This week’s sermon explores both the beautiful promises of Romans 8:26 & 38-39, and digs into the frustrations of Romans 8:28. What does it mean to trust in a hurting and broken world that “all things work together for good?”
Today’s Scriptures are Romans 8:26-39, Psalm 119:129-136, and Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52. I’m also adapting portions of my sermon from July 30, 2017, as well as referencing this year’s commentary from Cory Driver in Living Lutheran.
Here’s the sermon audio and the entire service from Living Hope:
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Siblings in Christ, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus. Amen
How many of you have a favorite Bible verse? I know some of you have gone through Lutheran confirmation as a teenager – did any of you have to pick a particular confirmation verse? If so, do you remember what verse you picked?
I did three years of confirmation at Ascension Lutheran in Fond du Lac, and I still remember my confirmation verse – in fact, we just heard it in today’s reading from Romans. There are a lot of great verses in these readings, right?
There’s Jesus’ great little parables about God’s kingdom in Matthew’s gospel. One commentary I read refers to this reading as “Parable-Palooza” with at least five images in just these few verses. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that starts small but grows into a great tree providing shelter and home.
The kingdom of heaven is like yeast mixed into flour, where even a small amount causes the whole batch to rise. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who leaves behind all the things of the world to pursue one goal.
It’s a net scooping up everything in its path, or a treasure hidden in a field. Lots of great images, memorable verses to hold onto. Any of those could be a whole sermon, by the way. Lots of good stuff. We’ll come back to some of those later.
But first, there’s this reading from Romans, from Romans chapter 8. In the landscape of the Bible, the Old Testament lays the foundation, telling the story of creation, the fall, and God’s chosen people, Israel. The Gospels tell the story of Jesus, the center of our faith, the story of God coming to be with us.
But in my opinion, the Mount Everest of the Bible, the absolute peak, the part that summarizes the whole point is the 8th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
In this chapter, Paul looks around at the state of the world, and he says, this world is messed up. This world is not the way it should be. There’s an awful lot of suffering going around us. I think it’s safe to say that’s still true today, right?
But instead of giving up, instead of believing this is all there is and it’s never getting better, Paul says, “Yes, the world is broken. But God’s not done yet. This isn’t the end of the story. In fact, God is at work in the midst of this brokenness.”
We begin today at verse 26, a great verse of encouragement. When we get overwhelmed by this world, Paul writes, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. Elsewhere in the Bible, in John’s gospel, the Holy Spirit is described as the paraclete, a Greek word meaning one who comes alongside. The Holy Spirit is accompanying us, advocating for us. When we don’t know what to pray, the Spirit intercedes for us, the Spirit gets involved and fills in the gaps.
The Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Verse 27: God’s Spirit is at work in us conforming our wills to God’s, changing our hearts to see the world the way God does, through a lens of love. God is conforming us to the image of Jesus, God’s Son. The Holy Spirit’s work is to make you more like Jesus.
And then we get to verse 28, another verse of great encouragement, but also one of the most misunderstood verses in the Bible. I mentioned in the weekly email how challenging this verse is. Ready?
Verse 28: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.”
Often, this passage gets used by well-intentioned Christians to inadvertently belittle people’s suffering. People mean well when they say there’s a purpose in suffering, but it rarely comes across that way. There’s this idea that God is causing suffering in order to teach you something or prepare you for something better.
It gets quoted when you get a lay-off slip from your job to say don’t worry, when God closes a door, He opens a window, so this will really be for the best. Or worse, it gets used when a teenager dies in a car crash, and people tell the grieving parents not to worry, because this must have been God’s plan to get another angel.
That’s just not true. Not only is it bad theology, it’s harmful to people’s relationship with God. The God I believe in does not kill children in car crashes. God does not cause gun violence, or bombings.
Some of you know Christin and I have a friend from our previous congregation who’s in the hospital right now in Billings, Montana because she was chaperoning the church youth mission trip, opened the wrong door, and fell down the stairs and got a severe concussion. God didn’t cause that.
