The Grace that no Longer Amazes: Romans 1:18-23

Our foray into the book of Romans begins to take a dark turn.  I say this because in the next two chapters, Paul lays out a scathing condemnation of humanity.  Paul reveals to his audience just how sinful they are–how sinful we are.  There are many who will not like what I have to say in the coming weeks.  Many would like to pretend that they are generally good, decent people who commit a few mistakes, sure.  Everyone commits mistakes.  But tell a person he or she is deserving of God’s wrath, then you are likely to receive a tongue lashing.  We are a culture that has become desensitized to God’s wrath.  We have been so exposed to a loving, gracious God, that the thought of grace no longer even amazes us.

I watched a lecture this week by Dr. R.C. Sproul, and he told a very interesting story.  He said that he began teaching an introduction to the Old Testament course in theology at a particular college to all 250 students. He laid out how students would be graded for the class.  There would be a series of papers turned in throughout the semester due on a certain date.  If the paper were not turned in, the students would receive a failing grade.  Sproul said that at the first due date 225 students came with their papers and 25 did not.  The 25 pleaded with Sproul saying that they were making the transition from high school to college; they had made bad time management choices and needed more time.  Sproul granted them more time, much to their delight.  The next due date came, and this time 200 students came with their papers, and fifty did not.  Once again the begging and pleading ensued.  Once again, Sproul offered an extension.  At this point, Dr. Sproul became very, very popular on campus.  All the students loved him.  According to Sproul’s story, they even sang a song to him!

But then, the final due date arrived.  This time, 150 students handed in their papers.  100 did not.  Sproul approached a young man and asked, “Do you have your paper to turn in?”  The young man replied, “Hey, don’t worry about it prof.  I’ll have it for you in a couple of days.”  Sproul picked up his grade book, looked at the young man again and said, “You don’t have your paper?”  The guy replied, “No.”  Sproul marked in his grade book and said, “F.”

Sproul continues, “There was this gasp in the room.  And I looked and said, ‘Johnson, where’s your paper?’  ‘I don’t have it, sir.’ I said, ‘F. Reynolds, where’s your paper? F.’ And as if it were orchestrated...they call cried out with one voice, ‘THAT’S NOT FAIR!’

“I said, ‘What did you say?’  ‘We said that’s not fair.’ I said, ‘Beech, weren’t you late with your paper last time?’  He said, ‘Yes sir.’  ‘And you are late this morning?’  He said, ‘Yes sir.’

“So, I gave you an F for today, and it’s justice that you want?  I’m going to give you justice.  I’m going to change your grade for the last one, the one you were late for, and I’m going to give you an F for that one.  O.K.?  Now, who else wants justice.  You people be careful about ever asking for justice because you just might get it?”

Sproul continues, “But what happened?  They became accustomed to my grace.  First they appreciated it.  Then, they expected it.  Finally, they demanded it, and that’s who we are.”

That’s who we are.  When it comes to God’s grace; His love; His mercy in this day and age–we no longer appreciate it.  Most of us expect it.  And many demand it.  This is why there is a severe lack of humility in many churches today.  This is why many Christians come across as arrogant and self-righteous.  They believe they deserve grace–they deserve God’s love.  And a Christian who is not afraid of God’s wrath or a person who is not afraid of God’s wrath, will not hear the Gospel as good news; will not ever have a change of heart; and will never experience the fullness of peace that the Gospel delivers.

Today, we begin a journey towards humility.  Today we will begin to have our toes stomped on unmercifully.  When Paul is done with us, our hearts will either be hardened to the point that we want nothing to do with God, or our hearts will be crushed and ready to hear what God has done when we least deserved it.

Paul begins, “18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.”  There was a time in recent Christian history when theologians wanted to get as far away from God’s wrath as possible.  They believed this painted God as arbitrary, judgmental, liable to blow up at a whim and punish whoever He wanted whenever He wanted without regard.  The idea that God could get angry to the point of dealing death toward His creation was shoved as far back as possible in favor of a God who simply loved and wanted to be loved.  The majority of theologians today have repented from this because the horrid events of the 20th century: the Holocaust; the killing fields; the murder of millions of people in Russian pogroms woke them up to the reality of evil.  And if God is a just God; if God cares even a smidgen for His creation, then He cannot stand such evil acts.  God’s anger must burn hot at sin or God is not good!!  Let me say that again: God’s anger must burn hot at sin and injustice, or God is not good!  This is what is behind Paul’s words here.  Ungodliness is sin against God.  Wickedness is injustice or sin from one human against another.  God hates these sins with a passion.  They bring about His wrath.

