So it¡¯s ANZAC day: often we hear the words on ANZAC day or some other military memorial, ¡°Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die¡±. These come from Romans chapter Five. They are often used to refer to the service personal that were killed in action.
One of the best known passages of memorial prose was written, by John McCrae as he remembered a friend whose death he witnessed and whose funeral he presided over his name was Lieutenant Alexis Helmer. This is McCrae¡¯s poem.
¡°In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.¡±
A very touching and relevant peace of poetry, as we remember the sacrifice of those who battled to maintain freedom on our behalf.
There is a Midnight Oil song called Forgotten Years that has these words,
¡°Our sons need never be soldiers
Our daughters will never need guns
These are the years between
These are the years that were hard fought and won.¡±
In this time of peace for our nation we will remember them. Let¡¯s also remember in our prayers the serving members of the New Zealand Defense Force.
(A time of corporate prayer!)
John McCrae used the words ¡°if ye break faith with us who die¡± to highlight the need to continue on and win the battle in that theater of warfare in the First World War.
Today I¡¯m going to talk a bit about faith and what being justified by faith means to those of us who have come to faith in Jesus.
We refer to faith often and Paul in his letter to the Romans talks of us being justified through faith. The faith that he is talking about is the belief, the system of belief and the lifestyle we have now taken up as we live in relationship with God through Jesus.
Just as soldiers in battle maintained faithfulness to that battle, we maintain faithfulness to our belief in Jesus and the call to that lifestyle he commands us to live.
Interesting faith is belief in action, when we believe it and we live it, that is faith!
We are put right with God, justified meaning ¡°just as if I¡¯d never sinned¡± (you must be getting used to that line now!) Through our faith in Jesus Christ are put right with God.
This part of Paul¡¯s letter tells us a few things about where we stand with God.
1) In the first verse of chapter five we read that because we have faith we are justified and because we have been justified we have peace with God.
Now if I was out of sorts with someone and I mean I¡¯d really up set them to the stage of having a decent row with them; how would I feel? How would you feel if it was you I was having the barney with? Tense; perhaps physically hot and sweaty, maybe a bit sick, sad to the point of tears, wild, quiet, maybe all of the above and more.
When I¡¯ve been out of sorts with God; in my experience anyway, there was a lingering uncertainty about where I stood with him, like in any relationship there¡¯s unease.
Paul who wrote Romans was a Jew, and for the Jewish people their concern about being in a right relationship with God was extreme, remember they had lost their home land previously, the Pharisees had 613 laws that they had to hold fast too. Why, out of their concern that they would upset God and be banished again from their homeland. They were not at peace.
Paul makes it clear, and remember, he had been a Jewish scholar and an expert in the law. ¡°Through our faith in our Lord Jesus we have been justified, put right and are at peace with God.¡± Gone is the tension, the stress about being right with God, because of their faith in Jesus, they were now right with God. Because of your faith in Jesus, you¡¯re all right with God. Go ahead take a deep breath and breath out that tension, you have peace with God!
I¡¯m not one to have people repeat things but today¡¯s different, could you take a deep breath, breath out and relax and say ¡®We have peace with God.¡±
As William Booth would say ¡°we are know so Christians!¡± We know we have peace with God.
2) But wait there¡¯s more! Because of our faith in Jesus we have access to God¡¯s grace, before Jesus we were in a place where we were separated from this grace but as we came to faith in Jesus at the same place where we picked up faith we found Grace. ((Pick up faith, find Grace)) Grace is a really lovely word; my old Granny¡¯s name was Grace, unfortunately for her, her family were Scots and she had Steele as a middle name.
So what¡¯s grace, Grace, remember it means ¡°to bestow kindness or favour on someone.¡± It¡¯s a free gift This is what God did for us. If we look down to verse ten, we see that we were his enemies and he did this for us. We were distant because of our sin and he drew us to him - through the death of Jesus.
3) We received a whooping great helping of grace and because of this we can now rejoice, with out that grace would any of us be singing and celebrating the love God has for us or the love we have found in and have for him? We stand here today in the undeserved kindness and favour of God¡¯s grace.
This far exceeds the kindness and favour of the lovely old aunt who would slip some money or a chocolate into your hand when you¡¯re parents weren¡¯t looking.
