February 27, 2000 - LESSON: Romans 5.3-13, ISV

SERMON TITLE: Daring to Trust

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INTRODUCTION:

  1. You have been nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor of the film in which you starred.
    1. This is the highest recognition that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can bestow.
    2. You will get to walk to the stage and receive the coveted trophy.
    3. But first you have to live in hope.

MAIN BODY:

  1. It is important to understand hope.
    1. Hope is a process.
      1. We live in hope.
      2. In the midst of the sound and fury of life, it is the only option which sustains us

        (Romans 5:1-5 NRSV)

[1] Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, [2] through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. [3] And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, [4] and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

[5] and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

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    1. Hope is the end result.
      1. It is the realization of the fulfillment of the promises of God.
      2. It is concrete.
        1. (Titus 2:11-13 NRSV)

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, [12] training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly,

[13] while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

        1. The manifestation of the glory, the return of Christ.
  1. You find this hope emphsized in Romans 15.5-13, ISV

5May God, the source of endurance and encouragement, allow you to live in harmony with each other as you follow Christ Jesus 6so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

7Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ accepted you, for the glory of God.

8For I tell you that Christ became a servant of the circumcised on behalf of God's truth in order to confirm the promises given to our forefathers 9so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy.

As it is written, "That is why I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing praises to your name."

10Again, he says, "Rejoice, you Gentiles, with his people!"

11And again, "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles! Let all the nations praise him."

12And again, Isaiah says, "There will be a Root from Jesse. He will arise to rule the Gentiles, and the Gentiles will hope in him."

13Now may God, the source of hope, fill you with all joy and peace as you believe, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

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  1. 13Now may God, the source of hope,
    1. fill you with all joy and peace as you believe,
    2. so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
  2. To overflow with hope we ought to be very careful in what or in whom we put our trust.
    1. The biblical view of humanity is not negative, but it is cautionary.
      1. (Psalms 118:9 NRSV) It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to put confidence in princes.
      2. (Psalms 146:3 NRSV) Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.
      3. (Isaiah 47:10-11 NRSV) You felt secure in your wickedness; you said, "No one sees me." Your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray, and you said in your heart, "I am, and there is no one besides me." [11] But evil shall come upon you, which you cannot charm away; disaster shall fall upon you, which you will not be able to ward off; and ruin shall come on you suddenly, of which you know nothing.

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    2. The biblical view is that one should not hope in the accumiliation of material possessions
      1. Rich Young Ruler

(Luke 18:18-23 NRSV) A certain ruler asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" [19] Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. [20] You know the commandments: 'You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother.'" [21] He replied, "I have kept all these since my youth." [22] When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." [23] But when he heard this, he became sad; for he was very rich.

        1. He asked the right question.
        2. He gave the right answers.
        3. He went away sorrowful.
        4. Jesus was asking him to evaluate his priority of trust
        5. This can be very dangerous

(2 Corinthians 4:4 NRSV) In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

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  1. Donald W. McCullough, president of San Francisco Theological Seminary and senior editor of Christianity Today, argues that "The worst sin of the church at the end of the 20th century has been the trivialization of God."

      1. By playing at being God so often and in so many different guises, we have succeeded in trivializing the whole concept of God.
      2. He argues that this sin of trivial gods is equally strong among liberals, evangelicals and charismatics (each of which leans respectively toward political correctness, theological correctness and experiential correctness).
      3. Instead of "have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3), we have a pantheon of trivial gods.
        1. - the "god-of-my-cause"
        2. - the "god-of-my-understanding"
        3. - the "god-of-my-nation"
        4. - the "god-of-my-experience"
        5. - the "god-of-my-body"
        6. - the "god-of-my-species"
        7. - the "god-of-my-generation"
        8. - the "god-of-my-race"
        9. - the "god-of-my-gender"
        10. - the "god-of-my-class"
      4. But only God is God, and we are not.
      5. John A. Stroman, in Thunder From the Mountain writes of an experience that took place on "On Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow plunged 508 points,...at the request of the Pacific Stock Exchange, a suicide watch was placed on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. During the same week, in Miami, a longtime speculator who lost large sums in the market's crash walked into the local Merrill Lynch brokerage office and requested to see his broker and the office manager. He opened his briefcase, took out a handgun, and shot and killed the two men and himself. A friend commented, "His entire life was devoted to the market, and it collapsed around him." The god that he trusted had let him down."(1)