But one might argue, how can someone who has never known God or known God’s commands stir God’s anger?  Isn’t that injustice on God’s part?  Paul says unequivocally that God’s anger is stirred against ungodliness and injustice–of those who suppress the truth.  Can EVERYONE know the truth?

Paul anticipates this argument as he continues, “19For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse;”   Paul probably has Psalm 19 verses 1-4 ringing in his head as he dictates these words.  This Psalm reads:

The heavens declare the glory of God
the skies proclaim the works of his hands
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
No sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.

Paul believes in what we call today, natural revelation–that we can come to know God–His power and His divinity–through the natural world.  This is not anything new for most people.  Most people believe that we can come to know some sense of right and wrong; some sense of justice; some sense of God through looking around the world.  Hence, every single culture around the world has some form of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  Babies have a sense of fairness and justice.  It is innate within each and every person who is in his or her right mind.  No one is without excuse.  And if there is a universal law, where did that law come from?  Paul argues that those who suppress the truth are those who claim it comes from anywhere and everywhere but God.

21for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.  There is a blatant mistranslation in this text in verse 21.  It should read “for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless hearts were darkened.”  The importance of this translation will become clear in a moment.

Paul continues in his argument saying that even though people knew God–even though they knew of His revelation through creation–they did not honor Him or give thanks to Him.  They refused to worship God.  This led them to become futile in their thinking; have darkened hearts; and to become foolish.  How does this happen?

This happens because everyone worships.  Yes, everyone worships.  I don’t care if you are an atheist, a staunch believer, or even a Christian in name only.  Everyone worships something.  Some may disagree with me greatly, but here is the argument laid out for you:

We as human beings don’t just live–we all live for something.  Something in this life gives us meaning; gives us direction; gives us purpose; gives us hope; gives us a sense of value.  Timothy Keller puts it best when he says, “There has to be something which captures our imagination and our allegiance, which is the resting place of our deepest hopes and which we look to to calm our deepest fears. Whatever that thing is, we worship it, and so we serve it.  It becomes our bottom line, the thing we cannot live without, defining and validating everything we do.”  In days of old those things were literally idols–images made from wood and metal, but in our days, such idols have been changed but are still none-the-less idols: money, sex, justice, peace, prosperity, work, family, friends, busyness, power, climbing the corporate ladder, science, technology, free time, the government and a host of other things capture our hearts’ imagination and lead us to become foolish.

How does this happen?  Let me read to you the comments of atheist David Foster Wallace in his commencement speech at Kenyon College:

Everybody worships.  The only choice we get is what to worship, and the compelling reason to maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.  If you choose to worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough.  Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age starts showing you will die a thousand million deaths before they finally grieve you.  Worship power and you will end up feeling weak and afraid and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect being seen as smart and you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud always on the verge of being found out.  But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is they are unconscious.  They are default settings.

When your heart’s imagination is captured by anything other than the Creator, you will become enslaved.  It will demand your time; your money; your energy; your entire being, and then you will delude yourself into thinking you are just fine.  You will justify what you are doing over and over and over again.  You will make excuses for your behavior and your thoughts.  When others confront you with your behavior, you will get angry and frustrated, and you will say, “I can stop this at any minute,” knowing full well you cannot and will not–until your heart changes.  Your stubborn, darkened heart makes you a fool.  Your worship of things other than the Creator turns you into a fool.

And now we must all ask ourselves: what do we worship?  What consumes our heart and mind and our thoughts day in and day out.  What do we think about in our spare time?  What does our life revolve around?  Odds are, it is not God.  None of us, and I mean none of us are focused with all our being upon Him.  We have traded worship for our Creator for things that are created.  Therefore, we stand under God’s wrath.  We deserve God’s wrath.  God’s anger is kindled against us.

