18 Jan

5/27/18      ROMANS 5:1-5   “MAKING A HALLELUJAH CHORUS!”

Have you ever noticed how people react to their adversities in life?  I’m aware of it as I have seen it many times as it’s been part of my job.  Some people have something happen to them and they can’t wait until they can tell others their story.  Other people will never say a word about a trial they have had in life.  Some will suffer a long time expecting the government or insurance or family to bail them out.  Some just take their lumps and move ahead.  We all react to adversity in different ways.  Most of us feel that this is the way we should be.  But I don’t really agree with this.  There is only one way that is the right way to respond to these types of things and that is to go to Jesus.  Let’s see if we can find that road and stay on it.

Jack Kelley tells the story of a trip to East Africa where he learned a valuable lesson.  He was a reporter for USA Today and was in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, to cover a terrible famine.  It was so bad that he saw many people lying dead along the side of the road as he came to a village.  He recalls that the smell of death is something that you just can’t get rid of once it gets into your hair, your skin or your clothes.

Jack came across a boy as he walked down the road.  He could tell right away by the protruding stomach that the youngster was malnourished.  His hair had turned a reddish hue and his skin was wrinkled as if he were 100 years old.  These are other signs of malnutrition.  It was truly a sad sight.

The photographer who was with had a grapefruit that he gave to the boy.  The boy was so weak that he couldn’t hold the fruit and they had to cut it in half so he could carry it.  He could only look at them with the look of thanks as he couldn’t speak.  Then he took the grapefruit and walked to the village and Jack and the photographer followed.

The boy entered the village and went to another boy who appeared to be all but dead.  It was the first boy’s younger brother.  The older brother kneeled beside the younger brother and broke off a piece of grapefruit.  He chewed it and put it in his brother’s mouth.  Then he worked his brother’s jaws so he could chew.  They found out that the older brother had been doing this for two weeks.  A couple of days later they found out that the older brother had died and the younger brother had lived.

In John 15:13 we read as Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”  The older brother was practicing just what Jesus has been telling us.  If we look at this morning’s Scripture we can see the love that Jesus has for us as He helps us chew on life.  I try to tell you about it every Sunday but there are just some passages that say it so well and this is one of them.

But before we begin I would like to clarify a word that we hear all the time and is in the first line of our reading.  It is ‘justified or justification.’  Now I don’t know about you but it took me forever to learn what justification and sanctification meant.  For years I sat where you are sitting and could never figure it out because they sounded so much alike.  I mean they could just as well as said justification, sanctification, altercation, aberration, or certification.  They were just a bunch words that sounded alike.  Then I find that there have been books written about these two words.  And most people don’t know what they mean and lose interest real quick when listening to long explanations.

To make it short and hopefully painless, we are justified or made right when we come to know Jesus as our Lord.  It is when we are reborn in Christ.  It is the point of time and not a process when we know Jesus.  I’m not even going into sanctification today.  So you were justified the moment you accepted Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior.

Because in verse 1 we see that we are made right (justified) through faith and we have a peace with our Lord Jesus Christ.  This is our faith and should be our lives in a nutshell.  Does anyone here remember when you first came to Jesus?  One of the most memorable moments I have the minute that I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior was the tremendous peace I had.  I had never known such peace.  It was a peace beyond description.  This is the peace that Paul is talking about.  This is the peace with our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is one of the things that the secular world does not understand.  They ask, “How can you be so peaceful and happy when all of these terrible things are happening around you?”  And it is hard to explain the answer, because the answer is more of a feeling than anything else.  It’s also more than a feeling.  It’s just not something that is easy to describe.  The answer has to do with the wonderful peace we get from knowing Jesus Christ.

People of other religions don’t understand this because they are too busy doing works so they can get to heaven.  And their problem is that they never know if they have done enough works to get there.  Therefore, they can have no peace because they are not assured of a spot with God.  This is obviously the devil working on them.  If you truly know Jesus Christ then you will truly know that you will spend eternity with Him.

And if people don’t understand the first part of this lesson, they surely won’t have a clue as to the second part. We are told that we have this grace given by our Lord Jesus Christ and we are to rejoice in it.  I can understand why people get a little confused when we use the term justification.  But I think that everyone should be able to get a handle on the word rejoice.

It is perfectly ok to come watch this and be as happy as you can be.  After all we have been saved by the grace of God and He is now our leader in everything we do.  The only time that things go wrong is when we take over some areas from God.   It is ok to come to worship to be happy.  Andy Griffith once said on one of his TV shows that church or worship is the only place where you can come and spend one hour each week and feel so good for the rest of the week.  Surely you can spend one hour in 168 hours of the week here recharging your spiritual battery.

And rejoice is mentioned many times in the Bible.  One of my favorites is when David is returning with the ark and he is singing and dancing in the street.  His wife, Michal, gets furious with him and despises him.  There is a lot more to that story but the idea is that it is ok to celebrate in a happy way with the Lord.

Now comes the real hard part.  We are not only to rejoice in the good times but we are also to rejoice in our sufferings.  Because these sufferings produce perseverance, and perseverance; character; and character, hope.  Like I said earlier, this passage has it all.  The hard part of following this is that we are humans living in a world controlled by the devil.  These are not easy words to follow.

