Redeemed - Romans 5:1-5

 

It was something that I had watched many folks go through in my years of ministry and marriage, but until September I had not experienced it myself.  However, within mere hours of my surgery in September, I was experiencing it.  For most who have experienced it, there is a definite “love-hate” relationship.  What is it?  It is known by many simply as torture, but the professionals call it “physical therapy.”

For anyone that has had surgery or been in an accident, physical therapy is necessary.  Through the pain, growth occurs.  When I began therapy, I was barely able to put my left hand behind my left hip.  Amongst other exercises was one dedicated to increasing the range of motion behind my back.   Each week I would push a little further and hold it a little longer, despite the pain…and while I have not completely regained all of the range of motion prior to my shoulder freezing up, I can now reach the far side of my back in the event of an itch…and if you’ve had an itch in your back that you can’t reach, you know how important that ability is.  Yet, without the pain, I would never have reached that point.

For our college students that have returned home, high school students that are there as well and any of us who have been there…think of finals—final papers and final exams.  Think of the sleepless nights writing and cramming…the skipped dates and parties…and the post caffeine and sugar high crashes.  Yet in the end, when that transcript reflects a passing grade and we find ourselves one year closer to a degree or walking across the stage, we know that it was well worth it.

If you haven’t had to endure physical therapy or been through exams and paper-writing, you can focus in upon today—Mother’s Day…because every one of us here has been on one or the other side of this (or maybe even both).  While I haven’t experienced it, it is made very clear that the experience of child bearing and child birth are extremely difficult and painful.  How many of you here are glad that you or your moms went through that pain?  Without it, this sanctuary would be empty.

For the last couple of weeks we have been talking about temptations, trials, and suffering—those things that the Adversary/the tempter/Satan tries to use to convince us that God doesn’t love us, God doesn’t care about us, or that God isn’t even around.  We’ve learned that God does not tempt us or test us but always provides a way out when we face those trials.  We’ve learned that it is not because God doesn’t care about us that we face these things, but it is because God loves us enough to give us free will and the ability to freely choose to love Him, and loves us enough to set up a world which can sustain life, that we face these things.

The question we have yet to answer, though, is what God does with all of this.  What does God do when we fall to temptation?  What does God do with the suffering that we endure?  What does God do with the mess that we face each day—whether it is the mistakes we make, the suffering others bring upon us, or just the things of life?  If we will seek him, God will redeem it all.  The Bible reveals a history of God working this way.

Remember the story of Joseph and his brothers.  Joseph gave in to the temptation of bragging on the dreams and visions God gave Him…His brothers decided to beat him up and sell him into slavery…He was framed for rape by Potiphar’s wife…He was forgotten by Pharaoh’s cupbearer…finally, when the Pharaoh had dreams that needed to be interpreted, Joseph was remembered and giving the credit to God, Joseph interpreted the dreams and found himself made second in command to Pharaoh.  In this position, Joseph was able to guide and direct events in such a way that when a famine arrived there was plenty of food stored in Egypt…not only enough for the Egyptians, but for the whole region—including his brothers, father, and all of the family.  Joseph truly experienced God’s redemption of his mistakes, suffering as a result of others actions against him, and natural disaster---yet it is as Joseph said when his brothers came to him fearful of retaliation after the death of their dad, “Do not be afraid!  Am I in the place of God?  Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.”  We see God’s complete redemption of everything as Joseph gave himself over to God, in the midst of it all.

The greatest example of God’s redemption in the face of suffering, though, can be seen in the life and death of Christ.  A completely innocent man was scourged within an inch of his life…and for those here who do not know what that scourging entails, Jesus found his hands bound and himself strapped to a post in the center of a courtyard, a cat of nine tails (a leather whip with nine strips, each embedded with sharp pieces of hook shaped metal and/or broken pottery) was used to strike the bound Jesus repeatedly the metal and pottery would dig in and rip out his flesh…later, already weak from blood loss, He was forced to carry the instrument of His execution through the streets of Jerusalem and up to Golgotha…once there, nails were driven through his hands and ankles as he was nailed to the cross and hung to die, enduring hours of suffocation as His body weight made it too difficult to breathe.

Three days later we see God redeem this injustice as He brought forth His Son from the tomb, and with it assured us the forgiveness of our sins and the promise of eternal life.  My brothers and sisters, if God can redeem the atrocity of the cross, we can be sure that there is nothing that we face that God cannot redeem—no mistake, no sin, no suffering, nothing is beyond the redemptive power of our God.  Paul puts it this way in Romans 8, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose…If God is for us, who is against us?”  Nothing is beyond God’s reach and nothing is beyond God’s ability to bring good out of it if we simply open ourselves up to God.

We have seen this happen…not only with healing through physical therapy, or good grades as a result of studying, or a newborn baby after painful childbirth, but in a myriad of other ways that God brings good out of the trials and tribulations of life.  There is the body set free from the bondage of addiction after going through the pains of withdrawal, there is a reformed gang-member who leads others out of a life of violence, there is the community that comes together across racial, educational, and socio-economic barriers to recover from a devastating tornado, there is the cancer-survivor who comes alongside and walks with someone newly diagnosed.  The list can go on and on of ways that God comes in the midst of all and redeems what we have experienced, no matter how painful…and in doing so, as we seek out His will for our lives, makes us stronger and the world around us more reflective of His Kingdom.

This is also what leads Paul to write “we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”  Like those who have endured the pain of physical therapy to find the part of their body weakened by injury or surgery made stronger, so Paul knows that the pain of our suffering accompanied by the faithful response of God, leads better endurance, because we grow in the certainty that God is going to act, and from that growing endurance, it becomes clear that we will trust more and more in God, revealing that we are not people who live in fear or under the cloud of depression but those who live with the sure and certain hope that God is going to have the final word and redeem anything that we must face.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.