Romans 9:1-5, "The Greatest of All Happy Endings"
Most of you who have been here know that we have been working our way slowly through Paul's letter to the Roman Christians. We just finished with Chapter 8 which is one of the most profound books in the Bible. As we considered Chapter 8 we talked about such topics as "the Body of Christ," our new life and new identity in Christ, life in the flesh vs. life in the Spirit, and our adoption into the family of God. We talked about how God is re-creating the world using the church, the Body of Christ, as his instrument, and how we are therefore co-workers with God in bringing about his restored kingdom. We considered the concept of Providence, the idea that God makes everything work for our good and his glory. Finally Paul ends Chapter 8 of Romans with a triumphant conclusion, that because of the work of Jesus Christ, we are more than conquerors; that our eternal glory is assured. Why don't we just read that part again?
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39 ESV).
Just so you know, this kind of writing, where the author expresses himself with heightened emotion, is called a doxology. The root of the word is the Greek word doxa, which means glory. It is used in various places, particularly in Paul's letters, to emphasize how amazing God's grace and love for us is. You may have heard the word before but now you know what it means. So these particular verses in Paul's letter are a kind of a shout for joy at our deliverance. It's like a giant, "Yay God!"
Some of you might remember that several weeks ago I used a clip from the movie "The Return of the King" to illustrate the magnitude of the victory Christ accomplished over the forces of sin and corruption. Do you remember that? The original story of The Lord of the Rings published in three volumes by J.R.R. Tolkien in the 1960s was a story that is motivated at least loosely by the Christian gospel. The universe that Tolkien created mirrors our own experience in that there was an original perfection, a fall from grace, and an ongoing struggle between the forces of darkness and light.
You might not care but I'm going to tell you anyway that the work is not allegorical like the Chronicles of Narnia. You may recall that in C.S. Lewis books the lion Aslan represented Christ, and the witch represented Satan, and each of the characters represented somebody from the Christian Bible. But in The Lord of the Rings the struggle is not depicted in that way. You can't say, well Gandalf represents Jesus, and Frodo represents... well, who does he represent? See what I mean? There isn't a simple correspondence. The story is more generalized.
But in the big picture you can see close association of Tolkien's story and the gospel. In particular, you can clearly see the conflict between light and dark, what we have called the Spirit and the flesh. So anyway, just in case you're not familiar with the story, the number one bad guy, Sauron, who I think you would have to equate with Satan, is trying to get his hands on the one ring of power, because he has concentrated his power in the ring.
I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that the ring represents sin. It seems like a good and desirable thing to whoever has it. But whoever tries to use it becomes trapped by it. The ring destroys their life, but they can't let go of it. They yearn for it desperately, even though it separates them from everything they love. Isn't this what sin feels like?
Anyway the quest of the story is to destroy the evil one's power by destroying this ring, which can only be done by throwing it into the lake of fire in the place it was forged, at Mount Doom in the middle of the evil one's land of Mordor. In the film after about ten hours in real time, at the end of the third movie, we finally come to the place where the character carrying the ring, Frodo, stands at the edge of the lake of fire in Mount Doom and is able to destroy the ring.
He almost flubs it, but in an unexpected plot twist the deed is accomplished by the least likely character Gollum, somebody who has been eaten up with madness by the ring, and who snatches from Frodo by biting off Frodo's finger. In his mad celebration he loses his footing and falls into the lake of fire and is destroyed along with the ring. In the meantime all of the other characters are involved in a hopeless fight against the forces of evil before the gates of Mordor.
It is hopeless because even though they are good, and they fight valiantly, they are utterly incapable of overcoming the magnitude of Sauron's evil. I do think this represents our own struggle against the forces of darkness. No matter how hard we try to resist, without Jesus we are doomed.
So at the climax of the movie we see Frodo, his helper Sam, and Gollum, all hovering at the brink of either destroying the ring once and for all or being utterly consumed by it, bringing about the triumph of evil, And that scene flashes back and forth with the scene of the hopeless battle of the forces of good, Gandalf, Aragorn, the Elves, Hobbits, and Dwarves, versus the overwhelming forces of evil. Their only hope is for the ring to be destroyed.
Then, and this is the part of the movie I showed before, when Gollum falls into the lake of fire and the ring is destroyed, the power that holds together Sauron's evil empire is destroyed. Sauron loses his sway over his evil forces; they cower and run away, and even the mighty towers and walls he has built crumble and are destroyed. In the movie there is really triumphant music, and we as the audience get to thrill to the idea that the deed has been accomplished. Tetelestai, it is finished.
