The Promises of God
Preached Date:
Sun, 07/25/2010
Preached By:
Dr. Jeff Paschal, Pastor
Lectionary Texts:
Hebrews 4:12-16
Romans 8:31-39
I Corinthians 15:20-28
Revelation 5:6-14
We continue our "You Asked For It!" sermon series with a sermon topic suggested by one of our new members. She asked, "What are the promises of God?" Hey, thanks for giving me such an easy topic!
"What are the promises of God?" Good question. I Googled the question and one website said there are seven promises of God. But I think a seven- point sermon could get a little long and tedious. Another website said there are 7959 promises of God (I’m serious). As the website author put it so helpfully, "If we use one promise each day it will take us 22 (twenty-two) years to use each of the promises once." You’ll be pleased to know today we’re narrowing it down to an arbitrary, abbreviated three promises of God list. First, maybe it’s good simply to recall what are not the promises of God. Namely, God does not promise us an easy life. In fact, according to Jesus the more faithful to God we are, the more we’re going to get kicked in the teeth. God also does not promise us close family relationships or romantic ones either. And despite what some relentlessly cheerful TV preachers trumpet, God does not promise us worldly success, vibrant health, and fabulous wealth. (I hate that. Don’t you?) So what are the promises of God? The writer of Hebrews warns, "Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joint from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account." The first promise is that God will judge our lives. God’s word is alive and active, cutting away our excuses and rationalizations, dividing truth from falsehood, peering inside us to see what our real thoughts and intentions are. And nobody--no matter what degrees, titles, influence, occupation, reputation--nobody hides from God. We’re all exposed to the unwavering, clear-eyed gaze of God to whom we must give an accounting of the lives we’ve lived. Of course, this promise is often rejected or ignored in our day. As we read about genocide, torture, atrocities too awful to describe in this sermon, crimes against adults and children, rape of the environment, maybe we think about the perpetrators, "Don’t you understand that all of us will be judged by God?" As we reflect on the "ordinary" evil in our own lives: pettiness, gossip, unfair business practices, meanness, selfishness, and laziness about spiritual disciplines, do we sometimes remember that we will be judged by God too? It matters how we live or fail to live our lives. God will judge our lives. And that is also good news. New Testament scholar David L. Bartlett talks about preaching to one of his congregations many years ago early in his ministry. He says, ". . . I was holding forth to my congregation in Minneapolis one day on one of the great texts of the New Testament which deals with forgiveness. I was saying something like, ‘Have you alienated yourself from those you love? It doesn’t matter. God forgives you. Have you taken short cuts at the expense of your own integrity? It doesn’t matter. God forgives you. Have you demanded too much of others and too little of yourself? It doesn’t matter. God forgives you.’ . . . After the sermon a very perceptive member of my congregation came up and said, ‘In that last litany, I would have felt a lot better about myself if you’d said, ‘Have you done wrong? It DOES matter, but God forgives you.’ Because [says Bartlett] you see if there is no judgment, if there are no standards to which we are held accountable, if there is not a hard, sharp, painful difference between doing right and doing wrong, if it doesn’t matter then we suspect that WE don’t matter. We suspect that we aren’t important enough for anyone to care."
(David L. Bartlett, "Good News and Unquenchable Fire" sermon, Dec. 12, 1976.)
The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we do matter. We’re precious to God beyond our imagining or understanding. So God sees, affirms, and empowers all the good that we do (and the good that others may or may not see). And God takes our sins seriously, judging them, and then forgiving them through Jesus Christ, who sympathizes with our weakness and intercedes for us with grace. So the promise of God’s judgment is finally good news. There’s a second promise related to the first. As Paul asked the Roman church, "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." The second promise is that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus. Nothing. Now notice what Paul says and does not say here. Paul does not say that because God loves us life will always be pleasant or easy. He does not say that we will never fail. And he does not claim that our suffering or the suffering of others does not really matter, because, after all, we’re going to heaven. He does not say that. What Paul says is that we have all sorts of people and powers aligned against us: hardships, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. We might add, jobs that drive us crazy. Family and love relationships that make us weep. Illness and ailments that grind us down. Financial struggles that worry us. Emptiness that bores us. Death that scares us. But what is Paul’s answer to these people and powers against us? Fear? Resignation? No. He says "we’re more than conquerors." Despite all appearances to the contrary, as the Greek says, we’re "prevailing completely." We’re winning "a most glorious victory" through Christ who loved us, because nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love.
