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May 22, 2005
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Wesleyan Heritage
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"The place where you Stand"
Romans 1:16-17
16For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. 17For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
Romans 5:1-5
1Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: 2By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; 4And patience, experience; and experience, hope: 5And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.
KJV
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- Over the past weeks John Towne has given you a marvelous taste of what life was like for the commoner during the 1500s in Germany. You had a visit from Father John, I understand, and were thoroughly abused by him. And then you heard how a young monk stood against the abuses being dished out by the Roman Catholic church of that era by posting his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door. Martin Luther emphatically said: "here I stand, I can do no other," and thus began the reformation.
Before the church was reformed, you heard how Luther himself had been transformed by the Spirit of the Living God. This young man had pursued the ministry because of a fearsome encounter with lightning, but so feared God, he was petrified to lead in worship. Believing he was wholly unworthy to serve in any way, he froze holding the wine at Eucharist and could not continue. He could never do enough to please God-- his works, his prayers, his confessions were never good enough, detailed enough.
His confessor became infuriated with his young disciple. "Martin," he cried, "go and commit some real sins and then come confess them!" Finally after he was made a professor of Bible at the university, God showed great grace. Through his study of the Scriptures, especially the passage in Romans 1, Martin understood he did not have to "earn" God's favor, but needed to receive God's favor. "The just live by faith," the passage said, they do not make themselves just to be given faith. Martin had learned to stand in the grace given by God.
It is not my intent to catalog all that happened as a result of the Reformation, but what began with Martin Luther was further expressed and expounded by many great men and women of that day. More and more people would learn with him to enter by grace into God's kingdom, to read the Word, to apply what it says.
One such community of believers lived in Saxony on the estate of a man named Count Zinzindorf. In 1727, these believers began an around-the-clock "prayer watch" that continued nonstop for over a hundred years with at least two people praying continually. By 1791, 65 years after commencement of that prayer vigil, the small Moravian community had sent 300 missionaries to the ends of the earth. (http://ctlibrary.com/3263)
These Moravians would greatly influence many people, among them a man who would change the face of Christianity for England and America named John Wesley. In 1735, some of those Moravian missionaries were on a sailing vessel with John and Charles Wesley traveling on a four month voyage from England to Georgia. It was on this voyage that God witnessed to John Wesley of his need of faith.
- Oh, John was already a clergy person in the Church of England at this point. He was going to Georgia with his brother Charles to serve as a missionary to convert the "heathen Indians." If you had observed his life, you would have been impressed. Like the best Pharisee, John was doing everything he could to conform his life to the Gospel. He had not learned to live in grace, to live by faith. Like Martin Luther in pre-Reformation Germany, John believed he had to do all of what he did to earn God's favor.
He was living by good works and was always falling short. He was not a happy person at this point for he could not seem to please God. He fasted, read Scriptures, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and went without basic necessities to meet the needs of others. All of these great acts of mercy and piety, however, were birthed from his desire to be pleasing to God not out of a faith in God being already pleased.
But during that voyage God sent some horrific storms. Waves broke over the side of the ship. One wave, he wrote, "came smoothly with a full tide over the side of the ship. I was covered in a moment from head to foot, being quite vaulted over with water, and so stunned that I scarce expected to lift up my head again till the sea should give up her dead." (Jan 23, 1736, Journal Jackson's works).
During the second storm as it increased he could but say to himself, "How is it that thou hast no faith? [cf. Mark 4:40]-being still unwilling to die."
Then during another storm on January 25th, 1735, he wrote: "The waves of the sea were now mighty, and raged horribly [cf. Ps. 93:5]. They rose up to the heavens above, and seemed to cleave even down to hell beneath [cf. Ps. 107:26]…. Every ten minutes came a shock against the stern or side of the ship, which one would think should dash it into a thousand pieces." John reflects in his journal on a public service they celebrated to receive a child into church membership, and this event gave him some hope, believing that it was testimony from God that they would indeed experience God's mercy in the land of the living, as Jeremiah's purchase of land when the Babylonians were at the point of destroying Jerusalem, was a similar pledge of God's mercy to the Israelites.
He then writes, "At seven I went to the Germans. In the midst of a psalm, wherein we were mentioning the power of God, the sea broke over, covered the ship, and split the mainsail. Many of the English screamed out. The Germans looked up, and without intermission sang on." (Ibid.)
