Presented to Nipawin and Tisdale Corps on December 16, 2007
Presented to the Swift Current Corps on July 11, 2010 & Jan 25/15
Presented to Alberni Valley Ministries on December 22, 2019
By Captain Michael Ramsay
The original presentation began with a quiz: the congregations were shown pictures of famous people that are readily recognisable and asked to identify them and at the end they were also shown a decades old picture of myself: the latter they weren’t able to successfully identify.
I remember - about the time these pictures were taken – I was a janitor; I worked nights for a big janitorial company. They have many buildings all over the city and I worked for this company since before I ever went to university so when I did go back to school, they were kind enough to work around my schedule.
They made me a ‘floater’: now a floater is a very important position because we are given the keys and alarm codes to banks and other important businesses all over the city and our shifts often end late at night or early in the morning so one doesn’t want just anybody walking around some of these buildings (for security reasons) in the middle of the night.
I remember one night. I’m on ‘floater’ duty. I have four buildings to clean. The first one, I have a staff working with me and I am given the unpleasant job of letting one of them go and that doesn’t go over so well. My second building takes me twice as long to clean as it should and when I get to my third building, it is well passed midnight and I have never been in this building before and I can’t find the light switch anywhere. As a result, I am late turning off the alarm and the thing goes off: it is loud. So while it is still ringing and the place is still dark I run and trip over a desk trying to turn it off and then the phone rings (the alarm company always calls to see why an alarm is going off) so I’m off and running again and this time it is in the other direction -still in the dark - to find the phone before I miss the call and the alarm company phones the police. I get to the phone just in time but not before crashing into another desk in the pitch black and yelling out some words that – don’t worry – I won’t repeat here.
I finally get this alarm mess sorted out but by now my leg that I have bashed twice is killing me as I am limping around the whole building still looking for the light switch in the pitch black. I am very lost in a maze of cubicles and I really can’t see anything and I am not feeling too happy at all when I hear something.
I hear something. I hear something growl. I hear something growl and bark loudly. This is not good. So what do I do? I yell. I yell quite loudly as I hit the floor. Peering up I can see a couple of police dogs and a police officer staring down at me. I can tell you – I don’t know if you have ever encountered an angry police dog but that was one of the scariest moments of my life.
What happened was when I spoke with the security company on the phone – remember I was just a spare, not the regular cleaner – my name wasn’t on the list of people who were approved to be in the building after midnight and instead of calling the company I worked for, like they are supposed to do, they called the police and so I almost got seriously hurt by a police dog.
Even though I told them my name they didn’t really know who I was.
This is not entirely unlike our story here today. Look at 11 verses 2 and 3, “When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’”
John knows Jesus - just like the alarm company knew my name from our phone conversation – John knows Jesus, just like we know who many of those people whose pictures flashed on the screen at the beginning of the sermon are but here, it seems, John, like the alarm company with me and like many of us with those famous people, John is not entirely certain who exactly Jesus is.
Now I don’t know if you remember from when we were studying Luke earlier in the year, John is Jesus’ cousin. Not only that. Jesus’ mom and John’s mom are fairly close. Remember from Luke chapter one, that when Mary finds out she is going to have a baby; it says, she gets ready and hurries to meet Elisabeth and when Elisabeth hears that Mary is going to have a baby –the baby in her stomach – John the Baptist – leaps, it says. John and Jesus are family but still in the passage before us today John asks, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”
And not only that, as we read last week as well, if you’ll remember, John is actually the one who baptises Jesus. These two know each other in this way but still John asks, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”
Not only do they know each other. Do you remember the interchange between the two of them – you can flip back to Chapter 3 if you want – when Jesus comes to be baptised? John says, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? (Matt 3:14).” John obviously knows Jesus and he obviously knows something about Jesus, even before and right at the beginning of Jesus ministry but now, now for some reason, John asks of him, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”
But there is even more: remember the heavens open up and God declares, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased (Matt 3:16)” and still John, who is there at the time asks, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”
Well this is interesting then – if John knows Jesus so well, who, other than the Messiah, the expectant King, could John be expecting?
