St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church -- Watertown, WI
Pastor Mark Gartner
Romans 13:11-14
11And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
Dear brothers and sisters who are united in worship and praise to the true God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
Have you ever tried anything really difficult? Some of the most common and most difficult things to do are quitting smoking and dieting. People struggle against smoking and eating and very often fail to achieve what they desired - or said that they desired. Often, the problem is that they can see the advantage of doing the thing they aim at, but when push comes to shove, they are not willing to endure what they need to endure to reach their goal. I am very familiar with those struggles myself.
The odd things is, when the motivation is powerful enough, the temptation to smoke or do that which causes your weight to be too high loses all of its power. Someone who had tried and failed to quit smoking for decades wrote that when the doctor told him that he had cancer and was going to die soon from it, he lost all desire to smoke, and had no difficulty never picking up another cigarette. People who could never discipline themselves to lose weight find that health problems, a brush with death, or severe pain caused by their weight can often give them the ability to do what they formerly did not possess the discipline to accomplish. These are just the facts of human nature.
Our text, this morning, lays out the only motivation for Christian living. Our motivation is living a life dedicated to serving the God who has saved me from my sins. The task of actually being holy is beyond our abilities - our holiness is from God. But the holiness which is in our hearts through faith doesn’t mean that we automatically live holy lives. When God worked faith in our hearts, we were filled with a New Person that wants to serve God and this New Person guides us in our lives, but the sinful nature in us doesn’t want to be holy. This is what makes our lives so difficult, and so we need the proper motivation to enable us to do anything holy at all and to endure the terrible temptations to do that which is sinful. The only way we can live for God is to remember what makes us special – the blood of Jesus Christ. We don’t try to live good lives so we don’t go to hell. We live good lives to say thanks to the God who has loved me enough to die for my sins. With that in mind we want to remind ourselves that we don’t want to live to follow the darkness of sins, but rather we want to realize that:
Sermon Theme: It Is Time to Wake Up!
1. Put aside the deeds of darkness
2. Put on the armor of light
The first thing that impresses me from the text is the urgency of the message. The Apostle Paul is pressing the importance of the holiness of the Christian on the basis of the realization that its almost over. The time of this world is almost done. Jesus is coming back any time now. Whatever is going to be done needs to be done now and we need to have a sense of urgency about it. It is already the hour for you to awaken from your sleep! The night of sin and darkness is almost gone, and the day of salvation and life eternal is at hand. You can see the sky brightening in the east already.
Paul puts it very clearly, “Do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” That is especially important because we don't want to be found unprepared, living as though we are not Christians. One reason, of course, to not want to be found living as though you are not a Christian is that if you live in such a manner, you might not be a Christian at all. Living for this world and in the values and attitudes of the world around us is the sleep from which we need to awaken. The hard part of the instructions Paul gives us is knowing that our sinful nature wants to live for the darkness of sin. But to live for the sinful nature means to be asleep. He who dies with the most toys does not win - he just dies. Life is not about accumulating possessions, or having a good time, or even watching your grandchildren grow. Those things may be part of life, but life is about Christ, the hope of salvation, and rescuing the lost and confused around us.
Paul gets pretty specific, “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.” Life is not about partying. That is what orgies and drunkenness refer to. God wants us to enjoy life, but all things in moderation. Life is not about taking the most pleasure out of it that you can. That is what words about sexual immorality and debauchery are about. Sexual immorality and sexual promiscuity distorts life and makes it all about one particular pleasure, and misses or deliberately rejects God's plan for our happiness and well-being in life. Debauchery, on the other hand, simply lives for the pleasure and delightful sensual experiences of it. The life of a Christian is not about how it feels.
Our lives are not about who is first or who is greater - dissension and jealousy arise out of such a misunderstanding of the purpose of life. In fact, dissension, strife and jealousy in the church always demonstrates that we have forgotten who is first and who is greatest - Jesus Christ. These mistaken behaviors and focuses are the sorts of things that Paul refers to when he instructs us to lay aside the deeds of darkness.
Our alternate course is to “put on the armor of light”. That expression is used in parallel with the expression, “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.” Our alternatives are to sleep in sin and do the deeds of darkness or put on the Lord Jesus Christ - which means living in the faith God gave us and laying aside the sorts of evils that Paul has named. You put on Jesus when you live as children whose sins are forgiven, when you walk as a child of light and as one who has eternal life as a certainty, and when your life reflects the conviction that God is your loving heavenly Father, and He is always on your side.
Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ means a change in you and a change in how you relate to the world around you. The change in you is trust in the forgiveness which Christ won for you on the cross. That trust looks back on our sin with repentance and the joy of forgiveness — and it looks forward on our sin as something deadly and needs to be avoided at all costs. The change in our relationship to the world - or how we relate to it - is that we see the world for what it is. The world is passing away. It is temporary. It is not worth our time and attention. This life, and the pleasures of it, are not the focus of the life of a child of God in Jesus Christ. This is not to say that we ignore the material blessings of this world or we ignore the taking care of the environment, or we deliberately turn away from others in need. We serve the people around us out of love - but the world does not determine our lives - the love of God for us does. We cannot panic because someone thinks that the world is falling apart. God is in control, and although things can look grim at times, and real problems arise around us, we know that God, who loves us and will always care for us, is in absolute control. We never need to fear what is coming upon the earth, our Father can handle it, and will handle it for our sakes.
So, in everything we do, we live in faith. We may well work at preserving the world around us - but we do it as an act of faith - not as though we are desperate and frightened about what would happen if we did not, but as those who are taking care of our fellow men and women out of the same sort of love for them that God has shown to us. We serve our fellow men from a heart of compassion, as God has had compassion on us, and as those whom God has abundantly blessed so that we can be a blessing to others. Whatever we do, we do it to the glory of God, not because we expect that without our help, God will not also bless them. All that we do is done as an expression of our faith and a confession of Christ.
The task before us is all the more urgent today because we know that the time is short. The words of Paul, inspired by God, are all the more meaningful today. If salvation was nearer when Paul wrote to the Romans than when they first believed - imagine how much closer it is today, two thousand years later! Of course, the hour is late personally - we never know how much time we have to do what God has given us to do. Each of us knows just how short life is, and how quickly even forty or fifty years can slip by. But the time left for the entire world has even grown short. The last day is two thousand years closer - and we started the very last days on Good Friday, when Jesus died for our sins, and on Easter Sunday, when Jesus rose for our justification and showed us what He had in store for those who are in Christ Jesus.
And we know what it is that God has given us to do. Our task is bringing the gospel to others who do not know who Jesus is and to strengthen our faith and the faith of those around us with our sharing of God’s love found in the Bible and our actions which are found in God’s love in our hearts. Neither part has priority over the other - and neither part can be ignored due to the preference for the other. Our lives, our times, and our riches are about the Gospel - telling it to those around us outside of the church, and encouraging our brothers and sisters in the household of God who are inside the church to stand firm, remain faithful, and hold fast to the hope which is ours in Jesus Christ.
And that hope that we have is our resurrection from the grave and life eternal beyond sin and death, beyond sorrow and sickness. This isn't the idle, wishful thinking kind of hope. This is the hope guaranteed to us by the death of Jesus on the cross in our place, and certified by the resurrection of Jesus from the grave on Easter morning. This isn't a weak hope, but the certainty of that which is yet to be experienced in its fullness. Your sins are forgiven, and you are chosen by God Himself – dearly loved and precious to Him.
It seems like life is going on just like it always has. It seems like the urgency of the work of the people of God is not really all that urgent. But time is running out. Jesus told us that it would seem like this. Paul, writing in First Thessalonians, wrote: “While people are saying, "Peace and safety!" destruction will come on them suddenly as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers, are not in darkness, so that this day should surprise you like a thief; You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness; so then let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:3-9)
The message of our text, on this First Sunday in Advent, is Know the time. Wake up! Salvation - the end of the world - is much closer today than when you first believed. Get ready for it, and act the part of who you are. You are a redeemed child of God in Jesus Christ. It is important as we struggle against the temptations of the devil, of the world, and of our own flesh in these last days. It is important as we confess who Jesus is to the world, a world that desperately needs to see Christ and know Christ now, before it is too late. It is urgent today because the night is almost gone!