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Romans 3:9-20
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad you're here, and we hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. My name is Jeremy. I'm part of the team here.
Speaker 1:And to all the women who have been mothers to us in a thousand different ways, we wanna say thank you. And we are jumping back into Romans this morning, but I did get a chance to put a quick video on social media this week talking about one of the feminine images of the divine that is used in the scriptures. You can head over to facebook.com/commonschurch to check that out, and you might be surprised to learn what El Shaddai actually means in Hebrew. That said, we are in the middle of a series on the book of Romans. And this is actually our second year in this series.
Speaker 1:But if you are new to commons, then please don't worry. We have not been looking at Romans for two years straight. That's too much even for me. Instead, we spent some time last year looking at chapters one and two. This year, we're looking at chapters three and four.
Speaker 1:And our long term plan is just to work our way through bit by bit, taking chunks to focus on each year until we work our way through this entire letter. However, before that, let me say, thank you for participating in the in seat survey last week. It's really good for us to hear from the community so that we can adapt and evolve and continue to serve you well. And obviously, in a community this size with four services, there are always going to be conflicting opinions and preferences. For every person who wants a little more variety in what we sing, there is someone else who's looking for more consistency.
Speaker 1:And yet, inviting those differences in opinions, and listening to each other, and dealing gracefully with each other while we learn, I think this is part of what makes Common so unique. And so thank you for that because we really do want to hear your input all the time. And then finally, one last community update before we jump in today. About a month ago, I gave you a heads up on our finances here at Commons, and I let you know that the first quarter was pretty tight for us. I just wanted to say thank you for the way that you have responded so incredibly generously to that, particularly those who filled out automatic contribution forms and budgeted their giving over the next season.
Speaker 1:That helps us immeasurably, and we continue to be so incredibly thankful for all the support that we get from the community, especially in a season where we're preparing to take on the challenge and the cost of launching a second parish in the city. We want to create more opportunities for more people to encounter this surprising grace of God that we meet in Jesus, and so thank you for being a big part of that. Now we started Romans year two by recapping Romans year one. And then last week, Scott looked at the start of chapter three as we jumped into some new material. And so far, Paul has introduced us to the idea that the gospel or the good news of God is the fact that God is always faithful to us.
Speaker 1:We can count on him. Now sometimes in evangelical circles, we subtly shift the focus so that it almost sounds as if our faith is the most important part of the good news. Do you believe in Jesus? That is certainly incredibly important, but for Paul, the real crux of good news is that God is always faithful even when you and I aren't. And for Paul, the way that God is faithful is that he has sent his son and he has proved his son through the resurrection.
Speaker 1:We believe only because we come to understand that God would never leave us on our own. And this is why as Christians, Jesus has to always be the lens through which we reinterpret everything. In fact, there's a lot of what Paul is doing in Romans. He knows he's part of the Jewish tradition. He knows he has the Hebrew scriptures to guide him, but he also knows that he has met and that he now worships Jesus.
Speaker 1:So everything changes when he meets Jesus. He is the only exact representation of the divine. That's Hebrews one. And the word that's used there in Hebrews is the Greek character, and, yes, that's where we get our English character from. But the literal meaning of character is when you would take a stamp and you would press that into metal to make a coin, or you'd press it into wax to make a stamp or a seal.
Speaker 1:And the writer is saying that Jesus is God pressed into the world so that you and I can now finally fully see what God would look like, not just in our imagination, not just in our writings, but what God would look like actually pressed into the world. Nothing trumps Jesus when it comes to God's character. Yet, because the God that is revealed in Jesus is so unbelievably graceful, and because the divine anger that's revealed in Jesus is not actually directed at you and I or even at his enemies, Jesus says to love your enemies. His anger is only ever directed at what hurts us, selfishness and greed and exclusion and pain. Then the question that naturally follows is, well, then why am I bothering to be a good person at all?
Speaker 1:I mean, if God is faithful regardless and Jesus is gracious always and all that hurts me will eventually be burned away by God anyway, Then why don't I just sit back, drink a margarita, and try to get whatever I can from life, whether it's righteous or not? And what's interesting in Romans is we actually don't know whether people were making that argument against Paul or whether he just thinks they might, and so he decides to preempt them. But that's the question, hypothetical or otherwise, that he's dealing with in the opening of chapter three. And Scott did a great job of walking us through Paul's response, which is almost literally, oh, hell no. And before you get upset about my language in church, as Scott said, that is very literally what very serious scholars with very impressive credentials behind their names translate that passage as.
Speaker 1:Reminds me of a scene from the Simpsons where they're coming home from church one day and Marge asks Bart what they learned about in Sunday school. Bart says, hell. And Romer gets mad and yells at Bart and Bart replies, well, that's what we learned. I sure as hell can't tell you we learned about hell if I can't say hell now, can I? Well, Paul's response here is basically what Homer should have said, which is, listen, don't be ridiculous.
Speaker 1:Grace is at the heart of the gospel. In fact, is gospel, but grace will always require a certain maturity for us to understand. Because you are absolutely right. You could be terrible, and God would still be faithful to you. An evangelical equivalent might be, you could ignore God all your life and say the sinner's prayer on your deathbed before you die, and that would be enough.
Speaker 1:And Paul says, if you're looking for loopholes, then you just don't get it. Participating in God's story isn't a punishment, it's an invitation. Being a good person is not what you have to do to be loved. It is what you get to do once you realize that you are. And that's the default posture that underpins everything that Paul is writing here.
Speaker 1:The faithfulness of God is bigger than you think it is. And so if you are looking for loopholes, you're going to find them. But if you're actually looking for God, he promises you'll find him instead. So that, let's pray, and then we'll move into verse nine today. Gracious and loving father, who sent your son to impress upon the world your true and complete character, unencumbered by our expectations and presuppositions of who you are.
Speaker 1:Would we come to encounter you through this text this morning? Might we read closely and study diligently, but might we also learn how to fix our eyes past the page and firmly onto your son revealed to us. God, where we have allowed our limited concepts of justice to supersede your grace, where we have filtered your incredible love through our frustrations and our fears, where we have worshiped really good things like religion and theology, but at some points lost sight of your story. Would you draw us back through these ancient words and welcome us into your embrace to show us how deeply loved we are so that you might then begin the transformation that calls us to participate in your renewal of all things. Lord of light and love and resurrection, might you help us to see ourselves in this story above all else.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Alright. Chapter three. We're gonna start in verse nine today where we left off, and I'm gonna read here through to verse 20 and hang on because this is a longer section.
Speaker 1:But it starts, 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 under the power of sin. Now remember, this is the big point from last week.
Speaker 1:The Jews do have the Hebrew scriptures, and that is a big bonus, but it's not a free pass. We are all on level ground before God regardless of our background, our ethnicity, or our history. But then he says, as it is written. And when he says, as it is written, this means a quote is coming. This one is a doozy.
Speaker 1:There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks God. All have turned away. They have together become worthless.
Speaker 1:There is no one who does good, not even one. Now that's already a little heavy, but that's from Psalm 14. However, he's not done, and so he continues. Next verse. Their throats are open graves.
Speaker 1:Their tongues practice deceit. That's Psalm five. The poison of vipers is on their lips. That's Psalm one forty. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.
Speaker 1:That's Psalm 10. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. That's Isaiah 59. There is no fear of God before their eyes.
Speaker 1:That's Psalm 36. And then just to finish this all up, Paul adds his own commentary, and he says, now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 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. So that's Romans three verses nine to 20.
Speaker 1:I told you it's heavy. That's just how this letter rolls, but here we go. And there's some interesting things to unpack here. So let's go back to the start of this extended compound quote. Because in verse 10, Paul starts by saying, there is no one righteous, not even one.
Speaker 1:And as I said, this is a quote from Psalm 14, but as we have already seen several times in this letter, Paul is paraphrasing here. And this is something that makes all first year bible study students extremely uncomfortable when they deal with Paul because he is doing something that they are not allowed to do. He is using the scriptures to make his point, but whenever they don't say exactly what he wants them to communicate, he just simply changes them. Now that doesn't need to be scary for us. We just have to understand what's going on here.
Speaker 1:And first of all, the Psalms that he's using here were originally written in Hebrew. Now he's quoting from the Greek translation that Scott talked about last week. We call that the Septuagint, and that's the translation that would have been most familiar to Paul and his readers at the time. Now it's also true that Paul, as a Pharisee, certainly would have read and understood the Hebrew as well. But he's writing in Greek to people who read Greek, and so he starts with the Greek translations.
Speaker 1:And what you have to understand is that Judaism, and by extension Christianity, have always adopted the technology of translation. What we have said is that the power in our religious texts is not in the magic of the words. It is in the message that is communicated to us. This is one of the ways that we depart from our Muslim neighbors. In Quran, it is kept in Arabic so that the original words are never corrupted.
Speaker 1:In Christianity, our words have been translated as broadly as possible from the very beginning. Now at the same time, of course, we work very hard to make sure that we are saying the same thing in different languages and contexts. But anytime you translate language, you inherently accept a level of transmissive transformation. There is nuance and syntax and limitations to language that just introduce complexity when you translate it. This is why we are still translating the Bible into English even though we first did it over four hundred years ago.
Speaker 1:English keeps changing. And so to say the same thing, we need to keep saying it differently. I mean, it would be great if we all still talked like Shakespeare, because then we could use the King James, and life, to be honest, would be far more interesting, but we just don't talk that way anymore. Side note, one of my favorite lines from Shakespeare comes from the play As We Like It, and he says, I do desire that we may become better strangers, and I have always wanted to work that into an argument somewhere, but it's never happened yet. Yet.
Speaker 1:Someday. Watch for it. I mean, I don't know if you know this also. Shakespeare invented a lot of words. One of them, bedazzled.
Speaker 1:I mean, what would you do with your old genes if it wasn't for Shakespeare? That's how important this guy is. Anyway, regardless, Paul sits in this long line of authors that saw language as a tool rather than a sentence. And, yes, that was a literary pun. Because he wants to communicate not just what the words were saying.
Speaker 1:He wants to communicate what they are saying, especially now as he looks back on them having encountered the story of Jesus. And what Psalm 14 originally said is that there is no one who does good. Now, repeats that line, and Paul keeps it the same in verse 12, but he changes the opening to there is no one who is righteous. And the reason for that is that Psalm 14 is all about how bad people do bad things. Psalm 14 actually starts, the fool says in his heart, there is no God.
Speaker 1:He is corrupt. His deeds are vile. There is no one who does good. And so that poem is actually about how people who ignore God do terrible things. Except that Paul's point here in Romans is that, actually, it's all of us.
Speaker 1:It's not just the nonreligious. It's not just the Gentiles. We all fall short of the glory of God. He's gonna say that in verse 23 a little later. Now, sure, you may do some good things because you keep the law and you follow the rules, but Paul's point is that alone doesn't make you righteous.
Speaker 1:Just being a good Jew who follows the rules isn't enough. But there's a few more quotes here to make his point. Verse 13. Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit, Psalm five. The poison of vipers is on their lips, Psalm one forty.
Speaker 1:Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness, Psalm 10. And this is just fascinating from a literary standpoint Because what Paul has done is he has searched through his encyclopedic memory of the scriptures and created this neat little progression of a metaphor here for us. In case you ever think that that Paul is just being careless with the scriptures when he quotes them, everything he does is incredibly intentional. Look at what he does here. Throats as open graves, tongues that practice deceit, lips covered in poison, mouths full of bitterness.