John was living from good works. The Moravians were living from a sure faith. Later he wrote: "It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country in order to teach the Georgian Indians the nature of Christianity. But what have I learned myself in the meantime? Why (what I the least of all suspected), that I who went to America to convert others, was never myself converted to God." (Jan 29, 1738, V 1 Journal the Jackson Edition ubp)
- Conversion, Wesley discovered, did not begin with doing many good works to earn God's favor, but with a change of heart. Like Luther, he discovered there was no way his own actions could please God nor assuage the wrath of God. But instead he needed to humbly present himself to God, accept by faith the grace of God in salvation, and be changed within and then walk out this salvation day by day.
A Moravian pastor told Wesley to "preach salvation by faith until you have it and then you will preach it because you have it."
So, John preached salvation by faith to congregation after congregation, and was kicked out of many of them, and then on May 24, 1738 attended a Bible Study. The Moravians leading the study were reading from the preface to Luther's commentary on Romans. Here God linked the work and ministry of Martin Luther (who had written the commentary) to that of this great leader John Wesley. That night John wrote "About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."
(Number II--JOURNAL: FROM FEBRUARY 1, 1738 TO AUGUST 12, 1738, Jackson Works.)
This was the beginning of the revival which would save England from revolution, and which would bring Methodism to this nation. The early followers got the name "Methodist" because of how methodically they sought to follow Jesus. But this was the message of the revolution that God loved you and knew your need and called you into relationship with Himself and with others. God invited you into life.
It was not a message of works, of working to make yourself cleaned up enough so God could love you, but that God loved you now, today, and wanted you to turn from sin to Him.
This message swept England. It was a message which called people into community with God and neighbor. We are going to look more into this over the next Sundays.
Today, I want to end with Romans 5 text, for it describes the grace that both Wesley and Luther entered. They had lived by works, sought to earn God's justification, and ended up living by grace, trusting that it was already theirs.
The transformation that happened to both men relates to the very basic truth of the gospel, as I have said already, we cannot 'earn' God justifying grace, but enter it by faith.
The book of Romans tells the story itself of our human plight as grace is offered, but the story of sin unfolds in chapters one and two detailing how both those who are living as pagans and those who think they are religious are equally sinful, equally in need of God's grace. In chapter three the apostle summarizes what he has already announced saying that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Then in chapter 4 tells how God justifies us people not by works on our part, but by grace through faith. Just as Abraham our forefather in the faith was declared righteous by God when he believed not when he had done works to please God.
This conclusion of Paul's brings him to this great statement in chapter five, "Therefore, since we are justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…" All the works we can muster cannot earn God's righteousness in our lives. Faith precedes any work. The just will live by faith, chapter one had declared. They are declared just and from then on continue to live by "faith" in God not by "sight."
So what happens as we trust, we are told, we "enter grace." WE are no longer "outside" of the realm of God's grace, but through Jesus "we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand…"
It is like we were "outside" of grace but then because of all that God has done, we have access into grace.
If I could have some volunteers to come up and form a circle. These folk have become a picture of this realm of God's grace, and by faith, I enter it as I respond to the Gospel. I move from being "outside of grace" into the atmosphere of grace. And then I live and move and have my being in the grace and presence of the triune God. If I walk this way, I am still walking in God's grace. If I move back another way, I still am walking in grace.
This is that John and Martin discovered so many years ago. They discovered that the grace of God alone brings forth God's glory in our lives. Whereas all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, in chapter three, now in chapter five we "rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." God's glory can be made manifest in my life and yours through grace. It is by faith not by works.
We stand securely in grace not based upon our successful attempts to follow, but based upon what God has done. We stand in grace. And we live in a community that does not say: "oh, your sins are great" but challenges us and helps us to learn to tackle sin with Jesus and win. We live in a community that stands with us.
Grace is God's undeserved, never could be earned favor. It is a parent who says, I love you, no matter what you do or say, nothing will change the fact that I love you, I am willing to die for you, I give myself for you, I treasure who you are, I encourage you to never give up on life. You are my beloved son, my beloved daughter. I love you.
Grace.
It is a big word in God's vocabulary, and the Reformation and the Wesleyan revival, and the great work of salvation through the campmeeting movement in America all hinged upon the discovery of Grace again.
Do you need to discover grace in your life?
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