Romans 7: 14-25

Ever give someone a gift that they took the wrong way?  For instance, I don’t really do the whole “How to have better marriage based on the Bible” preaching thing but I will share one piece of advice with you.  Husbands, any kind of household appliance, a vacuum cleaner, a blender,  bad choice as a gift for your wife.  Anything related to exercise or weight loss?  Again, not a good choice.  Can be easily misinterpreted.

Here’s a gift someone gave me for Christmas a few years ago.  It’s a book, “563 Stupid Things People Do to Mess Up Their Lives,” by Dr. Larry.  Why was someone giving me this?  Was it a hint?  In this book you will find stupid things to avoid in your life, everything from believing in conspiracy theories to asking a women if she’s pregnant.

In the words of Romans Chapter 7 we hear Paul wrestling with the question, “Why do I do such stupid things to mess up my life?”  We have all been there.  We all wrestle with the questions?  Why do I always date losers?  Why do I always go into debt and can’t pay my bills?  Why do my relationships and friendships always end with someone hurt and angry with me?  Why can’t I overcome my addictions?  Why do I have no close friends?  Why do I commit to things and then don’t keep my promises?  Why do I make a decision to do the right thing, but then can’t actually follow through?

Paul said, “I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it's predictable.”

The word he uses to name the behind this struggle is one some of us may not like.  The reason we do stupid things, Paul says, is the sin that is inside us.  Now I know someone may object and say, “Do we have to use the word sin?”  Well, yeah, we do.

Language can be problematic in churches.  A couple of decades ago, churches argued over the language we use about God.  Troubled by the exclusive use of male pronouns for God, many of us sought to use more inclusive language.  I believe that was a good thing.  I do not believe God is a literal “he.”  When one thinks of the attribute that makes a “he” a “he” one is forced to wonder, if God is a “he” does he have a ­ you end up in some weird theological territory.  But whenever I try to speak about God and avoid using the word “he” I usually wind up saying something like, “When God speaks to us about Godself, God is communicating what God wants us to know about Godself.”  I sound like a babbling idiot.

So I am going to use the word sin today, which I realize may turn some of you off.  But frankly, like using an occasional male pronoun for God, it’s easier for me to just say the word than to come up with watered-down euphemisms for it.  So deal with it.

Sin. We are hesitant to use the word for fear that it will crush someone’s self-esteem.  Much the same way we are afraid to keep score in our kid’s baseball games.  When as you will see, actually dealing with sin and discovering God’s remedy for it is the only thing that will give us true and lasting self-esteem. 

When someone speaks about sin, our first instinct is get defensive and make accusations.  “Who are you to say what sin is?  That’s just Catholic, Jewish or Calvinist guilt.  You’re just manipulating people so they give money.”  Our list of excuses and rationalizations goes on and on. 

So first let me say, I have no desire to make you feel guilty in an unhealthy way.  But I do hope that by examining God’s Word to us today we can all be convicted with a healthy sense of our own dysfunctional excuses and rationalizations.  So let’s take a look at why Paul would make the unpopular claim that sin is behind all of our wrong choices and the stupid things we do to mess up our lives. 

Recently, I heard Timothy Keller, pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City, speak about the topic of sin.  His message really opened my eyes to a new way of thinking about it.  It spurred me to think even further.

Think of the choices you make that are wrong.  What do they involve?  Is it, lying, anger, sex, addictions?  Ask yourself, when you make the choice to behave that way, what goes through your mind?  Why do we do those things?  I believe that simply giving a stock Sunday School answer like, the devil is tempting us or because Eve ate a piece of fruit doesn’t quite cut it anymore.

There is often a basic sin, beneath the individual sins we all commit.  Take for instance, lying.  Some of us lie, because we don’t want say something that someone won’t like.  We want to make people happy.  Or we lie to project an image of ourselves, motivated by pride.  So when we lie, what we are really saying is that our god, our idol, is not God, but our need for approval.  In other words, Jesus is not my savior, my need for human approval is my savior.

Keller points out that when, as a church, we simply say “don’t lie or God will be mad at you,” or “God will get you” we are just playing on your need for approval and creating a downward spiral of guilt and approval seeking.  It can motivate us to lie even further to protect ourselves until one day, our whole life explodes and falls apart.  We are stunned and wonder, “How did that happen?” We find ourselves the main character in, “Stupid Things People Do to Mess up Their Lives.”

That need for approval is the underlying motivation for so much sin in our lives.  Why do betray the trust of their friends?  Often to fit in with or get the approval of their friend’s enemies.   Why do people betray their spouses? Often it is the need to feel sexually attractive or to be the perceived center of attention. As parents, God calls us to teach our children to make God-honoring choices in their lives. Why do we so often fail at that?  Often because we are unwilling set boundaries with our children for fear that they will angry with us or not love us.

When we build our life, or base our identity and self-worth on anything other than God, we fail.  If your life is built on your job, your talents, your writing, your music, your art, your spouse, your kids, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your house, your car, your stocks ­ if you get your identity and self worth from any source other than God, it will ultimately fail you.  And you will ultimately fail it.  Those counterfeit saviors will enslave you, and it will never forgive you for your failures. 

We have a lot of creative people here at our church, which is a wonderful thing.  But if your self-worth is derived from your dream to make the world’s next big blockbuster movie (as it once was mine), or write the next Great American Novel, or hit song, if you fail, that dream will never let you off the hook.  If your self-image is dependent on your accomplishments, you will be trapped in feelings of failure, guilt and resentment for the rest of your life. 

If your identity is enmeshed with your career, your money and your possessions, you will never have enough. If your only sense of security comes from your job and the next big raise or promotion, your status is only as secure as next quarter’s sales and the realization that you are disposable and replaceable. If your self-image comes from spicing up your sex life in non-monogamous relationships, you may very well discover that the spice cabinet is a dark bottomless pit that leads you to somewhere you don’t want to be.   If you can only feel good about yourself through the approval of others, there is not enough applause or compliments in the world that will ever make you feel good about yourself. 

We want to make the right choices in life, but this underlying “devil inside” consistently sabotages our best intentions.  In the passage from Romans we just heard, Paul tells us that there is only one person who can pull us out of this quagmire.  Only the power of God through Jesus Christ.

That is a revolutionary and countercultural message.  There is an entire media machine and culture that tells us 24/7 that Jesus does not have that power ­ that the good news of Jesus is wrong.  This apocalyptic beast pushes the buttons of the false idols that we put in God’s place - Our need for approval, our materialism, our vanity, even patriotism.  Every single advertisement goes against the grain of Jesus’ proclamation that you cannot serve God and money.  Instead, these ads tell us that possessions and wealth will satisfy us.  They play on our insecurities of not having the latest and most impressive stuff.

Jesus pointed the way to God.  Each time we make a choice that is contrary to God’s way, we are in effect saying that God is wrong.  When we mistreat someone or are mean, we are saying Jesus was wrong when he gave us a new commandment to love one another.  When we hold grudges and resentments or seek revenge, we are saying Jesus was wrong to teach us to turn the other cheek.  When seek power and control, as individuals or nations, we are saying Jesus was wrong when he said the last shall be first.   When we are break our promises, or view others as sex objects or as a means of pleasure, we are saying God was wrong when he said we are all created in the image of God.

Jesus preached that the Kingdom of God, God’s dream was transforming the world right now.  The new creation of peace, reconciliation and renewal was inaugurated in the ministry of Jesus and continues to this day in the lives of his followers.  Yet we continue take a divide and conquer approach to life.  We wage war and endorse violence.  It is almost as if we think of Jesus’ message as a good idea, but not now.  Even though Jesus proclaimed the time is now, we respond, not yet. 