Paul says we can rejoice in the Glory of God, we have access to God. We come into his presence and can rejoice in his glory. There¡¯s a something about being where we have come to in our lives and having access to God that just lends itself to rejoicing.
Paul talks about how his readers were able to rejoice in their suffering. It should be remembered that the church at that time in Rome the politics were pretty scary. Under the Roman Emperor Claudius the Jews had been expelled from Rome and under Emperor Nero things remained on a knife edge.
Nero was responsible for having the church persecuted. Roman Emperors were ¡®gods¡¯ by default and they didn¡¯t like these Christians not bowing down to them.
Paul himself was executed during Nero¡¯s reign.
Do we rejoice in our suffering?
Paul says we can and there¡¯s a bit of a formula that helps us understand why.
suffering ¡ú perseverance ¡úcharacter ¡ú hope!
So suffering produces perseverance and because you can persevere you develop character and the wrinkles to go with it. Why because no matter how everything else may suck you have faith and are at peace with God, you¡¯re standing in his grace. You have HOPE, hope eternal!
Why? Because while we were unable to do anything in our own strength to get closer to God, Jesus died for the ungodly, he died for us!
We have been saved from the wrath of God because Jesus died for us. We now have peace with God, we are saved. (SBI)
We have been put right with God because of Jesus.
4) Paul goes onto say that if we have come to this place of being right with God because of the death of Christ, ¡°how much more will we be saved through his life!¡±
Much more has been done for us than one sacrificial death. Think for a moment of those soldiers who went away to fight for King and country. They sacrificed their lives for what they believed in.
What else was done? Through Jesus sacrifice, the bondage of a nation was broken, people foreign to that nation were made part of the promises from God to that nation, they too became God¡¯s people, we have become heirs of His Kingdom.
Jesus rose from the dead and, is now alive at the right hand of the Father.
Our being at peace with God is attained through Jesus, and his being present at the right hand of the Father.
Remember this passage from a couple of weeks in the first sermon on Jesus ascension. ¡°But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense ¨C Jesus Christ the Righteous one. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, not only for ours but the sins of the whole world.¡± (1 John 2:1b-2.)
Because of where Jesus is now we are at peace with God, we are saved.
Why because ¡°while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.¡±
So you may ask what difference does this make.
Well we know in relationships when things are strained, there¡¯s tension. This no longer exists between us and God, if we are living in the faith, in his Grace.
Jesus is there at the right hand of the Heavenly Father, speaking in our defense, working with us, for us and in us through the Holy Spirit for our good.
Peace with God and Salvation are ours! Because of these things we are able to rejoice because of the hope we have in Jesus and we can live confidently in the knowledge that we are acceptable to God!
It¡¯s a little like two warring parties coming to a table polarized by their differences.
The mediator of the meeting comes in and negotiates the peace. The two parties can then walk away from that table, without concern that there will be continued struggles with the other.
I said a little like, because as God is Holy we are not able to approach him, the barrier exits between him and us because of our sin, the benefit of having ancestors who would not do as they were told. Good old Adam and Eve.
But through Jesus being willing to die for all of our sins we are justified by his blood. We are reconciled with God. We are at peace with God, we are saved.
The transaction was paid through his death and we are continually saved through his life and his empowering us through the Holy Spirit.
Now being reconciled, the best way I can think of explaining that is that if I owe the tax department money. It needs to be reconciled, I need to front up with the cold hard cash and be reconciled with the I.R.D. When it comes to the government there is not a lot of flexibility, what is owed needs to be paid.
For Christians and our debt of sin, it¡¯s all paid.
Jesus paid the debt for our sins
We have been saved, we are saved and we will be saved, we are at peace with God!
Right through this message I¡¯ve been addressing believers. May be you¡¯re not, maybe you feel you are far from being at peace with God. The gap between being at peace or not, being justified or not, having the balance of debt in your life settled with God is faith in Jesus.
Peace and salvation are as close as a decision away.
Benediction:
Salvation is ours,
We stand in the Grace of God,
His Spirit leads and comforts us,
May you go from here sharing your faith,
Living it, sharing it
Amen.
