church

INI
The Eighth Sunday after Trinity
July 26, 2009
Ascension Lutheran Church, Tacoma WA
Paul Naumann, Pastor

CHRISTIANITY IS NOT CONVENIENT
Acts 24:24-25

Grace, mercy, and peace be with you from God the Father and from the Lord
Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, Amen. The Word that God would lay on
your hearts this morning comes from the 24th chapter of Acts, verses 24 and
25, as follows:

And after some days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish,
he sent for Paul and heard him concerning the faith in Christ. Now as he
reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was
afraid and answered, "Go away for now; when I have a convenient time I will
call for you." Here ends our text.

In Christ Jesus, Who paid the terribly high price of our redemption, Dear
Fellow Redeemed,

As an instrument of convenience, the telephone has come a long way. Some of
you remember rural trunk lines where as many as a dozen neighbors had to
share a single phone line. When individual lines were introduced it was
obviously more convenient, but it was also more expensive. Phone extensions
came next; now you could have phones in several rooms of your house instead
of just one. The next big thing was cordless phones, which at the time were
much more expensive than corded phones. For some time now, of course, we've
had the ever-present cell phone, and it's expensive, too. I'm always amazed at
what some people are willing to pay per month for their cell phone ($80, $100,
more?) Now there's even such a thing as a satellite phone, which will let you
communicate anywhere in the entire world, from the north pole to the Gobi
desert. Very convenient. But that convenience will cost you: with rates up to
$15/minute, you may find yourself paying nearly $500 for a half-hour phone
call!

The point I want to make is that convenience always comes with a price.
Sometimes it's worth it. Sometimes it's not. When people decide they want
convenience in their spiritual lives, the price they end up paying is very often far
too high. In our text for today, we meet a man who put off hearing the Gospel
until a more convenient time. As far as we know, that "more convenient time"
never arrived for him! Our theme today is:

CHRISTIANITY IS NOT CONVENIENT
I. God's Law inconveniences everyone who hears it.
II. Jesus suffered the greatest inconvenience ever, to save us.

Does the name Antonius Felix mean anything to you? Probably not. You'd
have to be a specialist in Roman history to have heard of him. He was the
Roman procurator of Judea from 52-58 AD. A harsh ruler and a greedy one,
history says that his willingness to accept bribes and pervert justice led to an
increase in crime during his rule. He was interested in the Jews; his second wife
Drusilla was Jewish, the daughter of Herod Agrippa. All in all, though, Felix is
not important in world history. His name has not gone down in the annals of
Roman glory. But to students of the Bible, he's remembered as a man who
wanted a convenient faith.

Felix happened to be the procurator at the time when the Apostle Paul was
imprisoned in Jerusalem for preaching the Gospel. Felix was evidently
interested in Paul. One day he had the guards bring Paul to his court so that he
could hear him speak on the subject of Christianity. Little did he realize how
much inconvenience that message would cause him.

When the Apostle stood before Felix and Drusilla, he made it clear that his
message was about Jesus Christ. He went on to talk about morality, and
self-control, and the coming judgment. His message hit a nerve in the lives of
these two people, both of whom had abandoned their first spouses to marry
each other, and whose lives were notoriously ungodly. But instead of taking the
Word of God to heart, Felix waved his hand and dismissed Paul, saying, "Go
away for now; when I have a convenient time I will call for you." He didn't
close the door altogether, but for the present time, he didn't want Christianity to
tell him that he was living a life of sin.

There are a lot of people in our world who are like Felix and Drusilla. People
who have only an academic interest in religion. People who really can't be
bothered with God in the ordinary routine of their day-to-day life, but who want
to have Him handy in case of emergencies. 9/11 is a great example. Remember
that huge surge in church attendance following the terrorist attacks? Barna
Research said attendance jumped 35% overnight. You know how long it took
attendance to go back down? Two months. As soon as the emergency was over,
suddenly Christianity was inconvenient again. Many people will consider
Christianity only if it's convenient. They want their family name on the
membership rolls, but otherwise they'd just as soon the Church leave them
alone. They want a religion that can be put on and taken off like a pair of
Sunday shoes. They want a convenient Christianity. The truth of the matter is,
there's no such thing!

Do you want to see something that's really inconvenient? Read through the
Ten Commandments. Now, there's inconvenience for you! God's Law is very
good at highlighting your sin and confronting you with your sin in a way you
can't ignore. It speaks to you in a very sharp and pointed way. About your
personal sins, your neglect of your Christian duties, your selfishness, your
temper, your pride, your lack of love even toward family members and
fellow-Christians, much less your neighbor! When we hear all that we get
uncomfortable. It's pretty irritating to our sinful flesh when the inflexible and
unchanging Law of God points a finger directly at us. It would be so much more
convenient, wouldn't it, if God's Law made no demands on us. How convenient
it would be if we could all live just the way we wanted to. Yes, by nature we'd
all prefer a more convenient Christianity - one that condones all the things we
like to do.

A friend of mine recently remarked that, no matter what you want to find in a
church, it's out there somewhere today. If you would rather doubt the miracles
of the Bible than believe them, there's a church that will honor your choice. If
you want a church that says sex outside of marriage is ok, and that abortion is
an acceptable solution to an unwanted pregnancy, why, you can drive down the
street and find a church that teaches just that. If you want a church that allows
you to believe that the Bible contains error as well as truth, you won't have to
go far. You can easily find a church that will conveniently ignore God's Word
about these things - and a preacher who will (conveniently!) tell you exactly
what you want to hear.

