A common meme or satire of beauty pageants is the contestant’s answer of world peace in the interview question. The greatest thing our society needs may indeed be peace, but nobody really thinks that it’s going to come about by something inspired through a beauty pageant. It’s not going to bring the world together in harmony. A while back, NBA basketball great Ron Artest, he was involved in a very serious brawl on court between the Indian Pacers and the Detroit Pistons, and it led to his very lengthy suspension during the season. It was infamously dubbed Malice in the Palace. So it was the fighting. Later, an added domestic abuse charge followed our test, and he decided that in order to do things differently, he would change his name. And he did, and he changed his name to Metta World Peace. It was the craziest thing, and even when you go out in the of course, they’d have to say, Metta World Peace. But as we know, changing one’s name does not change one’s behavior. We see things, slogans like, Peace in the Middle East, or give peace a chance, and they are bumper stickers that have long fated.
Their horizon seems pretty empty of any grand unifying person or work that can actually bring humanity together. Right now, crowd rallying moments are almost entirely conducted by those stoking the flames of division rather than unity. And into this acrimony, the gospel comes with this bold proclamation of hope and peace that’s not a slogan. It’s not a name change. It centers on the promise on a person who can truly bridge the gaps. And he does so in a way that nobody saw it coming. The God of the universe becomes one of his creatures in order to welcome them back to himself. And in this, he levels all people in order to raise them up. And because the Lord has given a sure and certain hope in our savior Jesus, we are to work now in bringing about this future reality of unity here today. There’s nothing Pauleanish about the apostle Paul or his letter to the Romans. He’s a realist. It’s hard-hitting. Apart from the Messiah Jesus, there is no hope for humanity, and he lays that out very clearly. With Jesus, though, we have secured a promise that we now are a living proof of.
Well, looking at this greater promise, into a largely divided church between Jewish and Gent Christians, Paul has pointed both to the one who unifies them. He says, verse 7, Therefore, welcome one another as Christ welcomed you for the glory of God. Not merely be not only accepting one another or tolerating one another, but to welcome, to embrace one another. That is what we have been called to do. On what basis? As Christ has welcomed you. Apart from Jesus, what do we have to anchor our hope on? It’s just us and our views. You think about that. So for maybe those who consider themselves open-minded, what’s the one thing the open-minded person cannot tolerate? Those who are not open-minded in the same way that they are. Why? Because their significance is in their willingness to accept others so they can look down on those who don’t accept what they accept. What’s required to bring people together in this system is that people must agree with their openness. They draw the lines in certain places to say who’s in and who’s out. This applies to all of us across the board. We all have lines that we draw to figure out who’s in and who’s out.
Traditional values, social justice, conservative liberal platform, food sourcing, and on it goes. We all have these ideas, these lines drawn that tell us who’s in and who’s out, who we accept and who we don’t. Paul is talking to Christians who do agree on the good news of Jesus Christ, but they apply the message differently in matters of living it out. And what Paul is showing them is that your functional significance when you do this is not coming from Jesus. When we do this, it’s coming actually from the lines that we draw. That’s our functional acceptance, where we draw the lines, not in the person of Jesus. So would say, Well, we follow the kosher food laws because we take our faith seriously. The other group would say, We don’t follow the kosher food laws because we take our faith seriously. Paul is saying, You need to follow Jesus. Take him seriously. Paul steps in and he says to these believers, Welcome one another, because Jesus has welcomed you. Neither of you figured any of this stuff out on your own. The promise that God gives does not have its origin in us. It has its origin in him.
And so then he goes on in verse 8, For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised, the Jews, to show God’s truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. So Paul is saying the Ministry to the Jews demonstrates God’s truth. The Ministry to the Gentiles demonstrates God’s mercy. These Two things are joined together, truth and mercy, in the promise for all humanity. This takes us all the way back to Chapter 1:16, when Paul says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it’s the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew and then to the Greek, to the Gentile. This is what God has intended for both. He speaks to these divided Christians about the fullness of the promise given by God all the from the beginning? What has divided humanity from the creator? It’s our sin. It’s our rebellion. What has the Lord done about this? Genesis 3:15. All the way back at the headwaters of the fall, God promised Adam and Eve that a solution was coming, that someone was going to come to crush the head of the serpent who would put everything right.
That was God’s promise at the very beginning. And then we see that God calls Abraham to himself and the ball gets rolling. The Hebrew nation found their lineage in this man. But as Paul has already shown, that was never just for one ethnic group. The world was always in God’s vision. Paul, now he quotes from various sources in Psalm 18. He says, Therefore, I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing your name. The Gentiles are included. And again, from Deuteronomy 32, Rejoice, O Gentile, with his people. And from Psalm 117, Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, let all the peoples extol him. And then from the prophet Isaiah 11, The root of Jesse, one of the lineage of David, will come. Even he who arises to rule the will the Gentiles? In him will the Gentiles hope. That’s always been a part of God’s plan. It was never just one group of people. It was this is the starting point that’s going to wrap every anyone else in. Now, if you’re Jewish, the Old Testament Bible to you is called the Tanak. We say Bible, they say Tanak. Tanak is T-N-K, and it’s from the Hebrew letters of the words that mean the law, the writings, and the prophets.
That’s what that means in Hebrew, Tanak, the three major divisions of the Old Testament canon. Paul quotes from each of these three locations. It’s not an accident. He’s showing that the whole of the Old Testament scriptures carry the same promise. It was never just about one man’s ethnic family and nation. The whole of the scripture, the law, the writings, the prophets speak to the promise going out as a vision to the world. All the way back in Romans 4:9, Paul asked this question, Is the blessing then only for the circumcised, the Jews, or also for the uncircumcised? And he answers that question, it’s for both. He says there in verse 24, chapter 4, Righteousness will be counted to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead, the Lord Jesus Christ. Who is delivered up for our trespasses, raised for our justification. It’s all about what Jesus has done for both. To the Jewish Christians who are saying, Well, I I guess it’s okay to let them in, but they have to become Jewish first, right? No. And to the Gentile Christians who are saying, Well, I guess we don’t need them anymore. They just need to get over themselves.
No. No, the promise was given and fulfilled by the Father through the work of the Son, applied by the spirit to all those who believe. The only one involved in that was God. No one stands on their own merit. It’s all by grace. Therefore, how these two groups get along in Rome are a living proof of this, a living proof of the promise. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul addressed both the Jews and the Gentile division in the church there. And he said, For Jesus himself is our peace, who has made both of us one, who has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. Ephesians 2:14. God, through Jesus, has made us one, tearing down the division. Christians living this unity demonstrate this truth. Unity among believers is paramount. As Jesus told his disciples, By your love, the world will know your mind. John 13. Then later in his prayer to the Father, John 17, he prayed saying, So that they, the disciples, may be brought to complete unity, then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. How? By their unity.
And Paul then expresses this in his prayer, in this benediction, verse 13, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the spirit, you will abound in hope. He draws both together under the banner of Jesus. Because the only hope for a sin interact world filled with everyone looking out for number one, it’s Jesus. We are to be re-united under him. And Paul is telling them, he’s telling us that these problems in the local church, the problems that Rome is experiencing, they’re not just about some petty bickerings. They’re issues that have cosmic significance. Now, we can laugh at the triteness of world peace that gives these in a beauty pageant. We can look at the hopelessness of slogans that no one really believes. Changing your name is not going to change who you are. But in our hearts, there is a desire, a longing for a truth that will unite us. We carry that because we’re made in the image and likeness of God. A desire to see things come together, that this fracturing that is out there that’s in our lives, it’s in our soul, it’s in our communities, in the world around us.
We know it’s not right. There’s a longing for it to come together. And it has to be more than people agreeing with me on the things I think are important. It cannot be found in a man, in a woman, in a group, in a nation, in a platform. They have all been done, literally to death. Any great unifying bridge that supports this cosmic weight cannot be built by human hands. Paul rightly takes us to the place first as he speaks to specific problems. It’s not about who’s eating what foods, who’s drinking or who’s not drinking. It’s much bigger than that. But in the heat of these differences, that’s all we see. All we see was what’s right in front of us because these things matter. Like stubborn your toe. All you feel is a pain in your toe for a while. You forget about the rest of your body. When these types of problems come and we have these types of arguments with one another, it’s just like, and we’re looking so intently at this. And Paul is saying, You got to step back. It’s more than just this. There’s something greater taking place that we participate in.
Our vision is too small. Our invisible God is making himself visible to the world through the church. From New Testament scholar Chris Sarrash, speaking on these verses, he said, We may perhaps sum up the overall theme by saying that the harmony of people from all over the world in the church is the proof that the one true God has reestablished his kingdom and he’s keeping his promises through the work of Christ. The harmony of all of these different groups coming together in the church is the proof that God is reestablishing his kingdom. He’s keeping his promises through the work of Christ. And so when we look at the world around us and we see the chaos, and it’s there, when we see people blindly trying to find their significance and their value in gender politics, A false sense of diversity, a sexual free for all, unfettered consumerism, personal peace and affluence. Don’t get laser-locked on those things as if they’re the problem in themselves. They’re problems, yes, but don’t lock in on that to think that that’s the thing that we’re fighting. In a second letter to the Corinthians, Paul said, 2 Corinthians 4, speaking of the unbeliever, he said, In their case, the God of this world, Satan, has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Being blind to Christ is the problem. You can blind yourself in lots of ways. Say, it doesn’t matter what you poke your eye with. The problem is blindness, blindness to Jesus. And because God’s work of revealing himself is a sovereign work of his grace, There’s no room for exclusion or boasting on our part. Paul goes on in 2 Corinthians 4, he says, For God said, the one who said, Let light shine in the darkness, he has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That’s what the Father has done. He has revealed the light of Jesus to us. Part of the spirit’s witness then to a fallen world around us is us. That’s heady and scary at the same time. You’re using us to be a witness to the world of this great redeeming work? I wouldn’t have picked me We are gathered here together not because of all the things that we agree on out there. We’re gathered here because by God’s grace, he has chosen us in Christ. We are to be a church shaped by that very same grace.
That is our starting point. Before we head into the things that divide, we start in with the greater vision, the greater purpose for the unity. That changes how we look at the problem. So that we came with Paul saying, May the God of hope, fill you with all joy and peace in believing. You see what qualifies the joy and the peace? It’s in believing. They are the result of faith in Christ. We’re not talking about hope and hope, faith and faith. This is not one of those things when something tragic happens in our lives or a great catastrophe, when people say, inevitably, Almost a silent whisper that comes out, Our thoughts and prayers are with you. What does that mean? I feel really bad for what’s going on, but I really don’t know what to do. I can’t do anything about it. So I just wish you good thoughts. Thank you. That’s not unkind. But is it going to do anything? The only thing that does anything is faith in It’s the only foundation of hope, the joy and the peace. That’s where that comes from. Clearly, This is a true and living hope founded on a true and living faith in Jesus Christ.
At the end of the verse, so that by the power of the Holy spirit, you may abound in hope. You see, that’s supernatural. The hope here differentiates between believers and unbelievers. What’s the difference? Well, the solution we’re looking for is not found in us. It’s found in God. And in the church, when disparate groups of incompatible people come together in order to praise the living God, we are the proof that Jesus is Lord of all and bringing all things under his banner into his kingdom. That’s amazing. And we have disagreements, for sure. We have differing denominations to show that. But it’s not the end of the matter. And there’s hard work to take place in dealing with our hard hearts. We can have dialog, we can talk with one another, we can push back, but that doesn’t mean push out. There’s room for communication and dealing with some of the specifics, but only after we first step back to see that the unity of who we are is regulatory to the world. Now, no doubt, if we were in a larger city, there would be several different reformed churches that we might slide into that we feel like has greater agreement with us or a better fit.
That’s true of all denominations. You hit a bigger city, there’s a hound from every town, and you just slide into lanes that feel more comfortable. You’re with people that are more like you. And in a smaller town, we just have to be rubbing shoulders with things that we might not all agree with. But I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for us that maybe in a larger location, you don’t get a chance to work on. It’s easy to like people who are like you. But when you differ, when there’s some vibration, it takes effort, it takes work, it takes something in our hearts to move. And yet what Paul has told us all the way back in Romans 12:9, it still stands. It stands for all of us. There he said, Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love, honor one another above yourselves. That’s true all places, all times for God’s people. That’s the work that we’re called to. Paul has woven these thoughts so masterfully together through the Book of Romans. That’s what love looks like in Christ Jesus. The promise that the Lord has brought us in Jesus is that he has conquered sin and death.
And what we lock onto It’s the fact that in our own sins, we cannot save ourselves, that he has to do it. It tells us immediately the priority of place that apart from Jesus, we could do nothing. That the vision that the world needs is this vision, this large vision cast wide of the good news of the gospel. You see, the world has a right to look back on all of us who claim the name of Christ to see if it’s just one more bumper sticker slogan or if it’s the real deal. They have a right to look and inspect that. Perfectly? Oh, by no means. None of us do this perfectly. But in a profound way that’s real, that there is something different because we bear the name of Jesus in our baptism, that we are his sons and daughters. And so therefore, how we interact with members of the family, it takes on a whole new significance. The vision is much greater than the thing that’s separating us. And if we don’t start with that, we’re not going to deal with the issue rightly, whatever that issue might be. And we take that not just here, but we take it out there, how we deal with one another, how we deal with the differences around us.
Jesus has done something for us. Jesus has brought us from darkness into light. We who were once blind to his righteousness now see because he has revealed that. And we live then as people who have been recipients of sight. Think about that. I know it would wear off, but if you have never been able to see and you were able to see it the first time, I imagine your first month would just be overwhelming joy for that’s what that looks like. That’s what that looks like in seeing people and touching faces, how amazing that would be. But then it would have to wear off as it naturally does. And we think about that. If you’ve come to Christ at various points in your life, how initially how thrilling and exciting that was and how amazing and everything in the world was seeing with new lives. And there is a wearing off of that. It’s just natural. It takes place. But what we need to be careful of is a hardening, a darkening of the cornea, where there becomes a calcified lens, making it difficult for us to see again. When we look at someone else, we’re not looking at them through a new vision of grace and mercy, that the truth that God has spoken to these Jews, the mercy that he has shown to these Gentiles has been brought together in the person and work of Jesus.
That we I’ve received. Take that and put that into the things that disagree. Take that into the world around us, first and foremost, and then see what happens. And this is hard. This is hard for all of us. I said that repeatedly. It’s hard for me. It’s hard for you. People push you and poke you and say things. You want to poke and push back. And Paul is constantly saying, there’s a greater vision. There’s a greater person. We’re following the one who did not push back, who did not revile when persecuted, who kept his mouth silent before his accusers. One day, we will have an opportunity to live this out in glory. The hope is there. The future is coming to us. And now we have the privilege of living it out in part. That as you and I are united in Jesus, we get to see this demonstrated here and now, preparing our hearts for what is yet to come so that we can be a living proof of the greater promises of the gospel that hope has been given in Jesus Christ, and people can actually tangibly see it in his people. Pray with me.
Father, as we come before you, we thank you. We thank you that you have regenerated us. Father, you have caused us to be born again by your spirit dwelling in us. Father, we praise you. We worship you. God, that you have given us for all eternity a name that is above all names, that you have marked us into the Lamb’s Book of Life. Father, thank you. And Father, we pray and ask them that we would reflect this wonder and beauty of Christ to the world around us. Father, that we could live in such a way that people would say, You belong to Jesus. And Lord, that you would be pleased to bring men, women, and children to a saving faith in Christ through the Ministry of us here, Faith Covenant, Council of Montana. We love you, Father. We bless you. You’re good and kind and merciful. And all praise and adoration we offer to through Jesus, our blessed savior. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.