Sermons and Studies

THIS SERMON was originally part of the series “What is salvation?” Since it belongs equally well in the series on Romans I am reposting it here for anybody who missed it first time round, or who wants to be reminded of the heart of the gospel Paul preached.

16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

What is salvation? What does it mean to be saved?

I want to explain the gospel message message this morning. And I want to do so by unpacking just a few crucial verses of Romans chapter 3 which lay out what it means to be saved, why we need to be saved, and just how God has saved us.

God’s plan of salvation

21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. (Romans 3:21-25 NIV)

For us to understand these verses properly I want to spell out the meaning of a few vitally important words. Righteousness. Sin. Justification. Redemption. Sacrifice of atonement.

First – righrousness. The word righteousness, and the related idea being made righteous, occurs a number of times in this short passage.

Righteousness – how can we be right with God?

21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. (NIV)
21 But now God’s way of putting people right with himself has been revealed. It has nothing to do with law, even though the Law of Moses and the prophets gave their witness to it. 22God puts people right through their faith in Jesus Christ. (Good News Bible)

Righteousness is a word which carries different shades of meaning in different places. Righteousness is that purity of character only fully expressed in God Himself, in God’s perfect righteousness and justice. By nature we human beings are not righteous – our lives are spoiled by sin. By nature we are not right with God – we are separated from God. By themselves human beings can never become righteous. But Paul talks here about a righteousness from God. It is not a righteousness which anybody can earn or deserve. It does not come by obeying the Jewish Law or any other set of rules. It is not something anybody can achieve by human effort. This righteousness before God, a right relationship with God, is God’s gift to all who put their trust in Jesus Christ.

The reason we are not righteous, and could never become righteous, is what we looked at last week. The problem of sin.

Humanity’s problem – sin

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (NIV)
For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. (New Living Translation.)
We thought about the problem of sin last week. There are all kinds of actions and attitudes which we know very well are wrong when we see them in other people, but when WE do them, they’re alright! We can always justify our own actions. We see so clearly faults in other people’s lives which we turn a blind eye to in our own lives.
Last week we saw that the Bible has a word for all these wrong things people say and do and even think. All the selfish acts which hurt us and hurt our fellow human beings. The Bible word for these bad things we do is “sin.”
“Sin” is just a little word with “I” in the middle. And whenever a person puts “I” in the middle of their lives, whenever they focus only on themselves and leave God out, that is sin. We all know what sin is. And we all know that every one of us are sinners! We all know we have done and said and thought things which we should not have done!
Romans 3:10 As it is written: “There is no-one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no-one who understands, no-one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no-one who does good, not even one.”
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
If we are honest with ourselves we all know that is true. We have all sinned. We all fall short of God’s standard, which is perfection. And all our sins have consequences.

Sin brings on God’s anger

Romans 1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
Sin makes God angry
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened
This is the essence of sin – neither glorifying God nor giving thanks to Him. Running away from God and hiding from Him. Ignoring God and pretending he doesn’t exist. That is sin.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. … 26 God gave them over to shameful lusts. 28. ….. since they did not think it worth while to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. … they invent ways of doing evil;

“God gave them over!” God gave them up. Human beings abandoned God so God abandoned the people He had created. He let them get on with their evil ways.
So sin brings on God’s anger and leads to God’s judgment. Sin deserves to be punished! God is a just and holy God – and judgment is the inevitable expression of that justice! And sin has other effects as well.

Sin separates us from God – spiritual death

Because God is a holy God whose eyes are too pure to look on sin, human sin separates us from God. That separation is spiritual and it is eternal – it is forever. Because even the littlest sin cuts us off from God forever.

Sin also leads to physical death

God is the source of all life. When sin cuts us off spiritually from God, it also limits our human life. Sin condemns our bodies to die.
From cover to cover the whole Bible is concerned with this one theme. How can sinful human beings escape the judgement of a Holy God? Because God’s standard is perfection – and none of us will live up to that standard!
Acts 17:30 In the past God overlooked .. ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”

How much can I get away with and still get into heaven? Absolutely nothing! Sin makes God angry and brings divine judgment. Sin leads to spiritual death and physical death. ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But the good news is that God in His grace is prepared to forgive a person’s sin and declare them not-guilty.. When a person puts their trust in Christ God gives them a gft of rightousness and this makes them righteous too.

God’s solution - justification

24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (NIV)
24But by the free gift of God’s grace all are put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free. (Good News Bible)

The English word the New International Version uses for this process of being made righteous is Justification. It simply means “being made just” or being made righteous. When we are justified God makes it “just as if I’d” never sinned. All are sinners. Everybody faces God’s judgment. But those who put their faith in Jesus Christ are declared righteous by God. Their sins are wiped away.

The Good News Bible translates Romans 3 using different words. It translates righteousness as being in a right relationship with God. And it translates justification as being put right with God. Instead of a person being in the wrong, God treats a person as if they are in the right. Because God takes their sin away they can be in a right relationship with God.
21 But now God’s way of putting people right with himself has been revealed. … 22 God puts people right through their faith in Jesus Christ. God does this to all who believe in Christ … 24 But by the free gift of God’s grace all are put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free.

So here is the good news! God brings us into a right relationshio with Himself. And He does so by his grace. It is a free gift we can never earn or deserve. GRACE - God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense. That is the “redemption which came by Christ Jesus,” the freedom which Jesus has provided for us.

Justification is more than pardon. Judgment is getting what we deserve for our sins. Pardon means not getting what we deserve. Justification means God treats us as if we had never sinned. William Barclay wrote, “To say that God justifies the ungodly means quite simply that God in his amazing love treats the sinner as if he was a good man. Again, to put it very simply, God loves us, not for anything that we are, but for what he is.”

The story is told of a man who went abroad for his holidays driving his Rolls Royce. While he was there the car broke down. Understandably miffed, he phoned Rolls Royce who immediately flew one of their mechanics out. The mechanic mended the car and flew home again leaving the man to continue his holiday. But when he got home he was worried just how much that repair was going to cost him, so the man wrote a letter to Rolls Royce to ask how much he owed them. The reply came back promptly. “Dear Sir. There is no record anywhere in our files that anything has ever gone wrong with a Rolls-Royce.”

That is how God sees Christians once they have been put right with him, once they have been justified. As if nothing had ever gone wrong.

So now let’s unpack this wonderful redemption. Just exactly how does God set us free?

Through Christ’s death on the cross

25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. (NIV)
25God offered him, so that by his blood he should become the means by which people’s sins are forgiven through their faith in him. (Good News Bible)
25 God sent him to die in our place to take away our sins. We receive forgiveness through faith in the blood of Jesus’ death. (New Century Version)
25 For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. (New Living Translation.)

Our forgiveness comes at a terrible price – the death of Christ on the cross. It was not just the execution of one criminal among many. The Bible tells us that Jesus’s death had a spiritual and indeed a cosmic significance. Christ’s death was unique because Jesus Christ was unique – in at least two ways. Jesus was unique because he was more than a man. Jesus was also the Son of God, God Himself born as a human being. And Jesus was also unique because He was completely innocent. He had never done anything wrong. He was without sin. He had never done anything to make God angry. There was nothing in Jesus’s life separating Him from God. He did not deserve any punishment. He had no sin which would cause him to die, spiritually or physically.

So Jesus was innocent. he did not die because of His own sins – he had no sin. Jesus’s death was a sacrifice for sin in the same sense as in the Old Testament so many lambs were sacrificed. As John the Baptist said when He first saw Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” 1 Peter 3:18 explains it this way.
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

Jesus’s death was a sacrifice of atonement. Atonement could be rewritten “at one ment”. Jesus’s death brings us back to God and makes us one with God again. And all we need to do is receive by faith what Christ’s death in our place has bought for us.

An evangelist had just finished his open air preaching service and was about to leave when a young man approached him and asked, “What must I do to be saved?” The evangelist replied. “It’s too late!” The inquirer was disappointed. “Don’t say that!” But the evangelist insisted, “It’s too late!” “You want to know what YOU have to do to be saved. It’s too late. The work of salvation is done, completed, finished! It was finished on the cross. YOU can’t do anything. Except receive as a gift by faith what Christ has already accomplished.”

So here again is how Paul explains the heart of the gospel, God’s plan of salvation.

21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. (Romans 3:21-25 NIV)

The only question which remains to be answered is, “Are YOU saved?”

