God Has Rights Too! Romans 12 :2
Sermon by Pastor Dennis R. Gleason -- August 21, 2005
Pastor Don Baker relates a story of Rev. Tom Erickson: The Public Library has a system called "Dial-A-Tale." Anytime a young child wants to hear a fairy tale, he can call the number and a voice comes on reading a short fairy tale to the listening young ear. However, the number is only one digit different from Rev. Tom Erickson. Because the small fingers often make a mistake, Tom gets frequent calls from a child listening for a fairy tale.
After several unsuccessful attempts to explain a wrong number to the small child, Tom felt he had only one alternative. He obtained a copy of Three Little Pigs, and set it by the phone. Now, whenever a child calls, he simply reads them the tale. A beautiful illustration of yielding personal rights. He didn't, as you might have thought, change his telephone number to avoid the "invasion of his privacy."
Source Unknown.
We live in a culture that says “Stand Up For Your Rights.” “Defend Your Rights”
It started with Bill of Rights in our Constitution
And then it was Civil Rights.
And now we have Animal Rights
Property Rights
Gay and Lesbian Rights
Human Rights
Privacy Rights
Child Rights
Disability Rights
Reproductive Rights
Voting Rights
Access Rights (to the Internet)
Women’s Rights
Elder Rights
Water Rights if you live out West
Tax Payer Rights ( a recent addition to our rights)
Employee Rights
Digital Rights
Copy Rights
Rights ad nauseum…Rights, Rights, Rights and no respect or responsibilities.
Our Text is the end of the Passage we considered last week…Romans 12:1-2…
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2Do not conform any longer 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.
Verse 2 tells us that God has a will…He must have one if you and I can test and approve it and find it good, pleasing and perfect.
We need to remember something very important about our relationship with God. He initiated it. He created the Universe and all that is in it…including us. He created the first man and woman…the man from ordinary clay and the woman from the man’s rib. We did not evolve from apes or any kind of monkeys. That is a lie of the devil who wants to deceive us into believing that we just happened somewhere along the pathway of evolution. You can believe all that trash if you want to…people do all the time. But it is not how it happened. If you don’t want God in your life then you need to believe that man just happened as part of the evolutionary cycles. We are just like the other animals…just better at surviving.
Now, if God created the Universe and everything in it, He must have done it with some purpose in mind. His purpose is therefore, the important thing in regards to what happens on the earth and in the Universe around us. It is all about God. Everything revolves around God and not us.
We find that hard to believe as human beings. We are the “top dog” on earth and we can mold and make the environment around us to be what we want. We can go where we want and do what we want and move mountains if necessary to accomplish it. So we think we are the most important ones.
The suggestion I have for us today is that God has rights.
He can do what He wants any time and any where.
There is the joke about a 1,000 pound gorilla. “What can a thousand pound gorilla do? Anything he wants!”
Well, God is not a thousand pound gorilla, but as the creator of the Universe He can do anything he wants. He has the right to do anything he wants to do in your life, with your life. You do not belong to yourself. You belong to Him. He made you. He has sustained you. He has provided for you. He has a certain will or plan for you. And it is His plan. It is not your plan, but God’s plan that matters. And he has the right to do what He wants to do in your life.
To come to an understanding of His Rights we need to look at Luke 13:6-9 – the Parable of the Vinyard. The Parable can help us to come to find the true standards for the measurement of human lives.
6Then Jesus used this illustration: “A man planted a fig tree in his garden and came again and again to see if there was any fruit on it, but he was always disappointed. 7Finally, he said to his gardener, ‘I’ve waited three years, and there hasn’t been a single fig! Cut it down. It’s taking up space we can use for something else.’
8“The gardener answered, ‘Give it one more chance. Leave it another year, and I’ll give it special attention and plenty of fertilizer. 9If we get figs next year, fine. If not, you can cut it down.’”
The People with whom Jesus was speaking imagined that there were degrees of sin. It is much the same today. We usually compare ourselves with each other and figure that we are not really such a bad lot after all. We actually come off quite well as we compare ourselves with each other.
