Sermon Notes 7/29: The Problem of Evil: The “Already” and the “Not Yet”

Do you guys remember the story of the Prodigal Son? It is one of Jesus’ most famous parables and addresses the topic of sin and redemption. The story is located in Luke Chapter 15 and I’m going to read it to you now because it provides a good illustration of Paul’s theological argument up to the point we have been looking so far in his letter to the Romans. We are going to be looking in Chapter 5 of Paul’s letter to the Romans today, but I want to read this text because I think it really offers a good illustration of where we are in the argument so far. I will be reading from The Message.

Then [Jesus] said, “There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’

“So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.

“That brought him to his senses. He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.’ He got right up and went home to his father.

“When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’

“But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time.” (Luke 15:11-27 MSG).

This is such a rich passage and there is really a lot here. We could spend weeks going over all of the things we can learn here. You probably know that there is more to this story than what I just read but that’s all a message for a different day. For today it is good just to look at this part and think about how it applies to what we have been studying in Romans.

Of course, when we read this story, I think we probably almost always identify ourselves with the younger son. This is in recognition of our own shortcomings. I think all of us, if we are honest with ourselves, can identify with the rebellion and selfishness of this character, and we should. One of the really interesting things about the story is that when you think about it in the context in which Jesus told it we come away with the realization that we can identify with the other two characters: the older son and the father, also. But again, that’s for a different day.

For today let’s just go with being the younger son. He is called prodigal because he is extravagantly wasteful. Prodigal means extravagant. He takes the livelihood of the father and just wantonly casts it away to satisfy his own passions and lust, with no care for the consequences either now or in the future. He doesn’t care who gets hurt as a result, or how.

Now the idea of asking for your inheritance before the death of the parent would have been a real act of rebellion in the society Jesus is telling his story to. No one ever inherited anything before the father was dead. And so that meant that when the younger son asked for his inheritance from his father while he was still alive, he was really saying he wished the father was dead. In a patriarchal and honor based society like the ancient Middle East this would have been an unconscionable act of disrespect. Jesus’ listeners would have been intrigued that the father gave in to the request, and shocked at what the younger son did.

They would have been even more shocked when the younger son decided to return to the father, which would have been incredibly bold, and they would have been absolutely astounded that the father received him back. That would have been utterly beyond belief. For the kind of disrespect the younger son had shown, the father would have been expected to disown the son. But instead the father eagerly, joyfully, welcomes him back to his full estate, and throws a big party to celebrate. This kind of love would have been beyond extravagant. That is why a recent book looking at this story by Tim Keller is titled The Prodigal God, because in this story it is really God who is extravagant with his love. That’s a book I highly recommend. In fact I highly recommend anything written by Tim Keller. In fact, much of what I am going to tell you today comes from another book by Tim Keller, The Reason For God. So now none of you can accuse me of plagiarism.

But I digress. The love that the father shows here would have seemed so extravagant to Jesus’ listeners as to seem almost foolish. The father would have forfeited the thing that was of supreme value in that society – honor – out of his overwhelming love for his lost child. And of course this is the point Jesus wanted to make: that the love of the Father is so great he will gladly give up the thing most precious to him in order to receive back his lost children.

Now isn’t this the very thing that Paul has described in his letter to the Romans so far? That all of God’s children stood condemned through their own fault, through their own rebellion, both Jew and Gentile, but that the well of God’s mercy was so deep that the Father was willing to sacrifice the thing most precious to him, his own son, to restore his lost children to full estate. This was all and entirely by the initiative of God, and no human could claim that he had done anything to deserve it. Redemption was made freely available to those God chose and all they had to do to receive it was claim it – and to act like they claimed it. And of course that last thing was the hard thing as we looked at last week, making that step of faith.

So the place in Jesus’ parable of the lost son where the Father welcomes back the son illustrates the place we are in Paul’s letter to the Romans. But what happened to the son after he was welcomed back by the father? It’s not recorded in the gospel. We are left with this wonderful scene of reconciliation. But what changed for the son? And was the son changed? We don’t know. And what happens to us after we become the receivers of God’s amazing grace? That’s what Paul starts to tell us about in the part of Romans we are looking at today.

5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

⁶ You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

⁹ Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! ¹⁰ For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! ¹¹ Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:1-11 NIV)

Just to summarize, I think Paul is describing to what happens after salvation by pointing to the resurrection. Christ’s death paid the penalty for our rebellion, but his life brings us peace with God.

This outlook of Paul’s, in fact, the whole Christian outlook, can be pretty frustrating by worldly standards, because there seems to be such a distance between the promise we read in verse 1 of this text and the way the world is. Verse 1 promises “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1 NIV). We have peace with God. What does it mean to have peace with God?

Peace in the context of any Jewish Biblical writing of this period would have represented the Hebrew word shalom. When we think of the word peace we usually think of it in the context of an absence of conflict or war. Shalom does mean that but it means more. The verb form of shalom suggests making restitution for harm done. If for example someone caused damage to his neighbor’s property, he could make shalom with his neighbor by somehow paying for the damage done. The noun shalom has the more literal meaning of being in a state of wholeness or with no deficiency. The action of shalom or restitution brings about the state of being shalom which means a relationship of wholeness without deficiency. Paul’s use of shalom would have brought to mind to people living in Paul’s day the concept of making full restitution for harm done and complete wholeness in the relationship between man and God. The brokenness and corruption and death that had been introduced into creation by the rebellion of Adam and Eve would be completely, finally, and totally reversed and complete peace with God restored. It is a state of peace so complete and so wonderful that I think we have a hard time even imagining it. It imagines a perfect world. What do you think a perfect world would be like?

But of course we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a heartbreaking world that is plagued by crime, war, sickness, poverty, despair, and futility. I used to pay a lot of attention to the news but now I can barely look at it because it is too heartbreaking. The more I realize the love of Christ in my own life the more I suffer at the inhumanity that our world seems to thrive on. And even though when we see evil in the world we renounce it, the way that we do so often only adds to the evil, it doesn’t heal anything.

So how can we as Christians reconcile Paul’s bold statement that we have shalom when we are surrounded by such chaos? Can we blame the skeptics for being skeptical? Their criticism of our faith is summed up as follows: in the face of such overwhelming evil and suffering, if God is powerful enough to allow it he must not be good, and if he is good he must not be powerful enough to stop it. If God is good, he cannot be God, and if God is God, he cannot be good. In either case, the loving God of the Christians seems to be neatly done away with.

But it isn’t so simple. Let me offer you a few observations on this problem of reconciling the triumph of Christ with the existence of evil in the world.

1. Evil and Suffering Isn’t Evidence Against God

The first observation is that the existence of evil and suffering isn’t evidence against God. The argument here starts with the assumption that because there is so much pointless evil in the world, the traditional God of all good cannot exist. The major fallacy with this argument, of course, is how do we determine that something is pointless? There has to be some measure of pointlessness beyond my own idea. Just because we can’t see a good reason for evil and suffering doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. We have to acknowledge that our own perceptions of situations are limited by the narrowness of our own vision of time and space.

We are all familiar with the story of Joseph in the Bible. Joseph’s brothers hated him so much that they eventually sold him into slavery in Egypt just to get rid of him. Joseph didn’t want to become a slave, and we know from the Bible story that for him and for his father this must have seemed an overwhelming tragedy. But we also know that Joseph found favor with Pharaoh in the land of Egypt and eventually became the number two ruler of the kingdom, which placed him in a position to save the lives of his father, brothers, and their families from a terrible famine. Many years after selling Joseph into slavery, when they learned that he had survived and become powerful, his brothers feared his retribution. But Joseph said to them, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Gen. 50:20 NIV) .

I think we have all experienced events in our own lives that at first seem to be tragic and pointless but which we look back on later and realize that all of those things had to happen in order to lead us to where we are today.

And, as another illustration, just this week I was reading the novel The Once and Future King by T. H. White. It’s a modern telling of the King Arthur story and it is not necessarily a book with a Christian outlook. Nevertheless in the middle of it I found this little story in which the magician Merlin tries to explain the seeming unfairness of life to his protégé Arthur. The Story goes:

“Sometimes, life does seem to be unfair. Do you know the story of Elijah and the Rabbi Jachanan? This Rabbi went on a journey with the prophet Elijah. They walked all day, and at nightfall they came to the humble cottage of a poor man, whose only treasure was a cow. The poor man ran out of his cottage and his wife ran too, to welcome the strangers for the night and to offer them all the simple hospitality which they were able to give in strained circumstances. Elijah and the Rabbi were entertained with plenty of the cow’s milk, sustained by home-made bread and butter, and they were put to sleep in the best bed while their kindly hosts lay down before the kitchen fire. But in the morning, the poor man’s cow was dead.

“They walked all the next day, and came that evening to the house of a very wealthy merchant, whose hospitality they craved. The merchant was cold and proud and rich, and all that he would do for the prophet and his companion was to lodge them in a cowshed and feed them on bread and water. In the morning, however, Elijah thanked him very much for what he had done, and sent for a mason to repair one of his walls, which happened to be falling down, as a return for his kindness.

“The Rabbi Jachanan, unable to keep silence any longer, begged the holy man to explain the meaning of his dealings with human beings. ’In regard to the poor man who received us so hospitably,’ replied the prophet, ‘it was decreed that his wife was to die that night, but in reward for his goodness God took the cow instead of the wife. I repaired the wall of the rich miser because a chest of gold was concealed near the place, and if the miser had repaired the wall himself he would have discovered the treasure. Say not therefore to the Lord: ‘What doest thou?’ But say in thy heart: ‘Must not the Lord of all the earth do right?’”

So, just because we can’t see the reason for evil and suffering we encounter doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. If we feel at liberty to be mad at God because he is powerful enough to stop evil but doesn’t, we must at the same time acknowledge that God is powerful enough to see the good that can come from what we see as evil. If we can acknowledge that good can come from evil some of the time, why can’t we acknowledge that God is powerful enough to make good come from evil all of the time?

2. Evil and Suffering May Be Evidence For God

My second point goes even further than the first. I have suggested that the existence of evil and suffering doesn’t constitute an argument against the existence of God. Now I will propose that the existence of evil and suffering might actually be an argument for the existence of God. And this is simply because of the fact that we know, or at least think we know, what good and evil are.

The argument against God based on the problem of evil begins with the idea that there is such a thing as justice and fair play. People ought not to suffer, be excluded, die of hunger or oppression. But if we look at the natural order in purely scientific terms we see that the evolutionary cycle demands all of those things in order for things to “evolve.” So our ideas about justice constitute a perception of how things ought to be that must come from somewhere outside of nature. Where?

I have seen this problem in my time as a professor at the university. Academia, I think in reflection of our secular society, is obsessed with the issue of fairness. Everything ought to be fair, and everyone ought to be treated fairly on an equal basis. I would never argue that people should not be, but the problem for academics, and for our society, is the basis by which we decide what is fair. Because academia reflects the society at large by falling into the post-modern trap of denying that there is any single monolithic truth that represents what is fair. How can you tell if something is fair if there is and can be no agreed upon standard of fairness? And if there is a standard, that is more likely to point outside of the natural order of things and argue for the existence of a supernatural agent, God, not against.

How do we know what good is without God? If there is no God, then everything works only according to nature, and we have no right to complain about it. Right and wrong are dependent on my own preferences, and might differ from yours, and I have no ground to argue that my ideas are superior. But if there is a moral absolute, that is an argument for a just God, not against.

3. Redemption and Suffering

The next thing. Jesus suffers our suffering. We can’t say that God is cold and distant and uncaring because the Christian message is focused on the fact that God cares enough for us to actually experience our suffering. No other religion or belief system in the world has God suffer along with people to redeem them. The writer of Hebrews writes this about how compassionate God is:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:15-16 ESV)

If we believe that God himself suffered and died as a human being, we still may not know what the reason for pain and suffering is. But we know what it isn’t, and it isn’t that God doesn’t love us. Because out of his great love for us God willingly took on our human form to suffer with us. So, if we believe that Jesus was God and that he went to the cross for us, then we have deep consolation and strength to face the brutal realities of life. We can know that God is truly Immanuel – God with us –even in our worst sufferings.

4. Resurrection and Suffering

Finally, as Christians we know that in spite of anything we might see or experience to the contrary, we are already triumphant because Christ is triumphant. How do we know that? Because Christ rose from the dead. This is the claim of Christianity that probably invites more skepticism than any other. Somewhere deep within ourselves we have been conditioned to take seriously the finality of death. Many very intelligent people throughout the ages have stumbled over this proposition because it just seems so preposterous.

And it is hard to believe. But it is a historical event that is supported with good historical evidence as to its reality. There are many well thought out articles and facts I could point you to, but let me just mention a couple here so that we can move past skepticism to the main point. The first thing we must consider and we must know to be true is that the writing of the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection and post-resurrection appearances – the epistles and the gospels --- all happened within the lifetime of people who would have been able to deny it if it were not true. Paul writes in the first letter to the Corinthians:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. (1 Corinthians 15:3-6 ESV)

If this were not true, don’t you think someone would have spoken up about it?

Secondly, the Apostles’ insistence that Jesus had risen from the dead put their own lives and the lives of their followers in jeopardy. History and the Bible itself are filled with stories of martyrs suffering horribly for their insistence on the truth of the resurrection. If the resurrection was just a story they had made up to try to gain notoriety, do you think the apostles would have been willing or even able to suffer and die for it? I found this very interesting quote recently by Charles Colson. Charles Colson was an aide to President Nixon who was convicted in the Watergate scandal that ended Nixon’s career who later became a respected evangelist. He says,

“I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.”

Jesus Christ did rise from the dead.

So, given that the resurrection is true, what does that have to do with the problem of evil and suffering? Everything. One of the distinctives of the Christian religion is the idea of τέλος (telos). Τέλος means an end. Christianity proposes that the end is fore-ordained. It doesn’t mean that individuals don’t have freedom now, but it means that the whole creation is destined to a certain ending.

In the Christian worldview history is like the journey of an airplane taking off from San Diego destined for Hawaii. There is a defined beginning, the take-off in San Diego, and a certain ending, the landing in Hawaii. While the plane is in the air, the passengers are free to move around and engage in many different activities, but in the end they are all going to land in Hawaii.

In the same way we as individuals are free to pursue many different activities in our human lives, but our faith says that the whole earth will meet an end that has already been ordained by God. The difference between the airplane analogy and the τέλος is that there is any number of things that might go wrong with the airplane trip, but the τέλος will happen. That is the reason theologians call the era we are living in now “the already and the not yet.” Christ’s victory has already been accomplished by the resurrection, but the τέλος has not yet been actualized. That will happen when Jesus returns. And make no mistake about it, he will return.

What does this τέλος look like? That is the part that John read at the beginning of the service when he from Revelation about the new heaven and the new earth. Isn’t this a beautiful picture?

“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4 ESV)

What does that have to do with the problem of evil and suffering? Everything. Because the sadness and suffering we experience now will make the joy of our certain homecoming complete. We have the fact of the resurrection as a promise we can count on. And the present darkness can only serve to make the coming dawn seem more miraculous.

Just after the climax of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings, I’m talking about the books, not the movies, Sam Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandalf was not dead (as he thought) but alive. He cries, “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?” The Bible promises us that for Christians the answer is yes. In the words of the evangelist Billy Graham, “I've read the last page of the Bible. It's all going to turn out all right.” This is the hope that Paul is pointing to in our reading today in Romans. It is a sure hope, not a false hope, in spite of the way things may seem.

Sunday 7/29 at RPC. The Problem of Evil: The “Already” and the “Not Yet”

Do you ever have a hard time explaining your positive Christian outlook to your non-Christian friends? Or to yourself even? In Paul's letter to the Romans we have seen how he announced to the Roman Christians that evil had been overcome by Jesus. And yet here we are nearly two thousand years later and darkness does not seem to have dissipated. The events of the last couple of weeks must surely make us stop and wonder where God is. And if we think about it, the events of the last couple of weeks do not really stand out; evil and suffering seem to be a constant presence in the world. How do we as Christians reconcile Paul's promise that the world has been restored with the reality of evil that surrounds us?

Join us this Sunday at 11AM as we squarely confront this issue of the presence of evil and suffering in the world in the light of the gospel. That's also where I'll tell you what the title of this post, "The 'Already' and the 'Not Yet'", means. ;-)

Don't forget we will have corporate prayer at 1015 in the second floor chapel where we can pray for our personal concerns and the needs of our congregation. All are welcome.

After service I will be meeting with the youth for pizza and fellowship. All of the youth are invited. I have new Student Bibles!

We are now on Facebook! Check out our new Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SDRockPresbyterianChurch. There are some pictures from VBS.

Hope to see you Sunday!
Pastor Keith

Sermon Notes 7/22: “Our Father Abraham”

As Americans we tend to like things that are new more than we like things that are old. This is true for almost everything. As soon as you get something new you want to use it right away. How many of you have gone to the store and bought something that you’re running out of, like toothpaste or milk, and been tempted to use the new stuff even though the older stuff is still good?

This is good…

But this is even better, right?

The people who lived in Paul’s time were way different from this, especially when it came to religion. As we have seen, Paul has introduced some radical ideas to his readers in Rome. Again, following the progression of his argument, he started out telling the Gentile Christians at Rome that they were slaves to sin and deserving of God’s wrath. Then he probably shocked the Jewish Christians in Rome by pointing out that they had no advantage. As we have repeated over and over, the Jews relied on the fact that they were God’s “Chosen” people, as represented in the ritual of circumcision and keeping the Law of Moses. Paul pointed out to the Jews that even though they did have these things, they didn’t help, because the Jews were just as guilty of sin as the Gentiles, and so they, too, stood condemned by God. He concluded by declaring that all were sinners and all were deserving of God’s wrath. The whole point of this was to make sure that none of the Roman Christians – Gentile or Jew – thought they could rely on anything of their own to make them right with God.

Then last week we read what Paul wrote about the remedy. Yes, it was true that all were condemned and no one could stand in right relationship with God on their own merits, but as he had written to the Corinthian Christians what God had told Paul about his own struggle with affliction, “my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9 NIV) What this means is that when all seems lost and hopeless, when people have come to the point that they are powerless, God can and does supply the needed power. The power to defeat sin so that people could be in right relationship with God, Paul told us last week, comes through the atoning sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus. So the way to right relationship with God is not through being “good” or counting on human strengths or attributes, but in surrendering to the cross and being reborn “in Christ.”

This is the gospel. Remember that the Greek word for gospel, euangelion, is translated into English as “good news” but in the ancient world it meant a lot more than just good news, it was a joyful proclamation of a great victory. If you were here last week I’m sure you remember that I used a clip from the movie “Lord of the Rings” to illustrate the great triumph of good over evil, and I mentioned that even though that scene was really dramatic, it was only a shadow of the victory that Christ won over sin and death. The news of that victory is really “great news.”

But all of that would have created another set of problems for Paul’s audience in Rome. For the Jewish Christians, the idea that their Messiah was a convicted and crucified criminal would have been nearly beyond belief. The Jewish community at that time was expecting a deliverer, but they were thinking in terms of a great King like David who would command powerful armies, maybe even armies of angels, to defeat the Romans and reestablish the earthly kingdom of Israel. They would never have expected that the Messiah could be a convicted criminal. And for the Gentile Christians, there was an automatic aversion to any kind of religion that was “new.” The way that a philosophy gained credibility was by being old. They would have thought of a new philosophy or religion as suspect. All of their traditions were old, going back to the times before anyone could remember. That was what gave them their power, the fact that they had lasted so long.

So Paul’s next task after laying out the basics of the problem and the solution was to show both the Jewish and the Gentile Christians that Jesus was the fulfillment of the ancient promises, the very thing that the Jewish scriptures had predicted thousands of years earlier. This is the purpose of what we read in Chapter 4 of Romans.

4 What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? ² If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. ³ What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” ^w

⁴ Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. ⁵ However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. ⁶ David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

⁷ “Blessed are those

whose transgressions are forgiven,

whose sins are covered.

⁸ Blessed is the one

whose sin the Lord will never count against them.” ^z

⁹ Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. ¹⁰ Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before! ¹¹ And he received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. ¹² And he is then also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also follow in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

¹³ It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. ¹⁴ For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless, ¹⁵ because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.

¹⁶ Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. ¹⁷ As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” ^o He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.

¹⁸ Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” ^{t 19} Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. ²⁰ Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, ²¹ being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. ²² This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” ²³ The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, ²⁴ but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. ²⁵ He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. (Romans 4:1-25 NIV)

The first thing we want to do here is to think about the story of Abraham. Some of us may know the basics of the story but it is important to consider him here for two reasons. The first is, obviously, that Paul assumed his readers knew about Abraham and so what he wrote here was based on that knowledge. For us to understand what his readers would have seen, we have to know what they probably knew.

But secondly, after Jesus, Abraham is probably the most important person in the Bible. It was through him that God initiated his plan to free the world from sin and corruption. Abraham is considered the progenitor of both the Jews and the Arabs. Abraham would become the father of three religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There are many important characters in the Bible, but none of them other than Jesus himself compare to Abraham in terms of importance in God’s story of salvation.

So who was Abraham? Abraham actually started off with the name Abram and it was later changed to Abraham. Abram was a very wealthy man who lived in what was then the center of civilization. The Bible calls it Ur but it is in what we today call Iraq. It was a very fertile and sophisticated place. Abram’s wealth was mostly in his flocks because wealth at that time was mostly measured in agricultural goods. Living in Ur would have been for him like living in La Jolla or Rancho Santa Fe for us.

But in Chapter 12 of Genesis we see that God spoke to Abram. He said, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen 12:1-3 NIV). Now Abram was 75 years old when this happened. So you might think that Abram was just settling in to enjoy his prosperity when all of a sudden he gets this call. We don’t know how God spoke to Abram; all we know is that Abram responded without questioning. The Bible just tells us “So Abram went.” (Gen. 12:4 NIV).

This tells us a lot about Abram because the journey he went on wasn’t like hopping in the car and driving to L.A. Here’s a map that shows the probable route of Abram’s journey. He travelled from Iraq to where Israel is today. If you go straight from Iraq to Israel it’s about 500 miles. That’s about the distance from San Diego to San Francisco or to the Grand Canyon. So you have to think about what God was telling Abram when he said to go: it’s like, “take all of your relatives thousands of farm animals and everything you own and walk to San Francisco. Or more like walk to somewhere in the desert between Phoenix and Santa Fe, because the country he was going to was mostly a desert. I’m pretty sure that if I came in here today and told you guys to do that you’d just laugh it off. But that’s not what Abram did. The Bible just tells us “So Abram went.” (Gen. 12:4 NIV)

Abram believed the promise. But there was a big problem with this promise, and that was that God had said he would bless all peoples of the earth through him, but he was childless, and his wife Sarai was barren. So even though Abram keeps hearing from God that he will be the source of blessing for the whole earth, he has to have doubts because he is getting really old and his wife does not seem to be able to have children. One day the Lord appears to Abram in a dream and reminds him of his promise, and Abram expresses his doubts to God. He essentially tells him, “You keep telling me that, but I’m not seeing any kids here. And I’m not getting any younger and neither is Sarai.”