Speaker 1:This is an incredibly skillful weaving of different poems together into a brand new poetic depiction of how sin starts somewhere deep inside and works its way out into the world. Now, yes, he's making a bigger point about how all of us mess up and how no one is immune to brokenness, and he's gonna come back to that before we close today. But he's also crafted this little moment in the middle of this poem here talking about where our worst moments come from. I have no doubt that you, like me, have had a moment somewhere in your life at some time, some point that you would love to take back. I will be completely transparent here.
Speaker 1:I've actually had more than one. I know that's hard to believe. But those moments that I regret, they didn't come from nowhere. Now, sometimes it feels like I just say something stupid or insensitive or uncaring out of nowhere. But usually, what happens is that if I look back and I'm honest, I can see how I was frustrated during the day, and I focused too much of my energy on that.
Speaker 1:Or I was in a difficult conversation with someone, and I carried that frustration over into a new interaction. I can see how I brought with me a sense of entitlement or selfishness or arrogance into an encounter with someone. And inevitably, every embarrassing thing that I allow out of my mouth started in my throat, formed with my tongue, passed through my lips, and at every moment along that way, I could have stopped it. You are what you feed. And Paul is reminding us that our worst moments actually didn't happen out of the blue.
Speaker 1:They happened because we put our energy behind them a long time ago. Now the good news here is that the corollary is also true. Now what you put your energy into that's positive leads to positive outcomes. But we have to be aware of what we're doing. My son had a massive freak out in the middle of the night a couple weeks ago, and he reached that point where he just, like, could not calm himself down.
Speaker 1:He didn't know what he wanted. We didn't know what he wanted. We could not discern any plausible way forward together. There was nothing rational about this at all. This was just a three year old in full on midnight meltdown, and I'm learning that this is just part of my life now.
Speaker 1:But after I tried my turn and was soundly rebuffed, I believe the exact quote from my son was, I don't want you. I want mommy. I went back, and I laid down in bed as Rachel made her attempt to calm the situation. And so as I lay there listening, these are two of my favorite lines that I heard from the next room. This is my son eating amid the sobs.
Speaker 1:I am just so angry, but I want to be calm. I am in the red zone, and I want to take a deep breath. And what's funny about this is hearing a child talk that way, but also, this is very particular language that Rachel has worked on in her career with children, and my son has picked up on this. Rachel's a fantastic mother, and I am so glad to learn from her, especially on Mother's Day. But this is language that's about helping kids to identify when they've lost control of their emotions.
Speaker 1:And so it's helping them regain a sense of composure by helping them determine whether they are in the green or the yellow or the red zone. And what I love about this is how significant that kind of self awareness is, not just for three year olds, but for 39 year olds and for 69 year olds as well. One of the things or one of the reasons that terrible things come out of our mouths is because we're not aware of them when they form in our throats. And noting what Paul does here in the middle of this quote in Romans, it helps us to realize that before we find ourselves in the red zone saying things we will regret, there are all of these steps that provide an opportunity for us to notice what is happening inside and to redirect that into healthy ways. Simply knowing that you are angry helps you not to act out of anger.
Speaker 1:The problem is a lot of us just don't know when we're angry. And so learning to pay attention to what is happening inside of you is really important because properly understood, it's one of the best ways to shape the person that you want to become. In fact, you can do this on the positive side as well. If you wish you were a more kind person, then start by focusing on more kind thoughts. If you wish you were more generous, then stop searching the Internet for all the things that you're going to buy when you get rich.
Speaker 1:If you want to be the kind of person other people turn to when they need support, then put your phone in your pocket and be present to them when they're not in the middle of a crisis. If our worst moments move through our throats, to our tongues, to our lips, to our mouth, then our best moments come through our awareness, to our intentions, to our choices, to our outcomes. Now there's still two more quotes here that Paul packs on before he moves on. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery mark their ways, the way of peace they do not know.
Speaker 1:Isaiah 59. There is no fear of God before their eyes, Psalm 36. That's six different passages woven together that Paul gathers to make his point. And the basic theme here is that people mess up. They're violent and hurtful and selfish and arrogant even in the face of a loving God.
