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"God is For Us in 2008 and Forever"
How pleased we are with things that are new! Having barely
separated ourselves from the glorious gift giving season of
Christmas with new toys and new clothes and new gadgets of
every kind we stand now at the threshold of a new year. It
is an interesting phenomenon of the human condition that
that one little word, “new” should spark in us such a
fascination and delight. We are ready I think to be rid
of all the old year. It has after all become quite tired
and decrepit in so many ways. The words we’ve said a thousand
or more times already, “Happy New Year” express our hope that
it will be better in some ways, perhaps in every way than the
old one.
Of course there is nothing really new about it at all. There
is no difference between January 1st and any other day. It
is truly a crossing over of an imaginary line. Nevertheless
it is a milestone that brings us together here this evening.
I will suggest to you that we are different for being here
tonight – whatever the reason for your coming – tradition,
the joy of worship, duty, family obligation. That difference
is simply the opportunity to receive again the most powerful
gift of re-NEW-ing that exists.
It is the very word of God if you choose to accept and believe
that God – as God, all-powerful, all-knowing, present everywhere –
is capable of seeing to it that what He wants to tell us has
been carefully written down, preserved throughout the generations
and delivered successfully to us again this evening. The word
recorded in the Bible assumes an authority, which if it is true,
and I certainly believe that it is, will quite literally change
us here this evening into new people ready to embrace a new year.
Our text is perhaps one of the most powerful verses in the
whole Bible. God, speaking through a man named Paul, concludes
a chapter of quotable quotes that some of you may have memorized
along the way. Chapter 8:18, “the present suffering is not worth
comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us." Verse 26,
“the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we
ought to pray for, but the Spirit intercedes for us with groans
that words cannot express.” And of course verse 28, “We know that
in all things God works for the good of those who love him and
are called according to his purpose.”
The questions that open our text summarize all that has gone
before. “What, then, shall we say in response to this? If
God is for us, who can be against us?"
You certainly cannot argue with that logic. If God is for us
then pretty much everything else pales in comparison. But how
do we know if God is really “for us” and not “against us?”
Yet another question is offered to secure the idea that God
is on our side. “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave
him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him,
graciously give us all things?”
Eight-year-olds embrace some interesting sources of truth.
Coming home from the grocery store a boy asked his father,
"Dad, do you believe in the Bermuda Triangle?"
"Jack," the boy’s father replied, "if you're asking me if I
believe that this place exists, my answer is yes. If you're
asking me if I believe all the mysterious stories about ships
and planes disappearing, no: I think that's all baloney."
"Well, Dad," Jack said with a note of defensiveness, "I
believe in it. And I bet you want to know why."
"Yes, Jack. I do."
"Well, I was watching Scooby Doo …"
The reality of “God for us” is not a cartoon character or a
Hollywood script, but in fact a knowable event in human
history. God became a man in the person of his only Son,
Jesus, whose birth to a Virgin named Mary in the city of
Bethlehem we have just celebrated. Jesus’ life, his actions,
his teachings, his arrest, trial, condemnation, execution,
burial, resurrection and post resurrection appearances to
as many as 500 witnesses at one time is documented. Many
have tried to discredit it, but honestly those who have
dealt with the account fairly can only dismiss it because
it doesn’t make sense to them, not because the events
recorded are fictitious. Every detail of historical discovery
over the centuries has served to verify the accuracy of the story.
And so it stands before us on New Year’s Eve. If God is for
us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son,
but graciously gave him up for us all – how will he not also,
along with him, graciously give us all things?
In the next verse we are carried heavenward to look at our
lives from God’s perspective. Who will bring any charges
against those who believe? No one, because God is the final
authority and by believing in Jesus we stand forgiven daily
and empowered to live the new life that is ours. And even
though we fail to live perfectly the next verse says that
Jesus is right there at the God’s side interceding for us,
insisting over and over again that our faith which clings
to him secures our future here in time and forever in eternity.
From that perspective, connected to Christ by faith, sins
forgiven, re-NEW-ed to live loving one another as He has
loved us, forgiving even as we have been forgiven, the next
question builds the intensity. “Who shall separate us from
the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness or danger or sword?"
I’m not sure any of us could honestly say that we have progressed
much beyond trouble and hardship in our own life. Even still
without a heavenly perspective it certainly seems at like we
are little more than helpless sheep standing in line to be
slaughtered.
But, regardless of how it seems, God insists that there is more
to it than meets the eye. In fact somehow in the midst of all
these things God says we are more than conquerors. How’s that
for a New Year’s perspective? No matter what may come, we have
already conquered it in Christ. Nothing can “undo” us. We may
struggle this way and that searching for solutions to whatever
comes our way in the New Year but we do so confident and secure
to make the best choices and decisions we can trusting that if
God did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us that He
will see us through it all and then some.
To know and believe this truth is to enter 2008 with a genuine
anticipation and excitement. It is a new way of looking at a new
year. For some it will be the challenges of new jobs, new places
to live, new relationships. For others it will be clinging to the
truth in the midst of deep sorrow and uncertainty, and receiving
again the confidence and strength to endure.
The final list seeks to seal the deal and fill your heart with
hope. Neither death nor life – be it your own or even worse that
of a loved one; neither angels nor demons – all the forces of
heaven and hell are no match for your faith; neither the present
nor the future, nor any powers – everything this side of heaven
is secured by the cross and resurrection; neither height nor depth –
no matter how good things go or how bad they may get you cannot
get beyond the reach of God’s love.
Nothing can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ
Jesus. You are made new again for a New Year.
Amen.
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