“Miracles don’t happen” Have you ever heard somebody say that? “Miracles can’t happen!” some people say. “Science has disproved miracles” some people say – which only shows they don’t really understand the limitations of science.
I believe miracles do happen. I believe that the Bible accounts of Jesus’s miraces are true exactly as they are written. They really happened, just that way. Mark’s Gospel takes ten chapters to cover Jesus’s ministry for the three years up to the beginning of his last week in Jerusalem. And in those 10 chapters nearly half of the verses are concerned with Jesus’s miracles. Anybody who takes the accounts of miracles out of the Gospels and not only are they accusing the Gospel writers of being liars but they are left with more problems than they solve.
I have no problems at all with the idea of Jesus working miracles. George MacDonald said, “The miracles of Jesus were the ordinary works of His Father. Wrought small and swift so that we may take them in.” God working on a small enough scale for us to see. The God of the Bible is Creator of Heaven and Earth, and Jesus came to proclaim that “the Kingdom of God is on hand”, that God’s rule as King was beginning. So we would be very surprised if Jesus Christ the Son of God did NOT work miracles! Of course he did! This week let’s look at three such events in the first chapter of Mark.
Simon Peter’s Mother in Law
So many parts of Mark’s gospel show signs of eyewitness testimony. Early church tradition tells us that the source for so much of what Mark wrote down was none other than Simon Peter himself. That is why this story is so vivid.
V 30 Simon’s mother in law was in bed with a fever. You won’t hear me telling mother-in-law jokes. But let’s notice that Simon Peter had left his fishing nets immediately Jesus called him to follow, even though he had a wife (who interestingly gets a mention by Paul in 1 Corinthians 9) and consequently a mother in law as well. When he came to recall miracle stories, Simon Peter’s mind went straight away to the day Jesus healed his mother in law.
They told Jesus about her. This was Jesus’s first miracle. The disciples hadn’t seen any miracles of healing before – only Jesus’s authority in casting out evil spirits. But still they instinctively knew that Jesus would be able to help – and they were right. So they asked – and those who bring their problems to Jesus are never disappointed.
So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. There were no elaborate rituals, no magical potions or spells. That is not how God’s miracles work. Just a simple practical action which released the love and healing power of God into that woman’s body. There’s no “formula” to healing miracles, just the love and the power of God.
The fever left her. Here was a miracle! We don’t know how serious that illness was. It could just have been a high temperature and a headache – but people in Jesus’s time and in tropical countries today are used to battling on with symptoms like that for much of the time. The fever could well have been life-threatening. But no matter how major or minor the illness, God cares for us. When God made the world there was no disease, in heaven there will be no sickness, and Jesus had come to bring God’s healing and wholeness to all who asked him.
And she began to wait on them. Here was the woman’s natural response in gratitude for what God had done for her. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that Jesus only healed the woman so that she COULD wait on them. God doesn’t heal and bless and save us in order that we will do anything for him. God heals and blesses and saves because he loves us and He hates to see anybody suffering. It’s all about God’s love and God’s grace!
All the sick and demon-possessed
The day had begun with Jesus teaching in the synagogue. That led on to Jesus bringing deliverance to a man who was possessed by a demon. We’ll come back to the problem of demons and the ministry of deliverance another day. And then Jesus brought healing to Simon Peter’s mother in law. It’s not surprising that news of Jesus’s miracles got round very quickly. So just as the day was drawing to a close and the disciples were putting their feet up for a well-deserved rest, they were interrupted.
v.32 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon possessed. There were too many to mention each by name. Simon and Andrew probably knew all their names, and to Jesus each one was an individual, a person with a need, not just a statistic. God cares for each and every one of us as individuals, not just as part of the crowd. But there were too many for Mark to record by name, because as we read
v.33 The whole town gathered at the door. It’s estimated that Capernaum was half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide. There were probably several hundred people gathered around that small hut.
v/34 And Jesus healed many who had various diseases. Many – every sick person who was brought to Jesus was healed – all who came, and they were many. They were healed of various diseases, too many different illnesses to record separately. No sickness is beyond the healing power of God the Creator.
He also drove out many demons.
The distinction between sickness and demon possession is usually clear and obvious. What we would call today mental illness is NOT demon possession, although sometimes the symptoms are similar. The fact is that if the problem is demonic then neither doctors nor psychiatrists can do anything at all to help. Only the authority of Jesus Christ can drive out demons and set people free – only God can help!
But he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was. Some people have this mistaken idea that Jesus healed people and drove out demons to prove to people that he was indeed the Son of God, the Messiah. That is NOT correct. The demons did have supernatural knowledge that Jesus was Son of God and Messiah, but Jesus did not want that to be revealed too soon. Jesus was not bringing healing and deliverance to prove anything to anybody. Those miracles were the Kingly Rule of God breaking into the world, the Good News in action, putting right the hurting in the world dues to sin and driving out the devil and his demons. Miracles were expressions of God’s love and power. And God is still a God of love and power and so we should expect still to see miracles of healing and deliverance in the world today. We should pray for healing and expect to see God healing people! His touch has still its ancient power.
So Jesus moved on the bring healing and deliverance to other villages too, which brings us to another story.
A many with leprosy.
v.40 A man with leprosy came to him. This was some kind of skin disease, not necessarily what we would diagnose as leprosy today. But this skin disease carried the same stigma. It set the sufferers apart from the rest of society, made them outcasts. They couldn’t enter houses, and had to shout, “unclean, unclean” to keep other people from coming close to them. So here was a man who was desperate.
And begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Look at this man’s faith! He knew Jesus had the POWER to heal him, the only question in the man’s mind was whether Jesus would be WILLING to heal even a leper like him. The man was unclean in a Jewish ritual sense, condemned and set apart by the Jewish Law. Did God’s Kingly Rule and God’s healing extend so far as to reach even a leper?
v.41 Jesus was Filled with Compassion. Everything that Jesus did was out of LOVE for people who were suffering. He wasn’t aloof to suffering – Jesus cares!!
Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. Although touching a leper would make him ritually unclean too, Jesus showed God’s love in that simple act of touch.
I am willing, He said, be clean. Jesus WAS willing! God’s love extends to every kind of person. To the outcasts even more than to the respectable folk. Sometimes we pray, “Lord, if it is your will, heal this person.” God so often says, “I AM willing.” Too often the problem is that we are too afraid to ask!
v.42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.
The miracle came instantaneously. In almost all of Jesus’s miracles, the effects were immediate. We don’t always see that today, sometimes healing comes gradually as a process. The healing is still from God, even if surgeons or doctors or nurses or psychiatrists or therapists or medicines have a part to play. The healing is still an answer to believing prayer.
In one sense, this story now has a sad ending. Mark 1:43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 44 “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” 45 Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
The man didn’t follow Jesus’s instructions, and the publicity which resulted actually hindered Jesus’s teaching and preaching. But still this reminds us that Jesus did not perform miracles to draw attention to himself or to prove he was the Son of God. That attention was the opposite of what Jesus wanted. And it also reminds us that God’s healing isn’t dependent on our obedience, either before or after the healing. I suspect that Jesus knew exactly what the man was going to do, but still healed him anyway. We don’t earn healing by doing good deeds and we don’t lose that healing by disobedience. It is all about grace!
Jesus brings healing! Simon Peter’s mother in law. All the sick and demon possessed in the whole village of Capernaum. And along the road, an outcast suffering from leprosy. Those healings were not to prove who Jesus was or to prove that his message was true. People were responding to Jesus’s preaching before he had healed anybody.
17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him.
21 They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. 22 The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.

People were already leaving their nets and following Jesus. People were already amazed at Jesus’s teaching and his authority. The miracles weren’t to prove Jesus’s teaching was true. All Jesus’s miracles were expressions of God’s love and power, the Good News in action, evidence of the transforming power of God. Miracles happened then and miracles will still happen today – because His touch has still its ancient power!

What about those who have never heard the gospel? Jesus said in John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me
The apostle Peter in Acts 4:12 preached, 12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
But there are still many Christians who are complacent about evangelism and complacent about world mission. And for many the reason is that they think that there is a loophole for “good people” who will somehow get into heaven on their own merits. I’ve even heard preachers and theologians talk about the “good heathen”, or “the anonymous Christian” who will be alright in front of the judgment throne of God because they have lived good lives. We can call this “the false hope of the sinless pagan.”
“The false hope of the sinless pagan.”
It’s a popular idea in woolly thinking liberal circles that people who haven’t heard the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ will saved anyway because God has a “back door into heaven” for “good pagans”. That false hope is based on these verses from Romans 2
Romans 2: 12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15 since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)
These verses give some people a false hope that if people live “according to their own lights”, guided by their own moral standards and their own cultures, and as long as such people haven’t actually explicitly rejected Christ, then such “good pagans” will be saved. Of course that would mean that telling such people about Christ would open to them the possibility of rejecting him, and so twisted logic argues that the best thing would be NOT to tell such a person about Christ. As if they would be better off without Jesus!
The problem with the false hope of the “sinless pagan” of course is that there aint no such person! There is NOT anywhere in the whole wide world even one person who is living such a good life that they don’t need Christ to save them! The point Paul is making is that even people who don’t know the Jewish Law DO know enough about what is right and wrong to be justifiably condemned by the Holy God. We do all have a conscience! But we must recognise:

The Limitations of Human Conscience
Paul is saying that our conscience is sufficient for God to be justified in condemning us, but not sufficient for any of us to be saved. The Bible teaches us that all human beings are created in the image of God.
Genesis 1: 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Over the centuries theologians have debated what it means to be created “in God’s image.” It means that uniquely within creation, human beings have a spiritual dimension so that we can relate to God who is Spirit. Human beings are unique in that we have the capacity for worship and for prayer. And part of that image of God is conscience, the ability to discern the difference between right and wrong. God has given each and every human being enough awareness of Himself and enough awareness of right and wrong to be accountable before God for our evil actions. We saw last week that Paul talked about this awareness of God in Romans 1.
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Theologians have labelled what Paul is talking about here as “General revelation”. God has revealed himself throughout the whole of Creation. People only need to look at the world around to see that there is a God of eternal power who made it all.
Psalm 19 says
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
3 There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
4 Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
General Revelation: God has revealed Himself to all human beings everywhere in His Creation. Then there is Special Revelation: God has revealed Himself to the Israelites in the Law and the Prophets and to the whole world in His Son Jesus Christ. We have the Scriptures as testimony to God’s Special Revelation in prophetic words and saving actions.

Psalm 19:7The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.
We have Special Revelation but there is also General revelation for all human beings everywhere. Paul explains this in Acts 14
15 “We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. 16 In the past, he let all nations go their own way. 17 Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.”

“Yet he has not left himself without testimony.” The Bible makes clear in many places that every single human being has enough awareness of God to be responsible and accountable before God for our actions. Everyone has, says Paul
A law for themselves, written on their hearts
. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15 since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts,
Philosophers and theologians talk about “Natural law”, a sense of justice and right and wrong inbuilt into every human being. Some people say, “It isn’t fair for God to condemn people for sinning if they don’t know that the things they are doing are wrong.” What the Bible says here and in many other places is that people DO know when they are doing things that are wrong. Each person has a knowledge of God and of right and wrong which does not have to be learned but which is innate and intuitive. We can’t forget the difference between right and wrong, because we each have a moral compass which is part of being made in the image of God. We each have a human conscience.
14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15 since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)
We each have a conscience bearing witness, now accusing, now defending, an inner witness to what is right and what is wrong. Every human being has a sense of responsibility. Our consciences can be misguided and desensitised, and bad parenting and bad company and the influences of television and film have contributed massively to so many consciences being desensitised to all kinds of evil. But nevertheless our conscience is always there. And natural law and conscience together mean that every single person knows enough about God and about what is right and wrong for it to be entirely fair and just for God to judge us. But the limitations of Natural Law and conscience are such that they are NOT enough to save us. Not enough to save ANYONE. The “sinless pagan” is a MYTH. No such person exists. We ALL need Christ.
There is none who is righteous, no not one!
That is the whole point Paul is making in the first three chapters of Romans. We saw it from the beginning.
Romans 1:16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
The ONLY way anyone will be saved is by God’s gift of righteousness given through Jesus Christ and received by faith. God is angry with human beings for all the godlessness and wickedness which follows when we reject him.

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

And Paul expands on that judgment of God in chapter 2

5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.
8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil:;

So will there be any sinless pagans? Will any reach God’s standard of perfection? NO!

12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.

Just so that there is no confusion, Paul spells out in Romans 3 that all will face condemnation.

Romans 3:10 “There is no one righteous, not even one;
11there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
12All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
13“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.”“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
14“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”15“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16ruin and misery mark their ways, 17and the way of peace they do not know.”
18“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
In this string of quotes from Psalms, Isaiah and Ecclesiastes Paul makes his point. There is NONE who is righteous no, not one. Romans 3:23 There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

All will be judged on the basis of their actions and NONE will reach God’s standard of perfection. Not our nice neighbours, not our generous friends. Not that very nice Mrs So and So at the end of the road. Not our parents or husbands or wives or children who aren’t yet believers but we like to think there will be a back door into heaven for them at the end of the day. And certainly no “sinless pagans” on distant mission fields or living just round the corner who haven’t heard the gospel. The only hope any of us have is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the power of God for the salvation of all who believe! And the only hope for those who haven’t heard the gospel is that somebody tells them – somebody like us!

The world is in a mess. Recession, unemployment, riots, wars, crime. And that’s on top of all the everyday problems ordinary people face. But what is the heart of the problem? Where has the world gone wrong? There was once a prolonged correspondence in the Times on the question, “What is the root cause of all the troubles in the world. The matter was finally settled by the author G.K. Chesterton, who wrote, “Dear sir, What is wrong with the world? I am, yours sincerely, G.K.Chesterton.
He was absolutely right, of course. Before any of us start putting the world to rights we need to take a long look at ourselves, and if we are honest and not blinded by pride we may not like what we see. If only we could all stop being selfish. But we can’t. However much we try to live perfect lives, we can’t do it! We need help!
If anybody is serious about wanting to change, we need the one person who can help us. The greatest teacher in history, the one perfect human being, perfect because he was not only a man but he was also the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Jesus was born into the world to put things right, to help people change. This was his mission. And right at the beginning of his ministry Jesus brought a message which shows us three simple steps we can take if we want our lives to be different.
Mark 1:14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”

REPENT
Repentance is a very important word in the Bible. We hear it sometimes in reports from the courts, “the accused was unrepentant”. But what did Jesus mean when he called men and women to repent?
At its root the word repentance means A COMPLETE CHANGE OF DIRECTION
The A12 Boreham Interchange is a very confusing junction. All those roundabouts – it is perfectly possible to follow the signs for the A12 and end up joining that wonderful road, but heading North instead of South. Lovely road but completely the wrong direction. Now if it should happen that you find yourself on the A12 going in the opposite direction to the way you wanted to go, there’s no point in turning off and trying all sorts of minor roads. The only sensible thing to do is to go all the way round one of the roundabouts and come back on the A12 in the right direction. To do a complete U turn. And that is what repentance means. Doing a U turn in life. The root of the word for repentance is to change your mind – and that is what Jesus calls every one of us – change your mind!
So many people spend their lives running away from God as fast as they can. Jesus calls people to repentance, to do a U turn so that they are running towards God instead of away from him. Repentance – a complete change of direction. If anybody wants to meet God, they have to change direction. If you have your back to the light, all you can see is the darkness of your own shadow. If you want to see the light, you have to turn around and walk towards it.
Then repentance means dealing with the sins in our lives. We all know what sin means – we see it on TV, and read it in the papers. Most of all we know about sin in our own lives. All the things we do and say and think which hurt other people and actually hurt ourselves. Lying and greed and immorality and hatred and selfishness and pride. All the things we would love to change about our lives if only we could. Repentance to deal with sin has three parts and it begins when we recognise the problem of sin in our own lives. When we “acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness” and are truly sorry for our sins. Then we need to confess those sins before God and ask his forgiveness, for the times we sin against God and against our neighbours, through ignorance, through weakness, but most of the time through our own deliberate fault. And thirdly we need to be sorry enough for our sins that we are ready to give them up and let God change us! Jesus says, repent. Change direction. Acknowledge your sins, confess them and change your ways.
The Greek which the New Testament was written down in has two ways of giving commands. One would be the one-off event, repent just once. But the word used here means more. It means repent lots of times, keep on repenting. The first act of repentance is only the beginning. We need to keep on turning our lives round, to keep on saying no to sin and yes to God. The starting point to changing our lives is repentance.
Then the second step Jesus gives us to changing our lives is this.
BELIEVE THE GOSPEL
Mark 1:15 “The time has come,” (Jesus) said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Believe the gospel. Believe the good news. We began to see last week how the good news is all wrapped up in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The world is overcrowded with self-help books and lifestyle gurus and make-over programmes. But the truth is that only one person can help us to change, only one person can save us from ourselves, and that is Jesus Christ. The good news IS Jesus – his life, his death and his resurrection.
Mark 1:15 “The time has come,” (Jesus) said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”
We all have things in life that we look forward to, birthdays, Christmas, holidays, maybe retirement? The Jews had been looking forward to the arrival of their Messiah for more than a thousand years, the time when God would act as King and save His people. And Jesus brings the message, the time has come! The kingdom of God, the Kingly Rule of God is near! God’s Kingdom is not territory. It is not the people who serve the King. The Kingdom of God is the things God does as King. The time has come when God will act as King and save his people! So, says Jesus, believe the Good News!
Believe that God WAS acting as King in Jesus. The Creator was stepping into His Creation to repair the damage done by sin and to offer forgiveness and new life through Jesus to everybody who believes. Jesus came and lived a perfect life and showed us and taught us how we should live. And by dying for our sins in our place on the cross and rising from the dead Jesus offers us forgiveness and eternal life.
But we each have to BELIEVE the Good News, believe the gospel. And that is much more than knowing about the good news. It is much more than intellectual agreement to certain ideas. Believing the Good News is about putting our trust in the Good News. I think that roller-coasters are safe. I can do the physics which says that when that car loops the loop and you are sitting upside down then you should stay in the car and you shouldn’t fall out. But I can’t truly say that I believe roller coasters are safe if I am not prepared to put my money where my mouth is and take my seat and go for a ride. Believing the gospel means putting our trust in the good news of Jesus Christ and living every part of our lives based on his command and his promises, trusting Jesus for everything!
Repent, believe the good news, and the third step to putting our lives right comes when Jesus says,