Could John be expecting that Jesus is Elijah?[1] Some theorists have posited that John may have thought Jesus was Elijah; certainly other people did (cf. Matt 17:10-12; Mark 6:15, 8:28; Luke 9:19). After all – even though Jesus claimed that John was Elijah later in this very chapter we are looking at here today, in 11:14 (cf. also 9:11-13; Luke 1:17), John himself at one point denies that very claim (John 1:21). So if here John does not realise that he himself is fulfilling the role of Elijah and if he does not realise that Jesus is the Christ, he could have thought Jesus was Elijah – maybe.
Maybe John was just asking this questions for others and he really knew the answer all along. This was a popular view of the Reformers evidently– an unlikely view given the context of the passage, I would think, the gospels don’t tend to be quite so tricky – but maybe?[2]
He could be a prophet (Jeremiah; cf. Matt. 16:14)– much like John himself– only greater. If John saw the dove at Jesus’ baptism he may even recognise that, yes, Jesus is God’s son but maybe he just doesn’t know what that means? After all aren’t we all the children of God? Weren’t angels in the Genesis account sometimes referred to as ‘sons of God’ (Gen 6:2-4)? So then what does it mean to be the ‘Son of God’ and who, who is Jesus? Is he the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?
Well this is an important question for us today then too, isn’t it? Who is Jesus? The most educated, religious people of Jesus day, the Pharisees and Sadducees did not accept him as the Messiah, the Christ, the King to come, and in our story today John the Baptist, someone who knows Jesus even before he is born, someone who is his cousin, someone who baptises him, someone who teaches the same message of ‘repent for the Kingdom is near’ (cf. Matthew 3-4), someone as close to Jesus as John asks the question, are you the one to come, or should we expect someone else? Well, is Jesus the one to come or should we expect someone else; who do we say Jesus is?
A good man? - I have heard people say that. An imaginary figure? - I have heard that too –this one is rather silly though since we have much better evidence for Jesus as Christ than we do for Julius Caesar as Roman Emperor or the even the very existence of Socrates.
Was Jesus just a prophet as some – such as the Muslims and the Jews – suggest? Was he a mere man? Was he only a voice calling from the wilderness? Much of the world today would say that he was some kind of the prophet.
Could he just have been a religious teacher from a minor Roman province who developed a cult following that continued to grow for well – thousands of years now – there are more Christians in the world than ever before and, of course, the Bible is the world’s best-selling book. But all that aside, could he be just a dead teacher?
These are all answers with which people today answer the question, ‘Who is Jesus?’ Is he the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?
I think this is important because it changes everything doesn’t it? If Jesus is our Lord; if he is our king and his kingdom is at hand; if he is our wonderful counsellor, mighty God, everlasting father and prince of peace (Isa 9:6) – then we need to submit to his authority don’t we? So who is this Jesus?
Of course Matthew answers this question right in our text today. He does it in a couple of different ways. First, he does actually call him the Christ / Messiah (same word, different language) in Verse 2 and even more than that, look at how Matthew records Jesus’ response to the question, ‘are you the one to come?’
He says, verses 4-6, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.” Jesus is drawing John’s attention to the glory of the Kingdom of the Messiah mentioned in Isaiah 35:5-6 and 42:18.
Here, listen to part of Isaiah 35 again - we read it earlier today - where the Christ’s Kingdom is described:
The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendour of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendour of our God.
And more, look at verse 5, HERE IT IS. It says that in the Messianic Kingdom to come, “… the eyes of the blind be opened (just like it says is happening now in our passage in Matthew) and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. - And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness.
Isn’t this great?! And Isaiah 42 is much the same: this is what Jesus is answering to John’s question. John asks, are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else? And Jesus answer gives John tangible evidence that indeed this Kingdom of God is at hand. The Kingdom of the Christ, the Messiah is being established now; it is here. Just like John and Jesus proclaim – it is now at hand.
Who is Jesus? He is this Messiah. He is this Christ. This kingdom is being established and the wondrous aspects of it are available now. This is what Jesus lets John know and he reveals it in His own way in His own time. It reminds me of a story I read about just recently in the Expository Times.[3]
James V, the King of Scotland used to go around the country dressed like everyone else: a common person. That is because he wanted to meet the everyday people of the country not just the rich and powerful. He wanted to see how the normal people lived.
One day he was dressed in very old clothes and was going by a place known as Cramond Brig, when he is attacked by robbers who don’t know who he is. There is a fierce struggle and he is nearly overcome when, at just the right moment, a poor farm worker - Jock Howieson - hears the commotion comes to the disguised king’s aid.