But now when I show this clip I want you to notice what happens. At first there is that real sense of triumph, but then something else happens. Let's watch.
What's going on here? These guys were all really stoked, cheering like they are the Padres and they just won the World Series against all odds, but in the end they're all bummed. Why?
The Text
That's right. They're afraid that their friend Frodo has died in the process of destroying the ring. And even though they're happy that the power of Sauron has been forever destroyed, they miss their friend. They think it's a high price to pay. What do you think?
Well, going back to the scripture, we see something very similar happening in Paul's letter to the Romans. Remember we just read Paul's doxology at the end of Chapter 8, it seems as though he couldn't have been any happier. Now at the beginning of Chapter 9 we see Paul is sad all of a sudden. Let's read it and then we'll see what kind of connections we can make.
9 I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit—2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen. (Romans 9:1-5 NIV).
Paul seems to be really sad about his own people the Jews. Let's see if we can figure out what the problem is.
Paul the "Super Jew"
Let's just think for a minute now who Paul is. We know from the Book of Acts that Paul was a very zealous Jew. He was a highly educated scholar and like many of his contemporaries put all of his hope in the promise God had made to Abraham to bring all people to righteousness through him. Paul believed that the Jews were especially blessed, chosen by God to be light to the world. He was passionate about keeping the law of Moses because he saw the law as the means by which the Jews could maintain purity so that they could bring all people to God. That was why when the Church started to grow in Jerusalem he saw it as a great threat and he worked hard to destroy it. In his letter to the Philippians Paul writes about his life before he encountered Christ. He writes,
If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. (Phil. 3:4-7 NIV)
Before Paul met Christ, he was a "super Jew." But we just read that after he met Christ, he looked at all that he had once been so proud of about his Jewish identity as loss. In the next verse he uses even stronger language, calling all of this external evidence of being a Jew "garbage." Why do you think he uses such strong language? [because he met Christ].
Because Paul met Christ on the road to Damascus, and he was changed on the inside. Because he was changed on the inside, none of the external things mattered to him any more. When Paul met Jesus on the Road to Damascus he was suddenly able to realize that far from being an enemy of the law, Jesus was in fact what God had been promising all along. He was able to see that all of his efforts to be right with God through religious practice were useless. He came to see that God had fulfilled the law in Christ, so that those who were in Christ could be right with God just through faith in Jesus. And he came to see that the promise God had made to the Abraham wasn't meant for the Jews alone but for everybody.
When his eyes were opened he was able to go back over everything he knew about the law and the prophets and realize that everything in the Bible points to Jesus. So for example Paul could see that the scripture that Mike read this morning, from the Prophet Hosea, was about Jesus. "I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.' I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people,' and they will say, 'You are my God.'" (Hos. 2:23 NIV). Paul's change was profound.
In the book of Acts we read about the scales falling from Paul's eyes so that he was no longer blind. It's very reminiscent of the great hymn "Amazing Grace," I was blind but now I see. Have you ever had that experience where all of a sudden everything makes sense? I know I have. When you suddenly see things in a new light, it gives you a sense of awe and exhilaration. If you're like me you want to run right out and tell everybody what you just discovered. And that's the way it was with Paul. That's why Paul went from being the Church's greatest enemy to the Church's greatest evangelist.
The Stiff Necked People
Well, here's the problem. Paul had seen the light. And some of the Jews had seen the light. But most of the Jews continued to think the way Paul did before he met Christ. So while in Paul's mind the gospel he was preaching came out of God's promise to Israel and was the fulfillment of the law, more and more Jews came to see the church and its gospel as a threat to Judaism. Sadly, the traditional Jews and the Christians grew farther and farther apart. In the first few years after Jesus' resurrection the original Christians had thought of themselves as Jews. But mostly because of the exclusiveness of the way Jewish people thought at the time, they grew apart, and eventually Christianity became a separate religion, as it is today,
Now, in some ways you can't really blame the Jews. Every Jew was educated in the history of the Jews and there were a few events that were fundamental to Jewish identity. One of these events was the story of the Exodus, where God had delivered the descendants of Abraham from slavery in Egypt. It was then that God gave the Jews the law, and made a covenant with them that if they followed the law and lived the life of righteousness, justice, and love that God expects from his people, that they would be blessed in the Promised Land.
