Therefore

Therefore

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

November 11, 2018

at Bethany Presbyterian Church, Zuni, Virginia

Romans 12: 1-8

Deuteronomy 7: 1-11

Let us pray,

Help us to see despite our eyes

Help us to think outside of our minds

Help us to be more than our lives

For your eyes show the way

Your mind knows the truth

Your being is the life.

Amen.

As I said last week. . . Paul transition to reaction to grace. . . Doxology. . .

Our response to God’s grace, must begin with Awe, Wonder, Mystery, Humility, Reassesment, and finally Praise!

But then as the way is often with Paul, he moves from praise to life

And he begins our reading for this morning with a special word. . . Therefore

And it isn’t a tight therefore, relegated to here, but instead is the therefore that responds back all the way to the beginning

In Sonnet’s its called a volta – that changing moment

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

You can hear it there in the – but they eternal summer, and it fits the rhyme scheme

I’ve written many of these-- class

It seems each time I walk into the cafe

I always seem to be the last one there

And then despite the hard work of the staff

The food that’s left just seems so poor and bare

The dregs of food burnt edges hard and brown

Just cold and bland with tasteless fatty grease

And when I try to choke a salad down

The wilted lettuce tastes like bark from trees.

But then I stop to think how hunger feels

Remembering how much I have been blessed

Not having to be worried ‘bout my meals

And how their pain’s much worse than how I’m stressed

And so when I am tempted to complain

I think instead about another’s pain.

Why do the Redskins always seem to stink

No matter how the season starts or ends

Builds faith beyond what our minds should think

Because we’ve seen repeated and consistent trends

They raise your hopes and then just let them fall

With trades of major size and seeming scope

They look as if they know how to play ball

Then lose and lose and dash all of our hope.

But something makes me think each time next year

It may be diff’rent and we’ll win a game

And that my hope again supplants my fear

That this season will not too end in shame.

This is the prayer of every Redskin fan

And is the pressure on coach Shanahan.

So this is the volta, of Romans and everything up until this point is captured in the Volta

Think back now to every sermon I’ve given since I started this journey through Romans, They are all on the table.

So if you’ve caught any of them. . . if you can remember anything from any of them

Basically they all come down to wrestling with the idea that grace has been given through the cross, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. . .

And now he turns and says therefore. . . and we’ll get to that in a minute

But there are many therefores in the contexts of scripture, probably the biggest is found throughout Deuteronomy, when you see Moses in his last sermon. . .

Since Exodus – Therefore

Here  is Deuteronomy 7. You can hear that language. . .

7 When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites,Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites,seven nations larger and stronger than you— ² and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. ³ Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, ⁴ for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.⁵ This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. ⁶ For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

⁷ The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. ⁸ But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. ⁹ Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. ¹⁰ But

those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction;
    he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him.

¹¹ Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today.

Paired with Therefores often in Deuteronomy is “So that’s”, for example Deuteronomy 4:1

Now, Israel, hear the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.

There are 62 so that’s in Deuteronomy

So that you may follow

So that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen

So that they may learn to revere me

So that you do not become corroput

So that you might know that the lord is God

So that it may go well with you and your children

So that you may live long. .  .

You get the idea. . .

Deuteronomy has 62 so that’s and only 10 therefores

Whereas little Romans has 21 therefores

Though there are a bunch of so that’s in Romans – there are only two that are connected to our actions and the future. . .

so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

 so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.

Hope! God’s action vs. our own.

So what’s the difference between a so that, and a therefore. .. in our own context

“So that” looks forward to try to shape the future with the actions of the present

“Therefore” looks backward and whatever is seen it reacts to in the present

I wrote this poem this week, to get at this idea a little closer

So that my teeth don’t rot, I brush them twice a day

So that my heart won’t stop, I put the salt away

So that my kids don’t hear, I watch the things I say

So that it rains tomorrow, I might do my dance this way

There are so many “so thats” it seems I hold control

But in grace it’s all the “therefores” which make me truly whole

I am a child of God, therefore I’m always in his hand

I live in the world he made, therefore I’m under his command

Despite my sin he’s steadfast, therefore I don’t fully understand

He sent to us Christ Jesus, therefore now I can truly stand

Do you get the difference. . . and this distinction is important, perhaps the major difference between Deuteronomy – and Paul as a Pharisee, and Romans and Paul as the Christian Missionary.

Paul has spent 11 chapters talking about what God has done for us. . . and now Chapter 12 opens

12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. ² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

³ For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. ⁴ For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, ⁵ so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. ⁶ We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; ⁷ if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; ⁸ if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

What is a living sacrifice? And what is a therefore sacrifice?

He sent to us Christ Jesus, therefore now I can truly stand

Living Sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, is true and proper worship

Whole versus holy –

Do not conform to the pattern of the world?

                        

Renew your mind – to be able to find God’s perfect will

What is your gift?

Do that wholly and fully to the best of the ability God gave you. . .