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Romans chapter 4
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
The spirit is present to us now. And for all his arguments, for all his points, for all his scriptural dexterity and remarkable memory, Paul recognizes that he has had this encounter as well. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad you're here, and we hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Hit the commons.church for more information.
Speaker 1:We are finally at the end of Romans for this year. But before that, my name is Jeremy. I get the privilege of leading and working alongside our team here at Commons. It's great to have you here with us. Perhaps you even rode your bike to church this week for the very first time as part of the faith commuter challenge.
Speaker 1:That would be great. Although, we are glad that you are here regardless of how you got here. However, it is neat to see how engaged and present our community can be in the neighborhood to participate in something like this, and I love that. And speaking of which, if you'd like to get present and engaged in the neighborhood, you can head over to commons.life. You can do that on your phone right now.
Speaker 1:I won't judge you because you can sign up to volunteer for our upcoming stampede breakfast. Last year, 100 plus amazing volunteers served breakfast to 1,700 plus grateful neighbors. It was an amazing day, and we are at work already getting set to do this all over again. So we'd love to have you jump in and be a part of that. However, before we dive back into Romans, couple things here.
Speaker 1:You may have noticed the banners on the sidewall have changed from Eastertide to Pentecost. And Bobby mentioned this earlier during worship, but Eastertide is the fifty day celebration of resurrection that flows out of Holy Week. Pentecost is the culmination of that period. And so penta signals fifty, and if you count seven weeks out from Easter and you include Easter Sunday and today, then we are on day 50. Now, in the Jewish tradition, Pentecost was also called the feast of weeks and it happened fifty days after Passover.
Speaker 1:And in the Christian tradition, it takes on the added significance that after Jesus dies and is resurrected during Passover, fifty days later during Pentecost, during the Feast of Weeks, the promised Holy Spirit is given to the church. And so that story is in the book of Acts and in the second chapter we read that on the day of Pentecost when it came the disciples were all gathered together in one place. When suddenly a sound like a blowing wind came from heaven filled the whole house where they were sitting, and they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that came to separate and rest on each of them. And so what happens is that these disciples, in particular Peter, get up in public, they preach the story of Jesus, they tell about his resurrection, and then according to the book of Acts, on that day, literally thousands of people join the church and commit themselves to this Jesus story. And so Pentecost is in many ways the birthday of the church.
Speaker 1:Up until now, the disciples have encountered the risen Christ, but they've not really been sure what to do with that. When the spirit arrives and empowers and pushes them out of their hiding places to share the story of Jesus with those around them, the story begins to take on a life of its own, and it's a remarkable story, and it reminds us that God is no less with us today by his spirit than he was when he actually walked and ate and spoke with his friends two thousand years ago. The spirit is in and through and with each of us guiding and shaping and journeying with us throughout our lives even in this moment. However, I want to mention a couple things here from this story quickly before we move back to our agenda in Romans. Because the story of Pentecost is important to appropriate well.
Speaker 1:So one of the central motifs of the Pentecost story is that the spirit empowers those who are ignored and undervalued, those who are discarded and voiceless. The spirit empowers the marginalized and the outcasts who follow Jesus and now gives them a platform through the spirit. And so they are empowered to speak their truth and tell their story, and that story, when it is connected to the risen Christ, transforms the world. But if that is going to be our story, and if we are going to tell that story well, then we need to understand that those of us with a voice and a platform and the resources to get our way in the world, we need to honor the story of Pentecost by actively creating space for the spirit and who the spirit would empower. Only talking about the empowering of the spirit at Pentecost.
Speaker 1:Without creating space for the marginalized to speak, this is only taking half of the story seriously. And so we should notice also that Pentecost is the barrier between Eastertide and ordinary time in our liturgical calendar. And so this mutual empowering and offering of voice, this transformative culmination of resurrection that results in a new shared world together. This is our new normal. And so today, I pray that your experience of spirit, of God guiding and walking and empowering you, even when that means giving your voice away, that would now become ordinary to you, and that you would see just how beautiful this new normal is.
Speaker 1:And so if you would like to put a public declaration alongside that new normal and be baptized into this new resurrection story, then next week on the first Sunday of ordinary time, baptisms will be happening here at Commons, and we would be honored to walk with you into and through that process. So talk to us, stop by the connection center before you leave, or just hit up commons.life on your phone and you can register that way. Alright. Last week, we made it through to the end of Romans chapter three. And don't kid yourself, that is a significant accomplishment in and of itself.
