The God(ness) of God: The God of Gospel - Week 1
May 18, 2008 3:21 pm Chapter 10, Romans, Sermon-Texts
This sermon is week 1 of The God of Gospel section of our “The God(ness) of God” sermon series. It is an exegetical treatment of Romans 9:30-10:4, addressing the themes of cultural groups, Jesus being a roadblock, having a heartzeal for the gospel, and how Jesus is the end of everything. This sermon was originally preached May 18th, 2008 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.
The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church
Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.
May 18th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets
Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
Week 1 - Romans 9:30-10:4
Introduction
Well good morning to everyone. I know it’s warm in here today. It seems like we’re escaping the normal May grey here in San Diego and we’re getting summer already. Maybe we’ll also escape the normal June gloom too, that would be great. At the end of the day yesterday, I took my family down to OB to watch the sunset and it was quickly apparent to me that summer is in full force. I love summers, I love the beaches, I love San Diego and I love Jesus. So let’s read his book and get started talking about it today. (READ TEXT AND PRAY)
Today we begin the second main movement or phase of our current sermon series “The God(ness) of God.” This is the longest series we have ever done, three chapters, but that is because these three chapters all really uniquely go together and then within them there are three main movements or sort of sub-series.
The first movement, or the first subseries was main about how God is a God that does everything for his glory, that the only reason God ever works in anyone’s life and why the gospel can be trusted is because God acts for his own glory. He is a God of Glory. That first section, which is mostly all of chapter 9, is sort of a big picture snapshot. It’s stepping back away from the immediate and looking at the grand purposes of God and his will as a whole.
In this second movement, or second subseries that we start today, zeros in more on the immediate, on the decisions of humans, and what God has offered us in Jesus. Some have said the first section focuses on God’s sovereign or free or elective will and this next section focuses on human responsibility and faith. Some have said the first section looks at God’s past workings human beings and this next section focuses on God’s present offer to human beings.
It’s a much happier section. One of the reasons I intentionally stuck with our scheduled text last week, even though it landed on Mother’s Day, was so we’d have some Mother’s Day happiness to counterbalance the heartbreaking realization of last week’s text that hell is real and some people will go there. So if that was a little weird for you, maybe that makes sense and maybe it doesn’t, it is what it is. But either way I’m relieved. I’m still sort of recovering from the emotional effect of the text from last week and I’m really glad to get into the stuff the text does in this next section. Hopefully maybe you at least learned what it is like to believe something the Bible says even when it is hard.
Alright, so here’s the four main things we’ll talk about today from the text. The gospel’s universal or trans-cultural or multi-relgious relevance, how Jesus is a roadblock, getting or having heartzeal for the gospel, and how Jesus is the end of everything.
The Gospel is Trans-Cultural (v.30-31)
First, The Gospel is Trans-Cultural. You’ve been hearing me say that Romans 9, 10, 11 was written because in the first eight chapters of the book Paul, the human author said God sent Jesus and says now that anyone who puts faith in Jesus will be saved and forgiven and come to know the soul piercing reality of God’s all-surpasing love. But that created a problem because in the Bible God had made promises to a certain group of people in the past, the Jews, so are those promises or Scriptures no longer good anymore and if they’re not, how can this new word from God, the gospel of Jesus really be trusted?
His answer in the first mini, sub-series, was it was never race that counted but grace. God has always saved whoever he wants not based on who they were or what they do, he determines before people are born whether he is going to extend his grace and mercy and compassion to them or not. And lest we think that there is something wrong with that, Paul arcs that whole section to say whoever and whatever God does, we can rest assure he does it for his glory, which is always good and right and true.
Now in this second sub-section, the main subject isn’t so much going to be God’s glorious purposes that he determines within himself before the foundation of the world outside of space and time, but rather God’s offer to all kinds of people in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
He starts out like he did at the beginning of chapter nine, talking about two kinds of people, two different cultural groups, Gentiles and Jews. Notice verse 30, “What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it…” and then verse 31, “but Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righeousness did not succeed…” So see, you have Gentiles and Israel, the Jews, they are two different cultural groups of people.
Let me talk about the importance of a cultural group and then we’ll talk about the gospel of faith versus the gospel of law, which was a primary cultural element of the Jewish group. I want to explain how the gospel, that the justification by faith, how that is trans-cultural…but to do that we have to understand cultural groups.
So I’ll give you an example here in a second. But first some definintions. Culture is things language, art, architecture, music, dress, worldview, tradition, rituals, lifestyle, and many many other things. A cultural group is a people who form themselves into some sort of community based on common behaviors, arts, beliefs and institutions. This can be super structured in some cases and other cases it can be more loose. And here in San Diego paticularly, the parabolic melting pot, we enjoy the ability to belong to several different cultural groups.
So here’s my example. I take Monday’s off because the Bible says that God rested a whole day of the week when he created everything, not because he was tired, but so that we would have an example to follow beause humans need a day of rest in their week. Most of you have Saturdays off, but that’s a work day for a Pastor as well as Sunday…so I take Monday’s off. Some of you work real hard and that’s good, but you need to think seriously about prioritizing your busyness and following the Bible’s principle of a day of rest. I mean we all know we need it because we start to go crazy after awhile if we don’t get a break…I don’t want to go crazy and don’t want any of you all to go crazy either.
So anyway, Monday’s my day off in the week. This last Monday, I was spending some time by myself and I rode my 10-speed bike, I know it’s not as cool as a fixed gear, but I like it…I road my 10-speed bike over to North Park to go to Off the Record, one of the last San Diego record stores, and to go to Evangelical Bible Bookstore. Anyone who knows me know there’s only about 5 things I love. Jesus, my family, surfing, books and music…maybe the iphone too, I just don’t know if it gets in the top five. The surf was no good so I wanted to spend my me time looking at music and books.
I was walking down University street and there is a bookstore I had never gone into but had always been curious about, it’s called “Controversial Books.” So I went in. There was some mellow harp music playing and I think maybe I smelled incense burning. I started looking at the books…there were books on astrology, chakras, channeling, crystals, god-consciousness, eastern religion, enlightened masters, feng shui, oracles, phenomenology, psychic meditation, readings, spirits, trance, tarrot, voodoo, and several other things.
I came up to the counter and I was looking in the glass display case and a lady behind the desk asked if I needed any help. I told her I was just looking around, that I knew about some of these thigns but others I didn’t and I was just curious. She said she’d be glad to answer any questions I might have and told me her name was Reverend Barbara.
So I just started asking her questions. What’s an angel stone? What this red string for? What would I do with a crystal? She started telling me how to use them and how you tie stones or crystals to each ends of a string and you can say a chant or a prayer to try and ward off bad spirits or bad energy or try and figure something out.
Behind the desk they had all these different kinds of Tarot cards…so I started asking her about them…they had Tibeten Tarot, Buddhist Tarot, Gothic Tarot, Gypsy Tarot…so I asked her how a person decides what kind of Tarot they are going to do? She started telling me that it was whatever one you are drawn to. She started laying out all these different decks on the counter and asking me if I felt drawn to any of them? I said no. I didn’t tell her I felt a little drawn to start casting demons out and calling on the name of Jesus and all the legions of heaven. J But I was ready to if she started trying to put a curse or hex on me or something.
So anyway, I’m standing there and while we’re talking two or three customers came in and they all seemed to know each other. In fact this other dude about my age came up to me and started trying to help me pick out the right tarot deck for me. Then this other lady came up and asked Reverend Barbara if she had heard about the earthquakes in China. She said yes, and she’d said you know what I think? And the lady started nodding her head…”Planet X is getting closer.”
I almost did a double take. But I just waited and listened quietly. After the lady walked away I asked her what Planet X was. She said is was the planet of catastrophe and whenver it gets close to earth in its orbit bad things happen…and she went on to say how she saw this enlightened master the other day who was talking about it and when he talked the crystal around his neck started floating.
Pretty crazy stuff. I asked her what made something controversial…she just said that they were open to anything and everything and didn’t want to judge anyone. But I started noticing something. All the people in the store seemed to either know each other or at least all kind of know and accept this certain mindset or way of thinking…there is a cultural community there of people who know things about crystals and planet X and they all use tarot and accept this certain exclusive philosophy that you really ought to accept all these things.
I tried to ask her personal questions, like what if someone didn’t accept these things or thought they were crazy. She said she had no problem with said proudly that and in fact her boyfriend was an athiest and they were fine together. But then she quickly started telling me how she has been able to open his eyes to some things lately and that it was exciting.
It was very interesting. She was asking me to rejoice with her in her missional attempt to win over her boyfriend to her cultural group’s belief system. But that’s another subject.
The reason I told that long story today is to try and shed some light on this text today so that you might kind of feel a little better the weight and the power of it. Jews are like the Christians here in this text. They think they are right because they have the Bible. Gentiles don’t have or believe in the Bible and they are crazy godless pagans. The Jews maybe feel a little like some of you might have when I was just talking about Reverend Barabra…she’s a “pagan new age crazy witch lady!”
Now here is the shock part…let’s read the text: “What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not puruse righteousness have attained it. that is the righteousness that is by faith, but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching the law.”
Do you feel the weight of that? Here are the Jews. The Bible, the law, is their treasure…in their eyes it’s what makes them special and different and they have formed their whole culture, a sacrifice system and everything around trying to fulfill it’s commands exactly. And you’re going to tell me that the person who doesn’t even care about the real God, whose all into crystals and planet X and tarot that they can have the love and favor of God just for believing in Jesus! How can that be?! That’s what the first word of verse 32 asks, “why?”
Jesus is a Roadblock (v32-33)
That brings us to our second point for today. Jesus is a Roadblock. I get that word roadblock the next couple verses. Verse 32 says, “They (that’s the Jews, who the promises and law of the Old Testament Bible was given to), stumbled over the stumbling stone.” And verse 33 continues, “…as it is written, Behold I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believe in him (that’s Jesus), will not be put to shame.”
Now a stumbling stone, could mean a rock that you trip over accidently and it makes you fall. But that’s not quite the idea here. Because this stone is a placed stone that is intended to cause people to stop and either take offense or turn and believe in Jesus. You see they “stumble” over the “stumbling stone.” It’s meant to be a stone that people stumble over. So when I think of this the idea of a roadblock seems to make much more sense.
Just yesterday to us, this morning their time…in Hebron, the West Bank of Israel, huge concrete roadblocks were removed, so that Palestinians motorists could go from Hebron to the south towns. Roadblocks are a big deal. If you drive up to a roadblock you are stuck. You either submit to the roadblock and trust that it is put there for good reason. Or you try to figure out some way to go around it.
Jesus is a roadblock. Saying everyone everywhere needs to put their faith in Jesus if they don’t want to be put to shame. That’s hard. That’s decisive. You either accept that roadblock and turn and put your trust in him, or you ignore it and try uselessly to find someway around it and you will ultimately end up looking pretty stupid for trying to ram your car up against this huge concrete block.
Being put to shame, is what happens when you die, or what happens if Jesus returns before that and everyone, as far is from the east is to the west Jesus says, will see and know that he is God and that he is indeed the savior. Then all that didn’t put faith in him, will feel remorse and regret and shame and receive judgement.
But what about the question, why? Why do you have to believe in Jesus? I get asked that pretty frequently. Can’t just being a good person and doing good things be good enough? The text here says no, and that is the reason the Jews missed it. Verse 32, “Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.” The answer here is what Paul addressed back in chapter 7…that the law was never meant to save. That wasn’t it’s purpose.
Just as in chapter 9, he said, race was never what counted in the first place so why do you think it counts now? Now he adds, law was never what counted in the first place so why would you think it counts now? It’s not race but it’s grace and it’s now law but it’s faith. Faith in who or what…that’s what the word believe means, it’s the same word, but in english faiths isn’t a word so we translate it believe…but whoever faiths, action verb, in Jesus, “will not be put to shame.”
Why? Nobody could ever do enough good works to get us God’s perfect righteousness, which is required for us to be with him, because he is perfectly good and holy and can’t be in the presence of any unrighteousness. We needed a substitute, someone like us but unlike us. Someone perfect and then someone to pay the penalty for our lack of righteousness.
Last week, after the sermon, one of you asked me a good question. You asked, “Why couldn’t God just accept everyone and forgive them, why couldn’t he just have mercy on all?”
Here’s some answers. Last July, Amy and I were rear-ended in Mission Valley. Our car and the car who hit us was pretty messed up. There were some costly damages…but they had to be paid by someone. Ultimately it was the insurance companies. But when you talk about human beings…what about the cost of being robbed of your happiness, reputation, or some opportunity?
If someone takes that away from you, the debt can’t just be dismissed. You can only do one of two things. One, you can try and make the perpetrators suffer. You can withhold relationship, or seek revenege, wish and pray that bad things happen to them, go cuss them out, or talk bad about them to certain people…then you might feel a little better, you’re making them pay off their debt to you. The problem is that it makes you colder, harder, self-pitying, and self-righteous.
The other option is to just forgive them by refusing to retaliate in any way, you don’t lash out, you don’t harbor bad feelings, you just take it all in. But the debt is still being paid. Now it is in the form of your personal suffering and agony. You not only have the original loss of happiness or whatever it was but now you give up the satisfaction of inflicting the same loss on that person by absorbing the debt yourself. And that hurts. It kills you. And without Jesus, it becomes a living death.