And it is here, in Genesis Chapter 15, that God tells Abram, “’…a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.’ ⁵ He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ ⁶ Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Gen. 15:4-6 NIV).

Now here’s the kicker. Later, when Abram is 90 years old, God again repeats his promise to Abram, this time changing his name from Abram to Abraham. This happens in Chapter 17 of Genesis. Abram, by the way, means something like “esteemed father,” and Abraham means “father of many.” And it is here, in Chapter 17, that God makes the covenant of circumcision with Abraham. The covenant is a physical sign of God’s promise that all male descendants are required to do, even to the present day. For the Jewish people it is like Baptism for Christians: an outward, physical sign of an inward, spiritual reality. In the case of baptism, it is a sign that we have surrendered our lives to Jesus; in the case of circumcision, it is a sign that someone is heir to the promise. What promise? The promise that God made to Abram when he told him to leave Ur in Chapter 12.

And this is Paul’s point. Between the time that God called Abram, and the time that he established the covenant of circumcision, God reassured Abram of his promise. And, “⁶ Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Gen. 156 NIV).

Now here’s where we have to be really careful. It’s really easy to fall into the trap that the Jews of Jesus’ time had fallen into and that many people after that including many Christians today fall into also, and that is the idea that in this incident there is some kind of an exchange between God and Abram. The wrong way to read it is to think, “Well Abram believed, and as a reward for that, he was made righteous.” But if that was true, that would mean that all of the things we have learned from Paul up to now are wrong. Because Paul has been telling us that humans can’t do anything to make themselves righteous, and if Abram could be made righteous by believing, Paul’s argument would be false. That would be what we call a theology of works.

Paul has been telling us all along that the righteous shall live by faith, not works. What does that mean? It can’t mean that we reach deep down inside ourselves and find something called faith and bring it up and give it to God, and in return God gives us righteousness. Paul even says that in his letter to the Ephesians “⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Eph. 2:8 NIV). What does it mean when Moses writes. “Abram believed the Lord…”? Abram believed that God would fulfill his promise.

If you have a $20 bill you use it to buy things because you believe the bill has value. But the fact that you believe the bill has value doesn’t give it value. The value is in the bill itself, or in the government that backs it, not in your belief. So if I were to pull out a blank piece of paper and try to spend it, I couldn’t, because the paper has no value, whether I believe it or not. Same thing with God’s promise to Abram. Abram was able to hold on to the promise because he believed it to be true, but his belief didn’t make it true. Its truth came from God himself.

So when the text says the Lord “credited it to him as righteousness” what is Moses talking about? What is “it”? It can’t be Abram’s belief, because the promise doesn’t get its truth from Abrams belief. Where does the promise get its truth? From God himself. And what do we as Christians know the fulfillment of the promise to be? Jesus. So when Moses writes “he credited it to him as righteousness,” he is writing the same thing about Abram as Paul writes about us when he writes “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith.” Abram looks forward in time to the fulfillment, we can look back. But it is the same promise. And this is just one more illustration that everything in the Bible points to Jesus.

So to the Gentile Christians, who don’t want to follow any kind of new-fangled religion, Paul can say, this is nothing new. This goes back to very beginning of the Jewish faith, which is ancient. And to the Jewish Christians, who have invested their hopes and identity in circumcision and the Law, Paul can say, Abram was made righteous before either the covenant of circumcision or the covenant of the Law. Abram’s righteousness, his justification, to use the theological term, was in Jesus, just as the Roman Christians’ righteousness, Gentile and Jew, is in Jesus. So Abraham is the father of us all, as Paul tells the Roman Christians.

So what does all this mean in practical terms for Abraham and for us? The last part of today’s reading in Romans talks about how Abraham expressed the faith that he had in God’s promise.

¹⁸ Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” ^{t 19} Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. ²⁰ Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, ²¹ being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. (Romans 4:18-21 NIV)

We can’t blame Abraham and Sarah for being skeptical. There must have been many times when both of them were tempted to give up on God’s promise and some of them actually are recorded in the Bible. But both of them hung in there until the end.

Do you remember the example I used of faith with the $20 bill? Remember how I said that we use the $20 bill to buy things because we believe it has value. But our belief doesn’t give it value. At the same time, we don’t try to spend blank pieces of paper because we know they don’t have any value. Abraham’s faith would have been more like God giving him a blank piece of paper and telling him to use it to buy a new car. Abram would have really had to scratch his head because it wouldn’t seem possible that you could use that blank piece of paper to buy anything, let alone a car. But instead of giving up, he did what the Lord told him, and set God’s plan of salvation in motion.

In the same way I think that we are all faced with times when we have to be skeptical of what we think God is calling us to. We know how hard it is to trust God. Let me tell you a story about my own personal life that might illustrate. After I got out of the Navy I went to school and became a software engineer and finally got a job working at Hewlett-Packard. By the middle of the 1990s you could say that I had achieved the American Dream. I had a good job with a good income. I was married with a child. I had a condo in La Costa. I had a minivan and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. If you looked at me from the outside, you would have called me a success.

But I was restless. I decided to o back to college and get a degree in history. I did really well. I was on the Dean’s list the whole time I was doing my undergraduate work and eventually got a full scholarship for graduate study at the University of California. As I pursued that, it became more and more clear that I was not going to remain in my position at HP.

The funny thing about a degree in history is that you can’t do much with it. You can teach. Some people use it as a stepping stone for law school. You can tell interesting stories at parties. But you’re never going to make any money. I came up against a crisis where I had to make a decision to either quit working at HP and finish my Ph.D. or quit school altogether. It wasn’t going to be possible to work and continue school. It was a really difficult decision. To most people it looked easy, you go with the job that gives you security and a good income. But I believed that God would not have led me to the place where I was if he did not intend for me to finish. So I quit working for HP. Everybody, including me, thought I was crazy.

That was over ten years ago, and God has taken care of me so far. I’m not rich but I have everything I need. And you can see I’m not missing any meals. I don’t know what might have happened if I had stayed at HP. But I believe I would not have ended up here. I would not have finally heard and learned to obey God’s call to preach the gospel. So when I quit HP I was really taking a leap of faith, trusting that God would lead me where he wanted me, and that he would provide what I needed along the way.

How is God challenging you? How is God calling you to spend your $20 bill? Does it even look like something you can spend? Are you willing to listen anyway? Like Abraham, like Paul, and even like Jesus, God’s calling to us is going to bring us way outside of our comfort zones. Our faith lies in obeying the call, no matter how crazy it seems. Here’s what I think is a really good illustration of that.

Sermon Notes 7/15: “Good News … Finally!”

 

I hope you've been here for the last few weeks as we've been going through Paul's letter to the Romans. If you were here for the last couple of messages you know that we ended last week on a pretty low note. By the time we got to the end of last week's scripture, the whole world stood condemned as a result of sin. The whole world was under the weight of God's wrath.

