Carl Sandburg wrote poetry, children’s books, a massive biography of Abraham Lincoln, a novel, and autobiographical works. With all these varied writings to his credit, Sandburg was asked by newsman Edward R. Murrow how he wanted to be known. He replied:
possibly four: to be out of jail, to eat regular, to get what I write printed and then
a little love at home and a little outside" (Niven 632).
He said he wanted “to be out of jail.” As a young man in his twenties, Sandburg spent a few nights in jail for hopping a freight train.
He said he wanted “to eat regular.” As the son of Swedish immigrants, he dropped out of school as a young teenager in order to help support his family. As a young adult, Sandburg worked at many different jobs. Later, he was the proverbial starving poet, so there probably were times when he didn’t “eat regular.” Like most poets Sandburg didn’t make much money from that. But when his Lincoln biography was published, he started making lots of money. The rest of his life, Sandburg was able to provide comfortably for his wife and their three daughters as long as they lived. So he had to look back a good many years to worry whether he would be able “to eat regular.”
He said he wanted “to get what I write printed.” As I mentioned, Sandburg saw a great deal of his work published over the decades of his long life.
But it’s the last of Sandburg’s four needs I want to call attention to: He wanted “a little love at home and a little outside.” Carl and Paula Sandburg shared a love through nearly sixty years of marriage and sought to pass that love along to their daughters. So he knew more than “a little love at home and a little outside" as a greatly admired and loved figure in America for several decades.
Human love, such as the Sandburgs shared, is a wonderful thing. At its best, our love for each other reflects the love of God. It is God’s love we look at this morning.
Each week at the close of the Baraca Radio Sunday School broadcast, I remind people of three promises from God. Starting today -- and for the next two weeks -- I plan to devote a lesson to each of the three:
God’s love that will never let you go,
God’s grace that is greater than all your sin,
God’s peace that passes all understanding.
Today, the first promise:
God’s love that will never let you go.
Our focal passage is from the eighth chapter of Romans. The final verses are full of assurance that God’s love is constant, that we can depend on that love in all conditions of life and of death.
The exact expression, “God’s love that will never let you go,” is not in the Bible but in a hymn:
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be (Mattheson).
St. Paul lists what I call “a catalog of disasters” -- 17 different things that can make us wonder whether God really does love us. I’m not giving away any great secret to say up front -- not one of those 17 things will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God’s love will never let you go.
Let’s begin with verses 31-32 of Romans 8:
What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?
Paul’s reasoning is that God loved us enough to send Jesus to die for us. With that great gift of love, God surely will not withhold anything we need. “God Almighty” can be a swear word, but here, it is a testimony to the might and power of God who is with us in everything life may throw at us.
If God is for us, who CAN BE against us?
A commentary says---
of him who with the gift of is own Son will freely give us all things beside (Arnold and Ford 213).
When difficulties of one kind and another pile up, it isn’t always easy to believe in God’s love.
Dr. J. P. McBeth put it this way:
God loves, not because we deserve it but because we are in Christ. The love of God is denoted,
not by the things we suffer but by what Christ suffered for us. His love is not revealed in material
blessings, nor does affliction denote the absence of His love; but the cross is the eternal exhibition
of His love for us (McBeth 206).
Or consider our individual lives:
A young woman carries a baby full-term, only to see it delivered stillborn, If she believes God controls everything in her life, why would she not be angry at God?
A husband learns that his wife, the mother of his children, has died in a wreck on the Interstate. If he believes God controls everything, why would he not be bitter?
Parents who were so proud of their son for serving his country in Iraq or Afghanistan get word that his body is being shipped home for burial. If they believe God controls everything in their lives, how do they feel when the preacher tells them God loves them?
A middle-aged woman, Susan Jacoby, tells of the childhood experience of being puzzled by the illness of another young friend:
stricken by polio and was in an iron lung. Polio has basically been eradicated,
but I grew up when polio was still a real threat to children, before the Salk vaccine.
This childhood friend had been playing and running only three weeks before,
and now he was in an iron lung. And I asked my mom, "Why would God let something
like that happen?" And to her credit, instead of giving me some moronic answer,
my mother said, "I don't know" (McNally)
The analogy that gives me some measure of comfort and reassurance is the Fatherhood of God. Any of us who have raised children or grandchildren have been pained in our hearts as we see our children do something which hurts them--physically or morally. We don’t stop them at every turn to keep bad things from coming their way. If we tried to do that, the children would remain helpless babies, always directly in our shadows. It hurts us to see them get hurt. But we let those things happen.
This is a parable for human suffering. The Heavenly Father leaves His children free. In our freedom, we do things which hurt ourselves. We do things that hurt others. Often our wrong deeds have far-reaching impact.
You may remember the man over in Georgia accused of holding his wife and their children as
virtual prisoners in their home. They were there so long, the children suffered malnutrition. The wife was mortally afraid of this man she is married to. There is no way on earth we can say God controlled what happened there.
I cannot say the loss of thousands of young American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan is under God’s control. I cannot say the loss of the lives of more than a million citizens of those nations is pleasing to God. All those deaths and countless additional permanent injuries must surely wound the loving heart of God.
As we consider personal problems alongside great national and international calamities, hear again the question: If God is for us, who is against us?
Verses 33-34 tell us, It is God who justifies. And Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God . . . indeed intercedes for us.
In verse 35, Paul asks, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Then he offers seven
different situations that might make us think we have been separated from the love of Christ:
The first two are presented as a pair: tribulation, or distress.