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      6. (Hosea 8:7 NRSV) For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield, foreigners would devour it.
        1. The wind is a figurative representation of worshiping other gods and human effort.
        2. The whirlwind is representative of the destruction which follows.
  1. Leonard Sweet in Homiletic's Magazine writes that "To combat this trust deficit, we need to develop a new set of Ten Commandments -- what we are calling a Ten Commandments of Trust. By following these new/old commands, we can begin to dig ourselves out of the hole that threatens to swallow our sense of community, of well-being, of security.(2)
    1. 1. Thou shalt turn only to trustworthy sources.
      1. In a world where trust is one of our most endangered virtues and values, where are the righteous to turn? Scripture has always been the trusted source, the divine font, of comfort and truth.
        1. - Turn to Jeremiah 17:7 -- "Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord."
        2. - Turn to the "Trust Psalms," (e.g. 11, 16, 23, 62, 121), or to general Psalms like 56:3 -- "When I am afraid, I put my trust in you."
        3. - Turn to the psalmist's mixed metaphor -- "Taste and see that the Lord is good," adding its next line -- "happy are those who take refuge in him" (Psalm 34:8).
        4. - Turn to Isaiah 26:3 -- "Those of steadfast mind you keep in peace -- in peace because they trust in you."
        5. - Turn to a yielded life . . .

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    2. 2. Thou shalt give up the illusion of control, and trust the Spirit.
      1. (James 4:13-16 NRSV) Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money." [14] Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. [15] Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that." [16] As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.
      2. A young man walked into a recruiting station and asked to re-enlist. When asked why he was returning to the Marine Corps, the man replied: "There's no one in charge on the outside."
    3. 3. Thou shalt place trust at the very heart of faith.
      1. (Acts 26:15-18 NRSV) I asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The Lord answered, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. [16] But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you. [17] I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles--to whom I am sending you [18] to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.'
      2. Daring to trust
        1. In Leon Uris's book, Exodus, seventeen year-old Dov Landau was about as bitter and hardened as a human being can be.(3)
        2. He had lived through the destruction of Warsaw and internment in Auschwitz.
        3. One day he meet Karen Hansen.
        4. She was comforting a child in a Palestinian detention camp.
        5. "...she looked up and saw Dov standing over her. 'Hello,' he said very quickly and walked away.
        6. Despite the continued warnings of many to leave him alone, Karen knew that she had penetrated a great darkness. She knew the boy was desperate and trying to communicate and that his 'hello' was his was of saying he was sorry...To everyone else...but Karen, Dov Landau was incorrigible. He spoke only in anger. She was always called upon to calm his sudden eruptions. She saw in him things that no other person saw--wonderful strength and pride.
        7. With Karen's loving concern, Dov changed. In the community of trust which developed between them, his outer shell of defense gradually dropped away and the wonderful, strong human being emerged.
        8. As the story of the Exodus unfolds, Dov becomes one of the heros in the struggle to establish a new nation.

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      3. A Christian perspective on the world is one of radical trust, a willingness to trust God and, therefore, an ability to trust others.
      4. The church must embody trust.
      5. Our good news for our modern culture must proclaim a God who can be trusted to care of us, to hold of us, to heal us, to save us, and a community that can itself be trusted.
    4. 4. Thou shalt "trust and obey."
      1. (Acts 5:12 NRSV) Now many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon's Portico.
      2. (Acts 5:17-20 NRSV) Then the high priest took action; he and all who were with him (that is, the sect of the Sadducees), being filled with jealousy, [18] arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison. [19] But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors, brought them out, and said, [20] "Go, stand in the temple and tell the people the whole message about this life."
      3. (Acts 5:22-26 NRSV) But when the temple police went there, they did not find them in the prison; so they returned and reported, [23] "We found the prison securely locked and the guards standing at the doors, but when we opened them, we found no one inside." [24] Now when the captain of the temple and the chief priests heard these words, they were perplexed about them, wondering what might be going on. [25] Then someone arrived and announced, "Look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people!" [26] Then the captain went with the temple police and brought them, but without violence, for they were afraid of being stoned by the people.
      4. (Acts 5:27-29 NRSV) When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, [28] saying, "We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man's blood on us." [29] But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than any human authority.
      5. Trust is a matter of obedience (cf. Deuteronomy 9:23-24). As the song says, "Trust and Obey."
        1. It's not "Trust when you feel like it and obey when you can."
        2. It is "Trust and obey."
        3. It's not "Trust or obey."
        4. It's not "Trust, then obey."
        5. It's trust and obey.

