Imprisoned In Our Disobedience. Romans 11:28-32
Sermon by Pastor Dennis R. Gleason -- August 7, 2005
28Many of the Jews are now enemies of the Good News. But this has been to your benefit, for God has given his gifts to you Gentiles. Yet the Jews are still his chosen people because of his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 29For God’s gifts and his call can never be withdrawn. 30Once, you Gentiles were rebels against God, but when the Jews refused his mercy, God was merciful to you instead. 31And now, in the same way, the Jews are the rebels, and God’s mercy has come to you. But someday they, too, will share in God’s mercy. 32For God has imprisoned all people in their own disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone.
Do you know how Eskimos kill wolves for their skins? Wolves are pretty ferocious and in packs are quite dangerous. However, the Eskimos find it quite easy to deal with them. What they do is this: the take a sharp knife and dip it into some animal blood. As it freezes, they add additional layers of blood. Once they have a number of layers of blood on the knife, they place the knife securely in the snow and wait for the wolves to come. The wolf has a very sensitive nose and is able to smell the blood from a great distance. When the wolf finds the blood coated knife it begins to lick the blood off the knife blade. The knife blade cuts the wolf’s tongue and it begins to bleed and the wolf eventually bleeds to death as it eats (drinks) its own blood until it dies.
The wolf is trapped by its own hunger.
Our text for today tells us that God has imprisoned all people in their own disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone…Jew and Gentile alike.
God created mankind and did so in order that he might have fellowship with us and that we might have fellowship with each other. However, when sin came into the world the relationship between God and man was broken. The break in that relationship caused by sin, broke the relationship between the man and the woman and everyone who has ever lived. We live in a world of broken relationships.
What does man want? He wants freedom. He wants to be free to do what he wants, when he wants and how he wants. His cry is a cry: Give me freedom. Ultimately what freedom does man want? He wants freedom from God. He wants to be free from the constraints that God places on us. He wants to be free from God. In his quest for freedom man will either worship created things, animate or inanimate. What he chooses to worship are demons and doctrines of demons. Or he becomes an atheist. An atheist is one who does not believe in God at all. It is not because there isn’t ample evidence in the world around us that points to God’s existence. He says there is no God and because there is no God, I can live the way I want. I am truly free! For the atheist the decision to say there is no God is a moral decision and not one of faith. He wants to live a certain way and cannot if God actually exists. So in order to live the way they want to live, they simply declare that God does not exist. Then they are free to live the way they want without any constraints at all.
The end result of all this is that people worship the creation and reject the creator.
Isaiah 53:6 tells us
6All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.
This is not a passive disobedience. It is a very active, choice to leave the path of true faith in God. It is an active choosing to go one’s own way. This is not disobedience that is based on ignorance. It is a willful choice that is made to go our own way.
This choice is an act of insolence. This disobedience is indicated by a word that means that we refuse to be convinced, or persuaded. It all adds up to a spirit of outright stubbornness and open resistance. In our drive to be free, we openly resist God and refuse to believe. That is a position common to all men.
However, in John 8 we are told that when we sin we become slaves of sin. We want to be free. But the very freedom we want leads us into slavery…slavery to sin with all its destructiveness to us.
Think about what happens when we sin. The Bible makes it clear that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Think of how many things that are wrong for us are addictive. When some thing is addictive, we find that we cannot do without it. Our behavior changes to make room for the addictive things in our lives.
Caffeine is addictive
Nicotine is addictive
Alcohol is addictive
Drugs can be addictive…think of the person who is hooked on heroin, or cocaine.
We have recently been told that sex can be addictive…usually the wrong kind is
Computer games can be addictive
What is an addiction? Addiction: the condition of being a slave to a habit. You are addicted when you are unable to give up a habit. So an addict is a person who is a slave to a habit. The World Book Dictionary.
When our desires are out of control, we call it lust. Lust is like a raging wild fire that is out of control. The end result is destruction. When our desires burn out of control, there is no freedom.
The world says, “Get rid of God and you will be free. Then you can live the way you want.”
Jesus, however, told us “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” The truth is that when we go our own way there is nothing but death and destruction.
The wages of sin is death.
When a person works an eight-hour day and receives a fair day's pay for his time, that is a wage. When a person competes with an opponent and receives a trophy for his performance, that is a prize. When a person receives appropriate recognition for his long service or high achievements, that is an award. But when a person is not capable of earning a wage, can win no prize, and deserves no award--yet receives such a gift anyway--that is a good picture of God's unmerited favor. This is what we mean when we talk about the grace of God.
G.W. Knight, Clip-Art Features for Church Newsletters, p. 53.
God says that people are imprisoned in their own disobedience.
The word imprisoned is a word that literally means “hemmed in. What happens to you when you feel that someone or something has “hemmed you in”? You are uncomfortable to say the least. You look for a way out of the situation that has you hemmed in. God says that when we sin we get hemmed in by the very sin itself…our disobedience hems us in.
God hems you in so that he can show you mercy. That is the point of what happens when we become slaves of our disobedience and sin. The thing that we think will bring freedom to us is the thing that enslaves us. We become slaves and lose the very freedom we long for.
And God shows us mercy. All the while we are imprisoned in our disobedience, God is calling to us. He is reaching out to us. He is offering us mercy. It is our for the taking…for the turning from our sin. All we have to do is renounce our own way and go God’s way. Remember, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life…” He would show us mercy if we would only come to Him. He cares for us. He loves us. But he will hem us in in our own disobedience so we will look to him as the way out of the mess of our lives.
What is mercy?
Mercy is compassion, clemency, forgiveness. It comes from the Latin word marces which has to do with “pay or a favor” It is a word of the heart. The love of God’s heart makes mercy possible.
God offers us mercy when we are actively in rebellion and disobedience, when we are dead in our trespasses and sin. It is when we are actively rebellious and disobedient that God comes to us.
Who can have mercy? The humble of heart.
Who cannot have mercy? The self-righteous person. It is the person who says, “I can handle this myself. I don’t need God.
“…Jesus…wasn't afraid of giving the prodigal son a kiss instead of a lecture, a party instead of probation; and he proved that by bringing in the elder brother at the end of the story and having him raise pretty much the same objections you do. He's angry about the party. He complains that his father is lowering standards and ignoring virtue--that music, dancing, and a fatted calf are, in effect , just so many permissions to break the law. And to that, Jesus has the father say only one thing: "Cut that out! We're not playing good boys and bad boys any more. Your brother was dead and he's alive again. The name of the game from now on is resurrection, not bookkeeping.
Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three.
I think I used this illustration some time ago, but it bears repeating because of what it shows us about mercy.
Years after the death of President Calvin Coolidge, this story came to light. In the early days of his presidency, Coolidge awoke one morning in his hotel room to find a cat burglar going through his pockets. Coolidge spoke up, asking the burglar not to take his watch chain because it contained an engraved charm he wanted to keep. Coolidge then engaged the thief in quiet conversation and discovered he was a college student who had no money to pay his hotel bill or buy a ticket back to campus. Coolidge counted $32 out of his wallet -- which he had also persuaded the dazed young man to give back! -- declared it to be a loan, and advised the young man to leave the way he had come so as to avoid the Secret Service! (Yes, the loan was paid back.)
--Dennis Gleason
