[Sermon Archive]

This Week's Sermon FIRST MIDWEEK ADVENT SERVICE 05 December 2007 "No Hopeless Existence" Romans 3:8-14 LSB Series A Pastor Philip G. Meyer Soli Deo Gloria!

Ours is an age not unlike the Apostolic age, the age in which the Christian Church was established. In the Roman Empire one could find every kind of sin and perversion known to mankind. Living as a Christian in that world was difficult, if not dangerous. What Jesus said would come true, that Christians would be hated and hunted down by all mankind, in fact, has come true in every age, especially in our own.

It is hard for us at times to comprehend why the world hates Christians. We know that it does because it hates Christ, but there may be yet another less obvious reason: the world doesn't have an answer for its own existence. Instead, the world cannot comprehend where things are headed because the world cannot see beyond itself. That has been used as one definition of sin, that is, to be curved back in upon one's self, as we learned the Latin phrase, curvatus in se. Perhaps we might even call it narcissism, self-absorption.

Look at how Paul spells it out here in describing our world:

"Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy." (Romans 13:13, ESV)

Look at the celebrity "train wrecks" in the news nearly every day. One internet service provider is providing a new listing entitled, "Scandals of the Year." I won't tell you which internet service is providing this list, but many of you use it. Nonetheless, it is available to anyone. Just the other day, on the same page of another internet news service were these headlines:
"Nude, Pregnant Pinup." Singer Christina Aguilera has posed nude in her obvious state of pregnancy. "At least," we sigh, "she's married!" Then Paris Hilton, famous for being infamous, who has more money than brains, announced that she wants to have a baby within the next two years. She is asking Santa for a nice boyfriend. Add to this another one I had never heard of before, a Tila Tequila, an MTV star who openly advertises that she is bisexual. Yet, the story says it's an act, that she's not really.

Then we come to the even more tragic. The body of a missing pregnant woman was found buried in a wildlife refuge. She had been missing since November 30 when she told her family that she was going to meet the father of her baby. Or the Kansas college student who went missing. It was discovered that she had a secret life as an internet porn star. Incredibly, her grandfather told the press, "All I can say to you young folks out there is be careful. It is a cruel world" [Associated Press, November 29, 2007]. That's it?

A syndicated column in September by Doug Giles [Towhall.com, 22 September 2007] pointed out that sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise among teens. An estimated 19 million new cases occur each year with teenagers getting the lion's share of them. A full 25% of the new victims are teens. Or to put it another way, every twenty-four hours 21,000 teens "are slapped, saddled, infused and infected with some creepy, nasty and potentially deadly bug brought about by following the advice of our crass culture," he writes. We live in a sex-obsessed culture, the very thing that the Apostle Paul warns us about. One writer calls it "The Pornification" of our culture.

But is it that simple? Yes and no. Yes it is because we are swimming in a sewer of sexuality that civilizations before also have. We make provisions to gratify our sinful flesh. We can't seem to tell ourselves "no." After all, the main cheerleaders in the entertainment industry are cheering us on!

And no, it is not that simple. It seems that such reckless, self-destructive behavior as we see exhibited in our celebrities and that we see be exhibited more and more in the lives of ordinary people is a symptom of a much deeper problem, that of hopelessness. When people feel hopeless, they figure, "Why not let it all hang out? What have I got to lose?" Couple these basic human urges with alcohol and drugs and you have a lethal cocktail that many are willing to drink. Merely giving people the facts about how dangerous these things are cannot cure the underlying problem of hopelessness.

"Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light." (Romans 13:11-12, ESV)

You, by virtue of your Baptism into Christ Jesus, do not have a hopeless life! You have a life with a real future. You have a life paid for by the innocent blood of Jesus Christ. He has given himself to redeem you from the futile life you inherited from your parents. As Martin Franzmann so eloquently put it in his hymn, O God, O Lord of Heaven and Earth:

1 O God, O Lord of heav'n and earth,
Thy living finger never wrote
That life should be an aimless mote,
A deathward drift from futile birth.
Thy Word meant life triumphant hurled
In splendor through Thy broken world.
Since light awoke and life began,
Thou hast desired Thy life for man.

Text and Tune: © 1967 Augsburg Fortress Used by permission: LSB Hymn License .NET, number 100010193.
Created by Lutheran Service Builder © 2006 Concordia Publishing House.

Dear friends, you do not have a hopeless existence! Your life is hid with Christ in God! Therefore, it is time for you to wake up from the sleep of the darkness of this world which is passing away and to "cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of the light." This is the language of your Baptism. It is Confession and Absolution. It is returning to the cleansing waters of Holy Baptism and being washed clean. It is putting on Christ again. It must be the constant activity of the Christian, a daily activity, just as Luther said in the very first of his famous 95 Theses:

1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, "Repent" [Matt. 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.¹

You do not have a hopeless existence! You have eternal life in Christ!

¹Luther, M. (1999, c1957). Vol. 31: Luther's works, vol. 31 : Career of the Reformer I (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther's Works (31:25). Philadelphia: Fortress Press.