Sermon 4-21-24

Pastor Ray Lorthioir

Trinity Lutheran Church

W. Hempstead, NY

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Leaving Paganism

In Lent we looked at what happens when both individuals and society fall into paganism. For all time Romans 1:18-32 establishes the process for the slide into paganism. And it begins with a pronounced rebellion against our Creator God. We simply decide He’s not really there. Either the universe somehow made itself or for some unknown reason it has eternally existed. And thus, without a Creator God we are free to organize and live life any way we want. The downside of paganism is that the life people then live fully embraces the worst motives and behaviors we humans are capable of.

Here in the seven weeks of Easter, we’re looking at Yahweh’s rescue of pagan society as that rescue was accomplished through Jesus and His Apostles. The rescue began with the news of Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead. It then moved on to everything that His resurrection means. And thus, Christians began to organize and live life according to the will of their Creator. The upside is that honor, commitment and virtue become important categories of existence.

Until this past week, I had never heard of Dr. Rosario Butterfield. For some reason, though, the YouTube algorithm figured that I would want to see her speech at Liberty University’s 2023 convocation. For once, the algorithm was correct. For, Dr. Butterfield’s life story reflects both the descent into paganism and the rescue effected by Jesus Christ.

Dr. Butterfield was born in 1962. She became a tenured assistant professor of English, Women’s Studies and Queer Theory at Syracuse University. She became a Lesbian and was a Homosexual Rights activist. Some of what she wrote in those days became official state policy in regard to LGBTQ. As she says, “I worked laboriously to make homosexuality look wholesome.”

In the 1990’s a movement of Christian men called Promise Keepers appeared across the land. Dr. Butterfield wrote an article about it that appeared in a large New York newspaper. It was entitled “Promise Keepers Message Is A Danger To Democracy.” However, being a true researcher and intellectual, Dr. Butterfield sought to know more about the Promise Keepers movement she was opposing. And, this brought her into contact with a local pastor and his wife with whom she became friends.

Being a true researcher and intellectual, plus an English professor, Dr. Butterfield made the “mistake” of going to the Christian source material, the Bible. And upon invitation she made another “mistake" and started going to church in order to understand things better. And understand things better, she did. After a long struggle with the Word of God, she gave up her LGBTQ worldview, her Lesbianism and sought to become a Christian woman. Eventually she married a conservative Presbyterian minister. These days, she works hard to prevent the Church from surrendering to Feminism and Queer Theory as is happening in many places and denominations. If you’re interested, you can easily look up her lectures and interviews on YouTube.

Now, Dr. Butterfield asserts that she was zealously committed to the pagan worldview she once embraced, taught and practiced. However, she admits that as she studied the Word of God it became clear that the Scripture she was reading proclaimed her an enemy of God because of her very worldview and practice. Therefore, for that reason alone, she could have rejected Scripture and become a dedicated enemy of it, like many who hold the pagan worldview.

But apparently Yahweh had other plans for Dr. Butterfield. The Spirit of the Lord kept her nose in Scripture and kept her in constant contact with Christians. Eventually she came to an absolutely critical point. As she says, “I realized that I now believed that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was objectively true. And it would be true whether I believed it or not.”

But there was an acute connection between the bodily resurrection of Jesus and everything else that God was about to do in her life. Her immediate next words in her testimony are these: “The power of the Word of God overflowed into my world. The image that crashed like waves in a raging sea — [the image] of me and everyone I loved suffering in hell vomited into my consciousness; gripped me in its teeth. We in hell rejected the Bible’s interpretive authority over our lives. The meaning of my homosexuality was laid bare. I worshipped myself. I worshipped my feelings over the God who created me.”

Here’s the important point I’m going to follow through on. Did you notice how her realization that the resurrection of Jesus is real history connected her to the God who created her? Becoming connected to her Creator and the words of our Creator in Genesis chapters one and two is what led Dr. Butterfield out of homosexuality. Those same chapters preserve her in her integrity as a Christian woman to this day.

But before we pursue this further, let’s also examine the sentences I quoted from her speech: “The meaning of my homosexuality was laid bare. I worshipped myself. I worshipped my feelings over the God who created me.” Her words apply not just to homosexuality, but generically to all sinfulness. Therefore, they apply to all of humanity.