Paul doesn’t say everything is good or everything is from God. He says that despite all the evil in the world, despite all the suffering and the pain and the sickness and the violence and the despair, God is still on our side, walking with us, even carrying us.
Sometimes, we can see a reason for suffering. Cancer can be caused by smoking. In the case of shootings, it’s pretty clear – someone pulled the trigger. Someone sinned. I saw a poster one time in a soup kitchen with three big words: Don’t shoot people. Sometimes there’s a clear solution.
But so often, there is no reason. Why does the chemo work for one person and not the other? As the Bible often asks, particularly in the Psalms (for example, Psalm 73), why do wicked people prosper and those who do good suffer?
Paul asks, when we see the suffering in life, what then are we to say about such things? Yes, sometimes we can look back at disappointments and trials in life and in retrospect, we can see God doing something good through it. God can redeem even the worst situations, knit together even the messiest threads.
But often, our attempts to explain suffering as caused by God don’t lead anywhere. All of our pretenses of being in control, our attempts to find meaning in suffering run into dead ends. Our words fail. You and I are not God, and eventually, all we can do is trust God is still working somehow for good, the promise that love will prevail.
Eventually, we’re left with Jesus Christ and the confidence in faith that God is for us. God is on our side. In all things, God is at work for good. God who did not withhold his own son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s children?
All of the misfortunes in life, all the pain, the suffering, the fears, the doubts, all the hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, violence, sickness, it all falls away in comparison to the love of God demonstrated in Jesus Christ.
It’s not that God causes evil in our lives, it’s that God’s love is so good, so ultimate, so overwhelming and final that it covers all the junk. God’s love lasts forever, the one thing that remains long after everything else has ended.
And we know God’s love because we can look at Jesus on the cross. We can point to the God who loved us enough to come in person to suffer with us, to do what we couldn’t do, to take all of the evil and pain and suffering onto himself and put it to death.
This Romans 8 passage is the center of the Bible because it’s the core promise of what God has done for us, the core promise of faith. This is the part that’s my confirmation verse.
Romans 8:38-39 – “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.”
That’s the core of the gospel. God loves you. Period. Nothing can change ever that, nothing you can do, nothing anyone else can do to you, nothing that can happen to you. Nothing.
That promise of God’s love is the foundation for everything else in our faith. God’s love is at the root of the kingdom Jesus talks about and is bringing into reality. This promise is at the root of how we live as citizens of God’s eternal kingdom.
One of the images Jesus uses in those parables we heard in the Gospel reading is that the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all he had and bought it.
This parable reminds me of that famous philosophical question, “What would you do for a Klondike bar?” The pearl here is God’s love. What would you do to receive God’s kingdom? It’s worth your whole life, and Jesus has already paid for it.
With this promise of God’s love, we can persevere through any suffering, through any situation. And not only can we persevere and endure, we can allow God to work in us to change the world.
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, Jesus says. It’s a tiny seed that grows into a large plant, but beyond that, it’s an invasive species that’s very difficult to eradicate once it starts spreading.
I’ve been at a retreat this weekend called Teens Encounter Christ where the goal is exactly what the title says, to help teens encounter Christ, to help people recognize the magnitude of what God has done for them.
This promise is so great that when we understand it, when we recognize the truth that truly, nothing can separate us from God’s love, it demands we do something in response. It changes the entire way we live.
The kingdom of heaven is like yeast hidden in flour, spreading out to affect the entire batch of bread.
Every little thing we do, every act of love done in response to God’s love brings God’s kingdom closer. The Holy Spirit is at work in you, interceding for you, turning our sighs into prayers, stirring us into action to build God’s kingdom.
God is working through you and me to heal everything broken in the world, and nothing, not even sin or death, is big enough or powerful enough to stop what God’s doing.
This week, may the Holy Spirit give you grace to follow and dwell in this promise of God’s amazing, unending love. May this promise move you to action for the sake of God’s kingdom.
And may the peace of God, which passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen