Wait for it, Wait for it – Genesis 15:1-21

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I don’t like waiting for things, and I don’t like making people wait for anything either. A period of waiting causes one to doubt whether something is really going to happen or not. Like, I’m still waiting for that Baltimore Orioles scout who saw me pitch four shutout innings against Rutgers 41 years ago to give me a call like he promised. I’m beginning to doubt if it’s ever going to happen, and I’m fearing I might have lost a few miles per hour on my fastball.

This week we are going to talk about someone who did a lot of waiting, and about a God who is not opposed to making his people wait. Our focus is upon Abraham as illustrative of the theme of declared or imputed righteousness.

To understand our primary passage of focus in Romans 4, we need to recall the background story of the man who is often seen as the ultimate paragon of faith — Abram, or as he was to be known, Abraham.

On most fronts, Abram’s life was going pretty well in Ur and Harran where he lived with varied extended family. There were no children for he and Sarah, but the rest of life was marked by success in material things and the accoutrements of life. We don’t know much of the nature of his faith prior to God’s selection of him, though we know he came from an idolatrous family. He may well have been that himself early in life, but God called him and continued to call him. And God’s calling is generally not much oriented to what a person offers, but is rather according to God’s pleasure in choosing whom he is going to use. It’s a grace thing for sure.

Abram was called (actually first at an earlier time when living in Ur), and the record tells us that he acknowledged God and obeyed, even though it meant a change from everything he knew as familiar.

Genesis 12:1 — The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

2 “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

This 12th chapter of Genesis gives us what we speak of as the Abrahamic Covenant. God made three promises: that Abram’s name would be great, that he would make a great nation of him, and that all the earth would be blessed through him.

Cool!  So, you would think that at ages 75 and 65 (Sarah) that God would get right to work on that building a family thing, right? No time to lose, that’s for sure! But then another 11 years go by, and no family. Now we are in Genesis 15 …

15:1 — After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:

“Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”

2 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

4 Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

7 He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”

With no children, the custom of the day would be for the primary household servant to gain the estate as his own, in this case a guy named Eleazer. Here is an example where the original language in Hebrew throws in a play on words that has a ring of humor to it. The words for “household servant” and “son-heir” sound much alike and rhyme. It would be like saying, “this hired dude I’m paying now is going to be the retired dude who is paid ALL my stuff when I’m gone.”

But God said that this would not be so, rather it would be someone of his own posterity. Man, if it took extra faith 11 years earlier, it took 11 more years of faith to believe it now. But Abraham in verse six did believe, and it was put to his credit as righteousness — the “stuff” that is needed to be eternally in right relationship with God.

But Abram still heard no babies crying. He was wandering around with his sheep as a nomad, living in tents, with God telling him that he was going to inherit all of the land around him. So you can understand why, even while believing, Abraham would request an affirmation of his faith.

8 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”

9 So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

10 Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11 Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”

The act of cutting sacrifices into pieces and halving them was a means of verifying a covenant. Those making the promise would walk between the pieces of the carcasses, symbolizing that if they broke the covenant, they would end up like the chopped-up beasts. They were essentially saying that they were staking their lives, their everything, to the oath being made. And the torch of fire passing through was God giving his word to Abram.

The other details had to have been a mixed bag of blessing for Abram. Great things were going to happen, but he himself was not going to life to see most of it. God’s plans would not find fulfillment for generations … for centuries. And in terms of the universal promises that Christ would fulfill, it would be millennia; and honestly, that continues to today in the ongoing building of the church and Christ’s kingdom.

Yes, the life of faith has a lot of waiting. And the fact is that not everything about God’s promise to any of his people is ever fulfilled fully on this earth. God’s plans and God’s program are so much bigger, and to be a part of it at all is a greatest of blessings for us.

And the way that we are a part of it is by grace through faith. It was true for Abraham, for Moses, for David, for Peter and Paul, and for all of us today. Our faith is in the merit of a reality beyond this world, but by believing and trusting in it, that merit is applied to our spiritual account.

Equal Opportunity Sinners – Romans 3:21-31

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You’ll be glad to know that I have not spent a lot of time standing trial before a judge. I’ve had to testify a few times, and that is creepy enough. But there is really only once that I chose to go before a judge to plead about an accusation against me — about a speeding ticket.

It happened in Virginia on an occasion when I was at a Free Church pastors event in the Culpepper area. I had made some sort of wrong turn and found myself on an isolated road that went through what is known in that area as The Wilderness. It is a dense tangle of trees and brush, most famous because of a horrifically brutal Civil War battle fought in that region.