Now Jock, the poor labourer, who works on this portion of the King’s land, known as Cramond Brig, now Jock unawares takes the undercover king home and gives him a dinner of broth and Jock - as the king is recouping – naturally asks the man who he is.
The King responds – in a Scottish brogue that I am not even going to attempt – ‘Ach, I’m a good man of Edinburgh.’
‘And where do you live in that city and where do you work?’
‘Well,’ says James, ‘I live at the palace and I work there too.’
‘The palace, is it? I’d like to see the palace; if I could see the King, I’d tell him a thing or two…’
‘About what?’ asks the man.
‘I’d tell him that I should own this land that I am on. I work it every day and he never comes here & gets his hands dirty working this land’
‘You’re right enough’, says the man. You come tomorrow to the palace at Holy Rood and I’ll show you around. Come at two.’
So the next day at two o’clock, Jock Howieson, is washed, dressed and at the palace to meet his new friend at the back door. The good man, whom Jock had saved the day before, shows him around the kitchen, the dining room, the bedrooms – the whole place. Then, at last, the two of them come to the great rooms of the State.
‘Do you want to see the King?’ the man asks Jock.
‘Oh yes indeed’, says Jock, ‘I do. I do want to see the King.’
So they enter the great hall and as they come in, men bow and ladies curtsey. It is really quite a thing to see.
So Jock whispers to his friend, ‘How will I know who the king is?’
‘He’s the only one who keeps his hat on’
Jock says, ‘But… there’s only us two with our hats…’ and Jock immediately takes off his hat as he realises that James is indeed the King of Scotland.
And so it is with us today. Jesus is King. He is walking around with each of us showing us his domain here on earth and just waiting for us to take off our hats as we realise that indeed Jesus is the one to come and he has arrived (and he’s coming back too, soon!)
Appeal: If there are any of us here today who have not taken off our hats and lain them before the Lord, I invite you to come up front here to the mercy seat and do just that – acknowledge the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord.
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http://www.sheepspeak.com/
[1] Cf. The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Matthew/Exposition of Matthew/IV. Book Version: 4.0.2. re: Schweitzer.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Margaret Forrester. The Expository Times. Vol. 119 Number I Pages 47-48.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
Victory: The Final Whistle (Romans 13:11-14)
Presented to Nipawin and Tisdale Corps on December 02, 2007
Presented to Swift Current Corps on August 16, 2009
Presented to Corps 614 Regent Park on February 07, 2016
By Captain Michael Ramsay
Last weekend something happened…something exciting happened… Blue Bombers fans you may wish to cover your ears…the Riders won the Grey Cup. This was exciting. I know some of you probably didn’t get to see the whole game because you were in church like us or doing other things but on the way home in the car, when I turned on the radio, the Blue Bombers were up 3 to nothing. When they made it seven to nothing, I felt quite alone as the 5 and 6 year-old in my backseat erupted into a chorus of “Go Winnipeg Go!” I had faith, though - though it was mixed with a little doubt – I had faith that the victory we’ve been waiting for here for 18 years was finally coming through and –as we all know now my faith, my hope was not in vain. The cup returned.
I don’t know if you remember but in the last couple of minutes of the football game, right after that interception near the end, you could see the anticipation as the cameramen zoomed in on the players’ faces. They knew the game had been won already but it wasn’t over yet. The game had been won. They wanted to celebrate but it wasn’t over yet. The game had been won already and it took everything for the coach to keep the players on the sideline and staff off the field because the game wasn’t over yet. They knew that it had been won but the game wasn’t over yet. The anticipation was written on the Riders’ faces as they knew that the game had been won but it wasn’t over yet….
This is exactly the situation that our text is talking about today. I’ll read part of it for you again:
Ro 13:11-12 "And 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. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here...."
It says that the night is nearly over! In verse 11 it says that our salvation is nearer than when we first believed! Now the Apostle Paul, in his numerous letters, uses the word ‘salvation’ in a number of ways. One way he uses the word is to refer to how we can be saved from the normal course of events in our lives (cf. Philippians 1:19).
