Romans [Season Two]- Ian Graham- Roman’s 10vv1-14: All Who Call

Pastor Ian Graham delves into the admittedly dense Romans 10 and tries to draw out some beauty.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning friends.
It's good to see you all.
I don't know how many of you inhere are vegetarians, but there
is a difference if you eat onlyvegetables, when you are eating
something that is prepared bysomebody who knows what they're
doing, and somebody who's justgiven you a plate of steamed

(00:20):
vegetables.
Right.
And the same for those of youwho are carnivores in here.
There's a difference in a thick, chewy cut of meat that's not
cooked that well and somethingthat's really nicely seared.
You get that maillard reaction.
You get something really juicyon the inside.
I say all this to say we'regoing to see whose hands you're
in today as we get to Romans 10.

(00:42):
Because, as a dedicated readerof God's Word, there are times
where I'm like I see theparallels, I see how this lands
on our community.
There are other times where Ifeel like I have a plate for you
and I'm going to present it toyou and I'm going to stand
alongside and be like do youlike it?
Is it good?
And what I am confident in isthat, no matter what we will

(01:06):
come to the table, we will hearthe good news that Jesus has
forgiven us all of our sins,that he is risen and alive and
that he lives forevermore tobring us to him and to draw the
world to himself.
I'm confident of that.
What I am still waiting to seewith very much anticipation is

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what Romans 10 has to say to us.
To lead us into that.
We've been in this extendedsection Romans 9 through 11.
It is a very much and tightlyinterwoven section.
There are parts that will causeour ears to perk up and be like
oh interesting.
We talked a little bit aboutpredestination last week, so you
can check that out if you werenot here.
But today what we have for youis a deeply dense section of

(01:50):
Scripture, and I just want to behonest about that.
It's okay that Scripturedemands something of us to read
it.
Scholars like Michael Heiser,scholars like Richard Hayes,
have pointed out how there arelinks in the scripture to parts
that came before and thatoftentimes one of our challenges
as modern Western readers is toget in step with the lexicon

(02:13):
and the vocabulary that thesefirst century Jewish writers
were employing, telling theJewish story in its culmination,
as we'll see, in the person ofJesus the Messiah.
And so for us, we're going totry to pull back some of these
layers and try to work withthese things.
But again, I stand before you.

(02:34):
Public speaking 101 is don'ttell people.
Hey, I'm reasonably confident,this is good, but there's some
hesitance on my part, so I'vegiven you full disclosure.
Let's get into the text today.
Reading in Romans 10, beginningin verse 1.
Brothers and sisters, myheart's desire and prayer to God

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for the Israelites is that theymay be saved, for I can testify
about them that they arezealous for God, but their zeal
is not based on knowledge, sincethey did not know the
righteousness of God and soughtto establish their own.
Okay, so here we find ourselves, continuing to address the

(03:20):
question that Paul raised inRomans 9.
Address the question that Paulraised in Romans, chapter 9.
The middle of Paul's extendedtreatment of what the current
circumstances, jesus, the JewishMessiah, offered for all the
world, and the reality that manyof Paul's fellow countrymen and
countrywomen have not accepted,the reality of this promise,
the general question that Paulis addressing is this If Jesus

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is Israel's long-awaited Messiah, then how can it be so that, by
and large, the Jewish peoplehave not responded to this
invitation?
So this is the scandal that heis investigating.
He asks the question in Romans9, verse 6, has God's word
failed or did God change hismind?
Did he, in Genesis 12, startworking through Abraham and his

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lineage?
And then, by the time we get toMatthew, decide oh, you know
what Actually we're doing a newthing now?
And the answer that Paulvehemently, consistently offers
to us is no.
Jesus was thoroughly a Jewishman, son of David according to
Romans 1, and a son of God,thoroughly God in the flesh.

