June 5, 2011
What Becomes of Boasting - Romans 3:9-27
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadYou people are not righteous, not even one of you. You have no understanding at all. Not one of you really seeks God. You have turned aside. You have become worthless. Not one of you shows any kindness whatsoever, not one. Your throats are open graves. You know that little flab of muscle in your mouth between your teeth? It’s called a tongue and you use it mainly to deceive others. You know those little humps on your face below your nose that otherwise might make for good speed bumps, otherwise known as lips? The venom of vipers is under those lips. Your mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Your feet are swift to shed blood. We talk about the “Jesus way” all the time. In fact, Christianity has been known for centuries simply as “The Way.” Well your way is full of ruin and misery. You wouldn’t know peace if it smacked you in the head. There is no fear of God before your eyes… Welcome to Central Steele Creek Presbyterian Church. It’s great to have you all in our Lord’s house on our Lord’s beautiful day. If you are worshipping with us for the first time, we are especially glad to have you here and hope you’ll come back soon. There’s always a place for you in our pews and in our hearts…
What in the world is Paul’s problem? Does he really mean all that? All those insults that I gave you earlier, they did not come from me. I did not wake up on the wrong side of the bed. They were direct quotes from Paul to us. I could have used the first person in that (we), but when I talk about bad things like sin, I like to use “you.” Are we really that bad? I think we can qualify sin. We know we’re sinful, but we’re not that sinful. We’re really not. In fact, it’s encouraging to read and gossip and other people’s sin because it makes our own sin not look so bad. We celebrated my mother’s birthday this past Monday at Harmon Field in Tryon, NC. While we were there, this young mother (I guess you could call her that) was watching (in between talking to her boyfriend and chatting on her cell phone) her sweet two-year-old little girl. The two-year-old was doing things that two year olds do, like walk a few feet out of the fenced-in area of the playground. After her mother told her that a kidnapper would probably come snatch her up, she got a stick and beat the back of her legs with it in front of the whole park. I’m not necessarily anti-corporal punishment, but what this woman did was unconscionable. It made me sick. It ruined my day. An hour or so later as we were leaving, my sister said that it made her sick, too. Of course, it also made her feel kind of good, because she wasn’t that bad of a mother.
I am a runner, and one of the things that I have learned about running is that it’s entirely relative. I generally run about an eight-minute mile, especially if it’s over six miles. You may think that’s great. Yet, I ran with a guy on Wednesday morning, ten years my senior, who generally runs about a six and half to seven-minute mile. Compared to him, I’m slow as molasses. Sin’s the same way. Church people may be sinful, but relative to everybody else, we’re in pretty good shape. Evidently last Saturday night after Speed Street, there was a melee uptown, what some have even called a riot. People got out of control. People got drunk. They fought each other. Three people got shot, one of whom was killed. Do you think any of those guys got up for Church the next day? Were any of you there last week? Do you think maybe Bud Shaney was there, throwing rocks at the police? That sounds like something he would do. Or maybe Charlotte Burgess. She looks all kind and sweet, but I’ll bet she has a wild side. I’ll bet she was there, too, flashing her gang signs all over town. Our crowd was down last week because it was Memorial Day weekend. It’s down every holiday weekend and every time the Panthers are playing. If they’re having a good season, Church attendance is really bad. None of that reflects well on us, but then again, we don’t do melees now do we? We don’t cheat on our spouses. 60% men and 50% of women do cheat on their spouses, but that number is way down for Church people. We don’t do drugs. We don’t cheat on our taxes. We don’t take advantage of people’s generosity. We don’t steel people’s property. We do help people when they need it, sometimes to a fault. We do have successful marriages. We do contribute greatly to the world around us. Every single benevolent organization in this country was started and continues to be supported by the Church. When it comes to sin, we may be guilty, but we’re not that guilty… in my opinion. Furthermore, I’ve got lots and lots of data to back me up.
But Paul here strongly disagrees with my opinion. Paul is convinced that we’re not what we crack ourselves up to be. We have become enslaved to that which is not God. We have become completely enslaved and entrapped by sin, in all the forms in which sin can be manifested. We are helpless under it. And in God’s eyes, we’re all in the same boat. Paul Achtemeier says it’s like inviting somebody over to your house, somebody who is destructive to your family, and then you can’t get rid of him. As long as you’re in that house, you are enslaved to that person. We’ve got sin in our bodies. We have been invaded by evil, and there is no way that we can be in right relationship with God. There is no way under heaven that we can possibly be whom God created us to be. God created us for relationship, both with him and with others. But because we’ve got this sin within us, that’s impossible. It’s not a quantifiable question. You either are sinful or you aren’t. We are. Therefore, there’s no us or them to it. We always talk about sin in the second or third person (you or they). Well that’s all wrong. When it comes to talking about sin, it must always, necessarily be in the first person (I or at the very least Us). And if there is any hope in the world for us, it will have to be through an outside source.
We haven’t heard from John Edwards lately. We used to hear from him all the time. He was charismatic. He was good-looking. He reminded people of John F. Kennedy. With absolutely no experience in politics at all, he ran for the US Senate and was handily elected. He then ran for President in 2004. John Kerry selected him and his running mate for Vice President that year. He ran again in 2008. Meanwhile, he fathered a child with a staffer while his wife was dying of cancer. He allegedly paid his mistress hush money out of his campaign contributions, which is a crime. Imagine the constitutional crisis we’d be in right now if he had been elected president. So, here’s my question. Can he ever be vindicated? I doubt it, right? I doubt very seriously if John Edwards will ever make a public appearance again, much less run for public office again. The only way, it seems to me, that he would be vindicated would be if he could somehow prove that he did not father a child with a campaign staffer while his wife was dying of cancer. And that’s impossible.
That’s what Paul means in verse 24. It’s just as impossible for us to be vindicated in God’s eyes. Justified there also means vindicated. We have been vindicated. We have been vindicated not because we have magically gone back in our lives and erased every bad thing that we ever did, or because we have successfully kicked our sin out the back door. If we were ever going to be vindicated, if we were ever going to be salvaged, we would need a miracle. We have been vindicated solely by the love and grace of God Almighty. We have been vindicated solely by the blood of Jesus Christ. What we got was Easter. That’s what makes Easter so wonderful. That’s why we call the awful Friday “Good Friday.” I don’t think we catch that sometimes. I have a nightmare on occasion that I’m going to jail. It’s always good to wake up from that. Unlike a nightmare, our brokenness is very real, which makes our vindication so amazing.
But whatever we do, the one thing that we can never do is to boast. If we believe that the Gospel is the truth, then boasting is completely out of the question. Us verse them is completely out of the question, no matter what. It may be that there are people whom we may not like. We may run into mothers and fathers who are bad to their children. We may read in the paper about people who have done horrible things. We can try to qualify our own sin and act like we come out on top, and maybe in our own eyes, we do. But not one of us is who we are supposed to be. We are guilty as charged. Technology, human know-how, ambition, goodness, intelligence, virtue… nothing in the world can give us what we need… except Jesus Christ. Well I’m here to tell you, as Paul has told us the very first thing in his letter to Rome. “I am not ashamed of the Gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” This is the last Sunday in Easter. We’ve got a lot to celebrate today. But we have no reason at all to boast.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