And now, I must end with an apology.  I apologize for ending this sermon right here and right now.  For years, I have included in my preaching the Gospel.  I have brought you time and again to the point where you hear the soothing message of what God has done for you through Jesus Christ.  I have pronounced the Gospel in a nutshell: John 3:16-17 with reckless abandon.  But I cannot do this today.  This book is forcing us to reflect upon the state of our hearts; upon the state of our sinfulness.  We must continue through the darkness so that when the Gospel is announced at the end of chapter 3, we will once again discover just how amazing grace is.  Amen.

Why Worship...In Church?

For many years, I have struggled to answer this question.  In many ways, even some of the answers I have posted on this blog have left me unsatisfied.

I mean, I know what has been passed onto me:

• Worship is central to the life of a Christian.
• Worship is the place we encounter Jesus in the Word and Sacrament.
• Worship is where we meet fellow Christians who share our joys and sorrows.
• Worship is where heaven and earth intersect for precious moments helping us and equipping us to endure the grind of daily life.
• Worship is where we are instructed and equipped for living the Christian life.
• Worship is where we hear the Gospel.

All of these things (and a few more), I know deep within the depths of my being, but they are sorely inadequate in persuading people to attend worship on Sunday mornings.   Such points do not cut through the fortified walls people have erected in their lives--the walls of reasoning and thought excusing them from regular worship:

• I am spiritual, but not religious.  
• I can worship God anywhere.  I do not need to be in church to do so.
• I do not find anything compelling when I attend worship.
• This person hurt me, and I do not want to run into them at worship.
• I do not like the decision the church made, and I will not worship.
• I do not like the way the pastor preaches. 
• I do not like the music.
• I want more organ music.
• I want more contemporary music.
• I like being anonymous when I go to church and do not like small crowds.
• I like being welcomed and part of an intimate group and do not like large worship services.

And the list could go on.  Instead of picking at each of these points and arguing their merits or lack of merits, I would like to approach things from a little different manner.

First, a lengthy quote from Timothy Keller's book The Reason for God:

If you don't trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God?  In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you.  For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won't have an intimate relationship.  Remember the (two!) movies The Stepford Wives?  The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands.  A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.

Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will?  If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you?  You won't!  You'll have a Stepford God!  A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction.  Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten a hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination.  (Kindle Location 1901-1907)

Can you connect the dots between worship and this quote?  I am sure many of you probably can, but if you are struggling, let me try and clarify.

At my congregation's last council meeting, one of the members brought up an interesting statistic: there are 8760 hours in a year.  If you worshiped every Sunday (at an average of one hour per worship service), you would only spend 52 of those hours in a place devoted to God--that's less than 1/2 of one percentage point of your time!!!

But let's also put a little more perspective on this.  During those other hours, everything else in the world is striving to garner your devotion.  Yes, I said that purposefully.  Everything else is trying to gain your worship and adoration--from your job to your family to your children to your leisure time  to television advertizements to your possessions to even your self!!  Each of these things is trying to draw your heart toward it, and they are obsessed with owning you and your time.  Don't believe me?  Try giving any one of them less attention than you do now.  See what happens.  Not only may you get a visceral reaction from one of these things, you will also feel torn, like you are letting it down.  You will feel guilty for not obeying one of your masters.  That may sound harsh, but it is assuredly true.  False gods do not let go of you easily--and it is not easy to give them up.  They have a special place in all of our hearts.

And there is no way to totally get rid of the heart's desire to worship.  There is no way to get rid of the heart's desire to grasp onto an object greater than itself.  Consider what atheist author David Foster Wallace said during a commencement address at  Kenyon College,

Everybody worships.  The only choice we get is what to worship, and the compelling reason to maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.  If you choose to worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough.  Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age starts showing you will die a thousand million deaths before they finally grieve you.  Worship power and you will end up feeling weak and afraid and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect being seen as smart and you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud always on the verge of being found out.  But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is they are unconscious.  They are default settings.