Several times in the letters of Paul (Romans 2:9; 2 Cor. 4:8), tribulation and distress come in the same breath. These are two kinds of pressure--tribulation is from outside sources and distress is pressure from within us.
The black church in America gave us many songs reflecting the pressure they felt in tribulation but also the faith that tribulation would not separate us from the love of Christ:
Here’s one song, from an unknown author, a lament in times of tribulation:
I been buked and I been scorned ,
I been talked about sure’s you born (www.tccgospel.org).
In the wake of sunny days
Jesus is there to pick you up and turn you around
When the devil stops you from seeing your goal
God steps in and takes control (Jackson).
Peter Senge distinguishes two kinds of adults: those who have “grown up” and those have “given up” (Senge 147). Senge says people who learn to cope with problems and changes are “grown up.” By contrast, people overwhelmed by problems have “given up.” \
We can say: As we learn to rely on God in tribulation, or distress, we are growing up. If we become discouraged in the face of tribulation, or distress, we may be tempted to give up.
Paul’s whole point in today’s passage is, “Don’t give up.” Tribulation, or distress will not separate us from the love of Christ.
What about persecution?
If you are living a godly life but are abused for your dedication, is that a sign God has withdrawn His love? No, persecution will not separate us from the love of Christ.
The next two examples Paul cites are famine, or nakedness. Many times, severe persecution will lead to famine, or nakedness. If we should be left without food and clothing, we might well feel separated from the love of God. But Paul would say, No, famine or nakedness will not separate us from the love of Christ.
Perhaps we see a downward progression or a heightening of elements. Dale Moody suggests tribulation, or distress are the basic examples of things we feel are separating from Christ’s love, and the rest in the sevenfold listing are examples of tribulation, or distress (Moody 224f).
Again, persecution can lead to famine or nakedness, which put us in peril. The last of these seven is the sword. “the instrument and emblem of the death penalty” (Arnold and Ford 213).
From the early years of the Christian church, there have been those who lost their lives because they were faithful. Death is symbolized here as the sword. So does the sword separate us from the love of Christ? Remember, Paul begins: If God is for us, who is against us?
God sent His Son Jesus to die for us so that, as we identify with Him through faith, we have all the resources of heaven behind us.
Paul has framed this complete, sevenfold list of possible causes of our being separated from the love of Christ. This list climaxes with execution. Christ’s all-encompassing love is with us even there. As he thinks of dying for the faith, Paul thinks back to Psalm 44. He says, As it is written, "For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered."
But he says, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
And though Paul has just given seven examples of bad things that will not separate us from God’s love, he now gives ten more.
He really picks up right where he left off just before he quoted from the psalm. He asked whether death by the sword will separate us from the love of Christ. Now, Paul’s second list starts with death.
If we have entrusted our lives to God through Christ, that love is there to sustain us in death. In the words of that most popular psalm: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me.
We may go through fearful times if we face a dread disease. But today’s passage reinforces that psalm: Our Lord Jesus Christ is with us as we pass from this life to the next. [I]n all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
As Paul mentions death and life together, his point is that nothing in death or in life can separate us. God’s love will never let us go.
I have a favorite gospel song about facing death and also the complexities of life:
When I come to the river at the ending of day
When the last winds of sorrow have blown,
There'll be somebody waiting to show me the way
I won't have to cross Jordan alone.
Though the billows of trouble and sorrow may sweep,
Christ the Saviour will care for his own.
Till the end of my journey my soul he will keep:
I won't have to cross Jordan alone.
I won't have to cross Jordan alone Jesus died all my sins to atone
When the darkness I see he'll be waiting for me
I won't have to cross Jordan alone (Ramsey and Durham).
In ancient times, folks believed the skies were filled with all sorts of unseen beings, and this groups Paul lists -- angels, principalities, and powers -- probably reflect belief in those beings.
You may be surrounded by whole battalions of unearthly creatures, both good and evil, but they should provoke no fear on your part. God’s love will never let you go. The 16th century reformer Martin Luther had these kinds of beings in mind in a line from “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”:
And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:
Paul broadens his concepts, thinking in more and more general terms. Next, he assures us, we need not fear things present, nor things to come.
We often fear what we know we have to face today and then what we may have to face tomorrow.
What if I lose my job?
What if my children neglect me?
What if my wife dies?
What if I get a dread disease?
What if I lose what little savings I have?
Those things may come to you or to me, BUT . . .
Paul says of the worries of today and of tomorrow:
[I]n all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
God’s love will never let us go.
Paul’s next pair of things we may fear:
Height or depth
Like Henny Penny, you may fear things that come tumbling out of the sky, or things that roar up from the depth of the sea. Paul says, Mark those off the list as well.
[I]n all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
It’s as if Paul has run out of things to mention that might worry his readers. So he finally just says, Don’t worry because none of these or anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We began with Carl Sandburg who said one of his four needs was for love at home and a little love outside. He was speaking of human love. Here’s another Sandburg statement about love:
There are explanations of love in all languages
and not one found wiser than this:
There is a place where love begins and a place
where love ends--and love asks nothing (Sandburg 399f).
GOD’S LOVE THAT WILL NEVER LET YOU GO
Romans 8:31-39
Baraca Radio Sunday School Class
First Baptist Church, Anderson, South Carolina
August 25, 2013
Lawrence Webb
http://www.alternet.org/story/95109/ , August 15, 2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment