The Heart of our Faith (Romans 10:8-13)

First Sunday of Lent, March 10, 2019

* Originally preached at HillSong, October 31, 2010.

                Followers of Jesus Christ get quite passionate - sometimes about faith.  And sometimes that passion is directed toward hotly debated issues of the day.  This is not new.  One of the 12 disciples was Simon the Zealot (Luke 6:15).  He was on fire for Israelite nationalism and he wanted Jesus to be as motivated as he was, but Jesus had a different agenda.  Simon was primed for a violent overthrow of Rome.  The way of Jesus the way of peace.  He subvert the social order through revolutionary love.  He prevented Simon and the other disciples from defending him the night he was arrested.  He ended up dying on a Roman cross.

            There’s the hot-button issue.  They come and go.  And then, there’s way of Jesus.  Simon the Zealot was a disciple who was passionate about the holiness of God’s people.  He wanted to see God’s people rule the land God had promised to Abraham and he could point to Old Testament passages as Biblical support for his zeal.  Today, true disciples of Jesus Christ pour their lives into movements they believe to be rooted in scripture. Consider the following:

Theological passion - some Christ-followers are ardent advocates of reformed theology.

Political involvement - some Christ-followers are so involved in politics it gets hard to distinguish their Christianity from their patriotism.

Social justice - the whole faith expression for some Christians is their adherence to the scriptures which declare God’s love for the needy and downtrodden.

Specific issues - one example (of many) is abortion; I have met Christians who entire faith expression is the pro-life, anti-abortion movement.

            I am not critiquing any of these issues or the people passionate about them.  I bring them up just to point out that people who love Jesus get wrapped up in specific issues and movements.  We are called to love as God loved us.  Often there are Christ-followers on both sides in these debates.  As important as the issues I have named and other issues are, these things are not the heart of who we are in Christ.  

That phrase in Christ names us.  This is who we are.  Everything - politics, identity, vocation - our very lives are determined by this phrase: in Christ.  

One of the Apostle Paul’s chief concerns in Romans is the heart.  How are sin and death defeated?  How is the heart transformed so that the person who was defined by sin is now defined by God’s righteousness?  There’s a one-word answer: Jesus.  (1) All people sin and are lost.  Paul emphasizes this in Romans 1-3.  Sin destroys us.  (2) The only hope for rescue from our sins and the damage they do is Jesus. We can only we stand before God when we stand in Christ.  Talking about Christ, we must talk about the crucial moment in the God-human story: Jesus Christ crucified, and resurrected.

Moving through the stories of Jesus we read during Lent we get to this point, the heart of our faith.  Romans 10:9-10.  “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.”

Everything about me proceeds from my belief that Jesus is Lord and that he is the resurrected one.  Everything about who I am stands on that belief.  No other argument, ministry, current issue, or theological debate can claim a disciple of Jesus.  How I vote does not show who I am.  Where you fall in a particular theological camp or ideological system does not tell me who you are.  Nothing we can argue about is the cornerstone or life blood.  Faith in Jesus is the ground on which we stand.  The Holy Spirit is the energy in us.  We are all about Jesus.  And when we speak of Jesus, the crucifixion and resurrection inform our thoughts.

To say we believe in Jesus is to say we are a confessing people.  Confession is our verbal witness.  We boldly speak our faith.  Our declaration is absolute and uncompromising.  Jesus is Lord.

When he met the resurrected Jesus, the Apostle Thomas shouted “My Lord and My God” (John 20:28).  He was no longer “doubting Thomas.”  He became “confessing Thomas.”  In Philippians Paul writes that after Jesus died on the cross, God exalted Him so that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” (2:10-11a).  John of Patmos, writer of the book of Revelation, concludes that collection of spectacular visions by saying, “Amen!  Come Lord Jesus” (22:20)!

We are people who say it!  Jesus is Lord - Lord of our lives.  He’s our God, our Master, and our King.  Ours is a spoken faith. 

Our words, as we saw in Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain which we looked at last week, come from the faith we hold in our hearts.  Paul writes, “If you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead ...”.  We know it intellectually.  Faith is rational.  But, what we know through measured reasoning also grips us in the deepest parts.  We hold this faith emotionally.  We speak it audibly because its too much to be contained.  We can’t keep it in and we shouldn’t.  Jesus is Savior and Lord. 

The message in Romans 10:9-10 is the heart of our faith.  Jesus and nothing else is the cornerstone of the church and the foundation of the individual believer’s life.  Every sinner needs Jesus and everyone sins.  Once we understand ourselves to be in Christ, we realize we are not just saved.  We’re called - called to share our faith.  We tell the good news of salvation in Jesus that others might hear and turn to him and themselves receive his grace and be saved.  

We can share our faith in countless ways and in just about any place; in the driveway after a one-on-one basketball game; at a bar with friends; at the coffee pot with a coworker; in an instant messaging conversation; while jogging; in the foxhole; at the kitchen table; before bedtime prayers; in a song; in a handwritten letter; with a neighbor over the backyard fence; through prison bars.  Jesus is Lord in all these places and we can speak our faith in Him in all circumstances. 

Paul says more about evangelism in Romans 10:14-17:

How are they to call on one in whom they have not believed?  And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard?  And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?  And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent?  As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’  But not all have obeyed the good news; for Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our message?’  So faith comes through hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. 

            For Paul, the witness of Christians is the hope the world needs.  In Romans 3:9, he writes, “We have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin.”  In the next 9 verses, he make reference to 9 Old Testament passages that show that sin has plagued humanity in all ages.  He sums it up in verse 23 where he says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  Arguments about border walls or who can or can’t get married fade to the background.  Paul’s concern is that all sin and thus all are permanently cut off from God.  It is a universal theme.

            But then in Romans 10, Paul declares a second universal theme.  Just as everyone sins, in Christ, everyone can find salvation.  Romans 10:12-13.  “There is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call him.  For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”  Just as sin’s curse and death’s cruelty are inflicted on all, so is God’s grace through Jesus available to all.  

            During Lent, we see our own need for God and in seeing, we step toward Him through repentance and confession.  You can begin this journey today.  If you have never put your trust in Jesus, you can do that today.  Come, confess your sin and ask Jesus into your heart.

If you are already a believer, speak your faith.  This morning, pray and ask God to give you the words and the opportunity to share Jesus with someone you know who needs Him.  Ask God to help you see how faith in the risen Lord is a present reality that defines our everyday lives.  Between now and Easter ask God to help you help someone you know find their way to Him.  

Throughout Lent, step toward Jesus.  Step into the heart of our faith.

AMEN

The Gospel (a partial Definition) - Romans 3:25

I preached this sermon July 3rd.  I am sorry to posting it two weeks late.

God has done something about it. 

Now hear this, because this is the Gospel.  We hear about “Gospel” music, and the four “Gospels.”  The word “Gospel” has come to mean something that is the essential truth.  Maybe Steph Curry can preach the “Gospel” of shooting a basketball, or Dave Ramsey can preach the “Gospel” of saving money.  And maybe there is essential truth in the pure mechanics of shooting a basketball or the life style discipline in saving.  But the concept of Gospel is not about sports or finances.

Perhaps you have been in church long enough to know that “Gospel” comes from an ancient Greek word that literally means “good news.”  If this is new to you, let me state it again.  The literal meaning of “Gospel” is “good news.”  The idea of Gospel was taken by the writers of the New Testament and applied in a specific way to Jesus.  In a way that can be true of no other, Jesus, who he is and what he did in walking the earth as God in human skin, fully man, fully God – Jesus is the Gospel. 

God has done something about it.  Remember that it.  Write it in the inside cover of your Bible.  Write it on the back of your hand.  Set it as a reminder in your Gmail updates.  Put it in a little frame on the magnet on your refrigerator.  Put it on a bumper sticker on your car. 

God has done something about it.

My wife will tell you one of my pet peeves is the pronoun without an antecedent.  Oh how I hate that.  It makes my blood boil.  And now here I am guilty of the infraction I despise. 

God has done something about it.  God has done something about what, exactly?  To what does the ‘it’ refer? 

ISIS.  The Traditionalist Worker Party.  Al Qaeda. Westboro Baptist Church.  Hamas.  The KKK.  Al Shabab.  Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army.  Islamic Jihad.  Boko Haram.  The ‘it’ in the sentence God has done something about it refers to terrorism.

