Sermons
“The Remant of Grace"
ROMANS 11: 25-32
25 So that you may not claim to be wiser than you are, brothers and sisters, I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And so all Israel will be saved; as it is written,
“Out of Zion will come the Deliverer;
he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.”
27 “And this is my covenant with them,
when I take away their sins.”
28 As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; 29 for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30 Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, 31 so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. 32 For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all. †
The Context
Christians and Jews have crossed swords far too often through history. The infant Church was persecuted by the synagogue, but in the 4th century, as soon as the Church’s numbers tipped the balance of power, the persecution ran the other way and has remained that way ever since.
In this passage, Paul addresses Gentile converts to Christianity, telling them they must honor and respect their Jewish brothers and sisters because they are the chosen people and remain within God’s promises.
He says, “a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.” [25b]
First of all, it should strike us that God hardens some hearts at all. He hardens the heart of Pharoah several times in a row, blocking him from repentance and obedience. In speaking about parables, and why He teaches by means of them, Jesus says, “The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’” [Matthew 13:13]
and from Isaiah 6:9:
‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive.”
God hardens some hearts. This is a problem for us, because if God hardens someone’s heart, how can they be held responsible for disbelieving or disobeying? They can’t, because God is all-powerful. This runs against so much of our thinking. We think that hearts are hardened by choice and by a lack of faith. Such things may in fact harden one’s heart, but this is not what the Bible says. The Bible says God hardens some hearts. In today’s text, it says He has hardened the hearts of His people, the Jews, to resist the gospel in order that Gentiles like us be brought in.
“until the full number of Gentiles are brought in”
We are living in an era of grace and mercy to the Gentiles in particular; that’s us.
This entire passage brings to mind Jesus’ teaching in the parable of the Prodigal Son.
[Luke 15: 11-32 paraphrased]
“There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of your will.’ So he divided his property between his sons. The younger son took the money and traveled to a distant country, where he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place so he went and hired himself out to feed pigs. When he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! So he went back home to live as a hired hand. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
[Here is where it gets interesting]: “Now the elder son was in the field; and he heard music and dancing from the house. He called one of the hired hands and asked what was going on. When he found out that his brother—or ex-brother—had come back and his father had killed the fatted calf for him, he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him, “Son, come inside and celebrate with us.” But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has squandered our fortune, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”
The younger brother: forgiven and restored. Included back into the family.
The elder brother: bitter, resentful, and feeling a horrid injustice has been done.
The question is: Does the older son eventually go in to the party? This is the relevant question, because this parable is about God’s grace to the Gentiles.
All my life, I’ve heard church folk ask: “Why don’t the Jews acknowledge Jesus as their Messiah?” Paul’s answer to this is simply that God has intentionally hardened their hearts, if only for a time. Again, verse 25: “a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.”
But this hardening is no different than any other part of God’s election. God calls whomever He calls, and hardens the hearts of whomever He calls. I think we must see the hardening as part of his work of salvation—part of His election. It is temporary. Once the full number of Gentiles has come in, God will harden their hearts no longer, perhaps. Then, we shall be one family.
As to the Hardened
We shouldn’t concern ourselves with hearts that are God-hardened; He is working out His purposes with them. Paul never doubts that his people are within God’s favor. Look at verse 26:
all Israel will be saved
Guess what? Jews are among the elect! If you’ve grown up in Christian circles that talk Jews down for not receiving Christ, then mark well this text! God hardens their hearts not for their destruction, but for their salvation and for ours.
Verse 28 says that they are “Enemies of the gospel for your [our] sake.”
How? Their opposition opens up the mercy of God to the Heathen, the Gentiles, the formerly non-Elect and Un-chosen peoples of the world. That is great news for the whole world. This opening up of God’s mercy was proclaimed by Christ in the Parable of the Great Banquet in Luke 14:
Jesus says, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. 17 At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ 19 Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’ 20 Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’ 21 So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ 22 And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’ 23 Then the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. [Luke 14: 16b-23]
This is the evangelical mission. We are the servants sent out into the roads to present God’s calling to come in.
That’s us and our mission.
That is the spiritual era we are living in!
Because of the hardening of the Jewish heart, we Gentiles—we, the unholy and unworthy—are adopted in the family of God. We are the dogs that Jesus brings home to the Father and asks, “Can I keep them?” and the Father says, “Absolutely!”
Same Terms for All
Verse 32 makes clear that there is—as Paul says elsewhere—no distinction between Jews and Gentiles any longer. We all come into God’s good favor in the same way: His free choice and election of sinners.
“All are fallen and disobedient”
The Jews failed to accomplish the terms of the Mosaic Law. The Gentiles had no cause for righteousness toward God. Both groups are utterly fallen and equally depraved, so there is only one plan of salvation for all people, and that is the good news that God elects for humanity out of pure mercy, goodness, and love.
