07-25-10 The Greatest Present of All

We come this morning

to the final verse in an 11 verse section of Romans

that we have been studying

for most of the past few months.

Those of you who have been here for this study

know by now the significance I see these 11 verses serving

in the lives of the people of God.

We started our study of this passage

by my describing it

as a list of 7 birthday presents

given by God Himself

to every believer the day we enter His family.

Along the way I have suggested

that these 11 verses

are structured into Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians

in a way that serves as the first conversation our Lord has with us

when we enter into His household.

This is our God sitting down with us

and sharing with us in a brief,

but incredibly powerful way

an overview of the things that have changed between us and Him

as a result of our faith

in the death of Christ

as payment for our sins personally.

I have also suggested that this passage

serves as a perfect litmus test

by which we can evaluate everything we believe about God

or learn about Him for the rest of our lives.

If what we think we have learned

is consistent with what we have being given to us in these 7 gifts,

then it’s probably true.

If it contradicts any of these 7 gifts,

then we have been fed a lie.

And last week I concluded our time together

by sharing with you that,

if I could have only 11 verses from Scripture

from which to preach for the rest of my life,

I would select these 11 verses.

In our study so far

we have looked at 6 of the 7 gifts

given to us by our Lord,

and we have studied our way

through 10 of the 11 verses in this passage.

Before we move on to that 11th verse

and the gift we find in it,

I want to read for us the 10 verses we’ve already studied,

and briefly recap the first 6 gifts

we have already received.

Paul writes:

Rom. 5:1 Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Rom. 5:2 through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God.

Rom. 5:3 And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance;

Rom. 5:4 and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope;

Rom. 5:5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Rom. 5:6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Rom. 5:7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.

Rom. 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Rom. 5:9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

Rom. 5:10 For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

And the six gifts we have seen in those 10 verses are these:

1. Peace with God - eternal and absolute.

2. A life with God here, now, in this world, that rests not upon our performance,

but rather upon His grace poured out on us daily, hourly, minute-by-minute.

3. The freedom to now exult in everything God will ever do

both in our lives personally,

and in our world,

knowing it is motivated by His eternal personal love for us.

4. The ability to also exult in the hard things that enter our lives,

because our God has committed Himself

to using even our pain for good in our lives.

5. The 5th gift given to us

is the gift of the Holy Spirit,

given to us for the specific purpose

of pouring out within us

an ever growing awareness

of the reality of the love of God for us.

6. And the 6th gift we looked at last week

is freedom forever from the wrath of God.

Whenever,

wherever the wrath of God is poured out upon the world,

it will not touch us,

because all of His wrath for our sins

has already been poured out

on His own Son

as He hung on the cross.

I didn’t mention it last week,

but I consider this passage in Romans 5

dealing with our freedom and deliverance from the wrath of God

to be one of the more significant prophecy passages in the Bible.

Years ago we studied much of the book of Revelation together,

and there is a section of that book in chapters 15 and 16

in which John describes the 7 bowls of the wrath of God

being poured out on the earth.

Those plagues describe a time of incredible pain,

and death,

and world-wide destruction.

Men and women covered with malignant sores,

the oceans and rivers turned to blood,

the sun scorching men,

darkness covering the earth,

worldwide earthquakes,

and islands sinking and mountains crumbling.

The passage in Revelation

makes it clear that these horrors

are the wrath of God

poured out on a world in rebellion against Him.

But what is fascinating

is that we know with certainty

from this passage in Romans 5

that God’s people

will not be touched or harmed in any way by that outpouring of God’s wrath.

Paul says clearly that,

Rom. 5:9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

Either the people of God

will not be on the earth at that time,

or they will be supernaturally preserved

and protected by God

through that time of turmoil.

We know that to be true with absolute certainty

because we are told that this destruction being described in Revelation

is the wrath of God being poured out,

and we also know that ...we (the people of God) shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

Which brings us to the last

and the greatest gift given to the Christian

by our heavenly Father

the day we enter His family.

It is found in Romans 5:11,

and it reads:

Rom. 5:11 And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Of all the gifts found in this passage

this 7th gift is probably the most difficult

for us to understand.

The words themselves are not difficult -

simply put,

the gift is the ability to exult in God Himself.

But the place where we get in trouble with this 7th gift

is not in hearing the words,

but rather in our relationship to them.

You see, there is a special trick of Satan,

a special kind of attack

that we are vulnerable to

when we come to this 7^th gift.

Unless we are careful,

our natural tendency is to view this gift

not as something God has given us,

but rather as something we are suppose to give to God.

When Paul says,

And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ...,

our tendency is to think

Paul is telling us

that good Christians will exult in God,

and we should choose to do so ourselves.

We’ve talked about this satanic slight of hand in the past.

We’ve talked about the way Satan seeks to destroy

the power and life of so much of what our God has given us

by taking the gifts He has given us

and convincing us they are really religious duties we must give to God.

Some examples

will help us recall what I’m saying here.

Take the gift of prayer...

Through Christ our God has given each of us

the absolute freedom to enter into the very presence of God through prayer

and share with Him everything going on in our life -

our pain,

our fears,

our shame,

the things that stress us,

our joys,

our hopes,

our anxieties.