I was driving along trying to figure out where I was. There was nothing but thick forests on either side for miles, but suddenly I went around a turn and into an open area with schools on both sides of the road … and a policeman pointing a speed gun at me. There was no warning that I could see. I was amazed at how quickly it all transpired. After getting my paperwork, I went back to see if there were any signs along the roadway, and there was just one that was overgrown by trees and brush and hardly visible at all.

The judge was unimpressed with my story. I told him the circumstances and that I was not in any hurry or seeking to speed beyond any reasonable standard, never expecting a school zone to suddenly appear. He basically told me that he understood I had no intent to break the law and how I would be unfamiliar with the road, but the fact was that I had done so. Guilty!

Probably most people who go before a judge for small items like traffic violations do so with the hope that there will be some measure of leniency, and often there is. Your history, like a driving record, is considered. And perhaps if your overall goodness far exceeds the accused failure, the judge might let you go. At least you hope so.

And that is how most folks naturally think about what it will be like at the end of their lives when they stand before God. They know they are not perfect, and their hope is that He will agree that they have been clearly more virtuous and moral than the relatively scant accumulation of wrongdoing.

But that is not good enough. Perfection is needed. As we wrote previously, the need is to possess this stuff called “righteousness.” And the problem is that we don’t have it; and worse yet, we can’t get it or earn it on our own. It has to come from somewhere, someone, else.

The Jewish people in Paul’s time believed the same folly that frankly a majority of people essentially believe today: that by keeping the Law (the Jewish belief) or by living a very good and largely moral life (Gentile belief), one can expect to be OK with God in the end.

But the Scriptures teach that we all — Jews, Gentiles, whoever — are equal opportunity sinners; we have all failed and are in need of righteousness. That is the bad news. But the good news (the gospel) is that there is a righteousness that is out there. It was anticipated in the Old Testament Scriptures; it was revealed in Jesus Christ; it is preached as the gospel by Paul and the New Testament writers; and it is available through faith to those who will believe in this truth and trust in Jesus Christ.

3:21 – But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in 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, 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.

It is all about gaining righteousness through faith. We call this “declared righteous,” which is essentially what justification is.  We also speak of it in terms of “imputed righteousness.”  This is a great topic … the BEST topic. And that is what we are going to speak about all of this week.

“It is Finished”

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The cross of Christ represents the end of earning, the end of seeking God’s approval based on our own “sacrifices.” This is why the writer of Hebrews specifies that one of the crucial differences between Jesus and the system of the past is the finality of the cross:

 11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws on their hearts,
and write them on their minds,”

17 then he adds,

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.  (Hebrews 10:11-18)

In a 2005 interview, Bono—the lead singer for the band U2—talks about how this magnificent picture of grace has led him away from thinking only in terms of “karma,” the law of cause and effect:

“I really believe we’ve moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace…You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…every action is met by an equal or an opposite one….Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff…I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge….It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity…The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That’s the point….It’s not our own good works that get us through the gates of heaven.”

One of the hardest things to fully wrap our minds around is this basic principle of grace. Sure, I love the idea of my slate being cleaned, but I might hate—absolutely hate—that grace robs me of the privilege to “boast” (cf. Ephesians 2:9) of my moral superiority. Don’t I deserve credit, after all?

The problem of this kind of arrogance is that it leads us into a dangerous path, relationally speaking. Because only one of two things can happen. First, my moral system might actually work for me, more or less. I may spend a lifetime devoted to strict moral obedience. Life goes well—I get a good job, raise good kids, and be respected as a pillar of my community. I conclude that I am blessed; my righteousness has earned God’s approval. And I am constantly sneering at my neighbors, who have not achieved my blessing—clearly because they’re just not as morally upright as I am. Secondly, my moral system might not work for me. I might spend a lifetime of trying, only to be routinely confronted by the naked brutality of this fallen world. I obeyed all the rules; why doesn’t God bless me? I become bitter—at myself, at God, at my fellow church-goers who—despite not sharing my strict moral convictions—always seem way happier than I can ever hope to be.

Life is far more messy than all that. But so is spirituality, so is grace. Jesus joins us in our mess and—as we’ve been saying—absorbs the stains of our sin that we might have God’s approval not through any—any!—works of our own, but only through the finished work that he achieved on our behalf.

This is why it’s hard to hear the gospel if you’re a religious person. Because it’s easy to assume that you already know it—when all along you’ve only been learning to cling more tightly to your moral code. And it’s killing you.

Moral character isn’t a disposable part of the Christian life, but if we make transformation a prerequisite to forgiveness we strip grace of its beauty and strip the cross of its power. At the cross we do more than repent of our self-indulgence; we repent quite equally of our self-righteousness. Let it go. Let it all go—your self-righteous moralism, your sense of self-importance and smug religious superiority, your condescending attitude toward the sin of others deemed to be worse than your own. Let it go, and stand in the glorious grace of the once-for-all grace offered by Jesus. We close this week with the words of an old hymn, a hymn whose title comes from the last words of Jesus on the cross: “It Is Finished.”

“Lay your deadly doing down,
down at Jesus’ feet.
Stand in him and him alone,
gloriously complete.”

Crux Sola

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“The cross is the key signature of our theology.” This was the conclusion of one German author, for whom the cross loomed large in his understanding of God’s great story of redemption. He may as well have been quoting from Martin Luther, who years ago famously said that “the cross alone is our theology.” To be a Christian is to be a “soldier of the cross,” to borrow language from the old hymn. Yet when Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ was released, many reviewers were baffled that Gibson would ignore every scrap of Jesus’ ethical teaching in favor of delivering a brutal portrayal of Jesus’ crucifixion. At least one reviewer sneeringly dismissed the film as the “Jesus Chainsaw Massacre,” revolted that a religious film would disproportionately focus on a man’s blood rather than his message.

But don’t you see? For Christianity, Jesus’ blood is the message: the message of love, of justice, of forgiveness all rolled into a singular, defining event.

This is why the writer of Hebrews—among others—sees the cross as fulfilling and replacing the Old Testament sacrificial system entirely:

8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure insacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:8-10)

The cross was no great accident or interruption in God’s plan of redemption. It was the plan all along.

THE CROSS IN ANTIQUITY

We must not underestimate the sheer, shocking brutality of crucifixion in the ancient world. The ancient historians described “being nailed up” as the worst form of death.[1] Latin writers described it as an “infamous stake,”[2] the “barren and criminal wood,” [3] and “a most cruel and disgusting punishment.” [4]

Medical experts tell us that the most likely cause of death was slow, painful asphyxiation—that the lungs could not adequately expand and contract when suspended on the cross. But this might have been one of several causes of death, including death from blood loss, shock, or even being attacked by wild animals.

The practice of crucifixion had been invented as early as the culture of Assyria, though it was the Romans who had perfected it into the form of an art. The methods of crucifixion varied person to person. The Jewish writer Josephus tells us that “The soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different positions…”[5] The Latin writer Seneca lamented: “I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts;  others stretch out their arms on the gibbet.” [6]

This was not done in obscurity; this was done publicly, in the ancient equivalent of the corner parking lot of the local strip mall. The whole purpose, of course, was to shame you, and shame your followers. When Spartacus was defeated after his rebellion against Rome, 6,000 of his most loyal followers were crucified on the 120-mile stretch of road between Capua and Rome. I did the math on this. This means if you left Tri-State Fellowship and drove to Lancaster, roughly 60-70 yards, on either side of you, you’d see a person hanging in agony on the cross. One ancient writer lamented:

“What death is more shameful than to be crucified?  What death is worse than this condemnation is conceivable?  Even now he remains a reproach among all who have not yet received faith in him!”[7]

CRUX SOLA

In the ancient world, when someone was crucified, the public places were chosen so that people would stop and look. And so today, when we speak of the Savior crucified, we must stop and look. We must see the blood. We must see the nails. We must cringe at the (literally) God-forsaken spectacle we see before us, we must see the Savior pushed to the bitter edges of the world that we might be invited to taste in Heaven’s sweetness.

And above all, we must see that here is our shame, lying not on our own shoulders, but on his. On Christ’s. On our behalf.  Here is the sacrifice that lifts away the sin of the world (cf. John 1:29). My shame died there with him. He was broken that I might be made whole again. “The deformity of Christ forms you,” wrote Augustine. “By his wounds,” God said through Isaiah, “we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

If you are not a follower of Jesus, then this is your time to begin. If you’ve been following our devotional writings for the past two weeks, then you’ve been confronted with the inescapable truth of your own wickedness, a stain you can’t clean on your own. The cross sets you free from your guilt and shame, it transfers that debt from you to Jesus. Jesus took the penalty that you deserve so that you could be reunited in relationship to God. All you need to do is pause, bow your head, and tell God two things:

  • I know that I am a sinner in need of your grace,
  • I believe that your Son Jesus died in my place. I ask for your forgiveness.