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      6. You say: But I don't feel like trusting. Actress Ingrid Bergman once told director Alfred Hitchcock that a certain scene just didn't feel "natural." She then explained why she didn't feel "natural" doing what the script called her to do. Hitchcock said: "Fine. If you can't do it naturally, then fake it."
      7. You don't feel you can trust God "naturally"? You don't feel you can cast yourself on the waters? You don't feel natural living by faith and not by sight? Fine. Then fake it. Do it unnaturally. Do it supernaturally.
    5. 5. Thou shalt trust that God is sovereign.
      1. No matter what is happening, or how long it has been since you've been visited by the Spirit, or whether the "foundations" themselves are crumbling, God is God and God's sanctuary is secure.
    6. 6. Thou shalt trust that God sees and knows what you are going through, and cares.
      1. (1 Peter 5:6-7 NRSV) Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. [7] Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.
    7. 7. Thou shalt declare before God every day, "I am no longer my own, but yours."
      1. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 KJV) What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? [20] For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.
      2. John Wesley began each new year by offering up this prayer at his New Year's Eve Watch Night service:

      3. I am no longer my own, but yours.
        Put me to what you will,
        Rank me with whomever you will.
        Put me to doing . . .
        Put me to suffering.
        Let me be employed for you,
        Or laid aside for you.
        Exalted for you, or
        Brought low for you.
        Let me be full,
        Let me be empty.
        Let me have all things,
        Let me have nothing!
        And now, O Father,
        You are mine and I am yours.
        So be it. And the covenant I am making on Earth,
        Let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

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    8. 8. Thou shalt do what you say you will do.
      1. (Matthew 5:37 NRSV) Let your word be 'Yes, Yes' or 'No, No'; anything more than this comes from the evil one.
      2. Follow-through is crucial in everything we attempt. Good intentions spoil into bad relationships tainted with mistrust when we fail to keep our word. How much can you be counted on? Are you someone who can be trusted? Can you be counted on?
    9. 9. Thou shalt honestly admit your weaknesses.
      1. (Romans 7:15-25 NRSV) I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. [16] Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. [17] But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. [18] For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. [19] For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. [20] Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. [21] So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. [22] For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, [23] but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. [24] Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? [25a] Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
      2. Hiding shortcomings may improve your image, but it doesn't build trust. There is a reason the old adage claims that "Confession is good for the soul." By trusting others with the knowledge of your faults, a bridge of trust can get under construction.

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    10. 10. Thou shalt always tell the truth.
      1. (Ephesians 4:15 NRSV) But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,
      2. (Ephesians 4:25 NRSV) So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.
      3. Premarital Counseling, Do nothing to damage your trust level
      4. There is no bigger roadblock to trust than deceit. It is the simplest and yet sometimes the most difficult of all these commandments. But if all of us told the truth all of the time, there would be no reason to harbor doubt.

CONCLUSION:

  1. Rodney Mickelson, Linden Heights sent me the following story, Soap and Religion, A Jewish Tale:
    1. As the Teacher was speaking to a group of children, a soap maker attempted to embarrass him.
      1. "How can you claim that religion is good and valid where there is so much suffering and evil in the world?
      2. "What good are all the books and sermons that your religion has produced?"
      3. The teacher motioned to a small child to move through the crowd.
      4. "This is Eric," the teacher said, "He is three. He is also dirty.
      5. "I ask you, what good is soap when Eric and hundreds of children like him are dirty.
      6. "How can you pretend that soap is effective."
      7. "What a foolish argument," the soap maker protested. "If soap is to be effective it must be used."
      8. "Precisely," the Teacher answered. "If the teachings of our master are to be effective, they must be used."
    2. Use the soap!
      1. Have faith
      2. We've got confidence!

1. John A. Stroman, Thunder From the Mountain (Nashville: Upper Room, 1990), 37.

2. Copyright c 1999 by Communication Resources, Inc. The material on these pages is offered to assist you in the preparation of sermons and worship services. As a subscriber you are free to quote material from HOMILETICS in your sermons and worship bulletins without further permission.

3. Leon H. Uris, Exodus (Doubleday and Company, 1958), pp 164, 166.

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