Though He hardens some hearts, it seems this is never the full story and that even such hardenings of heart are finite, temporary.
The good news is that God has an irrational love of sinners. Our sinfulness is not ignored by God, but its price is paid in full in order that the broken Creation may be mended, and the lost children of His household be called, found, and returned to their true home.
May we all be quick to bless our Jewish brothers and sisters. We live with a hope that God will accomplish for them what they cannot accomplish themselves. God’s promises will be fulfilled and every covenant finished. We should avoid criticizing the hard-hearted for being hard-hearted, but we may speak of our hope in God’s mercy and grace.
Indeed, we Christians must proclaim what we know; namely, that mercy has come to us through Israel in the person of Jesus Christ, who is our savior and the sole source of our salvation. We do this without demanding responses. We do this as a gentle invitation only. God will do the crucial work in His time to His own satisfaction, which is something you and I should be perfectly happy with. †
“More Than Conquerors"
ROMANS 8: 33-39
33Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.
34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed
all day long;
we are accounted as sheep
to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. †
Who Judges?
Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? Not Satan, though that is his purported charge. You know, that is exactly what “Satan” means—the Accuser. You have to picture a heavenly version of an ancient kingdom/state, which is the imagery we inherit from the Old Testament. You must picture a court, as in the court of a king. The king sits on the throne. At his right hand is the seat of authority—what we’d call a Prime Minister today—who has executive power and acts on behalf of the king. On the left side was seated a special person to the king—a trusted friend or perhaps his queen.
The members of the courtroom include a host of loyal subjects. The main work of an ancient king was to make decisions for his kingdom, which means he functioned much of the time as a judge, sorting out conflicts brought to his hearing. None of this is too foreign to us; we still have courts very much like this.
There are other special roles. One is the prosecuting attorney, or The Satan (and the word Satan is always preceded by the definite article “the” so that it functions as a title more often than a proper noun). It is the role of The Satan to bring to the Judge’s remembrance the sins of the accused. He is The Accuser.
So what Paul says to us is that the Accuser has no role. Verse 34:
Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.
Jesus is at “the right hand” of God, which means he acts with all the authority of God.
About Larry
I got to spend 90 minutes a week with Larry for about 8 years as he attended my Tuesday morning Bible study. I know him pretty well. I know where he stands on most every issue. I also know that he could be stubborn and sometimes really irritating—though never intentionally.
Larry was a man of God—a man after Christ’s own heart—and he has been a strong Christian and leader for much of his life. Larry knew Scripture, and not only because of his years in service to the Gideons, but because he always made personal study his practice.
Those of you who have sat in my classes know what my teaching style is. You know how I like to enter into the central tension and crisis of a text, for I believe the Word of God speaks most clearly in disrupting us of our self-made comforts. It is only once we face the tension and crisis of a text that we learn at a deep, heart level what the text says to us.
One of the things Larry used to really got my goat. We would just be in the first steps of revealing the true crisis of the text and Larry would step in and say something like, “Well, you know, the main thing is that we should believe in Jesus and trust Him completely in all we say and do.” And I would say, “Larry! You keep stealing the punchline! Don’t blurt out the punchline before I’ve finished winding up the joke!” Larry knew the truth of Scripture and loved it with His whole heart.
At First Pres, Larry served as a Deacon, and Elder, a Trustee, and he was even on the Pastoral Nominating Committee that called me. I remember how, in the midst of my interviews, I would be answering questions about my pastoral management style or fielding questions regarding conflict resolution and so on, but when Larry asked a question, it was always the good stuff—who is Jesus and how will He be proclaimed? I always felt my heart calm and soften when Larry asked one of these crucial and most-important questions. I always loved and respected him for them.
And then came the fire. December 12, 2018: Jane awakes in the small hours to see a wall in flames. She wakes up Larry and gets him out of the house and then tries to return to salvage important items, but it is already too hot to try. Larry is taken to Arrowhead hospital in Rialto with 3rd degree burns over much of his body. He looked like The Mummy for the first few weeks. Jane walked away unscathed, un-scorched, but she needed to be with Larry. From the beginning, for those of us who attended Larry and Jane, keeping them together was their highest good and ours. We did all we could to keep them as close as possible, for whenever they were together, they both lit up tremendously. They were very good for each other.
Lingering
Months and months and months passed. Larry had some promising upticks and some disparaging setbacks. Once he had a tracheostomy inserted, he could not talk (not that it didn’t keep him from trying!). He wrote pages upon pages of notes. Last fall saw him degrade to the point that none of his writing was legible in the least. We made up pages for him so he would only need to point to what he wanted:
This is how we communicated. The boxes for “I want to see my wife, Jane,” and “Thank you so much” were his favorites by a hundred miles.