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And so, for us, we have to getin step as best we can with the
Jewishness of the story to seehow that particular story opens
up as an embrace to all.
Paul brings us back to thissubject that he has been
addressing.
Verse 3 of that section we justread is an important verse
because it has had such animpact on our understanding of

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the word gospel in the last 600years.
What does it mean?
That these people were seekingto establish a righteousness of
their own.
In many explanations, thissimply is how the Jewish people
sought to observe the law.
The Jewish people, we are told,were legalists and they were
trying to establish arighteousness of their own,
achieving salvation by theirworks.

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And then along comes Jesus andhe's like guess what?
Your works don't matter anymore.
Good news, it's all about grace.
Now, as with all vastoversimplifications, this
version just doesn't tell thewhole story that Paul has in
view here.
Paul has already covered theground of what accounts for

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righteousness, and he did thatin Romans 3, verses 21 through
31.
Another famously very easy textto read, and you'll see exactly
what I mean here in just asecond.
We're going to read it alltogether.
All right, everybody, deepbreath, hear the word of the
Lord, long scripture incoming.
Here we are.
But now, apart from the law, therighteousness of God has been

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disclosed and is attested by thelaw and the prophets.
So when Paul talks about thelaw and the prophets, he's
talking about Torah, the firstfive books of Moses, by the law
and the prophets.
So when Paul talks about thelaw and the prophets, he's
talking about Torah, the firstfive books of Moses, and the
rest of the Old Testamentscripture, the prophets, right.
So we're in.
Step there the righteousness ofGod through the faith of Jesus
Christ for all who believe.
For there is no distinction.
Since all have sinned and fallshort of the glory of God, they

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are now justified by his graceas a gift, through the
redemption that is in ChristJesus, whom God put forward as a
sacrifice of atonement by hisblood, effective through faith.
He did this to demonstrate hisrighteousness because in his
divine forbearance he had passedover the sins previously
committed.
It was to demonstrate, at thepresent time, his own

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righteousness, so that he isrighteous and he justifies the
one who has the faith of Jesus.
Then what becomes of boasting?
It is excluded.
Through what kind of law?
That of works?
No, rather through the law offaith, for we hold that a person
is justified by faith, apartfrom works prescribed by the law
.
Or is God the God of Jews only?

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Is he not the God of Gentilesalso?
Yes, of Gentiles also, sinceGod is one and he will justify
the circumcised on the ground offaith and then the
uncircumcised through that samefaith.
Do we then overthrow the lawthrough this faith?
By no means.
On the contrary, we uphold thelaw.
Okay, so you got that Great.

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Now what Paul's doing there issubtle.
We did talk about it a year agowhen we went through Romans 3,
so that is available to you tokind of walk through this
passage.
But he's talking about works ofthe law.
For the people of Paul's ethnicrelation, the Jewish people,
works of Torah were boiled downto three practices.

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First was Sabbath keeping.
Sabbath keeping marked theJewish people out as different
from their pagan neighbors.
It was something they did thatthose around them did not do,
and that is why they guarded itso viscerally.
Again, we've talked about thisbefore, but how is it that,
through all of these cascadingdegrees and generations of

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imperial forces dominating andhaving authority over the Jewish
people, how did they subsistand maintain their identity?
One of those is Sabbath, theother is table fellowship.
Who did they eat with?
This is why it's such a scandal, the kind of people that Jesus
will sit down and dine with,because they're like hey, do you
know?

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Those people are unclean.
Jesus is like I know, welcometo the party.
The third is circumcision, aphysical marker, and Paul will
use this as a badge ofmembership in the covenant
people of Israel.
So when he talks about works ofTorah, he's certainly talking
about more than that, but he'snot talking about less than that
.
Does that make sense?
And so he's saying, like isGod's righteousness unveiled

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through these covenant practices?
And what Paul is saying is thatno, apart from these practices,
jesus has in some way fulfilledthe Jewish story.
We'll get more into that as wego here.
God's righteousness.
Here, as throughout Paul, isGod's own covenant loyalty,
unveiled in Jesus the Messiah.
God has been faithful to thecovenant with Israel through the

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giving of his son, but thisfaithfulness was unveiled in a
shocking manner, what Paulelsewhere in 1 Corinthians calls
a scandalous manner, and we canget inside the expectations of
the first century Jewish peoplein this way.
So they're oppressed by theRomans.
They have these promises thatGod will someday restore them

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from exile, and so in their mind, the equation balances
perfectly.
God, when he restores us tofavor with him, is going to get
rid of the Romans.
He's going to come and conquerand he will establish the
covenant promises given topeople like David, that he will
never fail to have an heirreigning on the throne of God.

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He will establish Zion,jerusalem, the Temple Mount, as
the central focus, thecenterpiece of all the world.
And along come the Christianssaying, hey, all of those things
you have been waiting for havehappened.
And let us tell you how ithappened.
It happened through a Messiahwho did not conquer the Romans
but, rather than shedding Romanblood, allowed his own blood to

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be shed on the cross, dying forhis enemies, saying forgive them
, father.
They don't know what they'redoing, that this Messiah has
been lifted to life, raised onthe third day, and that he is
the true Lord of all the world.
This is what Paul calls ascandal to people who have been
operating under theseassumptions.
And then the story has turnedout quite differently, and so

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God's righteousness has beenunveiled.
But for the people with thisframework, they're like how can
this be?
How can this be so?
Nt Wright says this.
He says and what Paul has beenarguing throughout Romans is

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that in Jesus this righteousnesshas been unveiled that not only
has God fulfilled his promisesto do exactly what he said he
would do through the lineage ofIsrael, but through redeeming
and fulfilling those promises,he has also redeemed the entire
creation.
He has judged that which hasled us astray and, as we see

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that often can be located rightat the epicenter of our very own
hearts.
He has judged the idolatry withwhich we so easily live with,
he has unmasked it for what itis and he has conquered them by
giving of his life and raisingfrom the dead.
And then Paul writes in verse 4, for Christ is the culmination

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of the law.
In verse 4 is the word in theGreek telos.
Telos is one of those greatbiblical Greek words.
To talk of something as havinga telos, or when Jesus says it
is finished, is talking aboutsomething as having a telos, or
when Jesus says to telestai itis finished, is talking about an
end, a goal.
It's one of the ways that weunderstand what God is unfolding

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in the world.
We, as we start to explore whatit means to be human, realize
that we were made for something,and the good news of the gospel
tells us yes, you were in factmade for something.
You were made to love God andto enjoy him forever.
And Paul uses this word, telos,which can have two different
connotations when we talk abouta goal or an end.

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You can talk about a goal, asin reaching the place where
you've been trying to get to andthen stopping right, or you can
talk about which I think thisword is translated really well
in the version that we use here,the NRSV the culmination, that
this is where all of this hasbeen going, which doesn't
necessarily mean that has to beover, but perhaps is the
beginning of the next chapter.

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Telos can have the force of endor cessation, but that would
suggest here that Jesus ends thelaw.
We've seen throughout Romansthat the law called the Torah by
the Jewish people is not a badthing that needs to be brought
to an end.
It is a gift of God that iswrapped up in promise.
It must be fulfilled.
Look at what Jesus says at thebeginning of the Sermon on the

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Mount in Matthew 5.
Do not think that I've come toabolish the law or the prophets.
I have come.
And so one of the primarytensions that exists in this
Roman church with Jewish andGentile people trying to figure

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out how to live together isaddressed throughout the New
Testament.
We see this in Acts 15.
The first question that theJewish Christian leaders are
asking as Gentile converts beginto come into the church is what
sort of faithfulness are theseGentiles supposed to embody?
And they ask themselvesquestions about things like

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circumcision, things likeSabbath keeping, things like
table fellowship.
And if you read in that chapter, they come to certain
conclusions about what theGentiles are supposed to do and
where they don't have to fullystep into the physical markers
of being a Jewish person.
And so Paul is againilluminating this tension.
Let's go on.
In verse 5.

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Moses writes, concerning therighteousness that comes from
the law, that the person whodoes these things will live by
them.
But the righteousness thatcomes from faith says do not say
in your heart who will ascendinto heaven that is to bring
Christ down or who will descendinto the abyss that is to bring
Christ up from the dead.
But what does it say?
The word is near you, in yourmouth and in your heart.

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That is the word of faith thatwe proclaim.
I want to put just a little bitof a pause, craig, on the
announcement section of theslides.
There's a little sermonquestion slide.
I'm going to put that up thereright now just as a little
interlude.
One of the practices that I'mtrying to start implementing in
our church and this will take ondifferent forms depending on
the amount of time that we have.

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Sometimes we'll have a lot oftime at the end and we can maybe
get to some of these questions.
Other times it'll be all right,we're going to address this on
a podcast or something.
But if you have any questionsand I picked this week very
intentionally because you mightbe like, yeah, what was all this
about Jesus and his love foryou profoundly but if you have
any questions, you can use thatwebsite, that QR code, and

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please feel free.
No commentary on anything meanor unkind, but just questions.
Okay, thank you.
Paul then quotes from Leviticus18, verse 5, and Deuteronomy,
chapter 30, which gives us avery strong clue as to what he's
saying here.
Okay, at first blush, when weread this, it seems that Paul is

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contradicting everything wejust said.
He contrasts the righteousnessthat comes from the law and the
righteousness that comes fromfaith, and seems to hold them at
two polar opposites.
But our translations do us abit of a disservice here, in
that they present thisconjunction as adversarial, as
if they have to remain opposites.
New Testament scholarChristopher Bryan translates
this little section like this hesays, yes, moses does write

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Leviticus 18, verse 5, but itskey terms are then further
explained in Deuteronomy 30.
And so the summary version ofwhat Dr Bryan is saying is that
these two texts work together.
They explain one another.
Leviticus 18, verse 5, seems tosuggest that doing the law will
lead to life, but Deuteronomy 30further explains that this

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doing of the law will only bepossible by the grace of God.
Are you with me?
Mostly All right, good, allright, verse 6.
Moreover, the Lord, your God,will.
Oh, this is actuallyDeuteronomy 30, verse 6.
Let's read that for you.

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It's a longer section, so I wantto read this over you.
He says so that you will lovethe Lord, your God, with all
your heart and with all yoursoul.
In order that you may live, theLord, your God, will put all
these curses on your enemies andon the adversaries who took
advantage of you.
Then you shall again obey theLord, observing all his
commandments that I amcommanding you today, and the
Lord, your God, will make youabundantly prosperous in all of

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your undertakings, in the fruitof your body, in the fruit of
your livestock and in the fruitof your soil.
For, okay, if you read inDeuteronomy, you will get to a

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section in the 20s where it justseems like God is saying hey,
this is not going to go well foryou and I've got a lot of
curses that are wrapped up whenit doesn't go well for you.
When we arrive at Exodus 30, wehave arrived at a turning point
where God is saying when Irestore you, when I bring you
back home, here are all theblessings that will be in my

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wake.
And this is where Paulhyperlinks to and trying to
point us in the sway of Romans10 to Deuteronomy, chapter 30.
And the kind of summary versionthat Paul is trying to hold
together is that all of thiswill be a gift of grace, a gift
of faith.
This passage in Deuteronomy 30is about the return from exile,

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and in Paul's day this passagewould have been read with
eschatological hope.
Eschatology is one of thosegreat theological words that
just means the study of lastthings.
And so for Paul and hiscompatriots, when they read
Deuteronomy 30, they knew theyfelt in their bones absent Jesus
the Messiah, that this wassomething that they were still

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waiting on.
And what Paul is trying to sayis that those Deuteronomy 30
hopes of homecoming, of God'sblessing, of the renewal of the
covenant, have all taken placein Jesus the Messiah.
But again, we're puttingourselves in that storied world
right.
And so for these people withthese assumptions, this is a
hard thing for them to land on.

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This good news about Jesusfeels like a total rewrite of
the script for them, and they'redealing with the tension of
that Okay.
Paul quotes, furthermore, inRomans 10 from Deuteronomy 30.
He says but the righteousnessthat comes from faith.
Verse 6, says this Do not sayin your heart who will ascend

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into heaven, that is, to bringChrist down, or who will descend
into the abyss, that is, tobring Christ up from the dead.
But what does it say?
The word is near you, in yourmouth and in your heart.
That is the word of faith thatwe proclaim.
Your mouth and in your heart,that is the word of faith that
we proclaim.
Paul is then saying that thisgift is not some other worldly

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gift.
It is present in the believersright now through the life, the
death, the resurrection, theascension, which we celebrated
on Thursday, of Jesus theMessiah, and it is evident in
the pouring out of his spirit,as next week is Pentecost Sunday
.
The Messiah has come down, theSon of God, the Logos, made

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flesh, given for us, that whichbrought the world to life, as,
in the words of Eugene Peterson,moved into the neighborhood.
But he's not just thisotherworldly being.
He is the son of David,according to the flesh.
Matthew and Luke trace hisgenealogy and are saying these
long-held cascading promises arenow fulfilled in this first

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century Jewish man, jesus ofNazareth, fulfilled in this
first century Jewish man, jesusof Nazareth.
The word is near.
He has descended into the abyssand brought victory over the
grave from its depths.
And thus the word is near,because Jesus's word has gone

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down, has gone througheverything we could ever go
through in this life and hasovercome it all.
As he says in John 16, takeheart, I have overcome the world
and he has established ourlives.
One of the hopes for the Jewishpeople at this time is that the
temple would be restored toproper worship.
Paul writes this sometime inthe 50s, maybe early 60s AD.

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In 70 AD, the Romans wouldmarch into Jerusalem and would
destroy the temple completely.
But part of what Paul isproclaiming to the people here,
scandalously counter-intuitively, is that God has not been about
restoring the worship in aspecific brick and mortar
building at a specific zip codesomewhere in the ancient Near

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East.
That God has been establishingproper worship in the human
heart.
That he has, in the words ofDeuteronomy 30, circumcised our
hearts, made our hearts symbolsof His covenant loyalty,
sanctifying us that we, bothindividually and and
collectively, are the holy ofholies for which the Spirit of

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God desires to come and dwell.
Verse 9, because if you confesswith your mouth that Jesus is
Lord and believe in your heartthat God raised him from the
dead, you will be saved, for onebelieves with the heart leading
to righteousness and oneconfesses with the mouth leading
to salvation.

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Paul then connects the nearnessof this word that has come down
from the heights, that hasdrawn up from the abyss, with
the words in our own mouth.
It's easy for us to make this asimple proclamation of faith,
but we can miss the way thatthis confession, jesus as Lord,
would immediately place thefirst century Roman Christians

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into conflict with the claims ofthe Roman Empire.
It just so happened that theRoman Empire made use of two of
Paul's favorite phrases.
First, the word that wetranslate gospel in the Greek
euangelion has its biblicalorigins in places like Isaiah 40
, Isaiah 52.
But Caesar also had his owngospel, his own good news.

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Nt Wright says this.
He says, in the context intowhich Paul was speaking, gospel
would mean the celebration ofthe accession or birth of a king
or emperor.
Though no doubt petty kingdomsmight use the word for
themselves, in Paul's world themain gospel was the news of, or
celebration of, caesar.

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And so it just so happens thatthis word that Paul holds so
dearly has resonances bothwithin his sort of Jewish
community but also in the pagancommunity.
He goes on.
He says when Paul preached hisgospel, then politically, it
cannot but have been heard as asummons to allegiance to another
king, which is of courseprecisely what Luke says Paul

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was accused of saying Again.
I tell you this often becauseit is such an easy way to see
what was at stake here.
The Roman Empire consisted of somany small cults and the Roman
Empire had all the tolerance inthe world for these little cults
.
They would allow them to dowhatever they were doing as long

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as they didn't disrupt thewider economy.
That says Caesar is Lord.
But along come the Christianswho aren't living a little
private faith out but areproclaiming a counterclaim that
actually Caesar is not Lord butJesus is in fact Lord.
And this was the friction point, the grounds for all of the

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little and big persecutions thatwould crop up, especially in
the first three centuries of thelife of the church.
Christians would not acquiesceto the claims of Rome's
greatness.
They would say Caesar isclaiming to be Lord, but we know
that the world's true sovereignwas crucified and is risen.
And this was the friction point.

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If the Christians would havebeen content just to have a nice
private faith, just one storyamongst many stories, they would
have been left alone.
But that's not what we see inchurch history.
And this is because the gospelproclaims a counter-narrative to
that which Caesar proclaims Allright.
Another of Paul's favoriteterms we find here proclaims
exactly this Jesus is Lord.

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Again, the imperial propagandamachine had a counter-claim at
the ready that Caesar is Lord.
Paul was announcing that Jesuswas the true king of Israel and
hence the true Lord of the world, at exactly the time in history
and over exactly thegeographical spread where the
Roman emperor was beingproclaimed in what styled itself
a gospel.
In very similar terms, ntWright says this.

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He says the lordship of Caesar,which, though certainly
political, was also profoundlyreligious.
Caesar demanded worship as wellas secular obedience, not just
taxes but sacrifices.
He was well on the way tobecoming the supreme divinity in
the Greco-Roman world,maintaining his vast empire not
simply by force though there wasof course plenty of that but by

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the development of aflourishing religion that seemed
to be trumping most others byabsorption or by greater
attraction.
Caesar, by being a servant ofthe state, had provided justice
and peace to the world.
He was therefore to be hailedas Lord and trusted as Savior.
This is the world in which Paulannounced that Jesus, the
Jewish Messiah, was Savior andLord.

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What this means, as Wright sohelpfully points out is that to
proclaim Jesus is Lord is notjust something we say with our
lips, it's something that we saywith the whole of our very
lives.
Salvation is by faith, throughallegiance to Jesus, our King,
which means living out thesacrificial call of discipleship

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.
We can't just do whatever wewant and then slap the vague
slogan on it like, oh, jesus isLord, jesus is Lordship, and the
gospel of King Jesus integratesour lives so that the whole of
our lives heart, soul, mind andstrength, or, in the world that
we live in, the things that wetry to break down, our jobs, our

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political allegiances, ourhobbies all integrated under the
Lordship of Jesus, notseparated, which so often is our
default mode is to keep thingsseparated.
Jesus is wanting to draw thesethings together, and this is why
so much in our culture thatclaims to be done in the name of
Jesus, that seems so holy andso devoted, is so distorted,

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impoverished and misguided.
This is why faith in Jesus isnot simply about having the
right doctrine, whatever thatmay mean.
It's about the status of ourhearts before him.
This is why Jesus says you haveheard it said do not murder.
But I say unto you if you lookupon a brother with anger in
your heart, you have committedmurder already.

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The claim that Jesus is Lord istheological.
The Lord God is one and thatoneness is revealed in Father,
Spirit and Son.
And it is political that wehave no king but King Jesus,
that no one, not any earthlyking, politician or president,
gets our allegiance other thanKing Jesus.
Paul says this in Romans 10,verse 11.

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The scripture says no one whobelieves in him will be put to
shame, for there is nodistinction between Jew and
Greek.
The same Lord is Lord of alland is generous to all who call
on him, for everyone who callson the name of the Lord shall be
saved.
Paul is drawing thesescriptural quotations from Joel,

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chapter 2.
I'm going to read a little bitof Joel for you here today.

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Joel says and my people shallnever again be put to shame.
Joel 2, much like Deuteronomy 30, is about the return from exile
, the homecoming, and Godrenewing the people by the
riches of his grace.
That phrase that I will returnthe years that the locust has
eaten I don't know about you,but that phrase has just struck

(30:07):
me the last couple years.
It's so much of the distancethat we feel in our lives
between that which we thinkshould be happening or that
which we experience.
So much of the disintegrationof our lives is not only about
the thing that happened.
It's about the time that youlost right, and here's God with

(30:28):
all of his promise, saying I'llnever put you to shame.
And all those years that youlost in true grieving, as I was
weeping alongside you, all thoseyears that you lost, when it
seems like the dreams were lostor diminished, and again I'm
always just trying to expand myown imagination for what the

