“More Than Overcomers”

March 16, 2008

 

 

I almost feel as if I have to reintroduce myself to you this morning; it seems that long ago that we were together.  It has been over 20 years since I’ve been out of the pulpit on two successive Sundays. If you sprinkle in the missed Wednesday nights and being out of town, I’m sure we need to spend a good deal of time getting updated on what is going on.

 

This has been an incredibly difficult winter for the bodies and spirits of our First Church family.  It seems like bad things started happening in October and have yet to let up. One by one, beloved friends have faced incredible challenges to their bodies and their faith. And while Beth and I believe God has incredibly blessed us, we did get a small taste of something that we never want to experience again.

 

We travelled home from Florida through driving rains, mountain fogs, and finally the terrific snow storms of last Friday.  Jessica’s ride back to school was stranded in Florida when the Cleveland Hopkins airport was closed, so we had to take her back to school.  The driving was even worse for this trip. When we were finally sitting in our living room late on Sunday night, the warmth of the Florida sun and our vacation seemed like a distant memory and the tension of the trip had us talking, trying to deprogram our emotions.

 

It was at that time that we experienced something that we are sure many of you have experienced, but for us was somewhat of a new experience. We desperately wanted to sit and share everything with you.  We needed to talk and have you listen, and we weren’t together.  We wanted to be with our church family and instead we were separated from you.  Suddenly the depth of what so many have gone through and are yet going through touched us profoundly. Physical pain is very real; but the loneliness that comes from being disconnected from Christian fellowship is just as real. We want to say we missed you and are glad to be back with you.

 

Our trip down to Florida was much different—it was quiet and healing.  Since my last sermon was still fresh in my mind, I meditated on it it for many hours while everyone else in the car slept through the night. If you can remember that far back, we finished the morning on February 24 (doesn’t that even sound a long time ago) by reciting together these words:

 

“In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

 

That night the phrase “more than conquerors” dominated my thoughts. As I prayed asking God what that phrase really meant and how we were really to live in this world, the Holy Spirit brought a steady stream of Scripture verses to me. One phrase, however, seemed to resonate more satisfactorily than any other.  It comes from Matthew 25 where Jesus was explaining what Heaven will be like.  Let me stop and give a small commercial for tonight.  Please come and join us tonight at 7:00 p.m. as we begin to study more and more in depth these kinds of passages that speak to us about our eternal home.  Back to this morning, note Jesus’ words to the two men who wisely invested their five and two talents:

 

'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!'

 

This parable of the talents, as we call it, said to me that entering God’s kingdom, or “sharing our master’s happiness,” depends on the nature and quality of our response to the opportunities our Heavenly Father entrusts to us. It also indicates that we are not judged on the quantity of our work, or a comparison of how much we do relative to everyone else, but on how well we respond with what we have been given. Four of these words defined for me what it means to be “more than conquerors through him who loved us.” They are: “good and faithful servant.”

 

More and more verses flooded my mind. “Good,” took me to Luke 18:19, where Jesus asks a certain ruler, “Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone.” From these verses and the entire context of this story we know that if Jesus calls one of us “good,” He is stating that we have the same character as our Heavenly Father. Good then refers to who we are, our personal integrity, and how we make the decisions we make. It includes our thoughts, our wants, and makes our desires important.  For us to be good, we have to let God change us inside and out. Jesus is saying that who we are is very important. Good even demands that our hearts be pure and makes the basis of our decisions as important as the actual choices we make. As sons of our Heavenly Father, it is not enough for us to do the right thing, Jesus says we have to want to do the right thing. It is not good enough for us to give, we have to have a giving heart and lifestyle.

 

These demands become even more evident when we add the phrase “faithful servant.”  Jesus is saying “faithful servant” sets the standard for the quality of our work or what we do in response to God’s direction and calling on our lives. This standard is even further clarified in Hebrews 3:5-6, where Moses was called “faithful as a servant” and Jesus is called “faithful as a son.” There will always be a qualitative gap between who we are and what we do when we compare ourselves to Jesus, but the same standard applies. The gap we cannot cross is centered in the depth of our love.  A servant cannot love as a son loves.

 

But when we remember or come to realize that Jesus has gifted us with the permanent power and presence of the Holy Spirit working through and living in us to the “good and faithful servant” concept contained in these verses, “more than conquerors” becomes an incredibly powerful statement. If the Holy Spirit does indeed indwell us and we let it dominate our thoughts and actions, we are truly able to love as a Son.  We can truly be “more than conquerors” of the sin that is in us and all the problems of this world that surround us; Jesus is telling us we can truly be sons in every real sense of the word.  We can love like a son or a daughter and act and respond as a son or a daughter because the Son lives in us through the Holy Spirit.

 

These thoughts took me to John 15:15 where Jesus says, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business.  Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” The rest of that night I thought on and on about what it really means to be a friend of Jesus.  As dawn came, I was left with the thought, “we really can be more than a conqueror because the sin and troubles of this world can be overcome in a personal relationship with Jesus.”  The Holy Spirit will and does live in all of us who give ourselves totally to God and desire that depth of intimacy with Jesus and our Heavenly Father. It was a night that left me at peace.

 

The trip back and the rest of the time that I have put into this sermon brought a different part of Romans 8 into focus. Those events make the last verbal phrase, “will be able to separate us,” just as important as the overcoming. It also speaks to a different aspect of sonship. It is easy to overlook or take for granted the fact that real friendship is permanent. Romans 8 says real friends will never let time or distance or circumstances separate them.

 

While Beth and I sat last Sunday night wishing we were with you, we also knew that a week apart and some snow did not diminish our friendship.  As I have been reminded since I have been back, many of you spent time praying for us while we were traveling.  Those prayers may be the reason we are here rather than somewhere else.  What makes our love and our friendship so important and permanent is the rest of that last phrase, “from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

 

God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are eternal.  They have been in fellowship and relationship since before time began. But what happened to Jesus in that one moment when He became sin for us, when He paid the penalty for our sins? Scripture records, “About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). Just the thought of a few hours or maybe even just a few moments of separation were enough for Jesus to sweat what appeared to be blood when He was alone in Garden of Gethsemane preparing for the cross.  In the moment in which that separation became real, Jesus cried out for the restoration of that fellowship.

As I stand here this morning, it is beyond me how so many can be so casual in their attendance at Sunday morning worship, our Sunday evening fellowships, our prayer meetings, and our activities.  It is beyond me how people can try to solve their problems, or even attempt to make decisions without the guidance of our Heavenly Father and the listening ear of our brothers and sisters.  All of us know moments of rebellion.  We all have desires that appear to go unfulfilled.  Those desires can lead us away for a time.  But how can any of us survive for long living in sin and rebellion?  How can we live without our friends and family at church?  The only possible answer I can come up with is that we haven’t come to the point where we know our Heavenly Father’s heart or His friendship and love.  I can only imagine this casualness means we haven’t made friends in church or shared our hearts and prayed with and been prayed for by our church family. 

 

Standing here this morning, knowing Jesus to be my personal Savior, knowing the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life, knowing I have tremendous friends and so many here who love me and pray for me, I say to those of you who don’t share the same experience, “invest yourselves in the church of Jesus Christ and in the lives of his children.” Love reigns here.  “More than conquerors” is realized in the fellowship of sharing our lives and our hearts with each other. It is possible because nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We truly can be more than conquerors because the sin and troubles of this world can be overcome in a personal relationship with Jesus and real, living, and vital relationships with our brothers and sisters in the pews.