Let’s try her statements this way: The meaning of my favorite sins were laid bare. I worshipped myself. I worshipped my feelings over the God who created me. That’s the truth about you. That’s the truth about me. It should be your confession of sin — and mine. I worship my feelings over the God who created me. I have made myself my own god. That’s breaking the first commandment — You shall have no other gods before me. It’s the root of the sin called idolatry. And according to Romans 1:18-32, idolatry is the inevitable consequence of denying our Creator God.

Now, if you and I deny that we have any favorite sins, we’re all liars and enemies of God. Don’t believe it? Just check these two verses from 1 John: 1John 1:8 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 1John 1:10, “If we say we have not sinned, we make him [God] a liar, and his word is not in us.” If you call God a liar, are you His friend or foe?

But, good news is found in the verse in the middle. 1John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This is pure Gospel. And like all pure Gospel it depends entirely on the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Here’s what Paul says about this in 1 Corinthians 1:16-18, “16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.”

Jesus could not have been resurrected from the dead if He hadn’t died. And it was the manner and purpose of His death that alone makes possible with God both the forgiveness of our sins and being cleansed from all unrighteousness. The death of God the Son, incarnate in mortal human flesh through the Virgin Mary, has atoned for all the sin of humanity for all time. And only God, the Son, could have accomplished something this extraordinary. That Jesus did accomplish this tremendous work is proven by His resurrection from the dead incarnate in the first, and as yet only, immortal, righteous human body. The promise of God is that all those who die in Messiah Jesus will also be resurrected with Him in immortal righteous bodies fit to live in the glorious presence of their holy Creator God.

Now, let’s look further into one of Dr. Butterfield’s statements. “We in hell rejected the Bible’s interpretive authority over our lives.” That’s the same as saying, “We in hell rejected our Creator’s authority over our lives and how we live this life.” For the Bible is the Word of the living God. As we’re told in Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

As a young adult, Dr. Butterfield had fallen into paganism. Never in a million years would she have given the Bible any authority over her life. She was her own authority as her own god. However, today she lives under the authority of the only true Creator God, through His Word. How did that happen?

Just as St. Paul gives us a description of the way individuals and societies can fall into paganism, he also gives us a description of God’s rescue plan for pagans. It’s found in the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Indeed, that chapter can be seen as Law and Gospel in a nutshell. And it describes what happened to Dr. Butterfield and what can happen to anyone Yahweh is rescuing from the present pagan society.

Ephesians 2:1-3, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

With these verses, Paul summarizes his discourse in Romans chapters 1, 2 and 3. As we saw during Lent, in chapter 1 of Romans, Paul showed for all time the consequences of denying the existence of our Creator God — namely the fall into paganism. In chapter 2, which we didn’t look at, Paul shows how the Jews — who were the only people in the first century who knew and worshipped the true Creator God — were no better off. While the Jews had knowledge of Yahweh and had His glorious commandments, the sinful nature all people inherit from Adam made it impossible even for the Jews to obey the Law in a way pleasing to God. Therefore, Paul’s discourse reaches this conclusion in Romans 3:22-23, “22. . . For there is no distinction: [meaning between Jew and Gentile] 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. . . .” 

Paul has described this same situation for us in the opening verses of Ephesians chapter 2. Both Jews and Gentiles are born dead in sins and trespasses. We’re all children of wrath on account of what Adam’s Original Sin did to the entire human race. That sin made us all our own gods. We’re born having to define and decide good and evil for ourselves just like little gods. We’re not born righteous with our nature completely in tune with Yahweh’s righteous nature. That’s what makes us children destined for His wrath. That’s what puts us in hell both here and forever unless we’re rescued by the Son of God.

Ephesians 2:4-7, “4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Without Yahweh’s character trait of mercy, we would all be damned to eternal hell. Human mercy is when you and I have the power and to harm and injure, but we don’t. Yahweh’s mercy is that He has the rightful power and authority to punish and injure those who have rebelled against Him, but He doesn’t. In fact, in His mercy He does good to us who have done evil and have rejected Him.

