Delivered by Death

Sermon “Delivered by Death” Romans 5 informed by Numbers 1-22

Lord, open our hearts that we may live to you, receiving of you all your great and precious promises, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Have you ever been downcast? I have. There have been some time in my life when I’ve just wanted to pull the covers over my head and disappear. We’ve all been there. Sometimes we are pretty low. Life seems to be against us and we don’t know quite how to deal with it. Maybe it would help if people would just leave us alone. Or maybe it would help if they wouldn’t abandon us. We want help, but we also want everyone to go away and stop trying to help. After all, those other people don’t understand, do they? Not at all. We’ve been beaten down and we’re discouraged. Life has the upper hand. Most of the time we are able to shake our heads, clear out the cobwebs, and go on with life, realizing God’s gracious hand is there somewhere. But sometimes we can’t do that. And occasionally we’re honest enough to ask the question, the big question, what’s going on? Why are we still here? If this is life, do I really want it to go on forever?

How do we deal with it when the people around us are feeling beaten down? What’s a good response to it? Of course, it’s different for each person, at least a little bit different. Some of the particular details change, but the big picture remains the same. Job’s friends who comforted him actually did something very well. They came to him and sat with him. For a good while they showed that they cared enough to lay aside their own priorities, their own occupations, their own concerns and just be present for him. That’s something I’ve found to be useful many times in ministry. A lot of times the person sitting on the other side of the desk will start talking and end up explaining to himself just what’s troubling him. After a while I can help him look at some of the Scriptures that speak to the underlying issues and we’re done. Someone who has been living as a Christian for a while, reading the Scripture regularly, hearing the Gospel regularly, that person is going to have considerable resources and often just needs a little nudge in the right direction. But what is that right direction?

If you’ve been keeping on top of our Bible reading challenge you’ve read most of Numbers in the past week. And you’ve seen that it is about a lot more than a census of Israel. It’s about God equipping his people to dwell in the land of promise, the place he has given them. And it’s all centered around worship, which in turn is centered around God’s means of grace given for the forgiveness of his people. Our Lord provided the priests and Levites to bring the people face to face with himself. And so his chosen people could come before him he provided means of forgiveness. All who trusted that God would receive their sacrifices saw that the Lord gave them forgiveness and restoration. There’s the right direction, the way we try to guide people. When we are in distress we look to God, and we look to him through the person and work of Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us. This is how we have peace with God. And that peace with God is exactly what we need.

So wait a minute. If I’m in distress, what I need is someone to point me to Jesus? Yes, that’s what I’m saying. I won’t say that looking to Jesus will change your immediate circumstances. I wish I could say that, but I can’t. Or if I did I’d be making claims which our Lord doesn’t make. But what did we see in Romans chapter 5? We don’t find ourselves rescued from suffering in that chapter. I know some of you would like that. I know I’d like it, as someone who has dealt with chronic pain for decades. No doubt I’d like Jesus to remove those sufferings. But that isn’t what he’s done. He is doing more than that. He has made peace with God and given us access to God’s mercy. He has reconciled us to God. He has delivered us, not from suffering, not from death, but through suffering, through death.

Jesus himself walks us through those times of suffering that we endure. Now here’s another of those tough biblical counseling situations. I have stopped counting the number of times someone has looked at me and told me that he knows exactly what God was accomplishing by his circumstances. Maybe you know what the Lord is doing in your life right now. I’ll admit it. I don’t know. I may know part of it, but I don’t know all of it, not at all. Just recently I’ve been using an illustration in counseling situations. We’re all familiar with an onion, aren’t we? It has lots of layers. And you can peel off one layer, then there’s another. Peel that one off and you find another layer. It keeps going on and on. And it’s all bundled up together. My understanding of God’s purpose and will in my situation is very limited. I may know some of what he’s doing in me, or maybe in a few people around me. But it will only be partial knowledge. There are other people who are watching. I may not know what they are seeing or what the Lord is doing in their lives. I might find out years from now that the Lord was equipping me for this or that way of ministering to somebody. Or I may never hear about it but someone else has a benefit from the experience I had years ago. It’s like an onion. Our Lord knows every layer. We know a little tiny piece of it.

