing!
So that is the problem. OUr problem. a problem for all of us.. and it is a problem that we can’t fix on our own!
But God provided that perfect solution to our problem for his own glory.
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
THis is the heart of the gospel. That for a people enslaved to sin, deserving of judgement and death God made a way to redemption through his own son.. Whom he loved, whom he sacrificed for our redemption. Now those who look to Jesus are justified- declared innocent- and called not just nice people but God’s people.. We are declared children of God.
But while that is the ultimate solution for our sin.. there is another problem.. A problem of patterns..
While we have been freed from that slavery to sin- that doesn’t mean that our hearts have gotten the memo.
as paul puts it.
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
Just because we have been set free from sin- doesn’t stop us from sinning.. BUt it should.
So that is what paul is trying to help us understand in this passage today. And he hinges his argment on a truth that I don’t think we understand in the modern age very well. THat is that we are all slaves to something. We would love to believe that we are masters of our own destinies.. able to determine our own will and way in the world. And that is the lie that covers the reality of our brokeness in this age.
As the poem Invictus by William ernest Henley Proudly declares.
“it matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”
The lie at the heart of our slavery is that we are the free. Free to determine our own fate and to do what will make us happy.
Paul’s argument shows a profoundly differnent perspective.
Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In otherwords Paul argues that each day we present ourselves mind soul and body to something to rule us.. For those that are not in christ there can only be one ruler for thier hearts.. One temptation that guides them.. THier sinful nature..
But for those that are saved their is a new decision to be made we can choose not to sin. and to become slaves for the kingdom.
Now this doesn’t ever give a christian a reason to judge or look down on one who is not saved yet. There should be a profound humility and sympathy in our hearts for those who have not met jesus. “there but for the grace of God” Should quickly echo in our thoughts.. For we have not been rescued for our good manners or perfect teeth but only because of Gods grace and will. And with joyful anticipation and purpose we should be looking at them recognizing that if God can call me his own then they too can be saved!
But Christian the problem is that just becasue you are Called to Him, Justiified and adopted as his own that doesn’t mean that you or I have learned yet to cast our old slavery aside. We still might cling to the lie that we are “the masters of our fate” and so choose to return to the mines of immorality and slave away. More comfortable with the lie than the truth that we have been saved and called to serve as part of the kings great army of suffering servants.
So Paul makes one simple argument to turn us.
He says open your eyes and pay attention to what your work is earning you!
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Our slavery to Sin only pays in death.. The promise of future death but also the constant misery and suffering that sin sows into our lives.
Living for ourselves not only doesn’t satisfy as it promises. Turning to the idols of our hearts doesn’t refresh us, it ruins us.
for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.
What Idols have promised you refeshment but only brought you misery? What obsessions have consumed your time but only paid you back with sorrow.
IF we look through the lie we realize that our slavery to sin has us digging holes only to fill them up again. a pointless futility that satisfies nothing and keeps us busy far away from the fruitful life of the kingdom of God.
So how do we counter this pattern of slavery..
Three simple steps
1. We open our eyes to the truth. The futility of Sin and the falsness of human independance.
2. We see ourselves as sons and daughters of the King! Jesus died for you. He called you! He loves you! You have been saved and called royalty. Not paupers you are princesses and princes in the family of God. You have been given a crown!
3. and finally we follow in the footsteps of Christ.. Paul says of jesus in
Philipians 2:6
though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Jesus high king of heaven Took his crown and for a time laid it down as he lowered himself in an act of obedience and love to become one of us that we might become part of his family.
Now brothers and sisters, we too have been given crowns.. authority and freedom. but to what end.. So that we can look esspecially royal as we meet each other on sundays. NO!
We are called to follow jesus- in obedience and in righteousness.
We have been given crowns so we might lay them down.....