To summarize the progress of Paul's letter to the Romans so far, in the first chapter Paul addressed the Gentile Christians in Rome and pointed out that they were condemned because even though God had not explicitly given them the law as he had the Israelites, he had written his law on their hearts and they had ignored that law. Of course, that was true for the Christians in Rome, but Paul was really thinking about all of the non-Jewish people of the world. That would have been in line with the thinking of the Jewish Christians, because they thought of themselves as superior to the Gentiles because their ancestors had been given the law, and they thought of themselves as the inheritors of that promise. Paul agreed with them that they had been chosen by God with the covenant of the law for the purpose of expressing the characteristics of God in their lives, righteousness, justice, and love, and by doing that attracting all nations to God's promise.

But then, in the passage we read last week, he made it very clear that the Jews were not at any advantage because they had never kept the law. So in effect they were no different from the Gentiles. I don't think it would be possible to express how devastating an indictment this would have been to the Jewish Christians. Listen to how Paul summarizes, drawing on the Old Testament scriptures:

10 As it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;

11 there is no one who understands;

there is no one who seeks God.

12 All have turned away,

they have together become worthless;

there is no one who does good,

not even one.” (Romans 3:10-12 NIV)

Now I shared with you last week how preparing that message had been very difficult for me because I want us never to forget that the gospel is "good news." It's more than just good news, it's a joyous proclamation of a great victory. When we got to the end of last week's reading, we didn't see very much to be joyful about. We may rightly ask what is so good about the news Paul has been delivering up to this point in the scripture.

You will recall that the way I found that I could frame the message in a positive light was by pointing out that we had to recognize our complete powerlessness against sin before we could recognize our need for a savior. And, even though that is a true statement, it's not very comforting. It doesn't sound like very good news.

Well you will be happy to learn that today we are going to finally get to the good stuff. We all love to watch a story where the good guys get rescued at the last minute, right? It's even better if the bad guys get it in the end. I'm going to do something a little different today and show you a video clip that expresses how great it feels when at the last minute, when all seems lost, there is a last minute miracle, and after that everything is fine. We all feel better.

 

 

How many of you guys have seen that before? It's probably one of the most famous scenes in all of the movies. And even though I've seen it literally dozens of times, it's still gripping. And I can remember how awesome it felt the first time I saw the Dark Lord defeated by this band of intrepid heroes. I know the clip I showed is a little long but I wanted to show it so that I could set the mood for how dramatic this next part of Paul's letter is.

When you are reading scripture I think it is easy to kind of sterilize what we're reading, draining it of any kind of emotion and wrapping it up in a kind of bland "haze of holiness." But we shouldn't do that because when we realize what's at stake with the things we are reading about in the scriptures we ought to realize that there isn't anything more serious, more dramatic, more important. So if I just read these couple of paragraphs we might not have even realized that Paul is indicating something at least as dramatic as the destruction of the ring. So with this dramatic feeling in our minds, let's read what Paul has to say to the Romans next:

²¹ But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. ²² This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. ²⁵ God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, ^m through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—²⁶ he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

²⁷ Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. ²⁸ For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. ²⁹ Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, ³⁰ since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. ³¹ Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law. (Romans 3:21-31 NIV)

You probably recognize verse 23 as one of the most famous verses in the Bible. I wonder if you noticed that if you take verse 23 by itself it says something slightly different than what Paul intends here. It basically continues the focus on the sinfulness of man. The famous evangelist D.L. Moody once wrote, “"Looking at the wound of sin will never save anyone. What you must do is look at the remedy." And this is what Paul is doing here.Verse 23 is just one phrase in a sentence that includes verses 22 and 24. So when we read it all at once Paul writes, “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:22-24 NIV). That’s quite a different message isn’t it? Rather than being a condemnation, it is a message of great hope for everyone.

We should probably think a little bit here about what is meant in verse 25 by “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement.” Let’s start with where Paul starts. He begins this section by stating “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.” One thing Paul is indicating here is that there has been a great change in mankind’s status before God. From almost the beginning of history according to the Jewish scriptures all of humanity had stood condemned before God because of the sin of Adam and Eve. But now, Paul tells us, that condemnation has been lifted.

When Paul writes “to which the Law and the Prophets testify” he is saying that this event, the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, really is the main topic of the Bible. God planned to save man all along. It was written in the script.

It is always important, I think, to keep in mind the historical context of the Christian faith. It makes no sense unless we consider it in light of the Jewish scriptures: the Old Testament. So it doesn’t hurt to rehearse the story again.

God began his plan of salvation with Abraham. We will be looking more at Abraham in the upcoming weeks but for now we can recall that Abraham was a wealthy man who lived in what we call today Iraq. God came to him and told him to just go; and the astonishing thing is that he went. He didn’t ask where, or why, he just went. And God made a promise to Abraham that he would have a son, and that through his son all of the nations of the earth would be blessed. God instituted the covenant of circumcision with Abraham as a seal to this promise.

Eventually Abraham did have a son, who in turn had a son named he named Jacob, whose name was later changed to Israel. Israel had twelve sons, from which we derive the twelve tribes of Israel. One of the sons was named Joseph. We can recall in the story of Joseph that Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt out of jealousy. Yet years later, when there was famine in the land, Joseph’s family could find rescue in Egypt because of the fact that Joseph had found favor with the Pharaoh. When Joseph’s brothers many years later feared their brother’s vengeance, Joseph was able to say to them“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Gen. 50:20 NIV) And so the children of Israel went into Egypt to escape hardship in the so-called “Promise Land” of Canaan.

Now it is really important to know about the story of the Israelites in Egypt because this becomes the model for God’s salvation of the whole world. The book of Genesis ends with the Israelites happily having found rescue in Egypt, but the next book in the Hebrew Scriptures, that we call Exodus, opens upon a very different scene.

We don’t know exactly how long the Israelites were in Egypt but it was probably several centuries. And over those years the Israelites had grown numerous and were seen as a threat by the new Pharaoh. So he oppressed them and they cried out to God for rescue.

We must always keep in mind how seriously God takes his promise to Abraham. He must listen to the cries of the Israelites because he has promised that they, the offspring of Abraham through Isaac the child of promise, must inherit the “Promised Land” of Canaan and become a blessing for all of the nations of the earth. So he sets in motion a plan to free the Israelites from Egypt.

The book of Exodus is really a fascinating story all by itself without even considering its theological significance and I urge you all to read it. But there is much symbolic significance here for us as Christians, that we really ought to know about in order to understand what Paul writes, not just to the Romans but in all of his letters. Because he was an expert in the Hebrew Scriptures. You might say he had a Ph.D. in the Hebrew Bible.

Kind of “the big story” in the historical memory of the Israelites all the way up to today is what is called the Exodus and also the Passover. The Israelites have been made slaves in Egypt and have cried out to God in their anguish. God raises up a leader, Moses, to deliver the Israelites from Egypt. Moses contends with Pharaoh, who blows hot and cold, and in the process God sends plague after plague to Egypt to punish Pharaoh.

Finally God’s plan to rescue the Israelites from Egypt includes one last plague being what we call the “plague of the firstborn.” In this part of the story God is ready to punish the Egyptians one last time by killing every first born creature, animal and human, in the land of Egypt. At the same time he tells the Israelites through Moses that they must take an unblemished lamb, slaughter and eat it, and spread the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. When the angel of death goes through Egypt taking every firstborn creature – animal and human – it will “pass over” the houses with the blood of the lamb on the doorposts. Thus the Jewish Passover celebration became a reenactment of that night and that event as we read about in chapter 12 of the book of Exodus.

So we get a foreshadowing here of the deliverance of mankind from the bondage of sin. By the blood of the lamb the people were delivered from death, and it was on that night that they escaped from Egypt. The escape from Egypt becomes a symbol for the rescue of the people in the minds of all generations of Israelites who follow all the way down to today. At the time of Jesus they didn’t think of it as a deliverance from sin, but as a national historical deliverance from the oppression of the Romans much like the original Exodus.