FOLLOW ME
Mark 1: 16 As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him.
That is what the Christian life is all about. Following Jesus. Learning from Him. Becoming his disciples.
And that is what Simon and Andrew did, AT ONCE. Because the time had come, the Kingdom of God was at hand, and that demands an urgent and immediate response. The King has arrived, but he is moving on. We have to follow him NOW, or never. It was the same for James and John.
19 When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. 20 Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.
Without delay Jesus called them. Without delay James and John followed him. In a way I feel sorry for Zebedee and the hired men. Jesus came and called for followers. James and John went but their father and his employees were just abandoned. Following Jesus was a complete break from their old lives. They just left their nets. No compromise. No turning back. AT ONCE they upped sticks and followed Jesus.
There is a story of a competition in hell for ways to keep human beings away from God. 3rd prize went to the suggestion, “Tell them there’s no heaven.” 2nd prize went to, “Tell them there’s no hell.” But the prize was won by the suggestion, “Tell them there’s no hurry.”
Being a Christian demands wholehearted obedience to Jesus and his commands. Following the example of love and sacrifice which Jesus gave us. Simon and Andrew, James and John left their nets. Following Jesus will always be costly – it will always involve sacrifice. Jesus told the Rich Young Ruler that obeying the ten commandments was not enough. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me,”Jesus said.
There is no room for competing interests – Jesus comes 1st, 2nd and 3rd! But the command to follow Jesus comes with a promise.
Mark 1 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.”
“I will make you, ” says Jesus. God loves us so much that he reaches down and loves and accepts and forgives us just as we are. But God loves us too much to leave us just as we are. So God promises not only to accept us but to change us – to give us a brand new life, life in all its fullness. “I will make you” says Jesus. One day two speakers were on their soap boxes at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park when a tramp passed by. The communist speaker said, “Marxism would put a new suit on that man.” The Christian preacher replied, “Jesus Christ would put a new man in that suit.”
When we hand our lives over to Jesus Christ he promises to make us into what he wants us to be – the very best person we could ever become. So whatever we give up to follow Jesus we gain so much more than we could possibly lose!
Follow me and I will make you FISHERS OF MEN. Jesus had a special job for those first disciples. It would be their task to continue his work after his death and resurrection, after Jesus returned to heaven. The disciples would continue proclaiming the Good News and catch men and women into the safety net of the Kingdom of God. And that task continues today. Jesus calls all Christians to be witnesses for Him, to tell other people about the wonderful things God has done in our lives so that others will follow Jesus too.
So here are the three steps we can all take to changing our lives. Here is the invitation Jesus makes. The invitation is for all of us – but it comes today and it calls for an urgent response.
15 “The time has come,” (Jesus) said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” … 17 “Come, follow me,”

For 2000 years the world had been waiting. Ever since God called Abraham and promised to bless his descendents forever. It was 1500 years since Moses had led the Israelites out of slavery and Joshua had led them into the promised land. It was a thousand years since the time of David, Israel’s greatest King. 1000 years of waiting for the Messiah, God’s anointed king who would be greater even than David.
For 2000 years God had been preparing His chosen people to receive their Saviour. The Law, the sacrifices, the whole of the Old Testament had all been God’s way of preparing the world to meet with God. And now the Good News was about to be revealed: the Good News which is all wrapped up in the person and the Teaching of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
But God’s chosen people still weren’t ready. So God sent one final messenger to make the last vital preparations so that the Jews would not ignore their Messiah. God sent the forerunner he had promised to pave the way.
Isaiah 40: 3 A voice of one calling: “In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. 5 And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
So it was that
John came baptising
Mark 1:4 And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
Baptism was not a usual practice among the Jews. In fact it would be very unusual indeed for a Jew to be baptised because baptism was the way that somebody who wasn’t a Jew could become a Jew. Baptism was the mark of conversion for Gentiles into Judaism. What John’s baptism was saying was that even the best Jews had fallen so far away from God that they needed to become Jews all over again.
John’s baptism was a sign of repentance. Like the Christian baptism which followed, John’s baptism was an outward sign of an inward change. It was n expression of repentance, an acknowledgement of sin and a desire to be washed clean. So people came to John confessing their sins and they were baptised in the Jordan. There were two reason why they were choosing to be baptised.
1. So that God would forgive their sins. John brought a warning that God’s judgment was coming. The Jews all knew that their repentance wouldn’t earn God’s forgiveness, but they were trusting in God’s mercy and living kindness and they knew and believed the famous saying of the Jewish teachers of the law, “If the whole of Israel were to repent for just one day, then the Messiah will come!”
2. To be ready to meet with God. Mankind’s evil and rebellion had tried to squeeze God out of the world He had created. When God entered the world as Saviour He sent John as messenger to prepare his people so they would make room for God again. People wanted to be ready for the Messiah.
But there was more to John the Baptist’s message than a call to repentance. He came to point the way for the one who was to follow him.
Mark 1:6 John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 And this was his message: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
John was impressive. But he only came to point to somebody who would be even more impressive, the “one more powerful” who was about to arrive. John didn’t draw attention to himself, but to Jesus. John’s gospel records that John the Baptist said, “He must increase – I must decrease.”
John pointed forward to the one who will baptise not with water, but with the Holy Spirit. John initiated people by immersing them and overwhelming them with water – but the one to come would immerse and overwhelm in the Holy Spirit – an initiation even more dramatic and radical and life-changing.
So God send John the Baptist to prepare his people to meet Jesus. John was just the messenger in the desert, preparing the way of the Lord. But Jesus also had to prepare Himself for the ministry God had given him. That is why
Jesus came and was baptised
Mark 1:9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
Here was a surprise. Jesus didn’t need to repent. He was pure and holy – he had no sins needing forgiveness. And Jesus was the person John was preparing the way for, the one everybody was waiting for. Others were getting baptized so they would be ready to meet HIM. So why was Jesus baptised? Three reasons.
1. Jesus was identifying with human beings. Jesus didn’t need to be baptised, but he chose to be baptised to be united with the rest of humankind.
2. Jesus’s baptism was a sign of his dedication and commitment to God’s will and the ministry God had sent him to fulfil.
3. Jesus’ baptism was specifically to equip him for his ministry as Saviour of the world.
In these respects Jesus’s baptism is not a pattern for our baptism. Rather it was unique, because Jesus Himself was unique in his person, and his ministry too would be unique. And then two things happened at Jesus’s baptism to prepare him for his ministry, which again would be unique to him.
Mark 1:10 As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.
The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove. We might think of a dove as a symbol of peace. In fact in the Bible a dove is more often a messenger of Good News – remember the dove which brought the olive branch to Noah on the ark. The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus to equip Him to be a Messenger of Good News.
Of course we know that both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are God, one with each other and with God the Father. So why did Jesus need to be anointed with the Holy Spirit? Well that is because Jesus was also completely human. And all the mighty acts he would accomplish during His ministry would be done as man, but as a man filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit of God. All Jesus’s miracles, all the acts of healing and deliverance, all his wonderful teaching would come from Jesus the man. So Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit for that ministry, equipped to serve God as a perfect man, not in his own strength as the Son of God but in the strength of God the Holy Spirit.
Then as a confirmation of God’s call on Jesus’s life, there came the voice from heaven.
11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
There words were not only for Jesus Himself, but for all those people around who heard them. And they echoed prophecies concerning the Messiah.
Isaiah 42:1 “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. 2He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. 3A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; 4he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law the islands will put their hope.”
Echoes also of Psalm 2:
6“I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.” 7 I will proclaim the decree of the LORD: He said to me, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.
8Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. 9 You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

