05-23-10 Messing With The Way Things Are

I want to begin this morning

by reading 4 verses

from the first chapter

of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

This is 1 Corinthians 1:26-29.

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God.

I know we are studying the book of Romans,

but there could be no better introduction for us this morning

to the passage we will be studying

than these 4 verses.

We are going to be talking this morning

about the way things are -

both about the way they are

in the world system in which we live,

and the way they are in truth.

In these few verses from Corinthians

Paul begins by calling us as Christians

to a point of honesty about ourselves.

If I could paraphrase him,

Paul is saying, ‟In case you haven’t noticed, folks,

there are not a whole lot of the rich and famous flocking into the family of God.”

He says it better, of course.

He says, ‟consider your calling” - in other words, look around you!

Those who have been able

to score big in this world’s social system

are far less open

to an honest examination of the message of Christ.

And then he goes on

to say that God has chosen the weak things of the world

to shame the strong,

and He has chosen the base things,

the despised things,

and the things that are not,

so that through them He might nullify the things that are,

so that no one will be able to boast before God.

Before we finish this morning

we will have a better understanding

of why it is so hard for those who achieve exceptional success in the world’s system

to risk looking honestly

at the Person of Jesus Christ,

and we’ll also see

how the message of Christ

nullifies the things that are.

But let me back up first

and get a running start at this.

We have been studying the last 11 verses of the 3rd chapter of Romans.

After blazing through the first two and a half chapters of Romans in about two weeks,

we are now moving very slowly

through these 11 verses

because the concepts presented in this passage

form the foundation for everything else Paul says to us in the rest of this letter.

So far we have studied our way through verses 21-26 and we have seen:

1. That through Christ God is offering us

the ability to become righteous,

holy,

absolutely morally pure.

It’s no wonder that, when Christ chose words to describe

what He would be offering the world through His death,

He said it is like being born all over again.

The change that takes place within us

is as extensive,

as far-reaching

and all inclusive as if we were reentering the world

through a totally new body.

2. We have seen that this righteousness

that is being offered to us through Christ

is exactly the same righteousness

as we would have obtained

if we would have kept the moral law of God perfectly

from the instant of our conception

through the instant of our death.

It is in every sense true righteousness.

3. We have seen that this righteousness

enters our lives

by God creating within us a new heart,

a new center to our lives,

a new inner spirit that loves God

and longs to please Him.

4. We have seen that this new heart is given to us by God

in response to our simple faith in Christ and His death for our sins.

It is absolutely, totally APART FROM works of the law,

apart from our performance.

It cannot be earned,

it cannot be merited by us

through anything we have done or have not done, will do or will stop doing.

5. And then, last week we saw that

this offer of forgiveness and righteousness

is made possible to us

not because we have somehow been able

to offer to God an acceptable sacrifice,

but rather because God Himself

has offered to us an acceptable sacrifice,

the sacrifice of His own death

in our place

for our sins.

Now, we have three more steps to take

as we complete our study of these 11 verses,

and each of these 3 steps

contains a result that will take place

or has taken place

because of what Paul has just told us.

So let’s go ahead and walk through

these three conclusions Paul presents

in these remaining verses.

#1. The first one is found in 3:27-28:

Rom. 3:27 Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith.

Rom. 3:28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.

And let me offer you what I see here in a single statement,

and then we’ll talk a little more about it.

In these two verses

Paul attacks and destroys

the foundation of all man-made religious systems,

and even more than that,

he destroys the greatest single security-blanket the human race has ever wrapped around itself.

I’ll explain what I mean by that in just a minute,

but first let me state simply what Paul is saying in those verses.

He is telling us that

what Christ is offering the human race

shatters the foundation of human arrogance forever,

both arrogance before God

and arrogance before one another.

Now listen carefully once again to this statement:

Rom. 3:28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.

It is the truth contained in that single statement,

perhaps more than any other truth contained in God’s communication to us,

that both draws and repels the human race.

It is true that, for many of us, there is something huge within our spirits

that rejoices when we hear those words.

Our God is telling us that

as a result of Christ’s death for us

and His removal of our sin forever,

we can now stand totally and eternally holy before God

simply on the basis of our faith in Christ.

That is the best news the human race

ever has or ever will receive.

That is the gospel,

the good news from God in a single statement.

But there is also something taking place in that verse

that has the power to repel

many who see honestly what’s being said.

You see, if those words are true,

and they are,

it does not just mean

that I am invited to stand righteous before God through faith alone,

it means that EVERY man and woman

stands justified before God on the basis of faith,

and that EVERY man and woman stands EQUAL before God on that basis.

It means that every human being

has equal value,

equal dignity,

equal prestige,

equal significance before God.

It means that every human being is unique,

and yet every human being who comes to Christ is recreated equal before God.

Do you know what that means?

It means the entire foundation

upon which the human race

has built the fiber of society

is declared meaningless.

The ‛A’ student in school

and the ‛C’ student,

and the ‛D-’ student,

and the ‛F’ student all stand equal before God.

The president of the company,

and his secretary,

and the shipping clerk,

and the janitor who throws out the trash

can all stand equal before God.

Both that little boy in 7th grade

who has always been the very last one to be picked for every team

because all the world knows

he cannot throw,

cannot hit,

cannot catch,

and cannot run,

and the Hall-of-Fame athlete who has made countless millions for his skill

can stand equal before God.

It means all of those pretty faces

we see paraded across our TV and movie screens

who have achieved great status,

and great wealth

by selling us a glimpse of their beauty for a few minutes

all of a sudden

find themselves

with no claim to special recognition,

standing on an equal plane before God

with all of the rest of us lumpy,

balding,

bulging,

rather misshapen people.

We hear our God making a statement to us that declares,

For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law...

and at first we wonder

why all the world is not dancing in the streets,

claiming by faith

what we could have never achieved through our performance.

But then, as we get a little closer,

we begin to understand

why Paul said what he said

in those verses from the first chapter of 1 Corinthians that we began with this morning.

It is no wonder that...

there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble... by the world’s standard

within the family of God,

because the very nature of the message

shatters all the rules

upon which our world’s social systems are founded.

And it is impossible for us to get near our God

without that nearness shattering

the very foundations of the lives we have lived

outside of Christ.

And just so we understand why that is,

let me remind us of what’s really going on.

When we as a human race

declared ourselves independent from our Creator,

and severed our communication with Him,

in the process we also severed ourselves

from the only true, accurate source of knowledge about ourselves that we will ever have.

Only our Creator

can tell each of us

who we are,

and why we have value,

and how our lives were designed to operate.

But once we could no longer hear His voice,

or more accurately,

once we refused to hear His voice,

we were forced to create for ourselves

some alternative system

by which we could establish some sense of worth,

and identity,

and value.

So what did we do?

We established a whole bunch of artificial systems

by which we then were able to measure ourselves against one another,

and on the basis of those systems

we tried to tell ourselves

why we have value,

why we have importance,

why we have significance.

In our U.S. culture

we have 5 major standards of measure:

1. our appearance,

2. our wealth,

3. our IQ,

4. our athletic abilities,

5. and our charisma and personality.

These are the things Paul is referring to

when he talks about ‟the things that are”

in that Corinthian passage.

If we can score big in at least one of those areas,

then we claim for ourselves

the right to declare ourselves of value,

and to expect those around us to do the same.

If we can score big in more than one area

we move up higher.

If we can score big in 4 out of 5

we might even get elected President.

But my point is this -

the good news of Jesus Christ

in which we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law...

can only be heard as good news

when God brings us to the place

where our need for answers,

and our hunger for truth,

and our longing for healing in our lives

becomes more important

than whatever success,

or status,

or prestige we may have achieved

through the false status systems

offered to us by our society.

Here we are as a society of people,

desperately seeking to achieve

peace with ourselves,

and some sense of security,

by achieving more and more status

through our positions,

and our wealth,

and our affirmations from others.

But when all the applause stops,

and we have run the numbers in our net worth again, and again, and again,

when we finally turn off the computer

we still find within ourselves

that nagging, empty, aching hole deep inside.

And the most terrifying moment of truth

any human being will ever face

is that moment when we finally step out from behind those hiding places

that we have worked so hard to create

through all those false sources of security we’ve been clinging to,

and let our God tell us who we really are.

And the remarkable thing here,

and the thing that never ceases to take the human spirit by surprise,

is that when we do that,

when we dare to reveal our confused

and broken lives to our God,

what we anticipate from Him

and what we actually receive

could not be more different.

Given the fact that we stand before Him

with our arms filled with the broken pieces of our lives,

we just naturally anticipate His disapproval,

and find instead ourselves confronted with His love.

We see our own moral failures

and anticipate His wrath,

His condemnation,

and find ourselves confronted with His forgiveness,

His kindness,

and His compassion.

You see, when we come to our God,

in the very act of doing so

we forfeit our right

to cling to those things we were previously using

to give us status,

and make us feel good about ourselves.

But we gain in return

the growing ability to hear

the sure and certain voice of our God

telling us the truth about our true value,

our past,

our real identity,

our future,

and our special place in His family.

I certainly don’t mean to suggest

that there is some instant silencing

of all those other voices we’ve been listening to,

and an instant, clear, direct line to the voice of our God,

telling us the truth about ourselves.

We have been keenly focused

on all those other voices

for our entire lives

before we meet our God

and every one of us

are highly skilled at hearing

and interpreting what they are saying.

The transition from those voices

to the voice of our God

is a life-long process.

But God’s Spirit can and will

actively seek to replace

the lies we have heard about ourselves

with the truth that He alone can tell us.

And then one final observation

before we stop for the morning -

when Paul summarizes

the result that salvation through faith in Christ brings into our lives he says:

Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith.

In other words,

he tells us that our equal access to God

through faith in Jesus Christ

destroys any basis of our arrogant boasting

either before our God

or before our fellow man.

Nothing in my hand I bring,

simply to Your cross I cling.

But it is the nature of man-made religious systems

to reestablish that boasting base

into our attitude both toward God

and toward one another.

Man-made religious systems

offer us a list

or a religious system

by which we can once again

establish our social pecking order

and even feel as though

we have done something

to earn God’s acceptance and approval.

To all such systems

Paul’s message is clear:

Rom. 3:27 Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith.

Rom. 3:28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.

So, the first of the three results

of Christ’s sacrifice for our sins

is that now, through Christ,

every one of us can stand equally,

fully,

and eternally justified before God Himself.

The second of the three results

of Christ’s offer of Himself

as the sacrifice for our sins

is found in 3:29-30

Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one.

Simply stated,

God is the God of all people,

His death is an acceptable sacrifice

for the sins of the whole world,

and now His offer of salvation through faith in Christ

is extended to all who will receive it.

Next week we’ll look at Paul’s final statement in 3:31.