Stephen Sizer

On January 6th 1941, the American President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the US Congress on the state of the war in Europe. Much of what he said that day has been long forgotten. But at the close of his address, he said something memorable, that he looked forward “to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.” He named them: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. He died in 1945, just three weeks before the Nazi’s surrendered on April 12th 1945.  He never lived to enjoy the peace he had laboured to secure. Yet Roosevelt was a man of vision and he dreamed of what the world could be, indeed should be, even in its darkest hour. We remember his vision because 60 years ago on 10th December 1948, just three years after the allies had defeated Nazism and peace declared, those four freedoms became incorporated into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Universally, people aspire to and endorse these four freedoms, even though, as we see in places like China, Iran and Zimbabwe, for example, they have not been realised for all on earth. Yet without them people give up hope.

In Jesus Christ I am Secure from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

This evening I want us to consider four of our throne rights as children of God. The rights the Lord Jesus Christ has won for you because he has defeated the source of evil in our universe, and brought peace between God and humanity. Luther called Romans  ”the clearest Gospel of all”. “If a person understands it”, wrote Calvin, “he has a sure road opened for him to the understanding of the whole Scripture.” John Chrysostom had the Book of Romans read aloud to him once a week. You and I could do a lot worse than that. If Romans is like the Himalayas of the Bible, chapter 8 is the Everest, the highest peak of all. You will not appreciate the view attained from Romans 8, unless you have walked along the path of Romans 1-7, and discovered there that apart from Jesus Christ, you are a lost and helpless sinner. Just as there would have been no Declaration of Human Rights without VE Day, so there would be no comfort, no Romans 8 without the victory of the cross and the realisation of the futility of all other paths to God. Because of the victory Christ has won, described in Romans 1-7, we are able to celebrate and appropriate our “Declaration of Throne Rights”, found in Romans 8.

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Do you know why dogs and cats are so different? A dog looks at you with those big brown eyes, cocks its head to one side and says to itself, “You love me, you feed me, you care for me, you take me for walks… you must be God”. A cat looks at you with those piercing green eyes and thinks to itself “You love me, you feed me, you care for me, you stroke me … I must be God”.

There are cat people and there are dog people. There are tennis people and there are golf people. Some people like to sleep with the windows open and some people prefer to sleep with the windows closed – and they are usually married to each other. Some people keep a pen and notepad by the telephone while other people just have children. There are breakfast people and there are people who don’t remember what breakfast is. There are A type people and there are the rest of you. There are Tigger people and there are Eyore people. There are blue sky optimist people and there are chicken little – sky falling in people. And every team has at least one of each. When it comes to finances, some are cheque book people and some are cash people. There are Harrods people and there are T.K. Maxx people. There are Waitrose shoppers and Aldi shoppers. There are carefully balanced every month cheque book people and there are shut the cheque account down every two years and start over people. There are people with stock brokers and there are people perfectly capable of going broke without them. And you know who you are.

Jesus says that ultimately, there are only two kinds of people – the sheep people and the goat people. Do you know which you are?

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.” (Matthew 25:31-33)

Jesus the King and the Sheep and the Goats from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

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