It’s as simple as that. That’s grace. That’s your first small step toward a larger world. If you have said that prayer—either now or as a result of our recent sermon series, we’d love to hear from you. You may find our contact information through the Church’s website (www.tristatefellowship.org), or you can contact me personally at my email address (chris@tristatefellowship.org).

[1] Demosthenes, Oratio, 21.105.

[2] Anthologia Latina 415.23

[3] Seneca, Epistulae Morales 101.14

[4] Cicero, Contra Verres in The Verrine Orations, 2.5.64.

[5] Josephus, Bellum Judaicum, 5.11.1

[6] Seneca, Dialogue 6, 20.3

[7] Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, 10.9

A True and Better Priest

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I need you to imagine something.

Let’s imagine that you need to go in for surgery. We’ll imagine that it’s an appendectomy—a fairly standard procedure, but in the absence of treatment can become something much more dangerous.

If you’ve ever had surgery, you know there’s a whole pre-flight checklist that everyone goes through. It’s more than just dotting “i’s” and crossing “t’s.” It’s a whole protocol that ensures the absolute safety and integrity of each participant from patient to surgeon. The final step is to wheel you into the operating room where you are put under for the procedure. Now imagine, right as your eyes are about to shut from the anesthesia, that you look over to see the surgeon walk in the room. Instead of wearing the sterile scrubs, mask, and gloves you expect, your surgeon is covered in mud, or wearing those ugly rubber orange gloves she found in the janitor’s closet.

If you caught such a vision, your last thoughts before shutting your eyes would be paralyzing fear. This was the one person you were counting on for what would ultimately be a life-saving procedure. Yet your health had now been compromised by her lack of purity.

A DEFILED PRIEST

In the book of Joshua, we catch a vision of the high priest on what seems to be the great Day of Atonement, the day when the high priest would offer a sacrifice for the provision of the nation:

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” 3 Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. (Zechariah 3:1-3)

at in the Hebrew, we would notice that it doesn’t just say “Satan,” but “the satan,” which might simply mean “the accuser.” Again, this is a vision, not reality, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see such supernatural elements here, but it’s not necessarily clear that Zechariah is referring to the devil himself or merely an enemy of Israel hurling accusations.

What we are meant to see is the defilement of Joshua, the high priest. Customarily, priests like Joshua were sequestered for a week to prevent them from coming into contact with anything unclean so that they could perform the ceremony undefiled.  There was even a set of ritual bathings, after which Joshua would emerge wearing pure white robes.

But in Zechariah 3:3, Joshua is wearing “filthy robes.”  The original Hebrew seems to suggest that he is actually covered in excrement.  He is expected to be clean, to bring purity to the nation.  But in God’s eyes, all the rituals and duties do not truly cleanse the stain.

We find a similar theme in the letter of Hebrews—though here the author focuses not on the priests or the Day of Atonement, but the entire sacrificial system:

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. 2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? 3 But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’” (Hebrews 10:1-7)

There’s no doubt about it: sacrifices ultimately meant nothing.

A TRUE AND BETTER SACRIFICE

Not to keep using such visceral imagery, but we need to truly wrap our minds around the culture of sacrifice in the ancient world. To do this, we can actually look at the history books from the ancient people and catch a glimpse of what their religious system looked like.

The writer Josephus, for example, tells us that major Jewish holidays attracted so many worshippers to the temple that there were over 200,000 sacrifices made for 2.7 million people. [1] Even if you think this is an exaggeration, we might point out that Jewish commentaries describe the need to install drainage systems in their temple system:

 “At the south-western corner [of the Altar] there were two holes like two narrow nostrils by which the blood that was poured over the western base and the southern base used to run down and mingle in the water-channel and flow out into the brook Kidron.”[2]

The Kidron would have looked like the Chicago river on St. Patrick’s Day—only instead of green it would have gradually become a deep red.

In short: the system was bloody.  So when Jesus made a once-for-all sacrifice, it would have stood in sharp contrast to this older style of worship.  Imagine living in a city where once a year, the local river turned red from all the killing.  Where the sounds of thousands upon thousands of animals being slaughtered could be heard above the traffic.

Inadequate, the Bible says. Only a shadow of what’s to come.

See, we need a better high priest—a true and better Joshua. We find this in Jesus. He’s the true and better high priest who offers a true and better sacrifice, so that his once-for-all sacrifice could atone for the sins of God’s people, past, present, and future.

 

 

 

 

[1] Josephus, Bellum Iudaicum, 6:423-427.

[2] Mishnah, 3:2.

Paying the Debt

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Do we need forgiveness?

By now, we’ve already established the sheer magnitude of the problem of sin—both Biblically and psychologically. The question we might be faced with is why we can’t simply overlook it. Move past it. Get over it. After all, if even the Bible emphasizes that we’re all sinners, can’t we just accept this truth and move on?

Thing is, there are some things in life we just can’t move past—nor should we, really. A friend of mine told me the story of why he and his fiancée ended things. He’d been away on business—the ministry, actually—and didn’t see her for a few months. When he returned, he discovered that she’d moved into the apartment of another man. Their relationship was over. He was devastated.

More significantly, though, he was left with something psychologists occasionally call “emotional debt.” He still loved her. The relationship had ended with the abruptness of a car wreck, but the sheer momentum of his love was propelling his heart forward even now, scraped raw against the tarmac. But his fiancée, well…she had already moved on. She wasn’t hurting—at least not as bad as he was. So all—all—of the hurt, all of the betrayal, all of the sudden raw loneliness lay on his shoulders to carry. This was a tremendous debt.

What do we usually do when we experience this? We try and manage that debt by spreading it around. We talk badly about that person. We “warn” others about them—though this is usually just a form of gossip. We let ourselves stew and fester over the past. We fantasize about their downfall—or, alternately, we fantasize about surpassing that person’s success, and inciting their jealousy.

So what happens if we don’t do those things? Then that emotional debt is ours and ours alone to carry.

And that hurts.

Now what if we were the ones who did the offending? And what if the person we offended was not just another sinner like us, but the infinitely good and righteous character of God himself? I’m cautious not to start applying terms like “emotional debt” to an infinite God (as if we God fits into our psychological categories), though there are plenty of places in Scripture when God’s grief comes welling up like a rejected lover thumbing through a tear-stained wedding album.

“I have fond memories of you…how devoted you were to me in your early years.  I remember how you loved me like a new bride; you followed me through the wilderness, through a land that had never been planted.  What fault could your ancestors have possibly found in me that they strayed so far from me?” (Jeremiah 2:2-5, NET)

If there is to be true justice, if there is to be a sense of wrongs being put right, then this debt must be paid.

The Bible describes this in the language of something called “atonement.” Atonement is the finished work of a blood sacrifice. What does it mean to “atone?” Eugene Merrill of Dallas Seminary does a wonderful job of helping us examine the deeply-storied meaning of the Hebrew word kaphar. Merrill says that if we dig through the related words in Akkadian and other ancient languages (similar to how we might look at Latin roots of English words in the dictionary), we find a lot of language that emphasizes not merely covering over sin, but blotting it out entirely. Wiping it clean.

We find this meaning in an unlikely place—the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 32. Though used as part of God’s larger, spectacular plan to fulfill his promise to Abraham and establish his people, Jacob got his start as something of a con man. After cheating his brother out of the family inheritance, he went on the run. Now, he was about to be reunited with Esau, and that was a scary prospect. So he sent a whole series of material gifts ahead of him. Ever the shrewd manipulator, he was trying to “buy off” his brother with material gifts. Here’s what the text of the story says was going through his mind:

For he thought, “I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterward I shall see his face. Perhaps he will accept me.” (Genesis 32:21)

If you were to read that in the Hebrew, you might notice that the text reads something like “I will atone him” or—if we paraphrase—“I may wipe his face clean [of anger].” Atonement, we see, is deeply relational.

God established an elaborate system of sacrifices used to shape his people’s relationship with him—particularly in the area of the cleansing of sin. The writer of the letter of Hebrews says:

Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. (Hebrews 9:22)

Naturally, we hear the echoes of the Old Testament law, here:

11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. Leviticus 17:11

Blood would be the means by which God’s people made atonement for their sins.

Now, if you’ve been in church for a while, you might know that each of the sacrifices meant something very specific. But, as Leon Morris points out in his book The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, if we fast-forward to Jesus’ day, the first-century Jews had blurred the system so that every sacrifice made was thought to remove sin.

Such language must seem shockingly barbaric in the walls of today’s sanitized sanctuaries. Why would animal sacrifice be such a major part of worship for such a long period of human history?

Because it’s gross.

See, I have this theory. You know those awful videos they show you in Driver’s Ed? The ones where they show the bloody aftermath of drinking or texting while driving? They’re almost cliché, really. We’re numb to it. But what if we showed cars running over animals. Dogs. Cats. Pets. That sort of thing. The cuter and fluffier the better. We can watch teens text and drive, then watch puppy guts get splattered along the roadside. I guarantee you this would be infinitely more effective than the footage they show now.

If that horrifies you, that’s the point. Sin is as offensive before a holy God is as blood is before a people who treasure their animals. Granted, a sacrificial lamb would probably not have tugged at the heartstrings as much as a family pet, but the unblemished, male lamb would have been quite valuable to the family. And now the worshippers would watch it bleed to death. It’s as if God is trying to remind us, This is your sin. This is your filth. This is your shame. This is the price of atonement.

As before, we need to let this sink in. We need to let this haunt our imaginations and turn our stomachs. We need to be horrified by a God that is so ferociously holy that he demands blood from the people that have incurred such an impossibly massive debt.  Hear the cries of the lamb. See its blood flow in crimson streaks. And let your own tears flow at the knowledge of God’s plan to remove the debt, to cleanse the stain—to bring healing, to bring relationship.

The Stain of Sin

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In the late 1990’s, a physician by the name of Karl Menninger wrote a book called Whatever Became of Sin? His book focused on the way the modern world took the concept of evil and human wickedness and packed it away in the attic along with all the other religious notions we’d grown out of. What we once explained in spiritual terms, we now could understand through psychology or sociology. This is why when you turn on the evening news, the talking heads on the screen strain to find some explanation behind some recent act of violence—usually attributed to the perpetrator’s childhood trauma or the collective weight of social forces. Even recent terrorist activity in the Middle East has been blamed on poor economic and social conditions. Perhaps all of this is an attempt to deny the radical wickedness that rots and stinks at the core of each of us. “There’s no evil inside of me, no sir.”

But even human psychology reveals that “sin” hasn’t been packed away as tightly as we might have assumed. The field of “moral psychology” deals with what are often called “moral emotions.” While some of these emotions can be quite positive (gratitude, for example, would be called a moral emotion), others are much more negative: guilt, shame, anger, disgust. While Sigmund Freud had identified “moral anxiety” in the late nineteenth century, it really wasn’t until the 1980’s and 90’s that psychologists really started examining these emotions with greater interest.

If you follow Jesus, their findings shouldn’t really shock you. Because while yes, cultures and people vary widely when it comes to ethics and moral questions, there are some things about us that are the same. No culture is neutral on issues such as the perseveration of life, sexual ethics, and respect for the dead. Could this be that yes, we do have some remnant of God’s image still alive within us?

But one of the most fascinating “moral emotions” is disgust. Essentially all cultures have some clear boundary line between what is “clean” and “unclean.” Cross that line and it grosses us out. Psychologist Paul Rozin calls this “core disgust.” It’s what we feel when we imagine ourselves handling a live cockroach, or eating something off the floor of the men’s room.

Now, we might attribute some of our disgust to biological preservation against germs. But we also seem to have a strong reaction of disgust when we think about moral contamination. Rozin’s most famous experiment illustrates this well. He asked a group of participants about their willingness to wear a sweater once owned and worn by Adolf Hitler. And of course the participants said “no.” Even if no one would ever know who it belonged to. Rozin kept changing the parameters: what if the sweater was thoroughly laundered? What if it were sent to Mother Theresa to be worn and sent back? What if the sweater were completely unraveled, re-dyed, and re-knit? The answer was still “no.”

Disgust and morality are closely linked. Hitler’s sweater is only the tip of the iceburg. Paul Bloom summarizes:

“Experimental research shows that feelings of disgust make us judge others more harshly. In the first experiment along these lines, the psychologists Thalia Wheatley and Jonathan Haidt hypnotized participants to feel a flash of disgust whenever they saw an arbitrary word. When the participants later read stories of a mild moral transgression, those who saw the word rated the behavior as more immoral than those who didn’t. In other experiments, participants were asked to make judgments at a messy, disgusting desk, or in a room that had been blasted with [an offensive odor]; or after being shown a [disgusting scene from a movie]. All of these situations made the participants more morally disapproving about the acts of other people. Even eating a bitter food, which evokes a sensation akin to physical disgust, makes people harsher toward moral transgressions…The consensus from the world and from the lab is clear: disgust makes us meaner.” (Paul Bloom, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, p. 140-41)

All this to say that when the writers of the Bible used the language of “clean” and “unclean,” they weren’t merely appealing to cultural standards; they were identifying that “core disgust” within each one of us.