Speaker 1:This week, we are going to take on all of chapter four in one shot. Now, I know that doesn't sound fair to chapter four, but as I mentioned last week, chapter four in Romans is sort of a case study for the arguments that Paul has been building throughout chapter three. And so in a lot of ways, this is going to be familiar material, but now Paul is gonna come at it from a new angle and present it as a narrative to reflect on. And so we have that in store today. However, before we do that, let's pray.
Speaker 1:Come, holy spirit, rain down upon the dry and dusty portions of our lives, and wash away the brokenness and heal our wounded spirits. Might you kindle within us the fire of your love so that it might burn away the places of apathy within us. Might we then live with purpose and passion, empowered by your presence to tell your incredible story through every facet of our lives. With warmth, would you bend our rigidity? With grace, would you guide our wandering feet so that we might come to recognize you within us daily?
Speaker 1:For those of us who have been denied a voice and a place to tell our story, would you heal us of that hurt and remind us that you are always there to listen to us. For those of us who have held too tightly to our platform and misunderstood the mutuality of your empowering spirit, might we learn to listen, knowing that we learn more when we truly hear our brothers sisters share their stories. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay.
Speaker 1:We spent four weeks walking through chapter three, and so, obviously, we're not gonna be able to recap all of that material today. But there are some big themes that Paul has been exploring that we need to have in the back of our mind as we begin to look at chapter four today. So first, Paul answers this question, is there an advantage to being a Jew? And Paul's answer is, of course, there is. Jesus was a Jew.
Speaker 1:Jesus comes out of the Hebrew tradition. Of course, there's an advantage to being steeped in the story that leads us to Jesus. Now, that doesn't mean it's a free pass. Everyone still has to respond to the same grace of God, but Paul acknowledges the world is simply not an even playing field all the time. Now, it doesn't take incredibly long for us to look at our world and realize that here in the West, in Canada, we have been offered, we have been gifted incredible advantages.
Speaker 1:In fact, some of us here in this room have been privileged above others. I have worked incredibly hard for all the success I've had in my life, but for me as a white male born in Canada, it would be ridiculous to suggest I started on a level playing field with everyone around me. I didn't. And I think part of what Paul does for us is that by acknowledging privilege in his world, he reminds us that it's okay for us to recognize it in ours. At the same time though, he also reassures us that when it comes to God, privilege only takes you so far.
Speaker 1:Because this is the beautiful thing about God. He is just even when circumstances aren't. That leads into Paul's second point that advantage doesn't negate the fact that we all stand in the same place before God. And that makes sense to us if we're steeped in the Christian story. But the point that he's making in his context is that it's not just them.
Speaker 1:It's not just the non Jews. It's not just those on the outside who need to be saved. It's actually all of us, every one of us, even people like Paul who were privileged by birth into the Jewish story. We all need the same rescue from the same God. However, there is good news because God's righteousness has been demonstrated through the faithfulness of Jesus, and we are now all invited to trust that story regardless of our ethnicity.
Speaker 1:For Paul, salvation is not just believing the right things or saying the right prayers. Salvation is entering into this dynamic generative relationship between the righteousness of God, the faithfulness of Jesus, and the trust that we come to place in him. Without any of those pieces, gospel falls apart for Paul, which is why Paul can end chapter three with his final theme. You don't do good to earn God's love. You do good because you come to realize you are loved.
Speaker 1:Now there is a tension here in chapter three because near the end of the chapter, Paul says, you don't need to be circumcised. And then in the very next breath, he says, you do have to uphold the law though. And for many Jews, law meant being circumcised. I have to remember though, for Paul, Jesus requires, he necessitates a complete reinterpretation of everything he's known. And so I quoted this last week, but if you turn to chapter 13 verse 10, we'll get there in 2021, I promise, but Paul explains this tension a bit.
Speaker 1:In the end, he says that whatever other commands there may be, the law is summed up in this one command. Love your neighbor as yourself. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of law. And that reinterpretation, of course, comes directly from Jesus, But this is now Paul reimagining all of his religious assumptions that he has grown up with in the light of Christ. Everything has changed.