Now, you may argue that there is nothing necessarily wrong with the "default settings" our hearts want to worship.  I mean, we do need money to survive in the world.  Taking care of our health and bodies are important.  Positive use of power makes a difference to people in the world--especially to those with no power.  Reading and studying to increase one's knowledge is generally a good thing.  I won't disagree with these statements, but that is not Foster's point.  Foster's point is that when these good things are turned into ultimate things, they will destroy you.  Each desire--while good in moderation--becomes destructive when it turns into an object of worship--a false god.  The reality is: there is no object of worship that does not lead to guilt, self-righteousness, pain, hunger, depression, anxiety, dissatisfaction, except God.  Unless Jesus is the heart's desire, one will remain unsatisfied and without peace.

Which leads right back to the worship of Jesus in church during the week.  Why?  Because we must answer the question: how do we put Jesus at the center of worship?  For a heart will not willingly give up its objects of worship.  It will simply turn from one to another.  Again, consider this quote
from Thomas Chalmers in his sermon "The Expulsive Powers of a New Affection":

It is seldom that any of our bad habits or flaws disappear by a mere process of natural extinction.  At least this is done very seldom through the instrumentality of reasoning or by the force of mental determination.  What cannot be destroyed; however, may be dispossessed.  One taste may be made to give way to another and to lose its power entirely as the reigning affection of the mind.  A youth may cease to idolize central pleasure but it's because the idol of wealth--the desire to make money--has got the ascendency; so he becomes disciplined.  But the love of money might actually cease to have mastery over his heart if it is drawn to ideology and politics.  Now he is lorded over by a love of power and of moral superiority instead of wealth.  But there is not one of these transformations in which the heart is left without an object.  The human heart's desire for one particular object is conquered, but it's desire to have some ultimate object of adoration is unconquerable.  The only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is to replace it with the expulsive power of a new one.  Thus it is not enough to hold out to the world the mirror of its own imperfections; it is not enough to come forth with a demonstration of its evanessive character of their enjoyment; it's not enough to simply speak to the conscience--to speak of its follies; rather, you must seek as a preacher every legitimate method of finding access to the heart for the love of Him who is greater than the world. (As quoted by Timothy Keller here.)   

What Chalmer's argues is that our hearts move from object of worship to object of worship to object of worship, and this only happens when one object gets displaced by another.  We do not give those objects up freely or rationally.  Only when one object is substituted for another does our heart let go.  Tie that to what Foster said previous, and one must ask himself or herself: to what am I giving my worship, and is that worship leading me towards abundant life here and in the world to come?

If Foster is right, and I think he is, then the only worship which will lead to abundant life and not devour you is the worship of God--particularly the worship of Jesus Christ.  And, it is only at worship apart from the rest of the world and false gods, where the Gospel is proclaimed--the action God took to save you, redeem you, and give you value and worth.  It is only in worship where you hold the body and blood of Jesus and take them into yourself that He may transform you from within.  It is only in worship where you shut out all the other false gods which demand your time, effort and energy and turn your attention to the One True God.  It is only by hearing that you are broken yet forgiven by no action of your own that the false gods begin to lose their grip and be displaced by Jesus.

For He is the center of all Christian worship.  Not the music we play.  Not who may or may not be at church.  Not the size of the church.  Or whether or not I feel welcomed.  Or I find anything compelling (unless you are only receiving the Law and being told what to do over and over and over.  That is not hearing the Gospel, that is for certain.)

And you cannot hear the Gospel sitting by yourself in a deer stand, or on the beach, or while fishing.  You may see God's handiwork, but you do not meet Jesus--sorry, you just don't.  The Word takes root in proclamation not in doing.

I know this post makes a very big assumption--that people actually want to be transformed into something different.  It assumes people want to know peace and joy.  It assumes they want to have an abundant life--much more abundant than running around from activity to activity feeling tired and stressed and overworked and the like.  It assumes people are dissatisfied with the way things are playing out deep within themselves and they would like to find a place of peace.

If that fits you, I invite you to worship.  Regularly.  Not once a month.  Not twice a month.  As much as you can.  No excuses.  Come meet Jesus.  As your heart is moved toward Him, you will notice the difference.