In the book of Proverbs, for example, we read:

There is a kind who is pure in his own eyes, Yet is not washed from his filthiness. (Proverbs 30:12)

King David, after his affair with Bathsheeba, cried out to God:

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me. ( Psalm 51:1-3)

None of us are clean.

There are two great temptations to avoid here. The first is the temptation to become defensive—“I’m not really as bad as all that.” The second is to take too lightly the promise of God’s grace—“God will forgive me anyway.” By that I don’t mean that God’s grace can ever be insufficient, only that sometimes we skip over the sheer awful gravity of our sin to “get to the good stuff.” In either case, there’s a sickness in each of us, a filthiness, a stain. Even in a culture of social media and digital transparency, there are things you and I would never say to family or share with our friends. We are ashamed.

So there is value, I think, in not moving on just yet to the “good news” of the gospel, but taking time to really reflect on—nay, mourn—the appalling truth about who we really are. It’s not for nothing that the Biblical writers spoke of tearing their garments or sitting in sackcloth—or the way Job encounters God and can only “repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). Learn from this. Take some time, this day, to truly sit and consider the dreadful sickness that runs rampant through our hearts and through our towns and, yes, through our sanctuaries. For only in our glorious cringe can we truly find renewed appreciation for the wonderful cure.

 

Obviously and Clearly Guilty – Romans 3:1-20

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On the day that I write this, I heard on the news about a trial in our region of a person accused of murder. The accused has professed innocence and absence from the scene of the crime. However, witnesses place the person there and DNA from the victim’s blood was found on the clothing of the accused. That is pretty damning.

I have often pondered what it must feel like to be facing a trial in a courtroom, seeing an aggressive prosecuting attorney bring forward evidence after evidence to accuse you, all the while with a judge and jury looking on. There must be a terrible sense of pending doom.

But that is our condition, the condition of all mankind, before a perfect and omniscient God and judge. We stand there fully guilty in our unrighteousness.

In this final passage we look at this week, Paul wraps up his prosecutorial case against mankind, and all are obviously guilty …

3:1 – What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? 2 Much in every way! First of all, the Jews have been entrusted with the very words of God.

3 What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? 4 Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written:

“So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.”

5 But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) 6 Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? 7 Someone might argue, “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” 8 Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!

No One Is Righteous

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.”

13 “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.”   “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” 14  “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 ruin and misery mark their ways, 17 and the way of peace they do not know.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” [most of these quotes are from passages in the Psalms]

19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

Boom! The gavel drops. All are guilty! Everyone fails to live up to God’s law. And we see in the final verse the purpose of the law: it was not to provide a pathway for people to become just in God’s sight, but rather it was to make a person aware of their sinful condition.

Theologically speaking, we are talking about the doctrine of original sin. The problem started with the original sin of the original parents. The curse and debt has been passed down, we were born bad. We weren’t born good, sinned one day and then became bad. We were never good, or righteous. We didn’t become sinners when we first sinned. We proved we were sinners when we first sinned.

Last Sunday I shared a story with a visual … of a dirty shirt. While biking this past summer, I chose to not sufficiently heed or believe a sign that warned of the danger of a wooden-plank bridge, the warning saying that it was dangerously slippery when wet. Pfff! How slippery could it be?  Well … sorta like ice, and out went the wheels one day and I looked like a baserunner sliding into second base on a bicycle. The shirt picked up the dirt and greasy filth from the bridge surface, and NOTHING can clean it — no washing or scrubbing — it is filthy!

Think of the shirt as representative of the human condition. The first father ignored God’s warning and got the stain, and that stain and curse has passed down to be inherited by everyone from that point forward. There is no new shirt, everyone inherits a stained shirt.

But, one human — due to the virgin birth — did not inherit the dirty shirt stain, and after a perfect life took voluntarily upon himself the stain of everyone else’s shirts. He washes out the stain, and then he gives you back something even better — his perfectly clean shirt for you to wear before God. If you receive that shirt, that righteousness, you stand not in your own goodness (whatever that is worth, which is nothing), but you stand in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

This first of the four weeks of this series has been heavy on describing the problem that creates the need for the gospel, whereas following sermons and writings will be heavy on the solutions. But getting a jump on that, let me ask, “What shirt are you wearing?  Have you denied your shirt is dirty?  Have you futilely tried to clean your own? … Or have you come to God and asked him to give you the clean shirt of the righteousness of Jesus Christ?”