Indeed we ourselves can be saved from daily events such as happened to me a few weeks ago when we were driving back from Winnipeg, we were pulled over; the officer however decided not to issue us a ticket: we were saved that expense. The other day Susan was going to walk back from dropping off our car to have winter tires put on. An employee at the store, however, offered her a ride; she was saved the walk. This is a common way that we are saved everyday and this is one way that Paul does indeed use the word ‘salvation’ but this daily salvation is not exactly what Paul is talking about here.
Paul speaks at times also, in other places in his letters - such as in 2 Corinthians 6:2 – about the ‘day of salvation’ and that ‘day of salvation’ is already here. It is not still to come; it has arrived but in verse 11 of our text today it says that our salvation is still to come: it says that our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed so how can that be?
How can our salvation be both now and still to come? How can it be both near and here already. This is an important concept to understand (theologians refer to this concept as a ‘prolepsis’) because our Salvation, as it is, has indeed already been achieved. It was achieved when Jesus died and then won the victory through rising from the dead. Paul himself acknowledges this in other places in the scriptures: 2 Corinthians 6:2, 1 Corinthians 15:2, Ephesians 2:8 and the Apostle Peter talks about just this sort of thing in 1 Peter 1. So then Christ has already won the victory but the final reward of Salvation is yet to come. The Game is won but the final whistle has not been sounded yet and the great cup is still be presented.
It is very much like our roughriders game. When the player went down on one knee to run out the clock at the end there was no way that they could be defeated. The Rider nation, as it were, the Roughrider fans were already victors with the team, just like we are already victors with Christ.
When Christ died on the cross and then rose from the grave, Death was dealt its deathblow, so to speak: Christ intercepted the pass and ran for the final touchdown to put the game out of reach. There is no way now that sin and death can ever come back and win the game but the thing is that that final whistle hasn’t gone yet[1] and this is exactly what Paul is speaking about in our text here today.
In this passage in Romans, Paul is speaking about salvation as if it were that final whistle. Sure the Riders had won the game with 20 seconds left to go but they did not get to hold the Grey Cup until after the final whistle had sounded.
The analogy Paul uses to make this point is quite neat – and for those here who aren’t Riders’ fans or aren’t football fans, I imagine a new analogy is a bit of a welcome relief right now. Paul refers to our salvation as the daytime that is almost here. This is exciting actually because, just as with the game that is out of reach, there is nothing that we can do to stop the daytime from coming, there is no such thing as a night that never ends; for that to happen the earth must stop spinning and then we would have a lot more problems than just a lack of light. Day hasn’t arrived yet but there is nothing we can do to stop it from coming.
That being said, Paul has some words for us. He says that we should wake up (verse 11)! We don’t want to miss it. Wouldn’t you hate to be a Riders fan who, after 18 years in waiting, slept through the awarding of the cup. It wouldn’t change the outcome of the game but it would sure affect you. Paul says wake up, you don’t want to miss the finish. You don’t want to miss the dawn but he says even more than that.
He says that since the darkness is fading (verse 12), we should no longer live like we are in the darkness. It is like ‘regime change’ such as we’ve heard so much in the news the last couple of years and there is a good example of this from historical England actually.
There was a time in England’s history when she had neither a King nor a Queen. Parliament had won the war against the monarchy and that is arguably the darkest period in all of English history. The rules of their society changed so drastically: it became so repressive without the king to look out for the interests of the common people that they eventually begged the son of the king to come back to rule over them again – but, even then, it takes a while and people have to be convinced to act the way the new regime wants. Just ask the Americans how well their governments in Iraq and Afghanistan are going…it may be a new day there but many people are still not choosing to living under their authority.
It is the same in our world of the text today. When Christ died there came about a regime change – the King is back. The Son of the King has come and he is indeed coming back and as this is the case, it is time to stop acting as if he is not.
Daytime is arriving so we should stop doing all of those things that people like to do in the night. Some of these things that we should stop are listed in our text today: it says in verse 13 that we should not engage in sexual immorality and debauchery; we should not engage in dissention and jealousy. Doing so, acting on our own selfish desires, would be like swearing allegiance to the darkness, to the old regime, the defeated regime; it would be like paddling out to join the Titanic as it’s going down or buying shares in Eaton’s as it goes ‘belly up.’ It would not be prudent. It would not be smart.
This is important. You see when we focus on ourselves rather than God and others (see verses 8-10; Matt 7:12, 22:40), we are serving the defeated regime and don’t be mistaken, even though it is defeated, it is still fighting and even though darkness has lost, people are still dying.