So in these ways God’s son was prepared for the ministry the Father had sent him to fulfill. John’s baptism had prepared the people for their Messiah. His baptism prepared Jesus for the work he had come to do. But there was just one more thing to be accomplished before Christ began His public ministry. And those final preparations could only take place in private.
Jesus was tempted by Satan
Mark 1:12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, 13 and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.
Jesus was in the desert for 40 days. We will save the details of those temptations for another day. Suffice it to say that here was spiritual warfare at its most intense. It had taken the nation of Israel forty years of wandering in the wilderness to discover what it meant for them to be God’s chosen people. Jesus spent 40 days in the desert fasting and praying learning from painful experience how hard it is to be the Son of God living as Son of Man in a sin-spoiled world. Angels were there. Demons were there and for 40 days and 40 nights the prince of darkness tried every trick he knew to extinguish the light of the world. And then the battle was over – Satan was defeated, the Son of God was victorious and the strong man was bound.
Jesus was then completely ready and equipped to begin his ministry of bringing God’s Good News to a dying world. Jesus had put the devil in his place, more than that, Jesus had faced all the temptation the devil could throw at him, all the temptations we ever face, and had learned by experience how to help others who so easily fall to those temptations. Jesus was now fully equipped to begin His ministry as Saviour of the world.
Hebrews 4: 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. 16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
So here is the beginning of the Good News – John the Baptist came to prepare the way of the Lord. But would we be ready to meet with God? If we mean business with God, if we really want to meet God, then John the Baptist’s message is as relevant to us today as it was to the people then. We need to prepare the way of the Lord, by repentance, by recognizing that things we do and think and say can be sinful. We need to be sorry for our selfishness and disobedience and rebellion. And we need to resolve to turn away from those sins and live an new life, with God’s help. In our natural state we are too blind to see God, and too deaf to hear Him. We all need not just one single act of repentance, but a continuing process of turning our back on sin and turning towards God, stopping going our own way and choosing to go God’s way.
But God didn’t wait for human beings to reach perfection before He stepped down among us. Instead, Jesus came and shared in our baptism, shared in our human condition and identified with our weakness. Tempted as we are – but without sinning! God came down and met us at our own level. So Jesus can help us and save us, right where we are. That’s why the message of Jesus Christ the Son of God is such Good News!

Riots. Inflation. Global warming. Droughts and floods. Unemployment. Murders and so many other types of terrible crimes.
Did Louis Armstrong really say to himself, “What a wonderful world”?
Of course it was a wonderful world when God created it. And not everything which God saw was good has been spoilt. But so much has gone wrong. So much has been tragically damaged by what the Bible calls sin. So when the apostle Paul is writing down the gospel he preaches to send to the church at Rome, this is where he must start – with the problems we are all caught up with in this runaway world, and with God’s anger towards mankind’s rebellion.
God’s anger against godlessness
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
In the nineteenth century it seemed that all the church preached about was fire and brimstone and the judgment of God. Over the last hundred years the pendulum seems to have swung to the opposite extreme. The church today seems to play down the anger of God against the godlessness and wickedness of human beings. Many churches and so called Christians now deny the judgment of God and the reality of hell altogether. This is strange when we remember that Jesus’s preaching contained so many warnings of judgment – think of the parables of the tenants in the vineyard, and of the wedding banquet, or of the wheat and the weeds, or of the wise and foolish virgins. The truth is that we can never hope to understand the way the world is unless we take seriously what the Bible says in so many ways and places, that the world which God created perfect is now marred and infected and polluted by man’s rebellion and disobedience. And the gospel of Jesus Christ only makes sense when we see the world as God sees it, completely lost, and when we realize just how angry the holy and righteous God is with human sin.
God is not just angry with wickedness – all the hurting and killing and selfishness and immorality. The root of the problem is godlessness – men and women rejecting God and trying to make sense of life without the One who gives us life and gives that life its meaning. We live in a “runaway world” full of people running away from God, and that also makes God so angry.
Would you swap a new Rolls Royce for an old and battered Mini? Of course not! But that is what human beings have done when they reject the very best God has created us for, and swap it not for second best but for the very worst.
they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images. ….
25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie,…
26Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
So we read in this passage three ways that human beings have exchanged, swapped, traded in, the best for the worst. So Paul goes on to spell out
Four results of rejecting God
1 Foolishness and idolatry
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
The Psalms tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but human beings have rejected that wisdom.
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
In earlier days human beings made false gods of their own – idols of wood or metal looking like animals and birds. Some cultures still have those kinds of idols today. Here in Western Europe our false gods are more abstract, but just as damaging. False gods like “power” or “reason” or “success”. But these are just as much idols when they replace the one true and living God for men’s trust and allegiance and worship. And we must never forget that all these false gods can be manipulated by principalities and powers and demonic beings.
2 Sinful desires and materialism
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
This explains how the world which God created perfect has been spoiled by human sin. People sometimes ask, if there is a God why is there so much suffering in the world. Why has God allowed things to get so bad? And the answer is – because that is the kind of life and the kind of world human beings have chosen – and God has let us have what we wanted.
Romans 1:24 “God gave them over”. God handed them over.
J.B. Phillips translation, they gave up God so God gave them up.”
The Message “So God said, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.”
We have the same phrase three times.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.
he gave them over to a depraved mind,
Sinful desires, shameful lusts, depraved minds – because that is exactly what human beings have chosen!
25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

The sin of materialism, worshipping and serving created things rather than the Creator. Lifestyles built on greed, extravagance and waste, amongst other things the exploitation of poor producers in the Third World by consumers in the rich West.
Colossians 3:5 says “Put to death greed, which is idolatry.”
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus Himself warns us that “No-one can serve two masters. You cannot serve God and Mammon,” the false god Wealth, or Money.
Philippians 3:18 For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.
3 Shameful lusts and perversion
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

The rejection of God’s perfect plan for sex and family life. Here is the clearest statement in the New Testament condemning homosexual practices. God’s design is that sexual activity should be the natural expression of love and commitment and intimacy between husband and wife in marriage. This passage is not talking about homosexual tendencies or desires or homosexual orientation. But Paul is talking about homosexual acts and he makes clear that such acts are unnatural and indecent and expressions of lust, not of love.
4 Depraved minds and the breakdown of society
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
Because people rejected God, he gave them up. So we have this catalogue of evils leading to the breakdown of family and community and society. There are so many examples of these sins around the world but even in our own country. Even today, as Paul says, “people invent new ways of doing evil!”
Four results of rejecting God: Foolishness and idolatry; sinful desires and materialism shameful lusts and perversion; depraved minds and the breakdown of society. But let’s make sure we don’t become proud and self-righteous about all these things. Because the righteous anger and the judgment of God is directed just as much at each one of us as it against the worst murderer. There but for the grace of God go you and I! Apart from Christ and the salvation He brings, we are just as rebellious and sinful and guilty as anybody else! Even with Christ, we are all a very long way from being perfect! But here is the point Paul is making!
They are without excuse
Some people say that it is unfair of God to judge human beings for their sins. That people are simply sinning because of ignorance. People just don’t know any better. Paul is contradicting that idea. Paul is saying, they are without excuse.
The old Anglican Communion Service included a prayer of confession – that we have all sinned against God and against our fellow men though ignorance, through wickedness, and through our own deliberate fault. Human sin is not all ignorance, it also includes willful rebellion!
People choose to suppress the truth about God
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

There is a whole other sermon here on the philosophical arguments for the existence of God which we must leave for another day. But Paul is absolutely clear that the Creator is revealed in His Creation. That God’s eternal power and divine nature are visible to everybody, believer and non-believer and atheist alike. People like Richard Dawkins who refuse to see God in creation are not merely blind and misguided – they are actually deliberately suppressing the truth about God.
More than four hundred years ago, the great Reformation theologian John Calvin put it this way. “Surely nothing is more absurd than that people should be ignorant of their Author, especially people who have been given understanding principally for this use. … God has not darkly shadowed His glory in the creation of the world, but He has everywhere engraven such marks that even the blind may know them.”
Message: So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives.
People deliberately choose darkness instead of light. So they are without excuse!
People deliberately choose to ignore God
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
Why did the burglar not see the policeman? Because he was too busy running away from him. C.S Lewis said that amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God.’ They might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat.” It was Winston Churchill who said that Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. People suppress the truth about God. They deliberately choose to ignore God. And
People deliberately choose to disobey God.
32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Even though the age of Christendom has passed, most people still know the essence of God’s Law. Even if they can’t list the ten commandments, most still know that murder and stealing and lying are wrong. It’s not that they don’t know right from wrong – we all have consciences, we all know good from evil and we’ll think more about that in a couple of weeks time. The fact is that human beings so often simply choose to do wrong instead of doing right.
The Message sums it up so well: Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!
So here is the problem. A runaway world, separated and alienated from God, suffering the consequences of selfishness and sin, but much worse than that, facing the just judgment of a holy God. The Creator God who is rightly angry with all the the godlessness and wickedness which are man’s own deliberate fault. We are lost souls in a lost world – that’s humanity’s problem!
And what is God’s solution. As we said last week – God’s solution is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe. The gospel which gives us a way of getting right with God based not on any good works but instead on simply accepting by faith the gift of forgiveness and eternal life which comes to us through Jesus Christ.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What is faith? Some words can appear to be “religious” - distanced from every day life in the “real world” One such word is FAITH. People talk about a “leap of faith”, and living “by faith not by sight”. It is so easy to be misunderstood. Some people even think that “faith is believing things you know aren’t true”

I want to answer a simple question this morning. What is faith? What does it mean to have Christian faith? What does faith really mean?