Speaker 1:And so if I was going to summarize chapter three, I would say something like this. Yes, Jews have an advantage because they grew up with the law, but that advantage can only take you so far because God is faithful to all regardless. And therefore, good works and law and obedience were only ever meant to be our trusting response to God's love and grace. And if I just said that, we could have saved four weeks and moved through chapter three a lot quicker. But now having all of these arguments in mind, chapter four is one big case study of this.
Speaker 1:It's kinda like Paul saying, okay, I've made my point. Now let me tell you this again with a story. And so chapter four begins, what then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? Now remember that Jewish interlocutor that we talked about last week. Paul writes Romans as if he's having a conversation with an imaginary Jewish friend, and he's explaining Jesus to him.
Speaker 1:Well, now he's made his arguments, and so he wants to say to his imaginary friend, let me tell you a story. Because everything I've been arguing for here is actually there in our shared scriptures if you're willing to look for it. Verse two, he continues. If in fact Abraham was justified by works, then he had something to boast about, but not before God. For what does scripture say?
Speaker 1:It says, Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now, that's a quote from Genesis 15. We'll come back to it in a moment. But before we dig into Paul's example here, we have to take a second to remember to gather up something about who Abraham was. And if you're interested, we did an extended series on the story of Abraham a couple years ago.
Speaker 1:It's available on our podcast feed and on our YouTube channel. You're more than welcome to backtrack and fill in some of the details for yourself if that's interesting for you. But here's the highlights. Genesis one to 11 is this long extended decline of God's creation. Sometimes when we talk about the fall, quote unquote, we tend to think of Adam and Eve and eating the forbidden apple, and yet as you read the story, that is only the start of the downfall.
Speaker 1:From there, Cain kills his brother, and then Noah and family survive a flood, and then humanity sets itself up against God by building a tower in Babel as a challenging God to a significance duel. And things get progressively worse and more opposed to God and more distance from the divine. But then in chapter 12, almost out of nowhere, God appears and he speaks. And we read that the Lord said to Abram, go from your country, your people, your father's household to the land that I will show you. And it is hard to overstate just how important this single verse is to the entire biblical narrative.
Speaker 1:You see, everything in ancient cultures was built around the idea that seasons, our lives, the world, the cosmos was built in cycles. Spring, summer, fall, winter. Spring, summer, fall, winter. Spring, summer, fall, winter. The stars go round and round and round again.
Speaker 1:They disappear for a season, but they always come back. And the belief in the very ancient world was that nothing ever changed. Nothing was ever new. You could never escape the cycles of destiny you were trapped in. And so if something starts on a bad note with a bad apple, then that cycle will only ever grow into more anger and more murder, more estrangement and more death, and eventually an inevitable showdown with destiny.
Speaker 1:And yet, right at that moment in chapter 12, God shows up. And he speaks to this previously unknown man, Abram, and he calls him to leave everything that he has known and to go somewhere new. And Abram listens. I'll read you Thomas Cahill's commentary here. He says that Abraham went are two of the boldest words in all of literature.
Speaker 1:They signal a complete departure from everything that has gone before. Out of ancient humanity, which knows in its bones that all striving must end in death, comes a leader who says he has been given an impossible promise. A dream of something new, something better, something yet to happen, something in the future. In every other society, Abraham would have been given the same advice, do not journey but sit. Compose yourself by the river of life.
Speaker 1:Meditate on its ceaseless and meaningless flow. But Abraham went. And so this story is the beginning, not just of the Hebrew story, but of humanity's movement out of cyclical despair and into the progressive tale toward the God who invites us to journey forward to him. And so if you ever feel like you are stuck, we have all, all of humanity has been there before. The incredible thing about faith is that it is what keeps us moving forward into the future.
Speaker 1:So don't lose sight of that movement in your life. But thankfully, that's only the start of the story. Because next, God promises to bless Abraham, to make him the father of nations. And then in Genesis 12 verse three, God says that all peoples on earth will be blessed through Abraham. Now, given everything that Paul has been saying all through chapter three about how Jesus has been faithful to the Jewish story and how through Jesus now all peoples regardless of ethnic markers are welcomed into the story.
Speaker 1:You can see why Paul is so excited to pull Abraham out to make his point. And you might be tempted to think, well, there you go. Done deal. Good job, Paul. Case closed.
