As we continue to experience The Word of the Lord together, let us pray. We know your nature, Eternal Spirit of the universe, because we know your actions in the past, and we know you personally. Instill in us the desire to be defined by your Salvation, of which we hope, and of which we are assured in your life, so that we may know more fully your grace. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught, but if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, thou who art our rock and our redeemer, Amen.

Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Romans. Listen for God’s Word for you today. Romans 13.11-14. The grass withers, the flower falls, but The Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

How do you define yourself? We have all known people who define themselves, and therefore find their self worth, in all sorts of things. We have known people who define themselves by what they look like, or by the fact that they are smarter than others, or more athletic than others. And we have all known some that are positive too, people who define themselves by being a good person or good parent, a good spouse, well read, articulate, whatever. What is your particular combination? We all have our combinations of how we define ourselves. And the catch is that we act according to how we do define ourselves. If we consider ourselves to be baseball experts, not that I would know anything about that, then we read up on baseball, we talk baseball, we revel in back to back comebacks against hated rivals that lead to the impossible, coming back from a 3-0 deficit in a 7 game series. 14^th inning homeruns and 12^th inning singles keep people like that up well past 1 a.m. Those people, whoever they are, live a life that is affected by baseball. We are affected by how we define ourselves.

Paul spends much of the 12^th and 13^th chapters of Romans writing about by what we as followers of Christ, as believers in God, should be defined. In the opening of chapter 12 he writes that we should not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds, into God reality. In 12, Paul gives marks of the Christian. And in 13, right before today’s section, Paul writes about being defined by love, that which we know through Jesus Christ, God incarnate. And then this last section of 13 that we have before us today, makes a shift. Paul is trying to get the people to see themselves in the reality of God, which is defined by the future. He uses language like “Salvation is near to us,” and “the day is near.” This is future language, anyone in the first century would immediately recognize it as such, and we should be aware of it. Paul wants us to be defined by the future, by the future we know we have in store for us by the power of God.

Last week I preached on Christ the King. The whole reason we have a Sunday known as such is to recognize and to celebrate the fact that our future, our eternal future, is secure. In the 1998 movie, The Truman Show, a woman wears a pin. The pin reads, How will it all End? And Jim Carrey’s character says about it, “I’ve been wondering that myself.” As Christians, we know how it will all end, what the outcome will be; God will win over evil, God will claim creation as God’s belonging, and our future will be with our king Jesus Christ. That is our future, and Paul wants us to define ourselves knowing the future.

What are we defined by? We are defined by the future. This is one of Paul’s points in Romans. We are people who live defined by the future that God has in store for us, people who know that God keeps promises, people who live in trust and faith, because we are people who God has claimed as God’s own children.

The problem is, it is sometimes hard in this world to be sure of the future. It is a dark hurting world, and these are difficult times in which we live. How can we be sure of the future? It’s hard enough to be sure of the present. If we can’t be sure of it, how can we claim it and let it define us, let it be our defining characteristic? I want to share two songs with you. The first is a personal favorite of mine, one by David Wilcox, a folk singer from the wonderful town of Black Mountain, N.C. [Matt moves away from the microphone at this point and the sound is muffled until the music begins.] The other is one we share. The Wilcox song is entitled Show the Way. It goes like this: [Listen to the audio to hear the song.]

The other lyric I want to read for you may sound a little more familiar. It is from a song called Come, Share the Lord. The third verse of that song is as follows.

We’ll gather soon, where angels sing; we’ll see the glory of our Lord and coming King; now we anticipate the feast for which we wait: come, take the bread, come, drink the wine, come share the Lord. Amen.