Some people think that faith is a “religious” word – that only religious people have “faith”. But faith isn’t a religious word. Faith is an EVERYDAY word. In everyday life we believe things, believe people, trust people. Faith simply means trusting! Trusting somebody. Putting our trust in something or somebody.

Faith is central to the whole of ordinary life. You are feeling poorly so you go to your doctor. He gives you a prescription in handwriting you cannot read. You take it to a pharmacist you have never seen before. He gives you a chemical compound you do not understand. Then you go home and take the pill according to the instructions on the bottle. All of that is trust, it’s faith!

We press the light switch without checking to see if the wiring in the house is still safe – we just trust it is all OK. We drop an important letter in the letter box but never wait around to see if any postman picks it up. We trust it will be delivered. We get on to a bus or a train plane without ever asking whether the driver knows where he is going. When I get in a car and turn the ignition key, I have faith that my car will start. The kind of faith Christians have is simply an expression of the same kind of trust. But trust directed towards God.

We trust the news when we hear it on television, most of the time anyway. We trust a SatNav is going to take us where we want to go. We trust all kinds of people all of the time. Faith in God is the just same kind of trust.

Christian faith is a relationship with GOD - EXACTLY like other relationships with people. That’s why faith, hope and love go together – they are all things which make up relationships with people! Abraham was called a FRIEND of God - because he believed God, he trusted God.
The action of Christian faith is EXACTLY like action of trusting anybody else

Some people think is must be different because “we can’t see God”. But I spend lots of time writing emails to people I can’t hear or see. Young people seem to spend half their lives texting or chatting on Facebook, often with people on the other side of the world who they will never ever meet face to face. We’ve had telephones for decades and letters for centuries. Every week all of us communicate with all kinds of people who we will never see. The taxman! The person I booked our holiday with. Family and friends hundreds of miles away. God is not the only person we trust without seeing them face to face. MOST of our trusting is like that.

Most of life is built on trust in one form or another. One of my hobbies is “mending other people’s computers”. Over the years that is something that lots of people and churches and schools have asked me to do. Somebody who might not know me very well, sometimes a person I have never even met before, comes and says, “my computer is broken, can you fix it? I want to upgrade my computer, can you do it for me?” I explain the risks. I warn them that things might go wrong and that they might end up having to buy a new machine if I break it even more than it is already! But they always agree to take the risk. So far they have always decided to trust me. And so far things have never gone wrong.

People trust me that I am not going to deliberately wreck their machine, or steal bits out of it, or get them to buy new parts which they don’t need and I don’t use but slip into my own computers instead. People trust me that I actually do know what I am doing, and that I wont take risks but will do my best to help them.

I don’t know why people trust me in those ways. Perhaps they think I’ve got an honest face. But life is full of examples of people trusting each other. And trusting God is just the same kind of thing. The only difference between trusting God and trusting people lies in the character of God!!!!! God is more reliable, more trustWORTHY, than ANYbody else!

So how does faith in God work? What does trusting God involve?

When I left teaching science a long long time ago to become a minister, a few colleagues very kindly said things like, “I admire your faith.” Or “I wish I had faith like yours”. I tried to explain to them that they DO have faith. Everybody has faith. And then I explained what it involved to have faith in God.

Christian faith involves at least three things
Trusting the Bible –
Somebody once said that we should start off treating the Bible like any other book – after a while we will realise that the Bible is unlike any other book!

Trusting what Christians say –
When Christians talk about God answering their prayers, some people assume they are just making up stories. How much better to assume that when Christian friends talk about the difference Jesus makes in their lives, the peace he gives them, the help and the guidance, assume that they are telling the truth.

Trusting your own experience -
We can all discover for ourselves God is real, that God is there, that God will help anybody who sincerely searches for him! Try reading the Bible. Try praying.
My family never went to church when I was growing up. I grew up thinking that God didn’t exist. I was studying science and I thought that science had proved the Bible was wrong, that science had proved that God didn’t exist. I was sixteen when God surprised me and showed me that he does exist, that he is real! So I began to see the world in a very different way.

6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Faith in God begins by making the assumption that God exists and deciding to live our lives to please the God we believe in. Other people may live lives based on possessions or money and things in the here and now which they can touch and feel. But Christian believers base our lives on the God of the Bible. We trust in His acts of salvation. We believe His Word the Bible as God’s word to us even today. We claim God’s promises. So we depend on God.

(C. S. Lewis) who wrote the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe once said, “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”

Hebrews chapter 11 is full of the examples of men and women who trusted God.

NOAH
7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

Even if nobody else hears God’s voice, if we believe then we hear, and we trust, and we obey. It may make us look foolish to everybody else. But we still rely on God!

ABRAHAM

8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

11 By faith Abraham, even though he was past age- and Sarah herself was barren- was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

Faith means clinging on to God’s promises, even when they seem impossible.

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) “Faith is not believing that God can, but that God will!”

It was that great theologian Cliff Richard who said, “The more we depend on God, the more dependable we find he is.”

Some people seem to think that trusting God is irrational. I would argue that putting faith in God is just as rational, just as sensible as trusting anything or anybody else.

“Faith is a reasoning trust, a trust which reckons thoughtfully and confidently upon the trustworthiness of God”. (the preacher John Stott)

It is rational to put our trust in God because of His character. When we trust other people, there is always the risk that they might lie to us, or cheat us. But God will never do that! Because God is infinitely Good –

God is good and just: He will never deceive us - so it should be EASIER to trust Him than it is to trust other people. We should be able to trust God MORE than we do other people!

Then when we trust other people there is also the risk that they will hurt us in some way. But that will never happen with God because God is all loving. God IS love. “I have loved you with an everlasting love!” God says. Oswald Chambers wrote, “Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God.”

God is all-loving: He will never let us down: it should be EASIER to trust God than to trust anybody else. We should trust God MORE than we do anybody else.

Then when we trust other people there is always the risk that they will mess up. That however much they try, they might fail to do what they have promised. But there is no risk of that happening with God. Because

God is all-powerful – God is Almighty. God can do whatever He chooses to do!

God is all-powerful - He CAN keep His promises: it should be EASIER to trust God than it is to trust other people. We should trust God MORE than we do anybody else!

We trust other people - put our confidence in them, have faith in them, believe in them -
Then people are fickle and fallible – But God is GOOD;
Human love is partial, limited – But God is ALL LOVING;
People can fail because of their limitations – But God is ALL-POWERFUL:
So we should trust Him most of all!

The Bible given us many examples of heroes of faith, but there are many modern examples of heroes of faith too.
Corrie Ten Boom was a dutch Christian during the second world war who with other members of her family helped many Jews escape persecution but was herself put into Ravensbruck concentration camp. Corrie Ten Boom said these things about Faith.
“You don’t need great faith, but faith in a great God.”
“If all things are possible with God, then all things are possible to him who believes in him.”
“Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible.”
“Faith is a Fantastic Adventure in Trusting Him.”

Faith isn’t something religious which only religious people have. We all have faith. We all exercise faith all the time. We all put our trust in things and people. The important question is – what do we put our faith in? What do we trust? Who do we trust?

I am fan of science fiction. Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke. Star Trek and Star Wars and of course Doctor Who. By far the best television science fiction series in the last decade was called Babylon 5 and its sequel called Crusade. Each episode of Crusade introduces the plotline and the main character by asking five questions. And those five questions are so good that they are worth everybody stopping to think about them sometimes.

WHO ARE YOU?

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

WHO DO YOU SERVE and WHO DO YOU TRUST?

What is faith? Putting our trust in God is just like trusting anybody or anything else. Questions well worth thinking about. WHO DO YOU SERVE and WHO DO YOU TRUST?