This parable is a picture of ordinary life. It has a very Eastern coloring with the vineyard and the fig tree. You and I could exchange the word garden for vineyard and the words apple tree for the fig tree. The sense would be the same.
The parable reveals three things that are of importance to us:
- The rights of the proprietor.
- The interference of the intercessor.
- The position of the property.
The first right of the proprietor (God) is the absolute right of possession. The plant was in His vineyard. It was his plant. He had the absolute right of ownership.
The second right grows out of the first one: It was the moral right of expectation. He came seeking fruit, and he had the perfect right to seek the fruit. What is a fig tree for? It is there to produce fruit…figs.
He had a third right when he found no fruit on the tree. He said, “Cut it down; it is taking up space that we could use for something else.” He had the right to say that. His right to destroy the tree was based on his right to expect fruit from the tree and the failure of the tree to produce any. It was enhanced by his patience; it took up space, soil and strength, which at the disposal of another tree would have produced fruit.
We have heard a lot about the rights of men. And while we hear very little about the rights of God we need to consider them now as we work our way through this section of our study in Romans.
God has an absolute right in all human lives. The sovereignty of God is based on the fact that every man is the creation of God. We are the thought of God. We are God created; physically, mentally, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally and volitionally. Man is made in the image and likeness of God, made by God. We are therefore the property of God. He has an absolute right of proprietorship, that is, ownership. Our lives are lived in God’s world. We enjoy his sunshine, and his rain.
Think about it for a moment. Even though we know that the devil is ruling over the world in some limited manner, evil has never made a blade of grass. It has destroyed many. The devil has never made anything; but he has destroyed much. Evil is destructive and not constructive. It makes nothing. It only breaks and destroys.
We are in God’s world. All of the forces of life are the forces He has given us. His right of ownership is based upon His creation.
God also has the right of moral expectation.
If man is God’s creation;
if all the forces of his being have come to him from God;
if man is living his life in God’s world in the midst of resources God has provided;
God has the right to expect fruit.
What fruit? We might ask. What has God a right to expect from a man? If you ask what you have a right to expect from an apple tree…you would say, apples. God requires from a man…manhood. That manhood is to be viewed in relationship with Christ Jesus. Are we at all like Him. I am to find out what I am by comparison of my life with the life of Jesus Christ. For in Jesus Christ there is the revelation to me of the true meaning of my own nature. He was a man who honored the will of God; who lived out his life in obedience to the plan of God.
My life is a failure when measured by that standard.
Because man has failed to produce that kind of fruit…God has the right to destroy him. It is not just that man has failed God, but that God has also been so long patient with us. God looks at mankind and finds no fruit to gladden or satisfy his heart.
There is no worship in the way of love to Him.
There is no service in the way of helpfulness to others.
And all of this in spite of God’s great patience with us.
Men are simply taking up space that could prove fruitful if God removed the fruitless plant and replaced it with another.
God has the right to cut down the fruitless tree when the tree is simply taking up space.
But thank God there is another in the parable. It is the story of the intercessor. The intercessor pleads with the owner of the vineyard for more time…time to work the soil and to add nourishment to it with the expectation that fruit will come.
Jesus came into the world to produce in man the fruit for which God is seeking. The goal is that we might become like Him.
He came to save us. He came to free us from the failure of fruitlessness. He came to remake us so that we can be what God wants us to be. In his love for us, he begins working with us so that we might become what God wants.
However, if after all his digging and introduction of the new forces into our life, the tree remains barren, then he says to the owner of the vineyard, “Cut it down!”
Jesus asks God to let him deal with the tree to make it fruitful.
The purpose of the tree in the vineyard…is fruit.
If there is fruit the tree will abide. It will have fulfilled the purpose of its being. The fruit will have satisfied God’s requirement and expectation.
And now the purpose of all this is that God has a will of His own for me. The only way in which I can produce the fruit he is expecting is for me to live out Romans 12:1,2. It is in the transformation of our lives by the Spirit of Christ that we will begin to bear fruit. As we yield our lives to him, he will place at our disposal those forces by which our will can be remade and produce the fruit God is looking for.
--Dennis Gleason
