Faster Unto Thee

Sermon Synopses - "Shirk the Shame" - Romans 1:16-17

Here is another sermon synopsis from my current series on the book of Romans. These synopses, as always, are presented minus the bulk of the sermon material, illustrations, etc.

This letter continues to be life-changing for me, and I hope it is the same for my congregation.

"Shirk the Shame"

Romans 1:16-17

June 21, 2009

Introduction

            Shame is an painful and powerfully motivating thing.

            Imagine the following scenarios. You marry into a family, and for your first Christmas with your new in-laws you are informed that this family draws names out of a hat at Thanksgiving time to decide who is buying Christmas gifts for whom. The family does this because it is large and it is just too expensive for everyone to buy gifts for everyone else. So you draw Uncle Fred's name and file it away. Fast forward ahead to Christmas Day. The family is all gathered together at Grandma's house, who by the way, never follows the name drawing thing but buys gifts for everyone, and it is time for everyone to exchange gifts. As you open up your gift, a sense of dread hits you because the gift you just opened costs way more than the gift you got for Uncle Fred. You hope that the person that bought you your gift just got carried away, but as you look around the room, everyone else's gift is about the same value as the one you are holding, except for the gift you bought for Uncle Fred, which is less than half that value. What happened? They all have an understanding among themselves that the gifts will all have about a such-and-such value, but they never told you about that. Nevertheless, your face is beat red, you want to slide under the couch and die and everyone wonders how such a cheapskate got into the family.

            I remember the kid in high school who, when he was asked a question in math class, did everything he could to divert attention away from himself because he still did not know his multiplication tables and he was embarrassed; Or the kid whose dad was in jail and got mocked for it all the time by the other kids – you could see the shame all over his face.

            Sometimes shame is simple and brief, sometimes it is crippling, sometimes it dominates a person's life and they never shake it.

            Amazingly, Christians sometimes feel ashamed of the gospel, the good news message of Jesus Christ. There are times when a believer walks into certain circles of people and the last thing that believer wants is to be identified as a believer in Christ. There are times and situations where the social fallout is so great, whether it be in school, or the workplace, or the neighborhood, that Christians do their best to live very quiet, wallflower Christian lives. We have the best news in the world and sometimes we are afraid to let it out around the very people who need it most because they might mock us or ridicule us or snicker at us, or think we are real simpletons for believing that religious stuff.

            The Apostle Paul, in this wonderful letter of his to the Romans, deals with this issue of being ashamed of the gospel with only two verses. That is all he needs to make it clear why he is not ashamed of the gospel, and the reasons that drove shame from him can drive shame from us as well. And so the thrust of today's sermon is this:

            Don't be ashamed of the gospel message! Let's look at the two reasons why in these verses.

I.  Because through it salvation comes (v. 16).

            ......

            Now back to my point about not being ashamed. Like Paul, we can say, "I'm not going to be ashamed of this gospel message, because through it God definitely changes people. It is God's means of bringing about transformation. This is how it works. I am not ashamed of it because when it is truly believed, people are transformed. To put it even shorter, I'm not ashamed of it because it is the truth, and those who mock it are fools and they believe a lie.

II. Because through it God's righteousness is revealed (v. 17).

            Now, second reason. Don't be ashamed of the gospel because through it God's righteousness is revealed. Verse 17 again: "For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith."

           It appears at first glance that God is in a dilemma. Human beings are terrible sinners, defying his commands and laws and will, living without praise to their creator, choosing to put their wills above his, worshiping other so-called gods, and living generally corrupt lives. That 's the Bible's depiction of human beings – sinful hearts and sinful lives. And the Bible depiction of God is that he is perfectly holy – without sin in any way – and that his wrath burns hot against sin. But God wants to forgive – he loves – it is in his nature to forgive. But his subjects deserve severe punishment and he has said that he condemns their sin and that the penalty for sin is death. And so he can't just wave his hand and forgive them without compromising his justice. For if he just said, "Aw, don't worry about it, I'll let it go", it would be the same as saying sin is no big deal and he  was just kidding about his standards and his holiness is not such a big deal, either. He cannot maintain his integrity as ruler if he does not take law breaking seriously and punish it appropriately. And then he would not be worthy of respect, much less worship. Like children who know their parents' warnings of punishment are empty threats, we would not respect God.

             The gospel is intellectually, emotionally, and relationally satisfying.

Critiquing Your Sermons

Bishop Donald Bastian has a helpful series of 6 posts on critiquing your own sermons starting here at his blog, Just Call Me Pastor. All the posts were helpful to me, and, I am sure, will be helpful both to the long-time preacher and the beginning one. Here are the titles of the six entries:

Part 1: Is My Sermon Biblical?

Part 2: Does My Sermon Have Unity? That Is, Does It Say One Thing?

Part 3: Does My Sermon Speak Concretely?

Part 4: Is My Sermon Relevant?

Part 5: Can My Sermon Be Preached With Unction?

Part 6: Does My Sermon Have Bite?

Mohler on "How Not to Raise a Pagan"

Dr. Albert Mohler delivered a powerful sermon entitled, "How Not to Raise a Pagan" during his November 6, 2008 visit to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The sermon's text is Deuteronomy 6. Here is my transcript of a portion of the sermon's introduction:

We are witnessing the loss of a generation. It is not comprehensive, by God's grace, but it is, nonetheless, monumental.

There has always has been a pattern that is discernable within the Christian Church of some period of loss among the young when they later  reconnect to the church, but study after study is indicating to us that we are now not experiencing the recovery of a generation that somehow in our complacency we had assumed would happen. The reality is that when most of our high school graduates from our families leave our homes they also leave the church. They also leave any substantial connection to the Christian community. They may have some tacit affiliation or allegiance to the Christian faith but in terms of their lives they live and they think like pagans. We are watching the rise of a pagan generation from within, supposedly, Christian families. And this is coming at the same time that we are witnessing the re-paganization of the culture around us. There is no other way with biblical eyes that we can describe what we are witnessing. As we look around us and we see the contours of this culture, we begin to understand if we listen to the messages, overt and covert, subtle and obvious, when we listen to the advertising, when we – if we dare – dip into the social media and listen to the conversation that is going on, when we listen and we watch and we see, we see the re-paganization of a people all around us. To our utter tragic shock and pain and concern we also see the re-paganization of much of what calls itself the church. We see re-paganization in the form of embraced idolatries, we see re-paganization in terms of the kinds of compromises that Israel was warned never to commit with the Canaanites and with the peoples around her. We see the Christian church now flirting with kinds of amalgams, the kinds of concessions, the kinds of accommodationisms, the kinds of syncretisms, that Israel was warned over and over again that it must avoid at all spiritual costs.  And we also have the testimony that Israel at times did not avoid these things to its own peril and we are witnessing in what may be a Babylonian captivity of the church because of our willful re-paganization and because of our lack of a prophetic confrontation not so much just externally with the paganization of the culture around us, but with our own children who are being taken captive by the spirits of the age.

I don't want to raise pagans. I know you do not want to raise pagans. Many of you in this place today are already parents. Most, by far of you, will one day be parents. You do not want to be the parents of pagans. But if you are not strategic and careful, if you do not heed the Word of the Lord you will raise pagans by default. For others will raise them as pagans out from under you.