The good He has done for us is that when we were yet helpless in our god-playing rebellion, only deserving wrath, He sent Jesus. And as the Gospel tells us, Jesus took the wrath of God upon Himself in our place — in all of humanity’s place. Again, the death of God, the Son, upon a cross has satisfied Yahweh’s justice. Yahweh's wrath has been satisfied. And because of that, He has poured out on humanity what Scripture calls regeneration — being born again. Born in the grip of Original Sin, humanity is reborn in Messiah’s righteousness, so that we can stand before our holy Creator, righteous in His sight. To be sure, those born again in this life do not have the total righteousness that they will have resurrected in Jesus. However, even in this life, all saved by grace through faith have a standing with Jesus that entitles them to a marvelous future of total righteousness.

So, note what verses 4-7 say. Even though we have not yet died physically, if we’re regenerated in Christ by faith, we’ve already been made alive and bodily resurrected with Jesus. We’re already seated with Him at the right hand of God totally in Yahweh’s favor. This great favor depends entirely upon and is intimately entangled with Jesus’ bodily resurrection. Without Jesus’ resurrection, we don’t have this standing.

And our standing is by pure grace — pure gift, pure mercy — from our Creator Himself. Therefore, it can only be by faith in God’s Word of promise that we can have such standing with God, and be assured that it is so.

Thus, we read in Ephesians 2:8-9, “8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Just as Adam’s disbelief in God’s Word was the ruin of everything, so faith in Jesus, the Word of God is, the restoration of everything. And here we’re told that the faith to trust the work of Messiah Jesus is a gift from God Himself. Therefore, our salvation is entirely because of God’s mercy, and not because we have in any way deserved it or earned it. That’s what the phrase, “not by works,” means.

And there’s one more verse to go. Ephesians 2:10 “For we are his [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” All the previous verses change the human heart. The tenth verse changes the world. For, how we individually live in the midst of society changes everything. And what standards a society collectively has changes the world for everyone. And what a society’s rulers think and act upon changes the world for the people they rule.

Now, when we think of good works, we have a tendency to think of individual acts of good — like buying a hungry person a meal. There’s nothing wrong with thinking this way. However, it’s too limited. We read in 2Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he [God] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” What is the righteousness of God? It’s living in God’s gracious good will for us.

After spending eleven chapters in Romans teaching about the full depth of God’s grace toward us in Jesus Christ, Paul begins the twelfth chapter this way. Romans 12:1-2, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Having been regenerated and born again in Messiah, we are to present our whole selves to the Lord. This includes our bodies which are our means of action in this world. A living sacrifice is an oxymoron. When animal sacrifice was made to the Lord under the Old Covenant, the animal was killed. But it’s plain that Christians are not to kill themselves before the Lord. Rather, we are to live. But how are we to live? That’s the question.

We are to live dead to sin, the world and the devil. That’s the sacrifice. We’re not to be conformed to the ungodly ways of the pagan world systems. Rather, our minds are to be transformed by the Word of God into Yahweh’s way of thinking and doing. From God’s Word we are to discern what is good, acceptable and perfect in His sight and live that way. After all, that’s what our lives will be all about in the coming glorious Kingdom of God.

Now, this is not easily done. In fact, it’s doable only because Lord Holy Spirit exerts His power in the mortal, sinful bodies of believers, thereby overcoming sin and the power of the devil. In the coming weeks we’re going to describe the upward curve that Jesus Christ produces in the life of the world wherever He is worshipped and acknowledged as King of humanity. The entire upward curve depends on the world-changing good works Yahweh has prepared for us to do.

However, our purpose today is to note how the ancient pagan world was transformed into the Christian societies of the high middle ages and apply this to ourselves. It all started with the resurrection of Messiah Jesus. Those who were given faith to believe the good news were regenerated in their very beings so that they could believe in Yahweh, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who is the Creator of everything that exists. This is something they could not do as pagans.

And given power to believe in a Creator God, the new believers submitted themselves to Yahweh’s righteous commands and His righteous virtues. This is what changed the ancient pagan world.

And nothing has changed. God’s means of grace can change any society that has slipped back into paganism — even ours. It all begins with the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead and moves on to faith in our Creator God. This is the story of the traditional Christian Church. All praise and glory be to the all-powerful, living God. Amen.

All Bible quotes are from the ESV.