We too easily cave in to our culture’s message.  Quite simply, we don’t trust Jesus and we don’t trust God.  Whenever I used to hear people calling us to trust God, or put our whole trust in the Lord, I didn’t know quite what they meant.  Trust God?  About what?  I always equated it to going skydiving and trusting that the chute would open.  I thought trusting God was doing something contrary to common sense and then hoping that God would somehow miraculously intervene and fix things.  Consequently, I was disappointed that God never seemed to intervene in my life and miraculously fix things.

Certainly there are times when trusting God means stepping out and taking risks.  But risks that are congruent with God’s purposes and not just in our own self interest.  However, it seems our lack of trust in God more commonly manifests itself in the way I have been describing.  Our lack of trust in God expresses itself in those times when we make choices contrary to the way of God because, after all we know better.  Or when we think, that rule doesn’t apply to me.  Or when we rebel against the path God put before us in Jesus.  Or when we rationalize, make excuses for not being good.

Peter De Vreis,  an author of short stories once said ”There was a time when we were afraid to sin in front of our ministers, now we are afraid to do something immature in front of our therapist.”  Although I believe the church should be a place where we can sin in front of one another, that’s not the whole story.

We would be enraged if we heard of a hospital who turned people away because they were sick.  Remember the Peter Seller’s  line from Dr. Strangelove, “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here.  This the war room!”  It would be equally absurd to say, “You can’t be sick here.  This is a hospital!”  It should be OK to be sick when you are admitted to a hospital.  And it should be OK to be flawed, imperfect - a sinner when you come to a church.

However, we would be equally enraged if we heard of a healthcare facility that although admitting everyone and providing beds for anyone with any disease, failed to treat them or make them well.  Imagine if you had cancer, sought treatment at a hospital and were told, “Hey that’s great.  We’re not judging your cancer.  Take ownership of your cancer and be OK with it.”  What if the doctors, instead of treating you, merely catering to your every wish, feeding you with whatever diet you liked, maybe providing cigarettes, nitrate-fortified bacon and red dye #2.  All the while your cancer grows, and you end up dead. 

That scenario is not as far-fetched as it sounds.  When I was a teenager I remember the first time one of my grandparents was in the hospital.   My grandmother had a minor heart attack and my grandfather was very upset that she had been admitted to the hospital.  One night my grandfather drove me to the hospital to visit her ­ which was an adventure in itself.  On the way home he told that how disturbing it was to have grandma in the hospital.  He was born in the 1890’s and when he was a kid, hospitals were where people went to die.   Now he was having trouble adjusting to the idea that hospitals were where people went to get well.

Similarly, the church although welcoming us all in our sickness, is a place where you come to get well.  Get well from our sickness, what Danish theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard called “a sickness unto death,” the sickness of sin. 

Like a grandparent trapped in the mindset of another century, some of us need to grow in our spiritual journey.  Some of us have gone to church for years.  Some of us have gone to this church for years.  So we need to move from the first step of, “I’ve found a cool church that accepts me just the way I am” to “At my church (hear the difference) I have discovered a God who loves me but is transforming me into who he wants me to be.”

This is a church where I want you to be transformed ­ to be what those old hymns called a sinner saved by grace.  My dream for you is that through our worship of God together, through our Vision groups, through your daily spiritual practices, and through service in this church, you will encounter and develop a relationship with the Risen Christ. 

As that relationship deepens and grows, my hope is that you will begin to uncover false idols and the counterfeit saviors in your life.  The Spirit of God continually works in us to expose the sin that underlies all our sins, and constantly calls us to change and make God the main thing, the ultimate concern in our lives.  To trust only in God and find healing, restoration and wholeness in Jesus Christ.

No matter if we have done one, 563, or thousands of stupid things to mess up our lives, God loves you so much that he is always reaching out to you to transform you and make you whole again.  God doesn’t judge you by your accomplishments, by your house, your job, or your fame.  God doesn’t you by how many people like you or approve of you.  You are not who other people say you are or who your misguided efforts to be someone in their eyes lead you to be.  God says, “Those things don’t make you who you are.  You are who I say you are. And I say I created you, you are my child and I love you.”