The apostle Paul was on his way to Rome. He was planning a church-planting expedition on to Spain and wanted to visit the church at Rome for the first time on his way through. So he wrote the letter which comes to us as Romans to introduce himself to the church there and to explain the gospel which he preaches.
What is the gospel?
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— 2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures
The gospel was foretold and foreshadowed by the prophets in the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament. The gospel was the culmination of God’s masterplan of salvation which unfolded over thousands of years.
2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 regarding his Son,
The gospel is all about Jesus, the Son of God,
3 regarding his Son,who as to his human nature was a descendant of David,
Jesus was a man, fully human, descended from David the greatest King Israel ever knew.
4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.
Jesus was more than a human being. He was also the Son of God. As we have been thinking over Christmas, Jesus was the Word made flesh, Immanuel, God with us. And the proof we have that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, the Christ, the Jewish Messiah, but more than that King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the proof we have is that God raised his Son Jesus from the dead. The resurrection is God’s proof to everybody of who Jesus really is.
Sometimes it helps to get a fresh perspective on a passage if we look at another translation, and here is how The Message paraphrase puts verses 3 and 4.
His descent from David roots him in history; his unique identity as Son of God was shown by the Spirit when Jesus was raised from the dead, setting him apart as the Messiah, our Master.
Back to the NIV as we read on
5 Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. 6 And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. 7 To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:
Paul, and the Christians at Rome, and every Christian everywhere are loved by God and called to be “saints,” holy people. And God has so many blessings for his people.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

The gospel is all about Jesus and the grace and peace he gives to everyone who follows him. So Paul writes
16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
The gospel is
The power of God for salvation
16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes
We had a whole series of sermons last year on “What is salvation?” Salvation is an umbrella word for all the blessings God gives to His chosen people. In the Old Testament it meant rescue from slavery in Egypt in the Exodus, deliverance from evil and redemption from captivity. In the New Testament salvation embraces forgiveness of sins and escape from Judgment, and new life as we share Christ’s resurrection life. Salvation includes eternal life and healing and wholeness and freedom from sin and death and the devil.
The old question, “are you saved” sounds dated. But it is still perhaps the most important question for anybody to answer. We still all need to be saved! D.L.Moody once said, “If we can get a man to think for just 5 minutes about his soul, he is almost certain to be converted.” The gospel is God’s power for salvation. The word power may remind our generation of electricity or of the atom bomb. In the world of Paul’s time it meant more political or military strength. But the gospel of Jesus’ Christ is God’s power – a simple straightforward message which can transform lives. The gospel is God’s dynamo and God’s dynamite to save! And Paul is not ashamed of the gospel because in it he himself has found new life in Jesus Christ.
The gospel is
A righteousness from God
Verse 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed
Righteousness is a central theme in all of Paul’s teaching. We find that word righteousness 35 times in Romans, and the related word righteous another 35 times! Applied to people, righteousness is talking about that gift of forgiveness and new life which changes us from God’s enemies into God’s children, no longer condemned as sinners but accepted as precious sons and daughters. By his grace, God puts us back in a right relationship with Him on the basis of Christ’s death and resurrection. The gospel offers us that righteousness and all the blessings of salvation which righteousness brings with it. At the same time, the gospel shows us the right way we should be living, and then gives us all the strength we need to live in ways which are pleasing to God. In a passage which literally revolutionized the church and shaped the understanding we have today, the founder of the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther explained it this way.
“I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “the righteousness of God,” because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and deals righteously in punishing the unrighteous. … Night and day I pondered until … I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby , through grace and sheer mercy, God justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scriptures took on a new meaning, and whereas before “the righteousness of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gateway to heaven.”
So the apostle Paul is not ashamed of the gospel because it has given even to him a new righteousness.
The righteous will live by faith.
17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
Paul is quoting Habbakuk 2:4 where it says, “The righteous will live by faith” or spelling out what that means, “the person who is righteous - will live by their faith.” Here Paul turns the verse around and says literally, “The righteous by faith will live,” that is, the person who is made righteous by their faith - will live. Elsewhere Paul makes the same argument from Genesis 15:6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
Paul is not saying that we earn our salvation by trusting God. Rather our faith is the channel by which God’s blessing comes to us. Faith is not some kind of good work we have to do to deserve God’s love. We never could earn or deserve God’s peace. What Paul is saying is that we receive God’s free gift of righteousness and salvation simply by believing God’s promises and accepting them for ourselves, not just in intellectual assent but in in a commitment to trusting God which affects our whole lives. Somebody has said, “Belief is a truth held in the mind. Faith is a fire in the heart.” Paul had that fire in his heart. That is why he is so eager to share God’s message of salvation with others. As the Message puts it in verse 5
Through him we received both the generous gift of his life and the urgent task of passing it on to others who receive it by entering into obedient trust in Jesus. You are who you are through this gift and call of Jesus Christ!
So Paul is not ashamed of the gospel because he himself has received God’s salvation by believing God.
16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
The message translation puts it this way. It’s news I’m most proud to proclaim, this extraordinary Message of God’s powerful plan to rescue everyone who trusts him, starting with Jews and then right on to everyone else! God’s way of putting people right shows up in the acts of faith, confirming what Scripture has said all along: “The person in right standing before God by trusting him really lives.
Paul first experienced that power of God for salvation face to face with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. So now his life was dedicated to making sure that everybody else would hear the gospel and have opportunity to respond to God’s offer of eternal life.
5 Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.
So Paul says “I am not ashamed of the gospel!” Perhaps he had in mind the words of Jesus Himself: Luke 9:26 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
God does not want any of us to ashamed of Jesus, or ashamed of the gospel. In the weeks to come we will unwrap this gospel and understand more of just how God saves us. We will learn more about the wonderful blessings the gospel brings to all of us who believe, and just how those of us who have experienced this power of God for salvation should now live our new lives.
But for tonight I want us to take some more time to reflect on Pauls’s words, “I am not ashamed of the gospel!” Are WE ever ashamed of the gospel? Are we ever ashamed of Jesus?

I want to start our thinking this morning right at the very beginning of the Christmas story. Not with the manger in the stable in Bethlehem, not with Mary’s long journey on a donkey, not even with the annunciation as the angel Gabriel visited Mary foretelling the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ.
The story of Christmas did not begin on earth at all, but in heaven at the very throne of Almighty God, in a dialogue we could never comprehend between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And to get the full story of Christmas we need to start at that very beginning, which is why our Christmas text this morning is 2 Corinthians 8:9.
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich yet for your sakes he became poor, so that through His poverty you might become rich.”
In this single sentence, the apostle Paul sums up the whole story of Christ’s incarnation and the way God brings us salvation. Here is the story of Christmas. And Paul begins, as does John’s Gospel, not with the baby in the manger but with the cosmic Christ.
THOUGH HE WAS RICH
The person Paul is talking about is Jesus of Nazareth, but that person had existed long before the baby was born, long before even time began.
Who was that person? He was God the Son
John 1:1-2 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.
And what had that person, the Word done? He had created all things, absolutely everything.
John 1:3-5 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been, and that future years shall see,
Evermore and Evermore
We thought last Sunday evening about the prophecies of the Messiah in Isaiah
Isaiah 9:6-7 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.7 Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.
THAT is the person we are talking about as Christians – the Word of God, God the Son. If our thoughts of Christmas don’t begin in heaven with the Cosmic Christ, we have missed half the story!
Though He was rich
YET FOR YOUR SAKES HE BECAME POOR
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
In the manger we find the Word without a word – not so much squeezing a quart into a pint pot as squeezing an entire OCEAN into a pint pot!
An ancient Christian hymn quoted by Paul puts it this way.
Philippians 2:6-7 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
Christ chose not to cling on to His divinity but that doesn’t mean He ceased to be God. He remained fully God as well as being fully human. There was no loss of power or glory – just a change of status as the king of kings and Lord of Lords became a tiny human baby. Think about the poverty of Christ’s birth and his childhood. Born in a filthy stable, not a palace. Brought up as a refugee in Egypt and then in an insignificant village in the back of beyond called Nazareth. One of a despised race, in a country ruled by an occupying army in the shadow of the mighty Roman Empire. Think of the shame for Jesus, being conceived before his mother Mary was married
But there is a second side to the poverty Jesus experienced, summed up in a simple sentence, “Christmas is a Son away from home.” Christmas is not just about the birth of a baby. It is about the Heavenly Father saying goodbye to His only begotten Son. God the Son embraced poverty at the incarnation, but so also did God the Father by sending His Son into the world, the Son who had been one with the Father since before time began.
Have you ever said goodbye to somebody you love, maybe at a station or an airport? That is the kind of poverty the Godhead experienced at the incarnation – poverty of relationship as the Son distanced Himself from the Father and the Spirit to become a tiny baby laid in a manger. That is how much God loves us!

And just why did God the Son leave all the glory of heaven and the presence of the Father and the Spirit? Not for their benefit, but for ours.