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restoration will look like.
He will return to us the yearsthat the locust has stolen, and
that is good news in and ofitself.
Us the years that the locusthas stolen, and that is good
news in and of itself.
The end of this section of Joel2 is also that which is quoted
by the apostles at Pentecost, asthe spirit is poured out, as we
look forward to PentecostSunday next week, if we again

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put ourselves in the shoes ofthe Roman church.
These people were oftenmarginalized because of their
faith in Jesus, by their culture, their refusal to take part in
the civic religion that Caesaris Lord.
Many of them had lost jobsbecause their trade guilds were
often mingled with devotion topagan deities or to the emperor,
and they simply had to bow outand say I can't work this job

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because of all that it entailsby my presence here.
Shame and exile were a commonexperience for this earliest
Roman church.
And here Paul is saying tothese people in the midst of
this vast city, this collectionof maybe 30 people that are
hearing this letter written tothe Roman church, read
presumably by Phoebe, he'ssaying my people will never be

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put to shame, that, though yourdaily lived experience may be
minimalization, marginalization,you are mine, my treasure.
And he's reminding them thatthey are the bearers of the true
story of the world, that, toquote Paul elsewhere in Romans,
that these people are more thanconquerors, through Christ Jesus
, who loved them, that neitherdeath nor life, nor angels nor

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demons, nor the present nor thefuture, nor any powers, nor
height nor depth, death nor life, nor angels nor demons, nor the
present or the future, nor anypowers, nor height nor depth,
nor anything else in allcreation would ever be able to
separate them from the love ofGod in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
And as I invite the worshipteam forward today, I just want
to invite you to consider asthese people dealt with this

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cultural alienation, thisfeeling of exile.
Where are the places in yourlife that the scripts that our
culture tells us that we have tohold on to lead us into shame
and accusation?
Now, for us, so often in themodern world, shame is this kind

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of self-inflicted wound and webuy into the stories of success
that our world sells us.
We buy into the lie that wehave to make something of
ourselves if we experience thedistance between what we think
we should have made of ourselvesand what we assess ourselves to
be.
That's where shame resides andwe often carry around that

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script of the world's assessmentof our worth and our value,
script of the world's assessmentof our worth and our value.
And instead of allowing Jesus'sassessment of us that we are
worthy because of what he hasdone for us, we are worthy of
his love because he has shed itfor us on the cross, we buy into
these smaller scale stories andversions.

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And I wonder, today for us, isshame such a prominent character
in our lives, the unreliablenarrator for so many of us?
Where have we allowed shame totell us a different story than
the story that God puts forth?
God's righteousness has beenunveiled in Jesus, the Messiah.

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His word will not fail.
He has been loyal.
Because he is loyal, he willnot fail, because he does not
give up on his promises.
You don't have to go up to someotherworldly heaven in order to
access these promises, becauseJesus, the word made flesh, has
come down to us to be God withus.
But he is not just God with us.

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It would be a beautiful thingto have the creator of all the
world walk beside us to sufferall that we suffer.
But Jesus doesn't just sufferalongside of us.
He is the one who overcomesthat which ails us.
He has broken every curse.
He will wipe every tear fromour eye.
He has defeated death by hisdeath on a cross.
We have been summoned by God,and if we respond and just say,

(34:53):
jesus, you gave your all for me,I respond yes to you.
Confess Jesus with your mouthand you will be saved by this
God who has given himself foryou.
Give him your allegiance, yourheart, your soul, your mind and
your strength for you.
Give him your allegiance, yourheart, your soul, your mind and
your strength, and we receivethis promise that we will never
be put to shame.
We trade the script that we soeasily live by, for the

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beautiful script that God givesus.
I think about this and it's anexample I love and so I've used
it before, but, man, I come backto it often.
There's a man named ColinWilkinson who was the original
portrayer of Jean Valjean in theLondon production of Les
Miserables, and he played thatpart beautifully for decades,

(35:40):
and when the time came for themto make a motion picture
production of the movie, I don'tknow about you, but I'm not a
musical fan, it's not for me,and so I show up in this movie.
Courtney and I were visiting inOklahoma.
She's like you want to see thismovie.
I was like, sure, sounds great.
I show up in this movie.
They start singing immediatelyand you ever get that sinking
feeling like are they going tosing the whole time?