(See u`pernika,w in BDAG)
Deborah Smith Douglas, an Episcopalian spiritual director says, "Once I was alone in a sea kayak off the coast of Maine–so far beyond the breakers that in the trough of every wave I completely lost sight of the land. All I could see, in those rhythmic alternating moments, was ocean and sky. I stopped struggling to make headway toward the shore (knowing at some level that the waves would bear me there eventually). I rested the paddle over the gunwales and let my slender craft be carried by the waves, borne irresistibly up and down, in and out, with the swell of the sea. I felt–viscerally–as though I were on the back of a great living creature, riding the lift and fall of its unimaginably vast breath. I was, in that moment, letting the Breath breathe me.
"I was completely unafraid. For that small time out of time, I knew without trying that God was near. I was not anxious about anything." And Smith says she knows "God will bear me up in any storm, at any unfathomable depth, through whatever I must endure, in this life and the next."
(Deborah Smith Douglas, "Feathers on the Breath of God," Weavings, Vol. XXV, Number 4, 12.)
Because of God’s second promise, you and I are also invited to the same trust–never separated from God’s love, more than conquerors through Christ Jesus our Lord.
And finally there is a third promise. We catch this promise again and again throughout Scripture, but it’s especially clear in 1 Corinthians 15 and in Revelation chapters 4 and 5. The promise is that at the end of time God not only will resurrect us but God will destroy all evil and death and redeem the entire universe for the mutual joy of God and the universe. As Paul puts it, in the end, "God will be all in all." And as the writer of Revelation pictures it–a heavenly throne room filled with "myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands" singing praise to God.
What does this mean? Of course, we cannot understand it or describe it completely. But we can say some things. Theologian Jürgen Moltmann reminds us that the resurrection described by Paul and the writer of Revelation is not just off in heaven somewhere but right here on the earth. God will make people, things, stuff, the earth, the universe, new. And when God transforms all into the new creation, this will bring joy for all creation and for God.
But what about judgment and justice? Moltmann writes, "It will be God’s creative justice, which brings justice for the victims and puts the perpetrators right. The victims do not have to remain victims for all eternity, and the perpetrators do not have to remain perpetrators forever. The victims of sin and violence will receive justice. They will be raised up, put right, healed and brought into life. The perpetrators of sin and violence will receive a justice which transforms and rectifies."
(Jürgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, ARISE!: God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth, 137.)
God is not an insane tyrant itching to torture wayward subjects. No. God is the perfect loving Parent longing to welcome all God’s children home.
So will all God’s children finally come home? Will all God’s children finally worship together and feast together with God eternally? What about those pictures of hell in the Bible?
I do not know for sure. But I (joined by many Christians) hope and believe that the descriptions of hell in the Bible are hyperbole, maybe a warning against living cold, self-centered lives, lives that are a taste of hell on earth.
But will all God’s children finally come home? I cannot prove it, but I hope so. And if God is love and God’s love is most completely revealed in Jesus Christ, it makes sense to me too.
There’s a scene in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Marmeladov, a hapless drunk, is in a bar. As a result of his addiction, his daughter has been forced into prostitution. Now, Marmeladov faces those who laugh at his predicament and badger him without mercy. He says to them, "I need to be crucified, not pitied! Crucified! . . . [But] He alone is Judge. On the day of His coming He will ask: ‘Where is the daughter who sold herself . . . And He will say: ‘Come! I have already forgiven thee . . . And He will judge and forgive all, the good and the evil, the wise and the humble. . . .and when He has finished judging all, He will summon us, too: ‘You, too, come forth,’ He will say, ‘Come forth, you drunkards; come forth, you weaklings; come forth, you shameless ones!’ And we will all come forth unashamed. . . . And He will say: ‘I receive them . . . because not one among them considered himself worthy of this. . . .’ And He will stretch out His hands unto us, and we will fall down before Him and weep . . . and we will understand everything."
(Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, 33.)
And we will understand everything.
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