In the book of Leviticus chapter 16 we see a description of what God prescribes as a ceremony of atonement. Other parts of the book of Leviticus, which lays out the stipulations of “The Law,” describe ways of making atonement for individual sins but in Chapter 16 it talks about the Day of Atonement where the High Priest will make atonement for all of the sins of the people. Interestingly, the center of this ceremony is the sacrifice of an unblemished lamb and the atonement comes through the blood of the lamb.

Going into the time when Jesus walked on earth and in the story of his crucifixion, we are all familiar with the Last Supper. The Last Supper was a celebration of the feast of Passover, commemorating the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. It’s not accidental that it was on this night that Jesus was sacrificed by his betrayal, arrest, and ultimate execution. Jesus is the unblemished lamb, who is sacrificed to atone for the sins of the people and rescue them from bondage. What Paul is telling us in these verses is that the bondage God is rescuing the people from is the bondage to sin he has described in such a devastating way in the preceding parts of the letter. The astonishing thing is that this atonement includes “all who believe,” both Jew and Gentile.

We need to mention a couple of significant things about Jesus’ sacrifice. From the time of the building of the Tabernacle in the desert to the time when Paul wrote to the Roman Christians for as long as there was a place to worship the Jewish High Priests had offered sacrifices over and over for their own sins and for the sins of the people. But in the New Testament, Christian view of things, there is no longer a need to continue the sacrifices over and over. It has all been accomplished by Jesus. The author of Hebrews writes:

¹ The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. ² Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. ³ But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. ⁴ It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

⁵ Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said… ⁸ “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them”—though they were offered in accordance with the law. ⁹ Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. ¹⁰ And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

¹¹ Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. ¹² But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, ¹³ and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. ¹⁴ For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (Hebrews 10:1-5a, 8-14 NIV)

Do you see how revolutionary this is? Do you see the amazing significance of what Jesus did on the cross? Because not only did he make a perfect sacrifice, because he was morally unblemished he was able to do it once and for all, and thereby set the whole world free from slavery to sin, once and for all.

And then, because that was accomplished, the law has fulfilled its purpose.The purpose of the law was to provide a means for release from slavery to sin but now, with Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, the requirements of God’s wrath have been met. Paul writes that no one can gain righteousness through the law because no one can keep it, but he also writes, in Romans Chapter 3 verse 31, “Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law.” (Romans 3:31 NIV)

Now, I don’t know if you guys know this but J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, was a Christian and wrote from a Christian worldview. You may know that he was friends with C.S. Lewis, the author of the Chronicles of Narnia series that has recently been made into a movie. But he criticized Lewis for writing the Narnia series because he felt that Lewis used too much analogy. For example, Aslan obviously represents Christ, and the lion has often been used as a symbol for Jesus. The White Witch is Satan tempting Edmund, who is Judas. Peter, one of the children, represents the wise Christian. Father Christmas represents the Holy Spirit, who comes and bring gifts to true believers so that they can fight evil, etc.

The Lord of the Rings also uses Christian symbols but much more subtly. There isn’t always a one for one correspondence between the individual characters in the story and Christian characters or Biblical concepts. But overall it still expresses the Christian worldview and the ultimate battle between light and darkness, good and evil, and sin. I’m going to talk a little bit about the movie and the books now so if you’re not familiar with them try to hang in there and I’ll do my best to be clear.

The One Ring is, in my mind, obviously sin. It seems to be beautiful, but it traps and ruins everyone who tries to use it. And even though you know you’re being ruined, you still desire it madly; you can’t give it up. And indeed that is its function in the story, to ensnare all creatures into subjugation to the Dark Lord Sauron. I don’t think it takes a lot of imagination to see that Sauron represents Satan. And, as we saw in the movie, Sauron’s Kingdom is black, ugly, and ruined, just like the creation after the Fall.

And I think the end of the story lands us in the present theological age because even though the power of sin (the ring) has been destroyed and Satan’s kingdom defeated, everything has not yet been made right. There is still struggle, sadness, and sorrow. There is still work to be done. The age we live in has been described by some theologians as the “already and the not yet.” Jesus has already overcome Satan and sin, but his kingdom has not yet been fully restored. Theologically the Bible finishes the story by promising that Jesus will come again and finish the job of making all things right. Indeed, we are called as Christians to devote our efforts to the final triumph of Jesus’ kingdom.

But anyway, that’s what Paul is telling us in the part of his letter that we read today. When Paul writes but now he is signaling a change in the world that makes the destruction of the ring and the fall of Sauron’s kingdom in this scene from one of the most epic movies ever created look like a cartoon.

So what kind of a difference does this make in our lives? Obviously, we ought to take seriously the importance of what Jesus has done for us on the cross. We no longer have to live our lives under the weight of guilt, wondering whether we have been “good enough” to somehow hold back God’s anger. We can never be “good enough,” but it doesn’t matter, because the price for every sin has already and finally been paid for by Jesus on the cross.

But that doesn’t leave us off the hook to do whatever we want. Paul writes, “all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:24 NIV). But he also writes, “²² This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” (Romans 3:22 NIV). “all who believe.” This is the key. To believe doesn’t mean just to give intellectual assent. It means to trust completely. Here is one definition of the Greek word Paul is using here, “to believe to the extent of complete trust and reliance—‘to believe in, to have confidence in, to have faith in, to trust...’”^[1]

I’ve heard it said that the difference between belief and faith can be demonstrated this way. If you are at the circus and you watch a man push a wheelbarrow across a tight rope you might sit in the audience and say, “I believe he can do it.” But faith would be to get in the wheelbarrow.Here is another way of thinking about our lives after out deliverance from Thomas Merton, using the symbols of the Passover and the escape from Egypt:

It took me time to find out: but I write down what I have found out at last, so that anyone who is now in the position that I was in then may read it and know what to do to save himself from great peril and unhappiness. And to such a one I would say: Whoever you are, the land to which God has brought you is not like the land of Egypt from which you came out. You can no longer live here as you lived there. Your old life and your former ways are crucified now, and you must not seek to live anymore for your own gratification, but give up your own judgment into the hands of a wise director, and sacrifice your pleasures and comforts for the love of God and give the money you no longer spend on those things to the poor.

So there’s something for you to think about and try to put into practice this week.

---

^[1] Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996). Vol. 1: Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: Based on semantic domains (electronic ed. of the 2nd edition.) (375). New York: United Bible Societies.

Sermon Notes 7/8: When God is All You Have, God is All You Need

I have to admit that I had a difficult time putting together this message today. If you have been with us from the beginning of this little series on Romans that we started a few weeks ago, you know that the author of the letter the Apostle Paul has been making a case for what is probably the defining verse of Romans: “the Righteous shall live by faith.” That sounds like a kind of a hopeful start but right after he wrote that Paul launched into a long section considering man's sinfulness and God's wrath. You should probably know that when Paul wrote this letter it was just a letter. It wasn't divided into chapters and verses. It probably didn't even have any punctuation, which is one of the reasons why Biblical scholars have a difficult time figuring out exactly what Paul was trying to communicate. But most of what we know of as Chapter 1 deals with the universal sinfulness of man and God's response to man's rebellion: his wrath as manifested in his turning away from humans and leaving them to their own devices. You may remember that when Jesus cried out from the cross “My God why have you forsaken me” he was experiencing the wrath of God to atone for our sinfulness.