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I didn't know the story, Ididn't know what it was, and
sure enough they did.
Sorry to spoil it for you, butI'm sitting there and, to my own
poverty, did not know the storyand by about 20 minutes in I am

(36:23):
just weeping uncontrollably.
I'm like this is the mostbeautiful thing I've ever seen.
What is this?
Turns out it's quite famous,right.
The book is even better, looksgood, but I would you know just
this became.
I tend to get a littleidiosyncratic about things, a

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little bit obsessed with things.
I started just like I read thebook for each child that was
born.
I would sit and read a book onmy phone because you're up in
the middle of the night.
It's like two options you candoom scroll or you can do
something productive.
Thankfully, I did somethingproductive and read Les Mis by
Victor Hugo.
I started researching thismovie.
I was like, wow, this is reallyimpressive.
Russell Crowe not a greatsinger, but okay.

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I came upon this little tidbitabout the bishop in the movie.
The bishop is one of the mostbeautiful characters everybody
can see, really really stunning,especially in the book.
The little tidbit I come upwith is wow, the bishop was the
guy who used to play JeanValjean.
He writes of his experience intransitioning roles.

(37:28):
So going from being the maincharacter to going to be in this
minor major character in thestory and if you don't know the
story, jean Valjean does a lotof things is kind of wayward.
And this bishop gives him thisextraordinary grace and
liberates him from his life ofenslavement to this system.
Extraordinary grace andliberates him from his life of

(37:50):
enslavement to this system.
And he says you know, toreceive that grace for so many
years and then once to be able,in the form of the bishop, to be
able to give it away, was animmeasurable gift.
And I think about how God isjust wanting to exchange the
role that we've been playing, togive us His script, to give us

(38:11):
His role, to show us what he iswanting to do in and through our
lives, the beauty of Hispromises and what he's done in
Jesus.
And I end where I started.
I don't know if we made sense ofRomans 10 today, but I do know

(38:31):
that the Holy Spirit is presenthere, that he's faithful to his
word, that his word does notreturn void, that he is drawing
people to himself, that he isoffering you a different role
than perhaps you have conceivedyourselves, in a different
script, saying my people willnever be put to shame.
I will return the years thatthe locusts have eaten.
Let's pray together.
Come, holy Spirit, god, by thepower of your word, lord, would

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you untangle that which westruggle to untangle with our
limited wisdom?
God, god, but beyond that,would you meet, dear sons and
daughters, with all the force ofheaven here this morning.
God, for those who are weeping,lord, would you show them that
you are there, god, that there'snever been a moment where you

(39:29):
haven't been there.
God, for those of us who aresubscribing again and again to
the story that shame andaccusation tells us, god, would
you tell us the truth, lord,lord, that you have done

(39:50):
everything for us, that it is bygrace, through faith, that we
are saved and all we have to dois say yes to you, to lay hold
of the promises that you putbefore us and to trust you, god.
And that trust will bemanifested in beautiful things
heart, soul, mind and strength.
Allegiance given to you, god.

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And that trust will bemanifested in beautiful things
heart, soul, mind and strength.
Allegiance given to you, lord.
But it all starts with trust,lord.
God, I pray that, through thepower of your word, the telling
of your story, lord, that youwould draw us deeper into life
with you.
I pray that you would have yourway in these moments as we
respond and worship God.
Let the Holy Spirit descendupon your way in these moments
as we respond and worship God.
Let the Holy Spirit descendupon this place in power.

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Lord Jesus, remind us of yourpromise, lord.
Tell us the truth.
Lord.
We need you, we love you.
We pray these things in yourname, in the beautiful name of
the Father and the Son and theHoly Spirit.
We pray Amen, ecclesiastes.
I'm going to invite you tostand.
Let's allow the Lord to meet ushere In a few moments.
We