He has literally given each of us

the ability to live constantly

in the presence of God Himself

and to share ourselves and our lives with our God without fear of rejection or condemnation.

The author of Hebrews says simply:

Heb. 4:16 Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.

If we Christians ever grasped what our God has given us

through this absolute access to Him,

it would have a profound affect on every aspect of our lives.

So, to keep us from discovering what we have,

Satan slips into his clerical collar,

and steps into the Christian pulpit,

and shares with us how important it is for us to pray every day.

He assures us that good Christians,

faithful Christians,

devoted Christians have a ‟daily prayer time”,

and even provides us with little systems,

and helpful tools

for making our ‟prayer times” meaningful.

And in so doing,

he takes the gift God has given us

and reshapes it into a religious duty

we must give to God.

And once that happens in our thinking,

the power of this glorious gift

is reduced to a frustrating religious game in which we feel good if we have our prayer time,

and we feel guilty if we do not.

Satan uses the same deceptive process

with our relationship to the written Word of God -

“HAVE YOU READ YOUR BIBLE TODAY?!”

He does it with the strength and encouragement and support

we receive from other Christians...

“DID YOU GO TO CHURCH THIS WEEK?!”

The gift becomes a religious duty,

and the religious duty becomes a complicated,

and frustrating,

and deeply unfulfilling dance we are forever attempting to perform with our Creator,

a dance we never seem to get right.

That same deceptive lie

crops up again when we come to this 7th gift given to us

here in Romans 5:11.

When we hear Paul telling us,

... not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation...,

if we are not careful

we will hear Paul telling us

that we SHOULD exult in God.

But that is not what he is saying.

He is not telling us we should exult in God,

he is telling us that,

for the first time in our lives,

we CAN exult in our God.

Do you know what this 7th gift is?

It is the gift that tells us

when our lens on life

is truly in focus.

Whenever we are seeing anything in our life correctly,

no matter what it is,

when we are seeing it as it really is,

it will cause us to exult in our God.

For what I’m trying to say here

to make any sense

I need to have us look honestly at our lives for a few minutes.

We all come into this world

with this huge emptiness inside us,

an emptiness we don’t really understand,

and often refuse even to acknowledge.

But there we all are,

with this huge hollow place inside us.

As we move into our adult years

and assume personal responsibility

for meeting our own needs,

we try frantically to fill that void

with anything we can find.

We keep cramming all sorts of things inside it -

religion,

money,

toys,

status,

travel,

sex,

work,

drugs,

alcohol,

success,

popularity.

But none of them fill the void

because the void is caused by the absence of our Creator,

and the only thing that can fill it

is God Himself.

And then some of us

turn to God and accept His offer of forgiveness through Christ.

He begins to pour out within our hearts

an awareness of His love for us,

and His presence with us,

and His life through us,

and that void within us begins to fill.

But there is a problem,

one that every Christian who has ever lived has wrestled with.

You see, the God that we have accepted into our lives

is not the God who really exists,

it is the God that we THINK exists.

And every place where our concept of God,

our perception of Him

differs from who He really is,

the emptiness remains.

I can offer you a little test

to help you recognize

those places where your perception of God is inconsistent with His true reality.

Every place in our lives,

in our thinking,

where we are angry at God,

or where we are afraid of Him,

or where we can’t trust Him,

or where we are afraid to follow Him,

or where we believe His way will not work in our life,

every place where we have a negative response to God

is a place where our perceptions of Him

are inconsistent with who He really is.

Let me state it from the positive -

if we were able to see our God as He really is,

and to see His true heart and mind toward us,

we would find ourselves rejoicing in Him and His presence with us

as we have never rejoiced over anything

or anyone else in our existence,

and we would know absolute fulfillment

and satisfaction in life here, now, in this physical world,

and we would wonder at the utter absurdity of all those other things

we had been trying to cram into our hollowness.

We will not see our God with absolute clarity this side of the grave,

but under the guidance of His Spirit within us

we can and we will make great strides in that direction.

When Paul says,

‟And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation...”,

he is simply telling us how the spirit of the Christian will respond

whenever and wherever we see our God the way He really is.

When we see Him as He is,

our spirits will exult in Him,

and we will cry out,

‟You’re all I want,

You’re all I ever needed.

When I have You as You really are,

I hunger for nothing else,

and when I do not have You

there is nothing else

that can even come close to filling the void.”

Do you know what this 7th gift really is?

It is the first step toward the fulfillment of the great pilgrimage of the human race,

a pilgrimage that began

with the first step Adam ever took,

and will culminate with the return of our Lord Jesus Christ

and our final entrance into His physical presence for all eternity.

It is not all that complicated.

We exist because our Creator God,

who is absolute good,

chose to bring us into being

so that we could delight in Him

and He could delight in us

and in His friendship with us.

He did not just create us,

He created us FOR Himself.

He is our reason for being.

Shortly after our creation, however,

we turned our hearts away from Him

and struck out on our own.

And since the day of Creation

God has been working on our behalf

to draw us back to Himself,

one person at a time.

And with each of us,

when we walk through that door,

into His presence,

into His love,

whenever we see Him as He really is,

our spirits exult in Him,

and we know He is why we exist,

He is what we’ve been searching for

since the day of our birth.