Through the Same Faith
A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
July 22, 2018
at Bethany Presbyterian Church, Zuni, Virginia
Romans 3: 21-31
Ecclesiastes 7: 15-20
Let us pray,
Help us to see despite our eyes
Help us to think outside of our minds
Help us to be more than our lives
For your eyes show the way
Your mind knows the truth
Your being is the life.
Amen.
So far in this foray into Paul’s letter to the Romans we’ve
looked at the problems that Paul introduces to then pose and illuminate,
discuss to put it plainer in the course of his letter.
1. That the willful
ignoring of God is at the root of all of the evil in the world, that the
world’s troubles all stem from this willful ignoring, and he calls it sin.
2. Then that he, as a
Pharisee, and a Jew feels called to show to the world about God, and what it
means to follow him by adherence to the law, but,
And this is what we talked about last week
It is
impossible to reveal the goodness of God this way because
No
one is perfect, and certainly then also not everyone is
It
only takes one transgression of the law to ruin the bunch
So
it is hard to not look like a hypocrite
And
even the gentiles just by nature follow some aspects of the law
So
what is the difference?
How can we show God to the Gentiles, how can we be the bearers
of the blessing promised way back in the Covenant to Abraham, that all the
world would be blessed through him? When we continue to fall? How is it
possible? Or maybe why even bother? But again and again he does actually say it
is important to keep on bothering. . .
Even if we are both—Jew and Gentile—alike. . . even if there is
no distinction at all between Jews and Gentiles. . .
Because he ruminates on it through most of chapters 2 & 3, we
can see shades of this problem, in the
lines leading up to our official reading this morning of v. 21-31, and they
also introduce our Old Testament Lesson. . . check out in chapter 3.v 9- 12
9 What
shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have
already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of
sin. 10 As
it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”[b]
11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”[b]
IN these lines, and it continues through v. 15, Paul is
stringing together a bunch of different quotes intermixed from the Psalms, from
Isaiah, and from Ecclesiastes, and he does it as if there is another source,
where they are connected, which is lost to us, but we can see it clearly what
it is saying, that righteousness under the law is futile because no one, not
even one, is righteous in this way. . . Of all the places he quotes
Ecclesiastes gets at his main point the most clearly. This is why I chose
Ecclesiastes 7: 15-20,, and Ecclesiastes has always been one of my favorite
books of the Old Testament, take a listen. . .
15 In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of
these:
the righteous perishing in their
righteousness,
and the wicked living long in their wickedness.
16 Do not be overrighteous,
neither be overwise—
why destroy yourself?
17 Do not be overwicked,
and do not be a fool—
why die before your time?
18 It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes.[a]
and the wicked living long in their wickedness.
16 Do not be overrighteous,
neither be overwise—
why destroy yourself?
17 Do not be overwicked,
and do not be a fool—
why die before your time?
18 It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes.[a]
19 Wisdom makes one wise person more powerful
than ten rulers in a city.
than ten rulers in a city.
20 Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous,
no one who does what is right and never sins.
no one who does what is right and never sins.
How bleak it all is. .
.
You can come out of Ecclesiastes wondering, ok what is the
point, if all of life is chasing the wind, just vanity of vanities, why does
anything matter?
Have you ever heard
Mark Twain’s stories about the Good Little Boy and the Bad Little Boy
Classics
Let me read you a
little bit of them, I won’t read it all, just enough to give you a flavor:
Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivens. He
always obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands
were; and he always learned his book, and never was late at Sabbath-school. He
would not play hookey, even when Hi bober judgment told him it was the
most profitable thing he could do. None of the other boys could ever make that
boy out, he acted so strangely. He wouldn't lie, no matter how convenient it
was. He just said it was wrong to lie, and that was sufficient for him. And he
was so honest that he was simply ridiculous. The curious ways that that Jacob
had, surpassed everything. He wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob
birds' nests, he wouldn't give hot pennies to organ-grinders' monkeys; he
didn't seem to take any interest in any kind of rational amusement. So the
other boys used to try to reason it out and come to an understanding of him,
but they couldn't arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. As I said before, they
could only figure out a sort of vague idea that he was "afflicted,"
and so they took him under their protection, and never allowed any harm to come
to him.
This good little boy read all the Sunday-school books; they were
his greatest delight. This was the whole secret of it. He believed in the good
little boys they put in the Sunday-school books; he had every confidence in
them. He longed to come across one of them alive, once; but he never did.
Jacob had a noble ambition to
be put in a Sunday-school book.
So that is the beginning of the description. . . but look at the
end of this story
But somehow nothing ever went
right with this good little boy; nothing ever turned out with him the way it
turned out with the good little boys in the books. They always had a good time,
and the bad boys had the broken legs; but in his case there was a screw loose
somewhere; and it all happened just the other way. When he found Jim Blake
stealing apples, and went under the tree to read to him about the bad little
boy who fell out of a neighbor's apple-tree and broke his arm, Jim fell out of
the tree too, but he fell on him, and broke his arm, and Jim wasn't hurt at
all. Jacob couldn't understand that. There wasn't anything in the books like
it.
This
boy always had a hard time of it. Nothing over came out according to the
authorities with him. At last, one day, when he was around hunting up bad
little boys to admonish, he found a lot of them in the old iron foundry fixing
up a little joke on fourteen or fifteen dogs, which they had tied together in
long procession, and were going to ornament with empty nitro-glycerine cans
made fast one him), and he took hold of the foremost dog by the collar, and
turned his reproving eye upon wicked Tom Jones. But just at that moment
Alderman McWelter full of wrath, stepped in. All the bad boys ran away, but
Jacob Blivens rose in conscious innocence and began one of those stately little
Sunday-school-book speeches which always commence with "Oh, sir!" in
dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good or bad, ever starts a remark with
"Oh, sir." But the alderman never waited to hear the rest. He took
Jacob Blivens by the ear and turned him around, and hit him a whack in the rear
with the flat of his hand; and in an instant that good little boy shot out
through the roof and soared away towards the sun, with the fragments of those
fifteen dogs stringing after him like the tail of a kite. And there wasn't a
sign of that alderman or that old iron foundry left on the face of the earth;
and, as for young Jacob Blivens, he never got a chance to make his last dying
speech after all his trouble fixing it up, unless he made it to the birds;
because, although the bulk of him came down all right in a tree-top in an
adjoining county, the rest of him was apportioned around among four townships,
and so they had to hold five inquests on him to find out whether he was dead or
not, and how it occurred. You never saw a boy scattered so. ^*
So
that is the Story of the Good Little Boy, here’s a taste of the Bad Little Boy
Once
there was a bad little boy whose name was Jim - though, if you will notice, you
will find that bad little boys are nearly always called James in your
Sunday-school books. It was strange, but still it was true that this one was
called Jim.
But the strangest thing that ever happened to Jim was the time he
went boating on Sunday, and didn't get drowned, and that other time that he got
caught out in the storm when he was fishing on Sunday, and didn't get struck by
lighting. Why, you might look, and look, all through the Sunday-school books
from now till next Christmas, and you would never come across anything like
this. Oh no; you would find that all the bad boys who go boating on Sunday
invariably get drowned; and all the bad boys who get caught out in storms when
they are fishing on Sunday infallibly get struck by lightning. Boats with bad
boys in them always upset on Sunday, and it always storms when bad boys go
fishing on the Sabbath. How this Jim ever escaped is a mystery to me.
This Jim bore a charmed life - that must have been the way of it.
Nothing could hurt him. He even gave the elephant in the menagerie a plug of
tobacco, and the elephant didn't knock the top of his head off with his trunk.
He browsed around the cupboard after essence of peppermint, and didn't make a
mistake and drink aqua fortis. He stole his father's gun and went hunting on
the Sabbath, and didn't shoot three or four of his fingers off. He struck his
little sister on the temple with his fist when he was angry, and she didn't
linger in pain through long summer days, and die with sweet words of
forgiveness upon her lips that redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart. No;
she got over it. He ran off and went to sea at last, and didn't come back and
find himself sad and alone in the world, his loved ones sleeping in the quiet
churchyard, and the vine-embowered home of his boyhood tumbled down and gone to
decay. Ah! no; he came home as drunk as a piper, and got into the station-house
the first thing.
And he grew up and married, and raised a large family, and brained
them all with an axe one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and
rascality; and now he is the infernalist wickedest scoundrel in his native
village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the Legislature.
So you see there never was a bad James in the Sunday-school books
that had such a streak of luck as this sinful Jim with the charmed life.
You ever feel like that is the way things should be. . . I’m a
good person and I follow the rules, I go to church, I do what I am supposed to
do, why isn’t my life perfect?
Maybe I’m not perfect but I’m pretty good. . .
Isn’t that what the Messiah was supposed to be, to set up
justice, to make things right. . .
To make it so the good get rewarded and the bad get punished. .
.
Put yourself in that frame of mind and then listen to this New
Testament Reading, Romans 3: 21-31
21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has
been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in[h] Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is
no difference between Jew and Gentile,23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through
the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement,[i] through the shedding of his blood—to be received by
faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance
he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present
time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of
what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires
faith. 28 For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart
from the works of the law. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of
Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, 30 since there is only one God, who will justify the
circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31 Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all!
Rather, we uphold the law.
Look at what Paul is trying to do here, he is trying to let it
be known that there is not distinction between Jew and Gentile in the new
Righteousness by faith
But by doing this he can imagine what his Jewish audience might
think of that. . .
well then we can throw out the Law then, if its purpose is righteousness
and we can’t be righteous, why bother?
But Paul is trying to get them to see it differently. . . a new
conception of what Law is. . .
No longer something that ranks people. . . and this is what I
think he getting at when he mentions “boasting” all throughout his letters, not
just here, but in all of them. . .
no boasting, in other words, no more ranking, putting others
below and yourself above, or even vice versa. But instead a new equality, where
righteousness comes to play.
But then where is justice? I’ve done well, I should be rewarded.
. .
No one is righteous, not even one. . . it takes a new
understanding of ourselves, a new perception in the light of the righteousness
of Christ, who though blameless, willingly went to the cross,
Though as the old gospel song says, at any point he could have
called 10,000 angels
He does not, for us.
It’s a new world view, necessary to come to terms with this. . .
and how often does Jesus in his teaching deal with this very concept. . .
When he says the last shall be first and the first last
When he says blessed are the meek
When he tells the parable of the prodigal son, with the elder
brother, who refuses to live in the world of his father’s grace
When he tells of the outcast Samaritan who does what is good
When he tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar
When he praises the widow who gave so little, but in her little
gave all
When he told the parable of the proud Pharisee
When he sat with the unclean
When he chose disciples out of fishermen and tax collectors
When he tells the criminal hanging on the cross next to him that
today he will be in paradise
It takes a major shift of our worldview to come to terms with
this world of grace that Jesus has brought not boasting and ranking, and
looking for ways that we should be rewarded ahead of others. . .
Those Mark Twain stories, of the good and bad little boy, are a
direct response to Sunday School teachings of the time, where children were
taught to behave, and that through their behaving their lives would be blessed,
rewarding or punishing them based on their behavior. . .
it just doesn’t work that way. . . remember when the child was
born blind, and Jesus was asked who sinned to cause it, and Jesus answers,
neither. . . but so the works of God can
be displayed in him. . .
So there are purposes that God has beyond what we can see, and
it is possible that the pain I feel now is for some purpose, and Good. This is
a worldview that is a challenge to us.
Driving in Smithfield the other evening, I saw it on a church
sign, plain as day, God wants you to be financially wealthy.
Look at the promises told to folks to get them to accept Christ
and behave. . . be a good boy, and your life will be great, come to our church
and God will reward you with wealth.
It is a common theme in the ancient world. . . if you run into
trouble it is because of something you had done to upset the gods. . .
The greatest Roman epic poem, The Aeneid, written just prior to
the birth of Christ, the author Virgil explains why the hero and legendary founder
of Rome Aeneas suffers so many calamities, and it is simply due to his having
offended Juno, the wife of Jupiter to King of the gods, his offending her and
his family’s offending of her. . . it all adds up, and Aeneas bears the burden.
Paul is showing the Christian worldview to be different. . .
God is in control, and sent Jesus Christ to save the world,
faith in this is what he calls the new righteousness given by God. . .
Given by God?
How can righteousness be given? How can faith be given? If I
have done nothing how can I be better than someone else? How can I be good
enough? How can I make my situation in this world better for me?
If the world isn’t any different for me because I am better why
should I be?
I think of Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof
I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a
while, can't You choose someone else?
Earlier this morning and a few weeks ago, we had looked at how
Paul had said that ignoring of God, as the essence of sin, is the cause of all
the evils of the world. . .
If we have faith in Jesus Christ then what we saw as evil, must
now be seen within the eyes of grace. . . and therefore as a renewing, piece of
life, bringing us closer to the good, we trust God has for us. . . faith,
forces us to see the world in new eyes. . .
We as a church then, can’t promise salvation for being good,
We can’t promise a free trip to heaven for coming to church,
We can’t promise that everything will be better for you if you
follow the rules.
We can’t sell an idol in the name of Christ
We can simply teach that the loving God who creates this world,
loves us enough to send his Son Jesus Christ to die for us, bringing about a
new righteousness brought on by faith, whereby all distinctions and rankings
are forgotten, and this new life in this Christ is not one of ease, and
material abundance, but one where God is bringing all things to the good he has
willed especially for us.
That we see life in this radical new way.
Insert about why come to church. . .