But here’s what the apostle says God is doing through our suffering. In Romans 5:3 we see that suffering produces perseverance. It is through struggles that we grow. It is through difficulty that we learn to push on and keep working. If everything in life were easy what would we do? How many of us would stand up to a challenge? We’d simply become passive, lazy, and we would give up at the least challenge. But that’s not the kind of world we are in. When challenged we persevere. And our sufferings show us how we will persevere. What does perseverance do? In verse 4 we see that it produces character. We push on, we face our struggles, we don’t give in. And what happens when we make it? It feels pretty good, doesn’t it? I was talking with someone recently who faces a lot of challenges at work. His job involves a lot of deadlines and a lot of variables. The playing field he is on changes all the time, moment to moment, and a large part of his occupation involves adjusting to those changes so as to reach a goal on time. Other people depend on him at various times during the work day. It energizes him. What happens when we work hard and succeed? We develop character. What happens when we don’t have to work hard to succeed? We develop a very different type of character. Our struggles build us up. What does that character produce? Again in verse 4 we see that it produces hope. And our hope is in Christ Jesus, who has faced all the sufferings we will ever face. He has persevered through the life he lived on our behalf. And he has overcome all of the struggles, including the struggle against sin, on our behalf, living a perfect life for us.

This sounds like a nice motivational idea, doesn’t it? And some people would stop right then and there. Jesus lives a perfect life for us and we can folllow him by living our victorious life. But there’s something else, something we don’t dare forget, right there in Romans 5. How does Jesus give us this perfect life? He has a delivery to make. And this is where I start using the word “deliver” in two different ways. We all know what it means to receive a delivery. I find it an exciting time. The big brown truck (sorry, Roger) stops in front of the house, someone gets out, and brings me a box. There’s a delivery. I receive a package. Jesus delivers us his life, his perfection, his grace. And he does it in a package, known as Word and Sacraments. That’s why we rejoice to receive communion today. Jesus delivers forgiveness, life and salvation through his body broken for us and through his blood shed for us. He delivers forgiveness and hope through the spoken word in the Scripture readings, in the sermon, and in the other parts of the liturgy. This is a wonderful delivery. But the other way we can use the word “deliver” means “to rescue.” Jesus delivers us. He rescues us. And he rescues us from death. How does he do that? In Romans 5 verse 8 we read that he delivers us, rescues us, by dying for us. Does he do this because we prepare ourselves? No. Does he do it because we are good people? No. Does he do it because he somehow knew that we would believe so he wants to reward us? No. He died for us while we were still sinners. He delivered us. He rescued us. He gave his life so that his perfect life could be applied to us. And that life is applied to us by faith. By faith we receive God’s grace. By faith we look to our Lord and confess our sins. By faith we look to our Lord as the one who forgives our sins and cleanses us from unrighteousness. By faith we receive that deliverance which he purchased by his death. By faith we receive life and salvation, knowing that Jesus has reconciled us, made us one with God, through his death for us.

Have you been beaten down? Have you realized that what you were depending on was lost, and lost forever? Maybe you have been hurt. Maybe you have been the one hurting others, alienating them. Maybe you see your sin and how it separates you from God. Maybe you aren’t quite sure what you see because you’ve been so hurt and confused. Maybe you are despairing and then wondering how God can forgive you at all because you wonder if he can forgive you. Maybe you have tried to make yourself righteous before God and seen it fail. Or maybe you are realizing that you have depended on your own righteousness. It won’t work. And you know it, and I know it. What has worked? Jesus, who gave himself to reconcile us to God through his own death on our behalf, he is the one who has worked. His forgiveness is sufficient to bring us to life and salvation. Where do we find that life and salvation? We find it as we look to our Lord in faith, confessing that he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We find it as we receive the body and blood of our Lord, given and shed for us. We find it as we call upon our Lord, Jesus Christ, the living Word of God, who has poured out his love into our hearts. Let us call upon the Lord then in faith.

Rise with me to pray. Our Lord Jesus Christ, we confess that we are among the ungodly. We needed you to die for us. And before we were even born, you did just that. As you have delivered your death on our behalf, deliver us from death, through your death and resurrection. Let us see you as the risen Lord, the one in whom we also rise in the last day, to join with you in life everlasting. This we pray in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.