"Not Just Any God, Not Just Any Love" New Years Eve December 31, 2014 Romans 8:31–39
On the last day of the year we close out a year and we look ahead to a new year. A lot of people are doing the same thing. What is the difference between the way we Christians do it and the way the world does it? Well, the world can give thanks for a year past and celebrate a new year devoid of God. Or it can do these things in light of any number of gods of any number of religions. But as Christians we give thanks and we celebrate specifically because of God and specifically to God. But not just any god. The second reading says that nothing can separate us from the love of God. And it is the specific love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. God is not just a god, He is the God who is the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And He doesn’t just love us, He loves us specifically through His Son Jesus Christ. As you have come to the close of this year, you look back on it and you may have been through some particularly challenging struggles. Some of these may be continuing on into the new year. You also may have experienced some really good things. And some of those may be continuing on into the new year as well. As you look back, what is it about God specifically that you can be grateful for both with the struggles and with the good things? How does knowing the true God, the Triune God, make it possible for you to be grateful in a way that is distinct from the way the world is? The answer is Jesus. Paul asks, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” But he’s not just talking about ‘God’. It’s not just any god. It’s the God who is for us in Jesus Christ. God for us apart from Jesus Christ is God against us. That is why He gave us His Son. Paul says, “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not with Him give us all things?” It’s not just that God is for us. It’s not just that He loves us. It’s not just that He’s God. He is for us and loves us and He is God in Christ. If He has given us His Son, how will He not give us all things? When you look back on this past year in gratitude it is not just because it was a good year. It’s not even because you had some real struggles but God brought you through them or is bringing you through them. It is that He blessed you this past year in His Son. He has given you His Son. Now you can see all the many more blessings He has given you this past year. If you were blessed in many abundant ways this past year, well, it’s because God gives you blessings over and above giving you His Son. If you had a very difficult year, you can see that in giving you His Son He has blessed you even in your struggles. He has given you strength, perhaps though you thought you were very weak. He has given you grace, perhaps though you thought He was not hearing your prayers. He has given you faith, perhaps though you felt it was a flickering faith. In His Son you have been given in this past year blessings that go beyond any circumstances that you experienced. Even in your most troubling times you still remained a Baptized child of God. This, after all, is how God loves you, in His Son. Not only did He not spare His own Son in giving Him over on the cross for all of your sins and to save you eternally, He gave you His Son in your Baptism and each day of this past year you were living in that Baptism. You were daily dying and rising in your Lord’s death and resurrection, and this was through difficult times as well as good times. One of Satan’s deceits is that if you are suffering God must not be with you. How could He love you if He allows you to experience trials? The answer to this in the second reading is that Satan cannot bring any charge against you. He will try to get you to doubt that God loves you, but who can bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. That is the answer to the lies Satan tells. Any time you have struggled and have had doubts, you have been able to go back to the fact that God justifies you. You know this, as the second reading goes on to say, because of Christ. He is the one who died. He is the one who, further, has been raised. He is the one who is seated at the right hand of God. Satan knows all this and he would like you to forget it. Nothing can separate you from the love of in Christ. Nothing. Paul gives a substantial list in the second reading: tribulation? distress? persecution? famine? nakedness? danger? sword? No, none of these things. They can’t because you have already gone through them with Christ. He has already experienced anything that might bring your downfall. Paul even ups the ante. It’s not just that these things don’t separate you from God’s love in Christ, it’s that in these things you are more than a conqueror through Him who loves you. Paul then makes his famous confession of faith: “I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” None of these things has prevented God from loving you in His Son. No trials you have gone through this past year have kept God from loving you with His eternal love in not sparing His Son for you. Everything that has been said about this past year is true of the year to come. There is nothing in the future that can change God. Nothing you experience in the year ahead will change God’s love for you through Jesus Christ. If He has not spared His own Son how will He not also give you all things in this coming year? In the year to come you have something that the world does not have. You have the love of God. It is not just any love because He is not just any god. He is the God who has given you His Son. He is the God who gives you all things through Him. There is nothing in the future that can separate you from the present and everlasting love He loves you with in His Son. Just as you were Baptized and given eternal life, in this new year you will be living in that new life. Each day you will be dying and rising to new life. If struggle comes your way you will be struggling through them being united with Christ. He knows how to get through them. He overcomes them as only He can since He has gone through the crucible of the cross and the sin of the world. The world is going into the new year without this love. It’s not that God does not love those who don’t believe in Him. It is that they do not want His love. So they go into the new year alone. Even sadder, they are eternally separated from Him and will suffer unspeakable suffering. It’s so sad because Jesus has already gone through this for them. He has already given them a future they can know even now in the present. Since God has loved us in His Son how much more can we in the year ahead love others with this kind of love? Loving them with the gift of the Gospel. Showing them that this year ahead is temporary but the love God in Christ is forever. Only God knows what we will experience in the new year. However, since He has loved us in His Son, we actually know as well. We can’t know every detail, but we know that our God is not just any God and His love is not just any love. It is His love for us in Christ. This is His love for us we give thanks for in this past year, that we pray for in this new year, and that He gives to us forever. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