Then in Chapter 2 we saw how Paul turned his attention to the community of Jewish Christians. There was a question in the early church about the relationship of Christianity to the Jewish faith. Christianity arose out of Judaism and was seen by its original adherents, particularly in Israel, as the fulfillment of the hopes of the Jewish people. In the beginning everyone in the original church, all Jews, was surprised that God seemed to have made the salvation brought on by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus freely available to Gentiles. Even though there is scriptural evidence that it was through the Jewish people that the salvation of the whole world would come, by the time Jesus lived the Jewish people had defined themselves as completely separate from and superior to everyone. Judaism was defined ethnically, by blood lines, but also by the practices of the Jews that set them apart from everyone else. These practices came to be represented by the ritual of circumcision and strict adherence to the ceremonial calendar and food laws.

The Jewish people had what they thought were good reason for setting themselves apart from everyone else. Every Jew was acutely aware that they had received the law from God through Moses, that the law included covenant obligations that they had failed to fulfill. In the minds of these people God had commanded them not to mix with the people of the Promised Land. The reason for this was because God wanted the Israelites to demonstrate his characteristics by adhering to the law given on Mt. Sinai, and that meant rejecting all other practices of all other ethnic groups. But the Jews had ended up mixing right in with the rest of the people. Instead of being shining lights drawing people to God, you couldn't tell the difference between the Hebrews and the pagans. God sent Prophets to warn them, but the people ignored them. Some of them they even killed. In the end, God punished the Israelites for not keeping their part of the bargain. First, the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians. Then, a few years later, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and dragged what was left of the Jewish nation into exile.

When they were able to return to Israel the remnants of the Jewish nation started to take the law very seriously. It was then that a group of people called Pharisees came on the scene. The Pharisees recognized that the cause of their exile had been the Israelites ignoring the law, so they were very meticulous about considering what it might mean to really keep the law, in order to prevent another failure. So, the Pharisees were actually thought of as good guys in Israel. They were the ones good people looked up to, because of the seriousness with which they took the law.

And, at least in the beginning, their hearts were in the right place. They were trying to avoid the errors of their ancestors. But as time passed the Pharisees lost their focus. They made obeying the details of the law more important than obeying for the reason for the law. The reason for the law was, as we have said over and over, to demonstrate God's loving character; to set people free in God's love. The details of the law were burdensome and difficult. This is why in the gospel stories Jesus is so critical of the Pharisees. He never chastises them for their piety; only for their hypocrisy. Because while they claimed to uphold the law, they missed the point of it. In the end Jesus pointed out the heart of their error when he told them “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Mt. 22:37-40).

So going back to the question of the beginnings of the Christian faith, many Jewish Christians believed that Christianity was in fact Judaism, and that Christians were Jews, and many people believed in order to be a Christian you had to adopt all of the Jewish customs, and that meant circumcision, the ceremonial calendar, and the food laws. Many of them, like Paul, were Pharisees, or at least admired the Pharisees, and as such put a lot of store in the necessity of their religious observances. Paul was very much opposed to this. He didn't say that following the Jewish customs was wrong; he just said that they were not necessary. That was the decision of the Church Leaders as we read about in Acts 15, but there were still a lot of Jewish Christians who continued to insist that the only way to really be a Christian was to adopt the Jewish customs.

There is some evidence of this controversy in the Roman church. I think this is why Paul addresses the gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians separately, kind of demonstrating their place in the new Christian church. His argument essentially runs that even though the two groups came from separate backgrounds: pagan and Jewish, they were both confronted by the same dilemma, the reality of sin. But in some ways it was worse for the Jewish Christians because they were taught from birth that they were God's chosen people. The fact that they did, more or less, abide by the traditions, gave them a sense they already had it made. If you feel you are doing all right, why would you need to surrender to Jesus?

I think the best illustration of this attitude in the gospels comes from Luke 18:9-14:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable:

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14 NIV)

So the text we will read today in Romans is Paul's attempt to get those who may have believed like the Pharisee in the story that they were no different from the tax collector. Let's read it.

What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? Much in every way! First of all, the Jews have been entrusted with the very words of God.

3 What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? 4 Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written:

“So that you may be proved right when you speak

and prevail when you judge.”

5 But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) 6 Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? 7 Someone might argue, “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” 8 Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!

9 What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. 10 As it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;

11 there is no one who understands;

there is no one who seeks God.

12 All have turned away,

they have together become worthless;

there is no one who does good,

not even one.”

13 “Their throats are open graves;

their tongues practice deceit.”

“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”

14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”

15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;

16 ruin and misery mark their ways,

17 and the way of peace they do not know.”

18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin. (Romans 3:1-20 NIV)

Well, maybe you can see why I had such a hard time with this text. At first glance it's hard to see how you can pull a positive message out of this. And the last thing I want to do is to be the kind of preacher who stands up here trying to make you feel bad about all of your sins. That would not be in keeping, in my mind, with the idea that the gospel is “good news.” This passage by Paul doesn't sound like very good news.

Paul begins the passage with a question. He’s been addressing the Jewish Christians and chipping away at their sense of superiority. This section of the letter is like a dialog between Paul and an imaginary third party. After Paul pointed out that the Jews were the same as the Gentiles in God’s plan of salvation in the previous section, the imaginary debater asks, “Is there any advantage, then, in being a Jew?” Paul’s answer is yes and no.

This section starts out with Paul’s yes. What is the advantage of being a Jew? It is that the plan of salvation for the whole world comes out of the Jewish nation. Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham that all nations will be blessed through him. I think a good analogy for this idea would be to think in terms of the Fourth of July holiday we just celebrated. What were we celebrating? We were celebrating American independence from Britain, but at the same time we were celebrating the historical reality of ideas of liberty and democracy that inspired the world and still inspire the world today. If we love the liberty that came out of the American Revolution, we have to celebrate America. Paul’s argument is similar: if we love the salvation we have freely received from God through Jesus, we must love the Jewish nation, because the plan of salvation originated there.

But Paul doesn’t give the Jewish Christians a lot of room for pride or celebration, because he points out that the Jewish people had been unfaithful to their covenant obligation to bring salvation to the world. Paul is being kind when he implies that just “some” had been unfaithful. In the next section we see that he really means “all” had been unfaithful.

At this point Paul sets aside a rather silly point brought up by his imaginary partner: if unfaithfulness serves to highlight God’s faithfulness, and that benefits God, doesn’t that mean that their sin has a positive outcome? If so, why should God punish the sinner? This silly question really requires a rather complex answer, even though straight up, Paul declares the answer is “no.”

The first thing we must consider, something we don’t want to lose sight of, is that God’s punishment, his wrath as we discussed a few weeks ago, doesn’t consist of God acting in a way to harm the sinner. He doesn’t throw rocks at them or make them sick or “send them to hell.” Rather, God allows them to sin. He does allow his children to choose hell, but everything we know about him demonstrates that he does this reluctantly; that he grieves when he loses one of his beloved children, just as we grieve when one of our children struggles. And just like us, God does everything he can to try to help. We can see with the cross that, just like us, God will go to ridiculous extremes and suffer enormous agony to try to save his children. But at some point the rebellion is such that God simply allows the child to choose their own destiny, just as we sometimes must with our children. And then he must watch with sorrow as the child destroys himself. But God is not in the business of sending people to hell. He is in the business of rescuing people from hell.

The second thing to consider here is that even though God detests sin, he can still use it to accomplish a greater good. So, for example, we can recall in the story of Joseph that Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt out of jealousy. Yet years later, when there was famine in the land, Joseph’s family could find rescue in Egypt because of the fact that Joseph had found favor with the Pharaoh. When Joseph’s brothers many years later feared their brother’s vengeance, Joseph was able to say to them, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Gen. 50:20 NIV) In the same way we know that Judas’ betrayal of Jesus was a sin, but that Jesus had to be betrayed so that he could accomplish his greater mission of salvation. In both cases God was able to turn sin into a greater good. But that doesn’t excuse the sin. God can redeem the sin and turn it to good purpose, but the sin must still be punished.