Though Christ was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor
SO THAT THROUGH HIS POVERTY YOU MIGHT BECOME RICH
The riches Christ has are not material but spiritual. So the riches He brings to us are not material but spiritual.
Galatians 4:4-7 4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, 5 to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. 6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.
As Christ shared the poverty of the human separation from God, so he shares with us the riches of a relationship with Almighty God as our Father. God the Son became a human being so that men and women could become God’s children too.
John 1:11-13 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Christ makes us rich by making us children of God. Christ became what we are, so that we might share in what He is.
2 Peter 1:3-4 3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
For a time God the Son let go of the relationship he had enjoyed with Father and Spirit since before time began, so that men and women like you and I can share in that relationship. That is the heart of the message of Christmas, Son separated from Father in order to reconcile fallen human beings with Creator God.
So how should we respond to all that God has done for us in Christ? Three simple things.
GENEROSITY
The context of 2 Corinthians 8:9 is all about generous giving to meet the needs of other Christians. There are lots of opportunities to give at this time of year. Giving to the work of the church and to Christian mission, and giving to those who are poor or needy, homeless or marginalised. Christmas reminds us just how much God loves us, God who loved the world so much that He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him should not die but have eternal life. Since God loves us so much, we should be generous to people in need out of deep gratitude for all God has done for us.
HUMILITY
The context of Paul’s words in Philippians is an appeal for humility.
Philippians 2:2-7 Make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing,
“He came down to earth from heaven, Who is God and Lord of all,
And His shelter was a stable, And His cradle was a stall:
With the poor and meek and lowly Lived on earth our Saviour holy.”
In His earthly life, Christ showed God’s love for the lost, the outcasts, the tax-collectors, the prostitutes, the criminals, the drop-outs, the “sinners”. Jesus was never too proud to help real people with real problems. Nor should we be. The Poverty of the Son of God challenges us to humility.
REJOICING
The message of Christmas is,
“Joy to the Lord, the World rejoice, Let earth receive Her King.”
Jesus Christ the Son of God was rich, yet He became poor. He became a human being, a baby laid in a manger, so that we might share in the riches of His relationship with the Father and become God’s children too. If YOU know God as your Father, then you too will be full of joy at Christmas.

For almost 1700 years Christians of every denomination have worshipped God and declared their faith by saying together the Creed. That includes these words.
“We believe in the one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one Being with the Father.
Through Him all things were made. For us men and our salvation he came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate of the virgin Mary, and was made man.”
I believe in the Virgin Birth. Many people do not. But I do. Jesus was born of a woman – and that shows us that he is completely human, one of us. But the historical fact that Mary was a virgin shows us that Jesus is truly God with us, the Son of God born a man. For God to become a human being a miracle was required, and that miracle was the Virgin Birth.
Matthew 1:18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
The Bible tells us that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. Not in an ordinary way but in a totally supernatural way. Mary was his mother and God was his Father. Luke records that Jesus “was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph,” and that reminds us that Jesus in fact did not have a human father.
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”

So Jesus was not just a very special man. Jesus is the man who is God. Fully human and also fully divine. The 200% man – 100% man and also 100% God. Immanuel – God with us. Many people have thought that because Jesus was God he was somehow different from us, special, different from ordinary human beings. Many people think that Jesus didn’t really face the same problems we face – that it was all somehow easier for the Son of God. But that was NOT THE CASE.
JESUS WAS COMPLETELY HUMAN
One of the earliest heresies the church had to battle with was the false idea that Jesus wasn’t really a man. That he was like the mythical Greek gods sometimes did, just pretending to be human. A human being in outward appearance only, but not real human flesh like you and me.
1 John 4: 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.
Here was the false idea that Jesus only seemed to be human. That he was really only God, and not truly a man. John 2:7 Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world.
And there may be some people here today who have that same wrong understanding – who think that Jesus wasn’t really human like you and me. That Jesus the Son of God was somehow different. A quick quiz: For example – did Jesus ever suffer from indigestion? Or flu? With all that preaching to thousands did Jesus ever lose his voice? With all that walking did he ever get blisters? Did Jesus ever have nightmares? Remember Jesus meeting the woman at the well.
John 4: 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
Jesus was exhausted. He experienced tiredness and hunger and thirst and pain just as we do. The Bible tells us that after 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil, Jesus was hungry! Jesus was completely human. So totally human that it was only after the resurrection that his disciples began to understand that Jesus the carpenter’s son, the rabbi, was in reality God Himself. Think about Jesus and his friend Lazarus.
John 11: 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” … 5 Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
Jesus had friends. Not just disciples. Friends. Folk to relax with. Have dinner with. Play a few games, talk about life, the universe and everything. I wonder what kind of music Jesus liked? I wonder what hobbies Jesus had? Jesus had friends. He even had a best friend – remember the apostle John was known as “the disciple Jesus loved”. But one day one of Jesus’s close friends Lazarus died.
John 11: 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
35 Jesus wept. 36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb.
Jesus was deeply moved and troubled. Jesus wept! Jesus felt all the intense emotions we all feel – because of course so does God. The mythical greek gods were impassable, unfeeling. The God of the Bible has feelings, deep deep feelings. Of joy and sadness, sorrow and grief.
Hebrews 4: 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. 16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Jesus was God with us. He has faced all the temptations we face. The pull of selfishness. The pangs of greed and lust and bitterness and self-pity. He faced them all. The only difference is that we give in to temptations. We dwell on them and let them lead us into sin. But Jesus did not. He fought harder than we do and he beat the devil every time.
Hebrews 2: 14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. … 17 For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
The fact that God became a human being at all is indisputable proof that God cares for us. But God did more than that. He shared our experience of death to destroy the devil so that we could share God’s eternal life. God didn’t just identify with us in the incarnation. He took our place, the Creator murdered by His creation. But that would be 33 years on from the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.
Besides, the reality is that most people don’t have any problem at all with Jesus’s humanity. It is his divinity they can’t take on board. Of course Jesus was human – most people would say. Jesus was a man – but that is all he was. And that is a mistake which is even more disastrous than denying Jesus’s humanity. Christmas would be meaningless if Jesus was only a man. But the Bible makes it totally clear that Jesus was also the Son of God.
JESUS WAS COMPLETELY GOD
Jesus was not just a very good man, not just a great teacher. The Romans wrongly believed that when their emperors died they were promoted to god-hood. But Jesus was not even a good man who at his death was promoted to being a god. Jesus always had been, always was, always is and always will be completely God.
John 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

The person of the Word, the second person of the Trinity, God the Son had always existed, even before time began. And it was that person who was born of the virgin in Bethlehem.
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Creator enters His creation. The author enters into his own play – knowing that he will be murdered before he has the opportunity to write the script for the final act. The greatness of God was not cast off. The slightness of human nature was put on. The Word remained completely God with no lessening of His divine nature. Yet He also took on everything that belongs to our humanity to become Jesus of Nazareth. There were not two separate persons – God and man. It wasn’t the case that God the Word was living inside Jesus the man, like Superman hiding disguised as mild mannered reporter Clark Kent. The Son of God actually BECAME Jesus of Nazareth.
Hebrews 1: In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word
Here is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, born as a human being. We sing “He’s got the whole world in his hands,” and All the stars in the sky held in the tiny hands of the baby in the manger, the word without a word.
Colossians 1: 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together
THAT is the baby in the manger. The Image, the Firstborn, the Creator – everything created BY Him and FOR Him. The one who is before all things – before all time and space. And also preeminent before all things. The one who holds everything together.
19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
Colossians 2:9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,
Christ is the FULNESS of God – everything that God is, is there in that baby laid in a manger. Almighty. All knowing. Eternal. Holy. Righteous. All Loving. The fullness of God all in that tiny baby!
19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Here is God’s cosmic masterplan – that Jesus would be the Saviour, God becoming a human being to bring men and women like us back to God. The road runs from Bethlehem straight and stony, steep and long, through 30 years to Calvary. That was Jesus’s mission. Immanuel, filled with all the fullness of God, came to share that fullness with sinful human beings in a fallen broken world. Only the Creator could repair His creation. Salvation was only possible by the miracle of the Incarnation. Christ became what we are, so that we might share what He is. He shared our humanity so that we might even share His divinity. The Word of God became a human being so that we might learn from one of our own kind what it is to be God. That is the mystery of Christmas.
Luke 1: 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.
That was Mary’s baby, Jesus, the Son of the most high. For God to become a human being was IMPOSSIBLE. So it took a very special miracle – the Virgin Birth. Jesus Himself was unique. So we should expect his birth to be unique as well – in fact we would be very surprised if His birth was NOT very special!!
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God
I don’t claim to understand the virgin birth. None of us this side of heaven will ever understand how Almighty God could possibly become man in Jesus Christ. It is a mystery – a miracle – a miracle possibly even greater than the miracle of the resurrection. I don’t understand the virgin birth. But I believe the Virgin Birth.
And it isn’t the case that my belief that Jesus is God rests on the fact of the virgin birth. It doesn’t work that way round. The first thing a person comes to believe is that Jesus is God, and we believe Jesus is God because of his amazing teaching and wonderful miracles and above all because of his glorious resurrection from the dead. But then, because we believe Jesus is God, we believe in the Virgin Birth, because the Bible tells us that is the way that God chose to become a human being.
“For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit He became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.”
So how do we respond to this man who is God? In these days more people than ever say the same as those cold hearted inn-keepers, “No room here!” We would do better to follow the example of the wise men. When they saw the baby Jesus with his mother Mary, they bowed down and worshipped Him. We should do the same. Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “If Socrates came into the room, we would rise and do Him honour. But if Jesus Christ came into the room we should fall down on our knees and worship Him.” Indeed we should. O come let us adore Him. O come let us adore Him. O come let us adore Him – Christ the Lord. Bow down and worship – for this is your God!