I recently read something by the famous pastor Charles Swindoll.  He has come to the conclusion and I agree that attitude has the most impact on our lives.  It is far more important than facts, the past, education, money, circumstances, what other people perceive, failures, gifts or skills.  You have a choice everyday about what your attitude will be.  You cannot change the past or what is inevitable.  But you can change your attitude or have a good attitude.  And that is what you need to do if you are going to rejoice in your sufferings.

One of the ways to develop your attitude is by being authentic.  You need to be yourself.  You are to be honest and humble.  You are to really stress the characteristics that God has given you.  I see this a lot when I am around young people.  They are always trying on different personalities, most of the time they are copied from their friends, television or magazines.  These are not the places to look for your personality.  First, look in the Bible and see all that God has given you.  Then try those on.  This takes courage.  Being authentic takes courage.  It is easy to hide behind a mask but it takes courage to be you.  And Jesus wants you to be the best you, you can be.  He has given you all the tools for this.

The second way to develop a good attitude is through good cheer.  It is easy to be down in the mouth when all you do is watch the news channels on TV.  If you want to destroy any good attitude that you have, just watch these on a continuous basis.  If it is not bad news, then to news networks it is no news at all.  We can know the news and it will help in a lot of our decisions.  But we don’t need to dwell on it when we have so much good news from Jesus Christ to dwell upon.

And this can be hard.  If you are in the middle of a crisis, it is really hard to be of good cheer.  That is why you come to church or worship.  You can share your hardships with the others around you.  Or you can be the person who listens and helps someone else. You can pray together and try to get to the upside of your present situation.  You all know that we pastors have the same troubles that the rest of you have.  I can’t help but think sometimes when I am in a crisis, how will God be glorified in all of this?  It is a little mind game that I play.  And I will tell you that usually I am wrong about the answer.  Most of the time, God’s glory is much, much more than any scenario that I can imagine.  Look to God when trying to be cheerful.

The last point of a healthy attitude is being aware of God.  Too often we miss this as we try to do things ourselves.  A good example of this comes from Pastor Rodney Buchanan.  His wife said one day as they were driving along, “Did you see that sign in that yard?”  When he said that he missed it, she continued, “It says, ‘Jesus is coming!’”  Rodney smiled and replied, “I’ve got better news.  He’s already here!”

Sometimes we get so focused on His coming back the second time that we forget that He has already come.  He will not abandon you.  He has not gone away.  He has defeated sin, hell and death.  And through the Holy Spirit, He is right here with you today.  Now I don’t know about you, but that is about as good a news flash as I can imagine.  Of course it is good news that He is coming back.  But let’s not forget what He has already done and will continue to do.

Here’s a thought that Mr. Buchanan brings forward about being aware of God.  What if you lived every minute of your life as if God were all around you?  What if you saw the glory of God everywhere and in every person’s eyes?  What if you lived as if the devil had already been defeated?  What if you lived as if you already had one foot in heaven?  What if you lived as if you were always a part of a family, God’s family?  How would your life be different?

This is what God wants you to do.  All of these things produce hope because God loves you so much that He has given you the Holy Spirit.  He doesn’t want you wandering around down here on your own.  He doesn’t want you making all kinds of decisions on your own.  He wants you to talk to Him about anything and everything.  There are no limits on what God wants to hear.  He is like the good parent who wants to hear everything about a child’s life.  Start a dialogue today through a devotion time or a daily prayer time.

This is because Jesus loves you and wants to do wondrous things through you.  This reminds me of a story of George Frederick Handel, the composer, when he had become an old man and had lost all of his fame and was wandering the streets of London.  He had a cerebral hemorrhage that had paralyzed his right side.  He was given little hope of recovery.  He was in a major trial.  But he did not give up and kept trying to get better.  It took a long time but he did regain his health and he was able to write music again.

But then he hit another adversity when Queen Caroline died.  She had been a tremendous supporter of his music.  Times were hard in England and they closed down the concert auditoriums because it cost too much to heat.  It almost sounds like things that happen today.

His hope was all but gone again when a man named Charles Jennens called on him one night.  Charles had just finished writing the musical text for a piece that connected the Old and New Testaments.  He thought that Handel should put it to music.  Handel was indifferent as he started to read the words.  But then phrases jumped out at him like, “He was despised, rejected of men…he looked for someone to have pity on him, but there was no man; neither found he any to comfort him.”  His eyes race ahead and found, ‘He trusted in God…God did not leave his soul in hell…He will give you rest.’  Handel became aware of the presence of God.  The Holy Spirit was with him as he picked up the pen and wrote the first part of the ‘Messiah’ in only seven days.  It took him six days to write the second part.  Even today people are still so moved when the ‘Hallelujah Chorus” is sung that they rise to their feet.

Handel had adversity but he overcame it with a healthy attitude and God.  You can do anything when you have Jesus Christ on your side.  Don’t sell yourself short.  Don’t say you can’t do something.  Don’t do these things because with Jesus you can and will get through all the trials of life and you will be surprised at the results.  The results can only come with the help of a God who loves you beyond any comprehension that you have.  Praise the Lord for His love and thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.