But is a convenient religion the answer? What if medicine worked that way?
Suppose you went to your family doctor for tests, and afterward he puts his
hand on your shoulder and says, "I've got bad news. You have cancer. But if we
operate right away, we can cure you." But you're not happy with that diagnosis,
so you hunt around until you find another doctor who's willing to lie and say
you're perfectly healthy. I don't have to tell you which doctor is ultimately going
to do you more good. The same is true of a convenient religion. Do you really
want one that hides and distorts the will of God? Are you going to take the
approach of Felix so many years ago and say, When I have a convenient season,
I will call for you? Remember what God said concerning the false-teaching
prophets of Israel: Thus says the LORD of hosts: " Do not listen to the words
of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make you worthless; They speak a
vision of their own heart, Not from the mouth of the LORD. 17 They
continually say to those who despise Me, 'The LORD has said, "You shall have
peace"'; And to everyone who walks according to the dictates of his own heart,
they say, ' No evil shall come upon you.'" …But if they had stood in My
counsel, And had caused My people to hear My words, Then they would have
turned them from their evil way And from the evil of their doing. - Is 23:16-22.

Christianity is not convenient. It lays out the Law of God in its full
condemning force. So why should we listen to it? Why put up the
inconvenience of it, and the squirming discomfort you feel when you hear God's
Law? For a very good reason -- because it's only when the Law has stripped us
of our own righteousness and laid our souls bare, that we're ready to hear the
sweet Gospel of Christ.

But poor Felix - he never got that far! He never let the Law have its intended
effect on him. If he'd only listened to Paul, instead of sending him away. If he'd
only confessed his sins, he could have heard about Jesus. He could have
believed in the Son of God, the One who suffered the greatest inconvenience
ever in order to save a world of sinners.

Read through the life of Jesus - it was one of staggering inconvenience from
beginning to end. True God, Son of the Father, He was perfectly at home in the
glories of heaven. And yet, he chose to take on human flesh and come into our
world - a world that had no room for him. During His life on earth, He had
none of the domestic conveniences that make for a cozy home; in fact, He
didn't even have a permanent home. He said, "Foxes have holes and birds of
the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." Mt 8:20.
Finally, even His friends ran away from Him, and an angry crowd with
blood-lust in its eyes turned on Him and viciously demanded His murder. He
died a shameful and painful death on the cross. Yes, I think you'll agree with me
that the life of Jesus Christ was rather inconvenient!

Why did the Almighty Son of God allow Himself to suffer these
inconveniences? To make a way for you and me to have eternal life. Just so
people like us - people who have failed to keep God's Law, who "daily sin
much and indeed deserve nothing but punishment" - might be covered with the
perfect, atoning righteousness of Christ. And here's a paradox, because what
could be more convenient for us? Jesus pays the price for sin, and we reap all
the benefits! He leads a perfect life in this world, we inherit a life of perfect
happiness in the next world. In the words of the hymn:

What punishment so strange is suffered yonder?
The Shepherd dies for sheep that loved to wander.
The Master pays the debt His servants owe Him -
who would not know Him.
So when, dear Lord, before Thy throne in heaven
To me the crown of joy at last is given,
Where sweetest hymns Thy saints forever raise Thee,
I, too, shall praise Thee.

There's another hymn called, "The Old Rugged Cross." It's not in our hymnal.
It's actually sort of a sentimental old hymn, but it does remind us of one thing:
that Jesus didn't die in some lavish cathedral between two golden candlesticks.
He died on a rough-hewn wooden cross on the skull-shaped hill of Golgotha,
where thieves cursed and soldiers gambled. He drank the bitter cup right to the
bottom. In love, He paid the full price of your sin so that, on Judgment Day,
there wouldn't be a single penny left owing on your account. It was a great
inconvenience for Him, that's for sure. But here's where you see Jesus' love for
you most clearly. He went to the ultimate extreme, just so He could have you
with Him forever in the mansions of Heaven.

Rejoice that you have such a Redeemer! The happiest people on earth are those
who have been "inconvenienced" by the message of Christianity. You know
that in life's darkest hours - when sin and guilt overwhelm you - you don't have
to run and hide. You can place your trust confidently in the righteousness of
Christ. When life deals out its harshest blows to you and your family, you can
count on your loving Savior to hold you up. For, "Who shall separate us from
the love of Christ?" Paul asks. "Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or
famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" No, for "I am persuaded that neither
death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor
things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able
to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" Rom
8:35, 38-39. And if it's just the seeming emptiness of life that's getting you
down, well, remember the words of the old hymn: "The evening always finds
me a day's march nearer home."

At the end of his life, the Apostle Paul had no regrets for having marched
under the banner of the Gospel. From prison in Rome, he wrote to his young
protégé Timothy, "The time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good
fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for
me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to
me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His
appearing." II Tim 4:6-8. For this aged apostle, Christianity had indeed held
many inconveniences, but none greater than those suffered by his Redeemer,
and none that outweighed the future glory that his righteous Redeemer had
earned for him. May it be the same with us! In Jesus' saving name, AMEN.