But how does that work? When someone wrongs you, shoud they be held accountable and corrected? Shouldn’t we try to repair broken relationships or at least try to constrain people so that they won’t hurt others in the same way they hurt us? Yes. Those are motivations of love, a hope that they will repent and change and make things right.
Revenge doesn’t work that way. You might say that is what you want but in your heart you just want to see them hurt and pay. The result usually is that our revenge is far greater than the original offense and we start a cycle of retaliation.
Why did Jesus have to die and why do we need to put our faith in him? Because no one “just forgives” a price is always paid for wrong. Forgiveness is bearing the cost inside and dying, instead of making the wrongdoer pay, and the hope is the wrongdoer will be changed by such love. Forgiveness always involves pain and personal suffering. On the cross we see not just Jesus as a martyr, or a symbol of sacrifice, or a great teacher but a mysterious exchange.
On the cross, Jesus, God himself in his very nature, absorbs into himself the pain, violence, and evil of the world. Jesus is a God who became a human being so that he could offer his own life to absorb all the moral evils we have each committed so that evil might be punished and many of us would not. Jesus wouldn’t had to die unless it was absolutely necessary. Unless there really was a penalty to be paid. Unless he was really God and paid it himself for those who put faith in him and that work. Otherwise Jesus is a bad example and teacher if he threw his life away and it was not necessary.
In Jesus a roadblock is placed. Jesus causes us to really deal with ourselves and the things which control us and to recognize that we don’t have what it takes to change or to pay off our debt, we need something, someone greater, him. And in Jesus, neither justice nor mercy loses out, because justice is satisfied and the mercy of the gospel is extended to people of all cultural groups.
We either love and receive and accept this provision or we turn away from it and stumble and get offended, thinking Jesus isn’t necessary.
Heartzeal for the Gospel
This gospel is a gospel of love, which leads us to talk about a heartzeal for the Gospel. How can God be a God of love if he doesn’t experience and enter into our human suffering? You’re right, he can’t. That’s why the gospel means good news, because in Jesus, Christianity is the only world religion which claims that God actually does. And once that love grips our hearts we become gripped for people.
And that’s what happened to Paul, the author of Romans. In his life Jesus literally came down out of heaven and stood in his way as a roadblock. You can read the story in Acts 9. Paul’s a smart, zealous dude, out to please God and gain his righteousness by stomping out heresy. So he’s on a trip to go to Damascus and kill some Christians and Jesus shows up in bright light and stands in his way in the middle of the road. Jesus confronts him and calls him to repent.
Something happens in Paul’s heart, the regenerating work of the Spirit and he puts his faith in Jesus and Paul is no longer hard but soft. Verse 1 of chapter 10, “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.” It’s just like what he said at the beginning of chapter 9. “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers.”
You see, when we realize what Jesus has done for us, we learn that there is nothing greater and there is no other solution. Some of you might think you’re a Christian but you don’t think other people need Jesus too. I wonder if you’ve ever really then grasped the greatness of what Jesus has done for you. Others of you, you seem to have grasped the gospel by your affirmation of sound doctrine. But there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of love for non-Chrisitans. God’s love is not like that. Even his anger is always tempered with love.
Here’s a way to tell. When I told you the story of Reverend Barbara, were you angry at her and think how stupid? Or did you you feel compassion for her as a lost person that needs Jesus? You see some of you worry me. Verse 2 There a “zeal for God, but no according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.”
Could it be that we could be that we being to think that we deserve or gain God’s righteousness just by believing the right things, when really in disguise it’s just us trying to establish our own righteousness? The only way out of that is humility. A humble admission and acceptance that there are no buts, I’m usually and most often self-centered and wrong and I need Jesus a whole lot. It’s usually the things we don’t want to hear or don’t like that are actually true.
This is such a great rebuke after the clearest chapter in the Bible on election and predestination…because that teaching tends to have this effect, especially on young men, it makes them proud. I know this because I used to be one of them, a young proud man. I know I’m still young, I’m only turning 30 here in a couple months, and I know I’m still proud and arrogant a lot of the time. I also know from my experience about 7 years ago when I learned Romans 9 that I got proud for my new found knowledge and looked down upon anyone else who didn’t accept it. Zeal, but not according to knowledge. I got it but I didn’t get it. I got proud.