Mass shootings – there have been 136 in the United States this year and since the year 1966 almost 1/3 of the mass shootings – gun incidents in which as least 3 people die – have happened in the United States.  A slew of high profile incidents in which unarmed young people die in conflicts with police.  Thousands of death due to people driving while under the influence of alcohol.  The ‘it’ in the sentence God has done something about it refers to violence and death.  God has done something about violence and death because God opposes those things.

Racism.  Homophobia.  Judgment and scorn.  Fear of foreigners.  Rejection of people.  Poverty.  The ‘it’ in the sentence God has done something about it refers to the things that erect walls of division between people.  God knocks down those walls because God is love and God’s intent is that we live in relationships of love.

The hateful words we speak.  The addictive drinking your uncle does because of the way his life has fallen apart.  The fact that because of a stupid argument, your father and your brother haven’t spoken in 10 years.  Your secret lusting accompanied with the indifference you show your wife.  The way you are unable to speak without spewing offensive profanity in every direction.  The contempt you show for people you think beneath you.  My short tempter, judgmental tone, accusatory slant, and confrontational approach.  The ‘it’ in the sentence God has done something about it refers to all the small ways you and I live in brokenness and act in ways that hurt ourselves and one another.  God hates that. 

As much as God hate terrorism, racism, fear of all things foreign, and the spectacular destruction in acts of war, God hates the little things we do that slowly destroy our lives.  And because God hates the destruction of His world and because God is God and God is love, God has done something.

The book of Romans says it this way.  “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  Some in our world giggle at the thought of sin and secretly or not so secretly desire the erotic pleasures and deviant stimuli they believe come from sin.  The sin might be sexual or drink or drug induced, or it might be a sin of power or a sin of self-centeredness.  People laugh and say, “Mmph.  Church?  No thanks.”  “God?  Whatever!”  “Jesus?  Please.”  Those same people are getting high or are glued to porn sites, or they are given to enraged verbal explosions aimed at the people in their lives.  Or they routinely commit the sin of omission, where you know there’s a good you should do, but you refuse because it’s inconvenient.  Or, they withhold the love God commands us to share.  Sin comes in countless forms and the enemy convinces us sin feels good.  But God hates it because sin actually destroys us.  Sometimes all at once, sometimes little by little. 

Sin is the word that sums up has happened to God’s world.  And it is widespread, universal.  “All have sinned,” the Bible says, “and fall short of the glory of God” (3:25).  We hear this familiar passage, but do we grasp it?  Sin damages, cuts us off from God.  The only possibility of joy and true love is slashed by sin, and every person you meet is a serial sinner.  Worst of all, the one you see in the mirror sins without ceasing. 

The extent of the damage is worldwide.  Sin is so deadly Paul writes in Romans 8 “The whole creation has been groaning in labor pains” (v.22).  Paul lived in a time before anesthesia.  Many birth resulted in the death of the baby or the mother or both.  Induced labor – not an option.  C-sections – not an option.  Epidurals – not an option.  When he thought of childbirth, he thought of something extremely painful and horrifyingly unpredictable.  At the same time, it came with the hope of new life.  When he writes of creation groaning in labor pains, he has in mind the pain sin brings to the entire world, but also the hope that God will bring out of the pain something new and beautiful.  His picture hurts and inspires.

Yes, sin hurts; it hurts the entire world.  But God has done something about it.

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”  Justified.  This word identifies what happens in salvation. God makes us right.  But more than making me suitable for a right relationship with God, or making you right, God makes everything right.  Our church.  The world.  The way the book of Revelation puts it, it is like Heaven and Earth fade and are replaced by a new heaven and a new earth (see Rev. 21). 

Several scholars apply Paul’s sensibility here, especially found in 2^nd Corinthians 5:17.  I appreciate our associate pastor Heather helping me understand this line of thinking.  It is not that the earth and Heaven are replaced.  Rather just as 2^nd Corinthians says we become new creations, this Earth and the Heaven where Jesus currently resides in his raised body are made new.  Our bodies die, but at resurrection are raised and made new.  All of this is related to Paul’s word in Romans 3:24 where he says we are justified.  Sin has made us completely unfit for relationship with God, but Jesus makes us right.