This is very much like the battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812. I don’t know how much you know about that battle or that war but it is very significant. You see the War of 1812 began when England was busy trying to contain Napoleon as he was bringing war to every corner of the planet he could reach. England was very busy trying to stop him so the Americans thought this would be a good time to conquer Canada so like they did many times before, they invaded – only it didn’t go so well. They lost. We were saved. They failed to conquer Canada and they were forced to send their agents overseas to sue for peace.
While on December 24, Christmas Eve, 1815, the war ended; but there was no long distance telephone, e-mail, or other way to tell the troops in the field this quickly in those days and so on January 8th a terrible thing happened. General Pakenham took the initiative on his own and invaded New Orleans. The enemy had already been defeated, the war had already been won but there were over 1700 casualties that day. The war had already been won but many people still perished in the battle that followed.
This is what it is like for us today. Even though the victory has been won already, people are perishing everyday. If we follow our own selfish desires, even though the war has been won…not everyone has been delivered from the darkness. There are still people perishing everyday.
How many of us, like General Pakenham’s troops are perishing when they don’t have to. How many of us are acting on our own instead of submitting to God? How many in this world – how many of us, our friends, or our family, still give in to drunkenness or debauchery and sexual sin? When we do so we are serving the darkness, the old regime, the defeated regime.
How many of us still give into quarrelling and jealousy? They are the same as the former sins, you know. And so when we do, we are serving the darkness, the old regime, the defeated regime. If you break one aspect of the law you transgress the whole thing (Gal 3). In the eyes of the Lord sin is sin and the consequence of sin is the same as it was for those poor people who marched to their graves in New Orleans even though the victory has been one. The wages of sin are death (Ro 6:23).
So why would we commit sexual sin or quarrel with each other? Why when we know that that is submitting to the old regime, the defeated government? Why? Why are we content to live in the darkness?
Why not rather strap on the armour of light like it says in verse 12. Actually this is neat too. Did you know that the word translated as ‘armour’ here (and in Ephesians 6 too) –‘hopla’ - is probably better translated ‘weapons.’[2] This designates much more than just defending oneself with amour. This refers to going out and seizing the foe. We should not just hide from the darkness we must wage war against it.
It says in verse 14 that we must put on Jesus Christ himself and make no provisions for our own selfish desires and really that is what the answer to everything is isn’t it? As we put on Christ, we can engage the world and not succumb to it. When we have Him as our armour nothing can slay us – He has no Achilles heel.
So it is to this end that I exhort us today. The game has been won, the foe has been defeated; therefore for us to be engaged in selfishness now would be like if in the last minute of play one of the roughriders switched to join the Blue Bombers, why when the victory is already won would anyone want to forfeit their prize before it is awarded? Why would we want to reject our salvation now that the daylight is coming?
So today, I leave us with this encouragement. Sin is already defeated. Death is dead and the darkness is fading so let us, like Jesus said to the lady accused of adultery (John 8:10), let us go and sin no more so that we may be there to hoist that great cup high with Christ who has already won us the victory.
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To view the 2016 Toronto version, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2016/02/romans-1311-14-really-super-bowl.html
[1] - just like with injury time in soccer, only the ref knows when it will but nonetheless the game is out of reach.
[2] NT Write, Romans NIB: 728; the word is ‘hopla’
Presented to Swift Current Corps on August 16, 2009
Presented to Corps 614 Regent Park on February 07, 2016
By Captain Michael Ramsay
Last weekend something happened…something exciting happened… Blue Bombers fans you may wish to cover your ears…the Riders won the Grey Cup. This was exciting. I know some of you probably didn’t get to see the whole game because you were in church like us or doing other things but on the way home in the car, when I turned on the radio, the Blue Bombers were up 3 to nothing. When they made it seven to nothing, I felt quite alone as the 5 and 6 year-old in my backseat erupted into a chorus of “Go Winnipeg Go!” I had faith, though - though it was mixed with a little doubt – I had faith that the victory we’ve been waiting for here for 18 years was finally coming through and –as we all know now my faith, my hope was not in vain. The cup returned.
