Grace to you and peace…
Peace. Doesn't that sound good this morning? Not so much absence of war, but absence of fear, anxiety, worry, wonder…wondering what is going to happen, wondering if you have enough food, water cash, or toilet paper, wondering if your family will be ok, wondering if you will be ok. Anxiety fuels fear and fear fuels anxiety. Hard to believe a week ago this was all a big hypothetical question. Now, here it is. Peace…something so simple, now so taken for granted.
I want you to know this morning, every morning, noon and night, you have peace inspite – despite! – what the world, your mind, and even Satan Himself tries to tell you. But to understand this, I need you to rethink peace. Peace, by definition, is not absence of war. It isn’t absence of conflict or lack of fear. Peace means unity, harmony, wholeness through restoration. In Christ, you do have peace, beyond worldly understanding. In Christ, God has been pacified and you have been restored in Christ's death and resurrection. You are justified – declared holy – by God’s merciful gift of Jesus and this is delivered to you by the Holy Spirit from faith.
Faith. That is always an important word, but it will be particularly important in these difficult days. The book of Hebrews defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen,” Heb 11:1. Your faith is from God. You do not trust your faith itself; that ebbs and flows. Your faith rests in Christ Jesus, your Lord and Savior.
Through Christ, you have access by faith into the grace of God. I want you to have a picture here of a room, a large room, that is warm and inviting. "Access" means entrance. By faith we have entrance into this grace in which we stand. By faith I walk into that room and the name of the room is grace. The ceiling, walls, floor—all grace. You live inside God’s grace, his love, his forgiveness, completely surrounded by it. That means you’re always forgiven. You must not think of forgiveness as something that takes place in your life every once in awhile, that you pile up sins for a time and then you get forgiven. You’re forgiven all the time.
People say, "I hope I don’t die while I’m sinning." People like that don’t know what sin is. Of course you’re going to die while you’re sinning. You sin because you’re a sinner; you aren’t a sinner because you sin. All of us are far short of what we ought to be all the time (Romans 3, 23). See, the law tells us how we are to be and not to be, and what we ought to do and not to do. Not being what we ought to be is also a sin. The Law demands perfection (Lev. 19,2). If you’re not perfect you’ve living in sin. But even if you’re sinning all the time, you’re forgiven all the time. You’re living inside the forgiveness of sin. If you die when you’re not thinking about Jesus, you still die as a believer.
People say, "I hope that I have a chance to repent before I die." That’s not right. The whole life of a believer ought to be one of repentance. See, believing doesn’t mean that you feel good all the time, and repenting doesn’t mean that you feel bad all the time. Repenting just means knowing that you’re a sinner who deserves to go to hell. Being scared to die without Jesus, that’s contrition. And faith is knowing that Jesus forgives you all the time, every minute of the day you are forgiven. When you die without having a chance to repent consciously, you still die as a person who knows that he’s a sinner and that Jesus died for him. How many times during the day do you think of the fact that 2 + 2 = 4? Did you know that last night when you were sound asleep? You sure did. Did you know that this morning? Certainly. And so I know that all the time that Jesus is my Savior, whatever happens to me.
Living in Christ’s forgiveness, "we rejoice in hope of the glory of God" (Rom. 5,2). Here "the glory of God" is the praise that God gives us. Someday when we stand before God, what’s He going to say? "Well done, thou good and faithful servant" (Matt. 5,21). You will say, "But when did I ever do anything good?? He will say, "That’s alright, Jesus did it all for you. Well done, you kept all my commandments." So we look forward to Judgment Day when God will say, "You’re not guilty." We "rejoice in hope" that that’s the way it’s going to be. We know it’s true now, by faith. Then we’ll hear it with our own ears from the mouth of God Himself. Now we hear it from human preachers, but then Jesus Himself will say it. "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matt. 25, 34).
This is the source of the hope we have in God: the grace given you by Jesus. I’ve said it before, it begs to be said again. When I use the word hope, I don’t mean the false one-in-a-billion hope of winning the lottery, or I hope the IRS doesn’t audit me, or something like that. Christian hope is one giant exclamation point. Some of you remember Victor Borge – he would do a schtick where he would read a section of a book and actually vocalize the punctuation. YouTube him and watch some of his routine – you have time, now. If Victor Borge were here, he would read every word “hope” in the Bible with the sound of an exclamation point. Christian hope is certain, not maybe; it is confident, not wishy-washy; it is definite, not a mere possibility. Hope is in Christ. Christ does not change, He does not schwaffle. Therefore you hope does not change, either.
Because of that, you are able to rejoice today, even in the midst of the chaos that is swirling around us. You don’t rejoice because of it, but in it. In this time of Our translation says “we rejoice in our sufferings.” A better, and little-less wooden translation is “we rejoice in the face of external pressure.” I think that today’s climate counts as external pressure, don’t you, and it opens this up a little more for us. Suffering has a deep and dark connotation. I don’t know any of us are really suffering. But all of us are facing some level of external pressure. Concerns about the economy, your job, your health, your loved ones, what to do with the kids if spring break is extended, trying to get to the stores – and find things you need…I could go on. These are present-tense struggles and pressures. Yet, in the midst of them, we as children of God have hope. Hope that enables us to speak and act in love in the midst of this; hope that looks forward in faith; hope that God desires to move us ahead in His grace.
Pressure is accompanied by patient endurance. Again, this is more than our civic leaders trying to calm the public down. This is God standing us up in His grace. That room of grace? He holds us in His grace, and keeps us standing firm. Where God sustains faith, He also uses pressure to produce endurance of faith.
Patient endurance is accomplished by tested character. Here is a good picture of how this works. Do you know how gold and silver is made pure? By melting it down. It’s put into high heat and melted into a pool of metal. But, what is remarkable is that because these metals are so dense, the garbage – the dirt and undesired other metals – float to the surface where it is skimmed off. That’s called the dross; it’s garbage. This happens many times, as heat continues to be applied and the gunk skimmed away. When the gold and silver is finally taken off the heat, it is left pure – just gold, just silver, nothing else. In the midst of patient endurance in the crucible, God is defining and refining our character. He is stripping away from us in these days anything that we have made as a god, something other than Him that we fear love and trust. What we are left with is Jesus. Life is hard right now, and our Lord strips away layer after layer away that would want to compete with faith in Him. Life narrows down and crisis comes. Suddenly, there is only one thing that matters. And, there in the narrow place, stands Jesus.
And in Jesus is our hope.
This is a process that Paul describes. It’s a process of maturing, growing in faith. But the faith in the love of God poured into our hearts – that faith does not change. This is God’s intention: to accomplish patient endurance, which leads to approved character, which returns to hope that trusts in the mercy of God in Christ from faith.
As you leave here today, you get to live in that faith-filled hope. Live – that’s the key word. Luther was once asked what he would do if he knew the end of the world was tomorrow. He simply answered, "Plant a tree." In other words, even as we will follow our civil leaders and do what they say - quarantine if necessary, limit distances, avoid travel, etc. - live today in the sure and certain hope of tomorrow as a child of God. Plant a tree. Play catch with your son or granddaughter. Bake some bread. Make love with your spouse. Talk with your neighbor over the backyard fence. Call an older member of the church and check on them. Before you go to the store, call your elderly neighbor and ask if they need anything and pick it up for them. Walk your dog. Laugh. Smile. Give thanks for God's goodness.
And others around you will see it. They will ask you about it – how can you rejoice in times like this? How can you be so hopeful? Be prepared to give an answer. Tell them about the hope (!) that is yours in Christ. Amen.
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