Also in that same verse Paul writes of redemption.  In first century Rome, the world in which Paul used this imagery, this specifically referred paying what needed to paid to redeem a slave so he was no longer a slave.  His freedom was purchased.  We are slaves to sin and cannot purchase our own freedom. But Jesus has. In his death on the cross, he buys our freedom. 

Over and over, I have read that the Bible doesn’t exactly say how this works.  How is it that by dying as he did, Jesus, accomplishes salvation?  Did he satisfy God’s justice?  Did he defeat evil?  Did he pay a ransom owed to Satan?  Did take our punishment on himself?  Even if we can answer each of these questions, it still doesn’t show how his death on a cross in the first century accomplishes anything for you or me in this century.  The “how” is not answered.  However, repeatedly the New Testament asserts that the death of Jesus on the cross is the vehicle of our salvation.

I have tried to be clear from the start of this series a few weeks ago that I believe the only way we can fully understand the Gospel is by seeing the cross and the resurrection as inseparable events.  The cross alone is tragic and evil.  Only when we realize that it ends with an empty tomb is our account of salvation complete.

For now, our focus is on what happens when Jesus dies the cross and Romans 3:25 gives a key piece of the story.  Leading to this verse, it has been established that sin destroys what God made good.  Sin brings death.  And all of us sin.  In verse 25 we read that God put Jesus Christ forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood.  Worship as it is established in the book of Leviticus is based up confession and repentance and then expressed through the sacrifice of an unblemished animal.  However, that sacrifice had to be repeated because sin was repeated and that sacrifice could not bring atonement for future sins.  The death of Jesus on the cross brings atonement for all sins. 

We can say two things at this point. First, God is satisfied.  Does that mean God demanded blood?  Is God a sadist whose thirst for blood must be satiated?  Or is there a deep divine justice that demands death?  What I can say about that is I don’t see the cross that way.  On the cross, I see the love of God.  We looked at verse 24 which mentions redemption and justification.  Beneath those accomplishments, what drove Jesus to the cross is the love of God.  For God so loved the world, he gave his only son.  Whatever the price of sin is when God sees Jesus on the cross, God it satisfied.  The faith of Jesus is sufficient for us.  God is “well pleased,” as the Gospels say, with Jesus.  Thus, when an individual is in Christ God is well please with that person.

Second, sin is wiped away.  In the matrix of Jesus on the cross and you or me putting our trust in him, repenting of sin, and receiving his grace, we become free.  As we know well, even after people commit to Christ, they still sin.  As individuals and as a church, we are not perfect.  But in Christ, we are made right.  God is satisfied and our sins are removed.  The sacrifice of Jesus brings this atonement. 

That’s the “it” when we say God has done something about it.  I recited sins earlier.  Racism.  Violence and death.  Rebellion.  Hatred of other humans because of their accent or because of their ethnic origins or because of their religion.  Sin is awful. And for us, the most awful sins are the ones we commit, or the hurts inflicted upon us.  The ultimate fulfillment of God’s solution – our salvation – comes at the return of Jesus on Judgment Day when we are raised in resurrection. 

That’s the ultimate fulfillment and it has not yet come.  Not yet.

For now, today, we live toward that future day by living out Kingdom of God values even as we live here.  For us, “here” is the United States.  Our country celebrates our independence tomorrow.  I think the Bible clearly shows that our allegiance is to the Kingdom of God, not to America.  In the Kingdom, we live as people of peace, mercy and grace, joy, selfless willingness to help others, and with a spirit of gentleness and kindness. 

I know some of my fellow Americans would be quite unhappy to hear me say that as Christ followers our allegiance should be to the Kingdom, not the United States.  To them I pose this question. What kind of America would we have if all the Christians truly lived their salvation?  If the millions in our country who claim to follow Jesus commit to live as people of peace, mercy and grace, joy, selfless willingness to help others, and with a spirit of gentleness and kindness because we know who we are in Christ, what would America look like?

That would be a country worth celebrating.  That would be a society transformed from within by people who live in light what God has done in Jesus.  Sin destroys the world.  On the cross, God has done something about sin.  I pray our lives will show what life can be like based on what God has done.

AMEN