By January, Larry couldn’t even point. He couldn’t hear and began a downhill trajectory.
If you’re like me, you might be inclined to ask, as I did, “Why to good Christians suffer?” After all the prayers, why weren’t our prayers for Larry’s healing answered in the positive? Why isn’t every prayer for healing granted?
To know the answer is to know the mind of God which is far-removed from our simple experience.
Last week’s text ends with a disturbing line—Romans 8:17:
[We are] children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
In Sunday school, I was asked, “What does it mean, ‘if we suffer with him’?” While it may refer to suffering for the name of Jesus, or for following him, as it did for many Roman Christians in Paul’s audience, it also refers to all of us. Though we may not suffer “for Christ” explicitly, we do suffer. We are born into life in the flesh, sin-stained and subject to the forces of decay and death. In this sense we suffer. Larry suffered in this sense more than most ever will. How can we say that Larry’s sufferings also were suffering with Christ? Quite easily—I for one can say that Jesus was there in the hospital room every time I visited. Jesus was with Larry the entire journey of suffering. Larry did suffer with Christ, and I think Larry’s sufferings brought him closer to the image and likeness of Christ than anything else he did. What could be more Christlike than to suffer the anguish of the flesh while praising God and investing all one’s trust in Him?
The early saints counted themselves lucky to suffer—blessed that God had considered them worthy of suffering for Christ. Why? Because in that suffering they took on the most complete image of Christ any Christian can take. We are right to consider all of our sufferings as participation in the suffering of Christ. We, who are His children, can keep hope and trust intact even when we feel abandoned and alone, because this is what our Master did on the cross. It is in suffering that we most resemble Jesus, and in suffering that our heartfelt prayers to be made Christlike are best answered.
Larry’s prayers were answered indeed, though not as we may have expected.
What Can Separate us from Christ?
Paul asks the question for us and all who wonder over the reality of suffering in this life:
Who shall separate us from
the love of Christ?
The list:
The answer? None of the above. He continues to add to that list:
The answer again: nada, nothing—nothing can separate us from Christ and His love. He is our Trust, and by Him we are more than conquerors despite what happens to us in this life. What is more, we share that promise with one another. We will see Larry again, once the promises are completed by our loving Lord.
May we live and encourage each other with this hope as we await that day! †
“Children of God, Led by the Spirit"
Text: ROMANS 8: 1-17
Forgive us our Debts
Debt is the new American slavery. You take out loans or charge up your credit cards and you are owned by the bank until you pay them off. If you own a house, you are owned by that mortgage until you pay it off.
If you have credit card debt, it goes on until you pay the last penny, with lost of interest.
When we say the Lord’s Prayer, we are right to say “debts” instead of “sins” or “trespasses.” “Trespasses” is the result of translating Greek to Latin before it comes to English. “Debts” is the Greek, and it makes perfect sense. The Jews believed that when you sinned against someone, you were indebted to them. We feel this. When we let someone down or otherwise do someone wrong, we feel indebted until things are made right again. When we sin, we let God down, and are right to feel indebted to Him. We pray for forgiveness of that debt, and God forgives us.
The Sin of Adam is an enormous indebtedness that we can never pay off. It’s like receiving a letter from your bank saying, “You owe $26 billion dollars and the interest rate is 20% compounded daily.”
“Could I have possibly been that bad?” you think. No, but you are born an inheritor of that debt. Your family name is responsible for payment because your great, great grandparents messed things up royally.
“It’s not fair!” you say, “I didn’t ask to be born!” Blame your parents, blame your grandparents, blame society, blame whomever you like, but it changes nothing—you have an insane debt to repay, and until you repay it, you are a slave to that debt, and your heart and soul are enslaved to all the anxiety of bearing that debt. Depression and despair are normal, rational, responses.
So we are born into a fallen cosmos, indebted to the gills from the moment we take our first breath. Born into unspeakably shameful indebtedness. So what can you do? Roll up your sleeves and do your best to start paying it off, bit by bit? Suppose you find, after ten years of 70-hour weeks, after denying yourself every creature comfort and little pleasure of the flesh, after turning practically every penny over to the bank in service to the debt, you find that the debt is…the same. What? After all that work? Yep, all you work—all that money—barely covered the accrued interest, sorry!
Despair. Despair and death are the logical conclusion of this debt. “Why bother trying?” you say, “Why go on?” And your phone, texts, emails, and home mailbox are all clogged up by lines of collection agents.
Wouldn’t it be great—you fantacize—to win the Powerball? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if some anonymous billionaire just came and paid it off? How would that feel? Such relief.