I don’t know if you remember but in the last couple of minutes of the football game, right after that interception near the end, you could see the anticipation as the cameramen zoomed in on the players’ faces. They knew the game had been won already but it wasn’t over yet. The game had been won. They wanted to celebrate but it wasn’t over yet. The game had been won already and it took everything for the coach to keep the players on the sideline and staff off the field because the game wasn’t over yet. They knew that it had been won but the game wasn’t over yet. The anticipation was written on the Riders’ faces as they knew that the game had been won but it wasn’t over yet….
This is exactly the situation that our text is talking about today. I’ll read part of it for you again:
Ro 13:11-12 "And 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. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here...."
It says that the night is nearly over! In verse 11 it says that our salvation is nearer than when we first believed! Now the Apostle Paul, in his numerous letters, uses the word ‘salvation’ in a number of ways. One way he uses the word is to refer to how we can be saved from the normal course of events in our lives (cf. Philippians 1:19).
Indeed we ourselves can be saved from daily events such as happened to me a few weeks ago when we were driving back from Winnipeg, we were pulled over; the officer however decided not to issue us a ticket: we were saved that expense. The other day Susan was going to walk back from dropping off our car to have winter tires put on. An employee at the store, however, offered her a ride; she was saved the walk. This is a common way that we are saved everyday and this is one way that Paul does indeed use the word ‘salvation’ but this daily salvation is not exactly what Paul is talking about here.
Paul speaks at times also, in other places in his letters - such as in 2 Corinthians 6:2 – about the ‘day of salvation’ and that ‘day of salvation’ is already here. It is not still to come; it has arrived but in verse 11 of our text today it says that our salvation is still to come: it says that our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed so how can that be?
How can our salvation be both now and still to come? How can it be both near and here already. This is an important concept to understand (theologians refer to this concept as a ‘prolepsis’) because our Salvation, as it is, has indeed already been achieved. It was achieved when Jesus died and then won the victory through rising from the dead. Paul himself acknowledges this in other places in the scriptures: 2 Corinthians 6:2, 1 Corinthians 15:2, Ephesians 2:8 and the Apostle Peter talks about just this sort of thing in 1 Peter 1. So then Christ has already won the victory but the final reward of Salvation is yet to come. The Game is won but the final whistle has not been sounded yet and the great cup is still be presented.
It is very much like our roughriders game. When the player went down on one knee to run out the clock at the end there was no way that they could be defeated. The Rider nation, as it were, the Roughrider fans were already victors with the team, just like we are already victors with Christ.
When Christ died on the cross and then rose from the grave, Death was dealt its deathblow, so to speak: Christ intercepted the pass and ran for the final touchdown to put the game out of reach. There is no way now that sin and death can ever come back and win the game but the thing is that that final whistle hasn’t gone yet[1] and this is exactly what Paul is speaking about in our text here today.
In this passage in Romans, Paul is speaking about salvation as if it were that final whistle. Sure the Riders had won the game with 20 seconds left to go but they did not get to hold the Grey Cup until after the final whistle had sounded.
The analogy Paul uses to make this point is quite neat – and for those here who aren’t Riders’ fans or aren’t football fans, I imagine a new analogy is a bit of a welcome relief right now. Paul refers to our salvation as the daytime that is almost here. This is exciting actually because, just as with the game that is out of reach, there is nothing that we can do to stop the daytime from coming, there is no such thing as a night that never ends; for that to happen the earth must stop spinning and then we would have a lot more problems than just a lack of light. Day hasn’t arrived yet but there is nothing we can do to stop it from coming.
That being said, Paul has some words for us. He says that we should wake up (verse 11)! We don’t want to miss it. Wouldn’t you hate to be a Riders fan who, after 18 years in waiting, slept through the awarding of the cup. It wouldn’t change the outcome of the game but it would sure affect you. Paul says wake up, you don’t want to miss the finish. You don’t want to miss the dawn but he says even more than that.
He says that since the darkness is fading (verse 12), we should no longer live like we are in the darkness. It is like ‘regime change’ such as we’ve heard so much in the news the last couple of years and there is a good example of this from historical England actually.
There was a time in England’s history when she had neither a King nor a Queen. Parliament had won the war against the monarchy and that is arguably the darkest period in all of English history. The rules of their society changed so drastically: it became so repressive without the king to look out for the interests of the common people that they eventually begged the son of the king to come back to rule over them again – but, even then, it takes a while and people have to be convinced to act the way the new regime wants. Just ask the Americans how well their governments in Iraq and Afghanistan are going…it may be a new day there but many people are still not choosing to living under their authority.