You know what I think? I want to press in on you here. I think there are a lot of 5 point, zealous Calvinists in hell, because experientially they never really believed they, personally, were depraved and in need of Jesus. They thought their sound doctrine saved them and they had no real love for Jesus or for non-Christians. And if you don’t know what a Calvinist is, that’s okay, you fill in the blank, anything you label yourself as that other than a poor dumb needy sinner. Zeal isn’t bad, only when it’s misplaced. It needs to be placed in a love for the gospel, heartzeal.
I say heartzeal because Paul’s heart, which here is clearly not mind, but his feelings, heart is contrasted to zeal in a false gospel, one which thinks we could do without the righteousness that comes from God.
Everything Ends in Jesus
Jesus is it. His righteousness on the cross is our only hope. Jesus is all that matters and everything is about him. That’s my last point for today, Everything Ends in Jesus. Our last verse for today, verse 4, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
I’m tempted to stop right here and just save this for a whole sermon because it is so huge. But it really belongs to this section. So I say some things about how it directly relates and we’ll see maybe next week I’ll do part 2 and do Jesus as the key to the whole Bible.
Christ is the end of the law. What’s that mean? Does it mean that the law was good for a time, some dispensation or period of history but now no longer is because Jesus is here? No. How do I know? Because in chapter seven we learned that the whole purpose of the law, was that we might be shown as sinful and that we need Jesus. The law shows us that we are not good as humans, we fall far short of the perfect and holy righteousness of God.
For people before Jesus it was meant to recognize that and realize that only God giving his righteousness would do and then cry out to God for it. That’s what chapter 4 of Romans says Abraham and David did, they believed God looking forward in time to the provision of God’s righteousness when he would become a man in Jesus.
That Jesus is the end of the law means what Jesus said in Matthew 5, when he said “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them (Mt. 5:17).” That Jesus is the end of the law means what Jesus did when after he rose from the dead he took a trip with two men to a city called Emaus and he did a Bible study with them and he pointed out to them about how all the law and all the Old Testament was all pointing to him (Lk.24:13-27).
Law here in Romans is specicially referring to the Jewish Law, but the principle of law is the same, what he says here applies to any law, any rule we attempt to live by. All of it fails. How many times have you made intentions to go on a diet, or to make some new resolution to better your life, and after awhile you fail? New years resolutions don’t work. No self-help imporovement program will ever work.
No law will save you, only Jesus. He is the appointed end of every law and rule. Only Jesus lived the life we know we need and only through his death and resurrection for us can we die to our personal laws and be risen to new life.
Everything is about Jesus plain and simple. Everything finds and has it’s appointed end in him. Everything in life is a gospel issue. Eating, drinking, playing, money, family, friends, birthdays, dogs, hamburgers and tofu…all of it in some way or another has to do with Jesus. Everything is a gospel issue. And the moment you start making anything in your life more important than Jesus, you’ve gone back to seeking to establish your own righteousness.
Conlcusion
Well let’s conclude. Four points today, The Gospel is Trans-cultural, Jesus is a Roadblock, Heartzeal for the Gospel, and Everything Ends in Jesus. This is the first week of The God of the Gospel in our God(ness) of God series. What makes God God? We’ve learned he is a God of glory, now today we learn he is the God of the Gospel.
What is the gospel and who is it for? The gospel is for all different types of people from all sorts of cultures, no matter how crazy or sinful they are, it doesn’t matter. The gospel is Jesus. He has come into this world and put himself in our way as a roadblock. We will either embrace him or turn away from him but those are the only two options.
But Jesus is worth it. He truly changes our hearts because in a great reversal he as taken our place as a substitute so we might be forgiven. Out of that forgiveness we gain a love for people and our zeal to destroy them or affirm our own goodness dwindles and is exchanged for a radical Jesus-centeredness where we start to see him in everything.
We’re going to take communion now, the grace of Jesus offered in his body and blood. Today, let me press you this way. What things are keeping you from Jesus? Really? Are you really a Christian or are you the one running your life? I implore and beg of you, my heart’s desire, is that if there is anything more important to you in your heart than Jesus and his church that you would lay it down. Almost symbolicallly just leave it on this table, receive Jesus’ forgiveness, and walk in newness of resurrected life.
Whatever it is, pride, arrogance, ill will, lack of trust, worry, desire for power or control, fear of life or man, bondage to sex or substances, the love of money and things…all of it. Behold Jesus, who had everything anyone could ever want and he left it all, he left his glory above to come and bear the pain and suffering we deserve so that we could be forgiven.
I’m going to close with some words that have been running through my head all morning, “Ever since by faith I saw the steram, thy flowing wounds supply, redeeming love has been my theme and shall be till die.”
Let’s pray.