Speaker 1:I guess we're ready for chapter five. Except that this is Paul, and Paul is never one to let an opportunity go by. And so Paul actually has five arguments for why Abraham proves Jesus is the bomb. And here you thought that Buzzfeed invented clickbait headlines. No.
Speaker 1:It was Paul back in chapter four here. Now, k, side note here. Here's a story. My son has these snack bars that he really likes, and sometimes finding something that's reasonably healthy and easy that your kid will actually eat is an amazing discovery, and so we keep these scattered around the house. And if we were really good parents and followed the advice of every parenting blog we read on the Internet, then we would make him snack bars from kale and sunshine and love.
Speaker 1:But we're real life good parents, not Internet good parents. And so we buy him these kids' cliff bars that he really likes. But this week, Eaton says to me, Daddy, I want a bar, the one with the boy, and he has a skateboard, and he has a helmet and a t shirt, and here's what he's talking about here. And in that moment, I realized that Cliff Bar Incorporated had spent untold hours focus group testing this packaging until it had been seared into my son's memory. Look, they are organic, so back off Internet.
Speaker 1:But this is kind of what Paul wants to do for you. He's made his point, but now he wants to make sure you don't lose sight of the big picture by weaving together a bunch of little pictures. And so this is some serious focus group testing Paul is about to do. He is gonna find something that you are going to remember before you leave the story of Abraham. And Paul will not let you leave this room until you agree with him.
Speaker 1:Now, we do wanna finish this chapter today, and so we are going to move through Paul's arguments pretty quickly here. But it is fascinating to see how Paul thinks, especially when he reads his Hebrew scriptures. Because Paul is going to make for us in this one chapter a biblical, a hermeneutical, a historical, a logical, and an experiential argument for why the story of Abraham was always meant to point to Jesus. All in the hopes that one of these things is going to click for you and you'll remember it. So biblical.
Speaker 1:We've actually already read this one. This is where Paul says in verse three, what does scripture say? It says that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. And so that's a quote from Genesis 15 verse six. And right there in the text of Torah, God promises all of these great things to Abraham.
Speaker 1:Abraham trusts God to do it, and the text says that God credited. The Hebrew word is, and it means God thought of or respected Abraham as righteous or tzadek in Hebrew. Now remember, Abraham has just met God in this story. He hasn't done anything of note yet, and God is saying, your trust in me is enough. That is exactly what Paul has been arguing all through the last chapter.
Speaker 1:Boom. Case closed. That's only point one. Point two is hermeneutical. Now hermeneutics is the study of how we create meaning or how we interpret what we read.
Speaker 1:And next, Paul is about to do some rabbinic interpretation for us here. You see, just before the time of Paul and Jesus, there was a very famous Hebrew teacher or rabbi named Hillel. And he was famous for a number of things. One of them being his seven rules for interpretation of Torah. Now, we don't have time to explore all seven of those, but one of them was what Hillel called Gazerah Shua or verbal analogy.
Speaker 1:And what Hillel taught was that any time two passages of scripture used the same word, they could be used to interpret each other regardless of their context or regardless of how far apart from each other they were. Now today, most of us would say, well, you can't really do that. Like, language doesn't work that way. If I were to say she dyed her hair and she dyed, those are not even remotely similar, and they should not be used to interpret each other. However, Paul has these rabbinic roots, and he's been taught in these modes of interpretation.
Speaker 1:And so Paul wants to flex his Jewish muscles here a bit and make a argument in verses six through eight. Now it's a little obscured in English, but this is how it works. In verse three, Paul has quoted Genesis 15 to say that God credited Abraham with righteousness. In verse six, he says, David also makes this point. And then in verse eight, he quotes David from Psalm 32 saying, blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.
Speaker 1:Now, count against is that same word credit to, in Hebrew or in Greek. It's not used in the same context here. In fact, it's used in the negative count against rather than the positive credit to, and David isn't really talking about faith at all in this passage. But based on, Paul is arguing same word so I can make the same argument. Because of faith, God credits righteousness and he uncredits sin.
Speaker 1:And this is kind of a strange argument, but it's actually a culturally appropriate way to do biblical interpretation at the time. And it's also one of the fascinating things about reading our Bibles. Because not only do we read what's on the page, we have to try to understand how these original audiences read what was on their pages as well. Okay. Argument three, historical.