Robert F. Smith is the founder, chairman and CEO of a private equity firm called Vista Equity Partners. During his commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta, he announced he would be paying off all the students debts of the class of 2019. The place went wild. Smith followed by urging them to do—in the ways they could—likewise, and to learn from the actions of 'positive role models’.
Can you imagine that feeling? Total relief and freedom—a fresh start—liberation and new life.
Good News…lite
And then your dream seems to be coming true. You receive a letter telling you that due to the generosity of an anonymous giver, 25.5 billion dollars have been paid in your name—for free! Amazing! Someone—some anonymous multi-billionaire—cared about you and your situation enough to give 25.5 billion dollars toward your freedom! Can you even imagine such a gift?
As you sight with relief, you receive another letter from the bank. Good news! You hereby owe the bank a mere 500 million dollars—isn’t that great news? No, it too is disparaging. You’re still enslaved to an essentially-unpayable debt.
This is the Law. This is sin. We are indebted to God beyond what we can imagine paying. All our good deeds, good intentions, and committed devotion can do nothing to pay that debt down—they don’t even cover the interest. We are fools if we think we make any headway by our own attempts at pleasing the Lord. Our piety is vanity. Our good works as filthy rags.
There is a kind of Christianity out there with a very false Jesus. This Jesus pays 25.5 billion off of our debt, but still leaves us so heavily indebted that we remain enslaved to debt, albeit a smaller remainder. This false Jesus stands at the head of a false Christianity that demands good works of Christians:
•You must be righteous!
•You must be sincere and authentic!
•You must serve the poor and outcast!
•You must give your heart to God!
•You must devote your soul to Jesus!
•You must help Him save the lost!
This is a false gospel built on a false Jesus—one incapable of paying the full debt without your and my help. It is a false Jesus who needs us. He needs us to follow through, or needs us to love Him, or needs us build His Kingdom here on Earth.
I tell you by the Holy Spirit: any god who needs is not the God of Scripture. Any Jesus who needs us, or the church, or our good works—is not the true Jesus revealed in Scripture.
If that false Jesus demands your attention or service, renounce him today.
Yet another Letter?
You get another letter in the mail. It says, “The entirety of your debt has been paid in full. What is more, your name has been added to a Trust fund worth 70 trillion dollars. The entire amount is yours to share with others named in the trust. You are a full inheritor—the Trust now names you Son/Daughter of the estate.”
How are things changed?
The work that you’ve devoted yourself to in order to pay off the debt? No longer needed, no longer required. So much for piety and good works. When you were indebted, you had to serve. Now that you are totally freed from debt, you are also free to serve.
So what shall we do now that we are co-owners of the Kingdom? How does that Trust change how we view ourselves and what we do with ourselves?
Now that we are free, are we going to rush into downtown LA, park ourselves under a bridge and shoot up heroin? Not likely (although that is where the indebtedness of sin could lead us). That is the fruit of indebtedness, but now that we are trillionaires, why would we live that way? Paul says the same about the law and sin. Now that we are under grace, why would we serve the Law? Now that we are saved under the Spirit, why would we live according to the flesh? We wouldn’t, which is Paul’s point.
Since we no longer live under indebtedness, but under the New Trust, our lives are changed, converted. We awake every morning with hope and joy, knowing that we are members of the ultraroyal family of God, who is to us Father.
What we do with our time is now free. We are free to serve, not obliged.
We live in a new world with a new light. This is my Father’s world and I am an inheritor! I bear the Father’s name. The world, with all of its problems, will eventually become exactly what the Father wants it to be. I am going to spend my days doing what I can to see myself and everything in my limited sphere of influence come into alignment with the Father’s vision of fulfillment.
How does our Father want things? Where is all heading? How can we help it along? Perhaps we can’t, but we can live and act in accordance with what He likes.
We can and do feel grateful, privileged, empowered, and freed.
One More letter
You get another letter from the bank. It says, “You have siblings—many brothers and sisters—who are included in this same Trust. They do not know that they are included, but they are. They need to be located and told. As they presently labor and toil in service to the debts they think they owe, hearing that they are in fact part of the Trust should come to them as very good news indeed. Now that you are freed—and effectively unemployed—would you help us locate some of your lost siblings?”
Perhaps we can help some others who are under the slavery of debt—just as we once were—to discover their share in Trust and be liberated from toil.
Condemnation comes from Adam and sin. Christ pays Adam’s debt—in full, not in part—therefore death has no more power. We are free from sin and debt, and free to live our lives in service to the Trust which is our inheritance.
May we come to the Table knowing that we have been made free by the work and grace of Christ, who includes us in the eternal Trust, sharing in His full inheritance as sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters.
And may we be diligent in locating our siblings who do not yet know their names are already written into the Trust. †