Because of what we know about sin and salvation, we know that the ultimate penalty for our sin is not paid by us, but by Jesus on the cross. And when we see it in this light, we see that asking if our sins are actually good because they highlight God’s ability to turn them to good is like us pounding nails into Jesus’ hands and feet on the cross and explaining to him that we’re actually doing a good thing for him. You can see why Paul thinks this argument is so ridiculous.

So in this first part of today’s passage we see Paul acknowledge that there is advantage in being Jewish in that salvation comes from the Jews, but that the Jews have never been able to live up to their obligations as the purveyors of God’s salvation to the world. And as we go into the next section we will see that this applies not just to the Jewish nation as a whole but to each individual. So in this case when Paul says that there is advantage in being Jewish, it would be like someone today saying there is advantage in being American because the ideas of liberty and freedom originated in America, but if we as Americans do not practice and allow liberty and freedom then the advantage is moot. That’s why Paul begins the next section with his no answer, “What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all!” (Ro. 3:9 NIV).

The next section of the reading is what’s called a “catena.” It is from the Latin word for “chain,” and it is a collection of verses strung together in a chain to make a point. When we look at verses 10-18 we see Paul quote a number of different passages, mostly from the Psalms but one from Isaiah, the point of which collectively is to demonstrate to Jewish Christians from the Jewish scriptures that they have no cause for boasting. Going back to the story I read from Luke earlier, this would be Paul talking to the Pharisee, who is so sure of his standing with God because of his strict religious observances, and who is looking down on the tax collector, and pointing out that the very thing he relies on for his justification condemns him. The Jews point to being the receivers of the law as their ticket to God, but Paul shows them that because they don’t keep it the law condemns them. In verse 20 Paul goes so far as to say that rather than being saved by the law, the lack of ability to follow the law only highlights their sin.

By the time we get to verse 20, we have to agree that Paul has made his case that all mankind stands condemned by God. And that’s where I found myself discouraged when I was preparing this message because I kept asking myself, where’s the “good news?” I prayed earnestly about it, and praise God I found it. And here it is, Paul at his most profound, and most baffling. He writes to the Corinthian church:

[I]n order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. ⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:7-10 NIV)

I could do a whole sermon on this passage from 2 Corinthians but let me just brush over it lightly here. Paul suffered from some kind of affliction; we don’t know what it was. Some people believe that he suffered from some kind of eye trouble; others suggest other forms of physical and emotional illness. I personally believe that Paul didn’t reveal the details about his weakness because he wanted to make a universal point: that we are all weak; all at God’s mercy. If Paul had said, “I asked God to remove my eye trouble and he didn’t,” some of us would say, “Well I don’t have eye trouble so this doesn’t apply to me.” But while we may not have whatever affliction Paul had, we all have some affliction, and one in particular: slavery to sin. That’s the point that Paul makes so devastatingly clear in today’s scripture.

What Paul is pointing out here is that it is the nature of people that until they experience broken-ness, they won’t reach out for God. God always stands ready to embrace us, to lift us up and shower his affection on us. But like rebellious children we spurn this help until we are faced with the limitations of our humanity. I think we have all experienced this at some point and to some extent. Did you ever when you were a kid set out to prove how mature and independent you were only to find yourself in trouble and calling on your parents?

Or how about when we hear of someone close to us dying? We might be going about our business consumed by the details of life and then be faced with the fact of our mortality. And at that point, all of the things we thought were so important, or little plans and designs, suddenly don’t seem so significant, and we get a brief glimpse of life from the point of view of eternity.

This is what is necessary to recognize our need for God’s grace, that fact of our brokenness. We have to be convinced that we are powerless ourselves before we will surrender to God’s power.

In my office above my desk I have a print of this painting that I purchased when I visited Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia a number of years ago. You may or may not know but I will tell you that it was at the home of Wilmer Mclean in Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, where Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Grant, effectively bringing the Civil War to an end. The reason why this picture is so significant to me is because as a historian I know the story behind it. I know that on the night before many of Lee’s officers urged him to surrender to Grant but that he resisted, placing his hopes in one last ditch cavalry charge to try to break out of the trap Grant had set. When the Confederate cavalry charged over the hill they were met by what seemed an endless sea of blue, and the realized the plan was hopeless.

It was at that point that Lee sent word to General Grant that he was ready to surrender. He was completely broken, completely without resource. He put on his last good uniform because he thought he would be taken prisoner and told his staff "There is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths." Isn’t that the way we give up our will? Isn’t that the way we surrender to God? And yet, without that surrender, there can be no salvation. And that is the point that Paul is making up to this point in his letter to the Romans. “There is no one righteous, not even one.” (Ro. 3:10 NIV)

That’s the bad news. But it’s also the “good news” because of the cross. Jesus paid the penalty for our sins, and when we surrender to him we gain his righteousness. That surrender, as we see demonstrated in the painting, might be the most terrible and difficult thing to do, but it is the right thing to do. And it leads to real peace and freedom. And that is actually pretty good news, I think you’ll agree.

There is one last thing I want to bring up in regard to this passage that has to do with the way we relate to our brothers and sisters. Going back to our original illustration of the Pharisee and the tax collector, one of the traps that religious people can fall into is the misplaced notion that because we think we live closer to God’s will for us, because we do the right religious things, that we are somehow better than our fellows who are not religious, and we might even stand in judgment of them, just like the Pharisee in the parable. Well, we don’t want to be Pharisees ourselves and say, “Thank God I’m not like this Pharisee!” Because the lesson we can take away from this section of Paul’s letter to the Romans is that we are the Pharisee, and that we are also the tax collector. We are all wounded; broken in every way.

That wounded-ness can and must also be turned to God’s advantage. It is so because the recognition of our own weakness and sin ought to help us to see our brothers and sisters in the same way Jesus sees us. We ought not to look down on our brothers and sisters unless we are reaching down to help them up. The writer of Hebrews tells us about Jesus, “…we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. (He. 4:15 NIV). Jesus does not condemn us; he knows our struggles and gave himself up to free us from them. We do sin, and we cannot give ourselves perfectly as Jesus did, but we can look upon our brothers and sisters with compassion as Jesus does, knowing that we are as broken as they are without Jesus.

Let us then look upon our weakness as the key to freedom from sin, both for ourselves and for our brothers and sisters. Let our lives truly demonstrate to the world that when God is all we have, God is all we need. Amen.

When God is All You Have, God is All You Need

Do you remember the story from Luke's gospel account of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple and how Jesus told the crowds that it was the tax collector who left the temple justified? We have probably been conditioned to think about the Pharisee as the bad guy in this story. But in Jesus' day, this story would have been shocking to "good folks" because the Pharisees were thought of favorably by most people. This story that Jesus told would have stood their ideas about themselves and the way to be righteous on their heads.

In this week's scripture we are going to be considering a passage from Paul's letter to the Romans that essentially gives the same message to the Jewish Christians in Rome that Jesus made to his listeners in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.  Join us this Sunday July 8, 2012 at 11:00AM at the Rock Presbyterian Church 6910-B Miramar Rd., San Diego, CA 92121 as we ask ourselves some hard questions about which we are in the story. The answer might surprise you.

Don't forget we will have corporate prayer at 1015 in the second floor chapel where we can pray for our personal concerns and the needs of our congregation. All are welcome.

We are now on Facebook! Check out our new Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SDRockPresbyterianChurch.There are some pictures from last weeks outing at Mission Bay Park.