Speaker 1:This one shows up in verse nine. Paul writes, we have been saying that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness but under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised or before? It was not after but before. Now, remember last week, I read you a quote from the scholar James Dunn where he says that Paul seems quite pleased with himself at times.
Speaker 1:This is one of those moments. Like, I can see Paul just kinda grinning as he writes this. Was it before he was circumcised? Yes. Okay.
Speaker 1:Now, Abraham is circumcised, but that comes later in chapter 17. After Abraham trusts and after God thinks of him as righteous. Because just as Paul has been arguing, obedience was always meant as a response to the love and grace we received through Yahweh, not a way to earn it. Next is Paul's logical argument. He says that because Abraham was righteous before his circumcision, that means that he is not just the Jews father in the flesh.
Speaker 1:Remember that line from the first verse of this chapter? Abraham is actually also the father of all who believe in a new more important way. And Paul's argument is that logically, it had to be that way because in verse 16 he writes, the promise comes by faith so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring, not only those who are of the law, but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. For he is the father of all of us. And here's his point here, just as it was written, there's a quote from Genesis 17.
Speaker 1:God says, I have made you a father of many nations. And so Paul says, if Abraham is the father of many nations, then he must be more than just a father in the flesh the way he is to us as Jews. He must logically also be a father in a deeper, more spiritual sense. He is everyone's father in faith. K.
Speaker 1:Paul has one more chance to make his point. Just in case he hasn't won everyone over here yet. And his last argument is, for me, whenever it comes to religion, probably the most flimsy, and yet at the same time, really the only one that matters. And this is the argument from experience. Paul writes in verse 20 and listen for the tone change here as he speaks.
Speaker 1:He says, Abraham did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God being fully persuaded that God had power to do just what he had promised to do. This is why it was credited to him as righteousness. The words it was credited to him were written not for him alone, but also for us. For us to whom God credits righteous, for us who will believe in him who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead. He's speaking here of our personal experience and encounter with God.
Speaker 1:And I love that Paul ends this section on this note. Because at the end of the day, whether you are a sappy emotional mess of a human like me, that's a joke, Or an intellectual time bomb ready to throw down five arguments for every point in a moment's notice like Paul. The heart of the Christian story is still and forever this dynamic encounter with the divine through the risen Christ. Abraham had it. You and I have it.
Speaker 1:The spirit is present to us now, and for all his arguments, for all his points, for all his scriptural dexterity and remarkable memory, Paul recognizes that he has had this encounter as well. Because for him, faith is still at the end of the day all about that moment where he met Christ on the road to Damascus. That moment where he learned that the large story of God was also the very small story of his personal journey toward and into the divine. And look, I know Romans is a heavy letter at times, and I get that Paul can be a divisive writer for some of us. And yet here's what I hope you would take away from our time in this book this year, That Paul has discovered a profound trust that God will do good for him.
Speaker 1:And as he looks back, he now sees that story woven throughout all of human history Into every moment, in every person, in every scriptural story he comes across, he sees that story hidden. And above all else, despite his brash bombast, what Paul desperately wants, he's somehow to invite every single person he encounters into that space of confident trust in the one who sits behind all things. He wants you to understand his arguments, but more than that, he wants you to encounter God. And so on this day of Pentecost, where we celebrate the new normal in the spirit, and we enter into ordinary time together. My prayer is that you might come to know that your experience of God's love, it is real, and it is powerful and it is something that no one can ever separate you from.
Speaker 1:Because the spirit is within you even now offering God's righteousness for you to trust. And that is more than five arguments. It is an encounter with the living spirit who speaks to you now even in this moment. Let's pray. God, help us as we close off this book for another year to take all of these arguments that have been made, these ideas that have been walked through with incredible dexterity and intellectual acuity.
Speaker 1:To think about them, to reflect on them, to come to understand them in some sense. But then, of course, God, even more than that, for your spirit to sink these concepts somewhere deep into our heart so that we would know them not simply intellectually, but we would experience an encounter with you. To know that we are loved, to know that you are faithful, to know that your story is righteous and you are inviting all things to be caught up into it as you renew and repair and heal all things so that all things might be welcomed back into your presence. God, by your spirit, would you be present to each of us this week, reminding us of this new normal, this new ordinary that we live in, where you speak and you guide and you comfort and you heal just when we need you. In the strong name of the risen God, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.