Speaker 1:And ultimately, Paul's point here is that it doesn't matter whether you are a Jew or not. All of this describes all of us in some way, or small. What's interesting about this is that each of these psalmic references would have been used in synagogues of the day in a very different way. I'll quote James Dunn here, who is regarded by many as one of the leading Pauline scholars of the last generation. He says that all of these passages would have normally been read within the synagogue as bolstering the assumption that the Jewish righteous could plead with God against the Gentile wicked.
Speaker 1:In other words, all of Paul's former colleagues, all of his Jewish contemporaries, all of them would have been just as familiar with all of these passages as he is. It's just they would have said, yeah, that applies to them and not us. And Paul's argument here basically boils down to this. When the scriptures say that no one is righteous, no one understands, no one seeks God, no one does good, no one fears the Lord, what they mean is no one. And remember, for Paul, that's not a problem.
Speaker 1:Because for Paul, the good news is that even when we're not, God is still always faithful. But if you are playing in a sandbox that says, good news is about coloring inside the lines, or good news is about being good enough to earn God's favor, or good news is being born into a special chosen people with special access to God, then you might have a big problem with what Paul is saying. But what Paul has realized through his encounter with Jesus is that good news was never about playing by the rules anyway. It was always only ever about trusting that God would do good for you. That's faith.
Speaker 1:And Paul is not trying to beat you up with the fact that you're not perfect. He knows that you already know that. So I've been doing this job for more than fifteen years now, and I have yet to meet a a single person who underneath it all, when you get right down to it below the bravado, actually thinks they're perfect. Every one of us are actually deeply aware of our own flaws. And sometimes, especially those of us who work the hardest to hide them.
Speaker 1:And so Paul isn't here to beat you over the head with the fact that you messed up. He's here to say, I know and you know, but it's okay. Because you don't need to pretend anymore. God's got this. Look at what he says in verse 19 where he comes back with his commentary.
Speaker 1:He says, we used to think that all of that applied to them, not us. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law also, So that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight simply by works of the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of our sin. And that might sound like a downer to end on, but that's only if you're intent on trying to be something that you can't.
Speaker 1:Because taken in the larger context of everything that Paul has been saying, his point here is, guys, the rules never worked anyway. They just made you feel bad about yourself. But it's okay because no one will ever be declared righteous simply by staying in the lines. Instead, the good news, the news of Jesus is that the righteousness of God is being revealed, a righteousness that is his faithfulness from first to last. God will make all things right even when we mess them up.
Speaker 1:You see, Romans three only makes sense in the light of Romans one. That's how it works. And Paul's goal isn't to grind you down. It's to invite you to let go of expectations that were never realistic to begin with so that you can discover faith in the God who is faithful to you. And so on this Mother's Day, may you sense in your spirit the God who, as any loving, nurturing parent, calls you not to earn divine favor, but to rest in the knowledge of divine embrace.
Speaker 1:Because life was not designed as a test you were destined to fail. That's the most that rules can offer you, and that's what Paul is actually arguing against. He's saying that life was created as an opportunity for you to discover the you that comes from trusting God will always be there to catch you, and that's what he's inviting you into. Let's pray. God, be with us as we engage these heavy texts that call us to put our full mental acuity into understanding what it is that's being communicated and how you are being revealed, not simply in the text, but through the text and behind the text that the word of your son is there present to us inviting us forward.
Speaker 1:And so, God, in all the ways that we have felt we needed to live up to your love, to earn your favor, to win our place at your table, God, would you remind us by your spirit that the rules are good, and they're there for us. They're there to shape us and guide us and keep us pointed in the right direction, but the rules were never our salvation to begin with. That was always you who is faithful from first to last, who refuses to leave us on our loan, and who will do good for each of us. And so, God, may we place our trust and our faith in you, knowing that you are faithful to renew all things because this is the story of your kingdom and grace. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.