Another event was the exile in Babylon. Because the Jews had failed to keep the law, in fact eventually forgetting they even had the law, God had punished the Jewish people by using the Babylonians to burn the temple, destroy Jerusalem, and carry the people into exile. When the Jews were liberated from exile in Babylon and allowed to return to their homeland, their religious leaders had created a way of understanding and obeying the law that sought to ensure that they would never again forget and suffer the consequences.
This was when the Pharisees had built a number of rules on top of the law and in addition to the law that were supposed to keep the people from screwing up. So it is important to remember that what the Pharisees did had a good intention: to make sure that the people didn't violate the law so that they were not punished again. The problem was that by focusing on the rules and regulations the Jews had forgotten the original reason for the law, which was to create a people who lived such blessed lives that they caused all other people to want to live as they did. They were to be light.
But instead of being light, the rules became oppressive. No one could keep them. The Jews themselves were either arrogant and hypocritical, pretending they were obeying the law when they weren't, or burdened with guilt because they knew they couldn't keep the law. And the people who were not Jews were repelled by what they considered to be arrogance and religious silliness.
The Jews were called to be light, but they were not light. And yet many of them clung to the idea that only by careful and strict observance of the law could they come into right relationship with God.
When the scales fell from Paul's eyes he could see the fallacy of Jewish religious understanding. Almost immediately he set out to try to convince everyone he came into contact with that Jesus had provided a way to get right with God without being bogged down by religious nit-picking and without guilt. This proved to be a compelling message for the Gentiles. The idea of being let off the hook was a powerful one that brought huge numbers of Gentiles into the church.
But that same idea was alien to the Jews. The idea could not have been more foreign and threatening. It would be like saying to us, "you don't have to believe in Jesus to be saved. As long as you believe in something and you lead good lives you're going to be right with God." We know that's not true and if someone came in here trying to preach that gospel we would throw them out on their keester. And of course that would be the right thing to do; faith in Jesus is at the foundation of our relationship with God and well supported in scripture.
But the Jews' faith in the law was not supported in scripture. It was a reaction to historical events that tried to add on to the scriptures. The Jewish scholars of the time called it "putting a fence around the law." But nevertheless they believed it as if it was scripture. And because of that when Paul and the Christians preached that you didn't need the law to be saved but only faith in Jesus Christ, most Jews saw it as a threat. And they still do.
So most Jews in Paul's time rejected Christ and saw Christianity as dangerous blasphemy, and many still do. And this is why Paul is so upset in the scripture verses we are looking at today. He knows that Jesus is the fulfillment of everything the Jews believe in, but the Jews of his time can't see it. And so Paul's brother and sister Jews were rejecting for themselves the promises God had brought to the world through them, while the Gentiles were eagerly accepting God's salvation.
And so Paul is bummed. Just like the characters in the clip we just watched. There has been a great victory over sin. But it seems that the cost has been high. It seems to Paul that he had to lose his friend in order to experience freedom from the bondage of sin.
Three concluding observations
I'm almost finished talking about this but I want to make three observations about this scripture that I think we can take away as lessons for ourselves. The first one is, we cannot rely on any external indication for assurance of salvation. What I mean by this is that our relationship with God is not dependent on the way we were raised or by the advantages we may have had in our upbringing and education.
I think in much the same way as the Jews of Paul's time relied on scrupulously keeping the law to assure their right standing with God, many Christians today rely on their relationship to the Church or their religious actions and attitudes to bring themselves to believe that they are right with God. If I go to church every Sunday and put money in the offering basket and try to be good then I must be OK, right?
I mean at least I'm not going out on Friday night and drinking and doing all kinds of sinful things. And I don't swear (well, not too much), or judge others (well, OK I do that but only when they deserve it), or curse others (well, except when I'm driving on the freeway, or when someone insults me or threatens me), or consider myself better than others (but wait, if I think I'm OK and you're lost I guess I do think that). You can see how this kind of thinking isn't really getting us where we want to go, can't you?
But anyway I believe in Jesus, that's an automatic ticket to heaven isn't it? But all of those things just indicate that we are trying to rely on religion for our salvation. We're no different than the Jews who tried to rely on the law for salvation. What they missed is what we are also missing, and that is that salvation is by God's grace alone. You cannot earn God's grace by being religious. In fact, as we see with the Jews of Paul's time and many people today who claim to be religious, our religion can be a barrier to grace. We can think that because we are good we don't need grace, and no one is more lost than someone who thinks that.
