03-28-10 Faith And Foolishness

Finding an approach to the Book of Romans

has not been an altogether easy thing for me.

This book is rich with truth beyond measure,

filled with statements that at times simply cry out for in-depth examination.

In my mind I can see so many of them running around,

calling out, “Look at me! Look at me! Look at what I’m really saying!

Doesn’t this simply amaze you and cause you to drop to your knees in gratitude,

or cry out in wonder?”

And there will be times in our study

when we do linger over some of those statements,

but in the end I have decided it would be best

for us to keep ourselves focused

mostly on the major themes

and the major concepts throughout the book,

even though it will mean

we will have to pass over

some remarkable treasures along the way.

This was not an easy decision for someone

who spent something like 3 years

teaching the 4 chapter book of Philippians a number of years ago,

and who felt a genuine sense of loss when we left the book,

knowing there was so much more we should have covered.

But with Romans it will not be that way.

Certainly there will be passages

where we will spend some considerable time

looking more closely at what is being said,

but when we finish Romans

I long for you to have established a friendship with this remarkable book.

The flawless logic with which Paul moves through his ideas

is designed to build into our lives

solid foundation blocks of truth,

blocks that can and will hold us secure

when all sorts of lies,

and fears,

and doubts,

and deceptions intrude into our thinking.

I have heard it said that it is impossible

for any Christian who understands

and accepts the truths contained in the book of Romans

to ever get caught up in a religious cult.

I believe that to be true.

God’s approach to protecting us

against the power and the lies of Satan

is not complicated,

but it is extremely effective.

Rather than attempting to educate us

in all of the different lies and deceptions

used by Satan against us,

He simply, clearly, powerfully tells us the truth.

And once we know the truth,

the lies become obvious,

no matter how skillfully Satan tries to dress them up in new clothing

for each new generation.

If you know what your Lord looks like

you won’t confuse Him

with the deceivers who use His name.

I can say best what I’m trying to say right now

by beginning our study of the book of Romans

with Paul’s final benediction to the book

found at the end of chapter 16.

After writing this remarkable document,

he concludes by saying,

Rom. 16:19-20 ... I want you to be wise in what is good, and innocent in what is evil. And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.

That, by the way, is the only reference to Satan

found anywhere in the book of Romans.

And in that statement

Paul tells us that our power over evil

will never result

from our learning more and more about the evil we are trying to overcome.

Our power over evil

comes from learning the truth.

Now, in keeping with my commitment

to keep us focused on the major concepts in this book,

we are going to spend almost no time at all

on the first 17 verses of the book.

In those 17 verses Paul introduces himself,

reveals to his readers

his purpose in writing this letter,

and then shares his longing to visit the church at Rome personally at some time in the future.

He does a great deal more than just that, of course.

In the very first sentence he tells us that he has been set apart to proclaim what he calls “the gospel of God”.

That word “gospel” means simply the good news...the good news of God.

That’s why he’s writing -

so that he can clearly, simply, powerfully reveal to us the good news of God,

and when God has good news for us,

it is good news to the extreme.

Paul comes back to this again in verse 16 when he says,

For I am not ashamed of the good news, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

And with that statement he sets the stage for everything else that follows.

He’s going to be talking with us about the power of God for salvation

and he says that this power is given to everyone who believes.

I know those are just words to us right now,

but at least they will help us gain a tiny glimpse of where we’re going.

The one thing I do want us to chew on a little bit at this point

is the purpose Paul states

for writing this letter.

It’s found in Romans 1:5, and then again in verses 16 and 17.

And it is the purpose not just for this letter,

but actually Paul’s stated purpose for his entire life.

In verse 5 he talks about Jesus Christ his Lord...through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles, for His name's sake,..

And the key words in that statement are those four words, ‟the obedience of faith”.

With that phrase he opens up a window

that allows us to see where he wants to take us

and why.

And then he comes back to it once again

in his bold affirmation in verses 16 and 17

where he says,

Rom. 1:16-17 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, " But the righteous man shall live by faith."

...the obedience of faith...

...But the righteous man shall live by faith...

Now, at this point in the book

we have no idea what that means.

In both of these statements

Paul is telling us

that there is a kind of faith in God

that will actually result in our becoming righteous - holy,

that the power of evil in our lives will be broken.

And already our 2000 years of church heritage

is beginning to work against us.

When we hear Paul talk about ‟the obedience of faith”

most of us do not understand what that means now

any more than the first century Romans did.

But our problem is

that we THINK we do,

or at least we think we should,

or more likely

we tend to tuck it away

in the mental file marked, ‟Meaningless religious words and phrases that I cannot doubt or question because I am a Christian.”

And just so you understand

how little we really understand here,

let me see if I can put this into a different context

and show you how we would respond to this phrase

or this concept

if we weren’t hampered

by our religious past.

I want you to picture yourself as a college student.

You are one semester away from graduation

and you are enrolled in a class

that you must have

in order to graduate and receive your degree.

The first day of class

the teacher explains the requirements of the class.

The first thing he says

sends a shock through you.

He says that there are only two possible grades

that a student in his class can get - an ‛A’ or an ‛F’.

Then he hands out the syllabus for the class

and begins explaining the course requirements.

Everything you’ve hated most about college is contained in that syllabus.

There is a 25 page term paper required,

along with smaller research papers due weekly,

and a two hour mid-term and a two-hour final.

There are pop-quizzes weekly

and at least 4 other books to be read apart from a hideous textbook.

Then, after going over everything on that sheet in detail,

the professor makes the following statement.

‟There are two possible ways

of getting an ‛A’ in this class.

The first way is to complete everything on this sheet to my satisfaction.

The second way is for you to have faith in me.

Either way is equally acceptable,

either one will fulfill the obligations of this course.

I will let each of you decide for yourself

whether you choose to pursue your ‛A’ through the syllabus requirements,

or through faith in me.”

Now, if you were in that class,

how would you respond?

If I was there

my hand would shoot up in an instant

and I would be demanding some more information

on just exactly what it means to pursue an ‛A’ through faith in the Prof.

And if we weren’t hampered by our heritage

I believe we would respond the same way to Paul’s opening comments in Romans.

And I think that is exactly how the initial readers responded -

‟Obedience of FAITH?! What in the world does that mean?”

‟The righteous shall live by FAITH? I don’t get it!”

Paul wanted his readers hungry

for the truths he was about to share.

He wanted them locked into his communication with them

as he moves into his letter.

And what he does between 17 and 18

is calculated to create that hunger.

Now watch this -

he ends verse 17 with that remarkable quotation from the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk,

‟But the righteous man shall live by faith”.

Oh - and just a fascinating little bit of Bible Trivia -

there are 232 references to faith in the Bible.

228 of them are in the New Testament.

Only 4 of them are in the Old Testament.

One of those 4 is this Old Testament prophecy quoted here by Paul in Romans 1:17.

I mention this simply because

I want us to understand

how lulled we have become

by the endless faith babble

that swirls around us

in the religious world in which we live.

There are two equally effective ways

for Satan to blind us to the power

of a critical truth in Scripture.

One of them is by hiding it from us,

making it difficult or impossible

for us to see its existence.

I think he has attempted to do this

with the concept

of the living, eternal reality

of our inner holiness of spirit.

Stand before a mirror

and say to yourself,

‟I am God’s holy one, eternally righteous and pure, not just seen as righteous,

but truly holy forever...”,

and then tell me if you believe it.

The truth has been hidden from us by Satan,

even though it is right before us in Scripture.

The second way Satan blinds us to truth

is to deluge us in a certain word or concept

until it ceases to have any real meaning to us.

This is what he has done

with the concept of faith.

In our current religious world

we have FAITH everywhere.

We name our churches Faith Baptist,

and Faith Lutheran Church,

and Faith Episcopal.

We name our children ‟Faith”.

We all know we are saved by faith,

and we are suppose to grow in faith.

Most of us are all too familiar

with Paul’s proclamation that ‟The righteous man shall live by faith...”

We know if we have faith we can be healed,

and if we have faith God will answer our prayers...

We are swirling in a world of faith talk,

and yet...

and yet we have no idea what it means.

The first Christians

brought no such baggage with them.

The Old Testament had numerous references to God’s faithfulness to us.

It had numerous references to our obedience to Him.

But there were almost no references

to our faith in Him.

And when Paul stepped onto the scene

and began preaching ‟an obedience of faith among all the Gentiles”

and when he began affirming

that the righteous man

shall become righteous by faith,

his audience wanted to know more...

LOTS MORE.

And I want us to conclude this morning

by seeing the way in which

Paul intensifies this hunger in his readers

by what he does immediately after making that statement, ‟But the righteous man shall live by faith.”

He sets up a contrast

so sharp,

so intense that it is certain to lock the reader into where he is going

and how he’s going to get there.

In Romans 17 he tells us," But the righteous man shall live by faith."

And then, the very next thing he says is this:

Rom. 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,...

Those two statements

are placed side-by-side

in order to create a longing within us to understand.

In the first statement

he fills us with a hope -

the hope that there is some way to become truly righteous

not through our strength of will,

not through our productivity,

not through our perseverance and determination,

but through what he calls ‟faith”.

And then he immediately switches

to remind us of the consequences that will result

from the absence of absolute righteousness in our lives -

the wrath of God will be poured out

on all ungodliness

and unrighteousness of men.

We have done strange things

with Biblical truth

in the church world during the past 2000 years.

We have smeared and blurred all the edges

so that truth and error and confusion

all sort of run together

and mingle with one another.

We claim to believe

that we are saved through faith in Christ,

and that we now share in the righteousness that comes through faith,

but then we spend most of our lives

running and hiding from a God

we don’t trust,

and a God whom we are certain must be irritated with us

because we are not behaving the way we should.

Paul is not going to let us get away with that kind of sloppy, illogical thinking in this book.

Repeatedly we will see him

take the two choices offered to us by God

and set them side by side

so that we can see the choice clearly.

We can enter into the righteousness

that comes to us through faith alone,

or we can seek to find our security with God

through our ability to be good.

If we choose the first

then our performance

at any time,

at any level

ceases forever to be the basis

upon which we relate to God.

Yet at the same time,

that faith-based union with God

will have a dramatic impact

on our actual, practical behavior.

Sin will loose it’s power over us.

And if we choose the second,

then we must recognize

that the wrath of God will be poured out on all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men...

Sure, we may have some nice things we have done tossed in here and there,

but it doesn’t make any difference.

There is no scale

with all the good on one side,

and all the bad on the other.

There is no way we can ever compensate

for any act of unrighteousness

with any amount of good.

God’s wrath is poured out

on ALL unrighteousness

and we are helpless,

powerless to escape any of it

through anything we do.

Do you know what this is?

This is the professor telling us

that we can choose to get our ‛A’ through faith in him.

But if we choose rather to pursue it

through fulfilling the work listed in the syllabus,

we need to know

that only absolutely perfect work will qualify.

The only test score that qualifies for an ‛A’ is 100%.

If there is a missing comma,

or a misspelled word on any paper,

it will not receive an ‛A’.

‟...the righteous man shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”

Welcome to the book of Romans!

There is an intensity,

a power to the book of Romans

designed to compel the reader into the truth.

I warned you last week,

and I’ll mention it again now

that this first section of the book

is designed to create within us

a desperate desire for Christ.

It is written by Paul

to answer the question, ‟Why was it necessary for Christ to come and die as He did?”

And he answers that question

by forcing us to see

what our world and our future looks like

without Christ on the scene.

The first step in finding our way home

is to come out from our hiding places

and admit we are lost

and hopeless without someone to show us the way.

But I can’t quite end there, can I.

Paul won’t begin explaining this faith thing to us for another 2 chapters,

but I don’t dare just leave it all hanging until we get there in the study

because there are some of you who right now are in tremendous turmoil with your God.

So let me take another two minutes and see if I can help.

What is it that you believe stands between Him and yourself right now?

There are lots of moral failures in all of our lives, of course,

but there’s one at the top of your list, isn’t there?

And if God’s Spirit has been doing His work in your life,

right now you see that failure and wonder how God could ever love you, accept you, delight in you

with that hideous blot on your life.

OK, if that’s what’s going on in your life

then you’re half way home.

Now, here’s what I want you to do.

Rather than trying to hid from that failure,

or trying to hide from God,

I want you to take that failure and give it to Him.

Give Him your sin.

And why in the world would He want it,

and why would He be willing to take it?

He wants it because He wants you,

He loves you,

and He knows that that huge moral failure stands as a barrier between you and Him.

And He is willing to take it

because He has already paid your debt for that sin in full.

That’s what He was doing

when He died on that cross.

And now all He asks from you

is that you give Him your sin

and then choose to believe

that He truly has paid your debt for your sin in full forever.

That’s what faith is -

that’s all it is - choosing to believe He paid your debt for you.

And that, my friends, is the good news of God.