It is the same in our world of the text today. When Christ died there came about a regime change – the King is back. The Son of the King has come and he is indeed coming back and as this is the case, it is time to stop acting as if he is not.
Daytime is arriving so we should stop doing all of those things that people like to do in the night. Some of these things that we should stop are listed in our text today: it says in verse 13 that we should not engage in sexual immorality and debauchery; we should not engage in dissention and jealousy. Doing so, acting on our own selfish desires, would be like swearing allegiance to the darkness, to the old regime, the defeated regime; it would be like paddling out to join the Titanic as it’s going down or buying shares in Eaton’s as it goes ‘belly up.’ It would not be prudent. It would not be smart.
This is important. You see when we focus on ourselves rather than God and others (see verses 8-10; Matt 7:12, 22:40), we are serving the defeated regime and don’t be mistaken, even though it is defeated, it is still fighting and even though darkness has lost, people are still dying.
This is very much like the battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812. I don’t know how much you know about that battle or that war but it is very significant. You see the War of 1812 began when England was busy trying to contain Napoleon as he was bringing war to every corner of the planet he could reach. England was very busy trying to stop him so the Americans thought this would be a good time to conquer Canada so like they did many times before, they invaded – only it didn’t go so well. They lost. We were saved. They failed to conquer Canada and they were forced to send their agents overseas to sue for peace.
While on December 24, Christmas Eve, 1815, the war ended; but there was no long distance telephone, e-mail, or other way to tell the troops in the field this quickly in those days and so on January 8th a terrible thing happened. General Pakenham took the initiative on his own and invaded New Orleans. The enemy had already been defeated, the war had already been won but there were over 1700 casualties that day. The war had already been won but many people still perished in the battle that followed.
This is what it is like for us today. Even though the victory has been won already, people are perishing everyday. If we follow our own selfish desires, even though the war has been won…not everyone has been delivered from the darkness. There are still people perishing everyday.
How many of us, like General Pakenham’s troops are perishing when they don’t have to. How many of us are acting on our own instead of submitting to God? How many in this world – how many of us, our friends, or our family, still give in to drunkenness or debauchery and sexual sin? When we do so we are serving the darkness, the old regime, the defeated regime.
How many of us still give into quarrelling and jealousy? They are the same as the former sins, you know. And so when we do, we are serving the darkness, the old regime, the defeated regime. If you break one aspect of the law you transgress the whole thing (Gal 3). In the eyes of the Lord sin is sin and the consequence of sin is the same as it was for those poor people who marched to their graves in New Orleans even though the victory has been one. The wages of sin are death (Ro 6:23).
So why would we commit sexual sin or quarrel with each other? Why when we know that that is submitting to the old regime, the defeated government? Why? Why are we content to live in the darkness?
Why not rather strap on the armour of light like it says in verse 12. Actually this is neat too. Did you know that the word translated as ‘armour’ here (and in Ephesians 6 too) –‘hopla’ - is probably better translated ‘weapons.’[2] This designates much more than just defending oneself with amour. This refers to going out and seizing the foe. We should not just hide from the darkness we must wage war against it.
It says in verse 14 that we must put on Jesus Christ himself and make no provisions for our own selfish desires and really that is what the answer to everything is isn’t it? As we put on Christ, we can engage the world and not succumb to it. When we have Him as our armour nothing can slay us – He has no Achilles heel.
So it is to this end that I exhort us today. The game has been won, the foe has been defeated; therefore for us to be engaged in selfishness now would be like if in the last minute of play one of the roughriders switched to join the Blue Bombers, why when the victory is already won would anyone want to forfeit their prize before it is awarded? Why would we want to reject our salvation now that the daylight is coming?
So today, I leave us with this encouragement. Sin is already defeated. Death is dead and the darkness is fading so let us, like Jesus said to the lady accused of adultery (John 8:10), let us go and sin no more so that we may be there to hoist that great cup high with Christ who has already won us the victory.
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To view the 2016 Toronto version, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2016/02/romans-1311-14-really-super-bowl.html
[1] - just like with injury time in soccer, only the ref knows when it will but nonetheless the game is out of reach.
[2] NT Write, Romans NIB: 728; the word is ‘hopla’
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