So if we cannot earn God's grace, and we cannot come to salvation by any of our own efforts, where does that leave us? Are we at the mercy of a capricious God? We are at God's mercy, but he is not capricious.
How do we know if we are "in Christ"? I think the best indication is not by what you do but by what drives your life. You may be selfish, but when you are selfish do you feel convicted? You may be dishonest, but when you are dishonest does it hurt you on the inside? You may be stingy, but do you feel the suffering of the less fortunate and wish you could do something about it? Do you hear the inner voice that tells you to act more in keeping with the Spirit, more righteous, more generous, more fair? Are you obeying it, even if imperfectly? Do you obey it more and more as time goes on? These are signs that God is moving us out of the world and into his kingdom.
The best way to live like a Christian is to obey the inner voice that calls us to live like Jesus lived, to live lives of righteousness, justice, and love. The best way to live like a Christian is to try to live lives that look like Christ. Of all the things that Christ was, he was not religious, which was shy he was always in trouble with the religious authorities. If you are not sure what a Christian life should look like, read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew Chapters 5-7.
The second observation is that you cannot substitute yourself for those you care about. Paul writes that he wishes he could substitute his own salvation if it could bring the Jews to salvation. But just by the way he wrote it we know that he knew he couldn't do that. He could pray for the Jews and work to try to bring them understanding, but in the end he knew that their fate was in God's hands.
And so it is with us. Are there people who you are concerned about? Who you wish you could bring the gospel to, but who refuse to listen? Are there people close to you who have rejected Christ, who you fear for their eternal souls? I think we all know people like that, and I think it's natural to wish that we could give up something of ourselves in order to bring them to salvation. The closer they are to us, the more we will be willing to give up.
But while we may sacrifice ourselves for the gospel, and in fact if we are in Christ we will sacrifice ourselves for the gospel, we cannot by our own sacrifice bring anyone to salvation. The work of salvation that needs to be done begins with Jesus.
You may remember the story from John's gospel of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus was Jesus' friend and he had died and been placed in the tomb. Those who loved Lazarus, his sisters Mary and Martha, prayed to Jesus to do something, but they knew they could do nothing to change the situation. Like Mary and Martha, we may be able to pray outside the tomb of the unrepentant sinner, but that person will not come to life until Jesus calls. "Lazarus, come out!" (John 11:43 NIV). Jesus called in a loud voice.
We cannot bring our friends and loved ones to life, but we can show them the way to life. We can pray outside the tomb, and we can be there to love them when they awaken. Finally, we can look at the moment of despair as only a moment. In Paul's letter he despairs for the Jews in the same way that Frodo's friends in the movie despaired for his safety. But we know that it was only a moment, a single scene in a continuing drama. And if we are familiar with Tolkien's story we know that Frodo was saved by the eagles, and that he lived a long and full life and that eventually he was able to cross over into the undying lands. We know that for all of its moments of uncertainty and sadness, in the end Tolkien's tale had a happy ending.
What we must also believe and rely on is much more so than Tolkien, who in my mind was a great author, God is an even greater author. And he is the ultimate author of happy endings. As we continue to study Romans we will see that Paul will eventually conclude that somehow God will bring the Jews to salvation. Neither he nor we know exactly how.
I think some of you may wonder why I gave this message the title, "The Greatest of All Happy Endings." It doesn't look like there's very much to be happy about in Paul's writing. Paul doesn't point to any happy ending; he ends on a note of despair. But we know that in spite of what our limited vision shows us God has a glorious future in store for us. God's story has a happy ending that has no ending.
So even though we might experience moments of despair, let's always remember that our God is a loving and merciful God, and that he has given all to rescue us from sin and bring us to salvation, and that because of all of that, we can look forward to the greatest of all happy endings.
Let us pray. O my God, you are very near, in my heart and in my life; yet often you do seem far away and my soul faints looking for you: you do lead me through dark places and it seems that you withdraw your presence from me. In the desolate time, when I feel perplexed and forsaken, I think upon the cross of my savior and his dreadful cry, and my faith holds fast in his faith, and despair cannot seize me. Help me to remember the days of vision and sure confidence, guide me to rest my soul in the revelations of yourself that you have given me in times past through all of your prophets and servants, and bring me out of the valley of the dark shadow once more into the light of your presence, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