Mere Religion Ain’t Good Enough – (Romans 2:17-29)

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Though I’ve been a member of the local Rotary Club for about 20 years, I’ve never been an exemplary member. I’m sort of like the Christian who attends church on Christmas and Easter and those other Sundays where there is not a higher priority thing to do. I participate in some of the Club projects, particularly those related to early childhood education in the schools. But my level of involvement is about to expand. I was asked if I’d be interested in serving on the board of directors for one year and said I’d be open to it. I missed a meeting in January, and found out later that I got elected!

Sometimes when my attendance at the Club has fallen off a bit, I’ve realized I needed to pick it up and get more involved. And the same is true of many of life’s connections. For example, if your busyness at work means that your spouse is being unfairly ignored, you make some effort to reverse the situation and get back into good graces.

In terms of a relationship with God, realizing to some measure that God has a posture of wrath toward unbelief and sin, the natural first thought is to up your game of religious involvement — to attend church more and do those things that mark the disciplines of faith. That is not wrong, but all alone, neither is it fully right, especially if it is nothing beyond a religious mask.

Paul’s attention in proving the guilt of all mankind shifts away from the Gentile world to focus upon the Jews — who at this point of his letter might have been feeling a bit more secure.

Indeed, the Jewish people could be rightly pleased with their heritage, they could make nice quotes about themselves and their privileged position. But Paul takes them apart as well …

17 Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; 18 if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; 19 if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? 24 As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

25 Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. 26 So then, if those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? 27 The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.

28 A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 29 No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.

God had given the Jewish people a wonderful and privileged history. They were truly God’s special and chosen people. But rather than be amazed at God’s grace, they reveled rather in a prideful posture of condescension toward others. They had forgotten what God had said about their selection …

Deuteronomy 7:7 The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

In arrogance, the Jews saw themselves as unique and righteous, simply because of their heritage. But Paul says that, upon closer examination, they were rather far from perfect. Their history was one of committing all of the same sins as those whom they judged. They stood guilty and in need of a savior in the same fashion as the rest of the world. Paul reminds them that they were in actuality the Exhibit A of “physicians that needed to heal themselves.”

Religious disciplines and faith exercises are great. But alone, as a mask that hides the true character of an unregenerate heart, they are not enough. A works-oriented religion is nothing more than a mask.

So don’t be like that. Don’t think that just being in church is going to make you right with God. Sitting in a library doesn’t make you a scholar, and wearing the latest Under Armor sports gear doesn’t make you a professional athlete. To be right with God you will need the cleansing of re-birth and the applied righteousness of Jesus Christ … our themes in coming weeks. Don’t miss it, but neither should you attend just to attend; you need to take these truths into your life through faith.

Good Enough Ain’t Good Enough – Romans 2:1-16

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Middle school girls at a slumber party aren’t the only ones who judge themselves to be better than someone else. People do it all of the time in relation to their self-evaluation of the depth of their sin. It usually takes some form of “I might not be perfect, but I’m not as bad as ____.”

Actually, that whole statement is probably true. The person making it is likely nowhere near as bad as whatever person or group he/she is comparing. Big deal. The problem is that the first half of the statement is equally true, and it is totally damning.

As we wrote about on Monday and will return to again in the third week, every sinner needs perfect righteousness in order to be received by God. And being pretty good just ain’t going to be good enough. Besides that, the situation is likely far worse than the self-righteous person believes.

I told the story Sunday of recently being in California for a pastors conference and staying several days with a good friend who lives in West Hills, north of Los Angeles. In driving through a somewhat remote mountainous area of many canyons, he told me that it was the location where Hollywood shot a lot of their movies. This reminded me of a picture I saw recently of an error in the Gladiator movie, where, in one scene, if you look closely, you can see a jet aircraft in the sky! Not so perfect.

And that is how it is with many people’s lives. Even those who have a guidance of the residue of the image of God in them — their conscience — when looked at closely will fall far short of righteous. And the passage today condemns such people who feel good about themselves as compared to greater sinners around them.

2:1 – You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2 Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3 So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? 4 Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10 but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11 For God does not show favoritism.

12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 16 This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

This passage has some complexity to it. It is saying, beyond the issue of those with a self-righteous judgment, that obedience to the law is what is required. But here is the problem: nobody obeys it perfectly, except the one person who did. More on these ideas as we go along.