Romans: Mountains of Mercy — From Sin to Peace

So we're in Romans chapter five. It's Baptism Sunday.

Romans chapter five, which means we've gone through the first four books.

Rome is extremely important to Paul.

Paul has written letters to the Corinthians, the Philippians,

Galatians, and he's written a book titled Romans to the Roman church.

Now, what's different with this church is that Paul did not start this church.

Paul hasn't been to Rome at this time, but Paul is very specific to write the

gospel to the Romans, because as we see, Rome spans, Rome's control spans so

vast across the country or across the world.

And Paul's been commissioned to take the gospel to the world,

to the Gentiles, to the, those that are non-Jewish.

Now we see, we've seen the last four books or see the last four,

last four chapters. I got to give it up to Logan.

The first four chapters, a little bit doom and gloomy, right?

I mean, we get for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Something that's very commonly quoted as more of like a comfort that's like, hey, it's okay.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But what Paul is really saying is, hey, no, everybody has sinned.

You've sinned, whether you're Jew or Gentile, religious, irreligious,

whether you had the law, didn't have the law. Everybody sinned, even Abraham.

Abraham is justified by faith.

Let's move on to the next slide. We'll leave that there.

So I kind of look at this last, the first four chapters, very similar to,

I don't know about you guys, but I love going to Colorado.

So I grew up going to Colorado. We've taken our family to Colorado a few times,

but from Oklahoma, getting to Colorado, really flat.

Nothing really exciting about getting up to Colorado through Oklahoma.

Either got to go through Kansas, the panhandle of Texas. No offense, TJ. Panhandle of Texas.

It's terrible. It's flat. We usually take the up through Amarillo and up through

route, but you get to this point as you turn the corner into New Mexico and

you're going, I love the mountain. I love nature, but when it comes to the mountains, right?

Trees are planted regularly and they're beautiful and rivers and all that,

but the mountains are still the rocks that God lifted from the ground.

And we get to see that majesty. And it's just so just inspiring and just take it in.

But to get to it, we kind of got to go through Kansas or no offense.

I don't know. There's a lot of people here. If I'm talking about your state,

I do apologize, but it's really flat, just like Oklahoma.

And we get to those mountains and it's amazing. So we see Romans 1 through 4

as Paul is telling us that about God's righteous judgment.

He defends God's judgment. He tells us that all have sinned,

but he's saying, hey, the good news is Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

So we'll read Romans chapter 5 verse 1. Therefore, since we have been justified

Romans 5:1

by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which

we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, boom, mountains.

But we had to go through the law to get there. Now I've spoken a few times that,

I understood Adam and Eve sinned and the need for Jesus to come.

But what I struggled to understand was the couple thousand years in between.

And one of the things that I was taught was that for you to know that someone

is there to rescue you, you must know that you're in prison first.

If someone runs up to me and just hands me and throws me a fire extinguisher,

I'm like, great, what is this for? Oh, there's a fire over there. I had no idea.

The context is very important. Jesus wasn't suddenly this backup plan with thousands

of years of God being like, oh man, one of these days they're going to get it, right?

There wasn't a, well, you guys have been trying your heart out at this whole

justification by faith thing. And well, even my guy, Abraham,

who's really good, couldn't do it. So I suppose we'll tag in Jesus.

This wasn't a backup plan. In fact, in John chapter one, verse one through five,

we read that in the beginning was the word, right? Jesus was there in the beginning.

All things were made through him.

This was not God improvising. This was not plan B. Jesus was always the plan.

And if we read the Old Testament just fragmented as siloed stories,

we see a man swallowed by a fish, we see a man parting the sea,

we see a kid with a slingshot, and eventually they just stay like that.

But if we view the Old Testament as an arrow pointing to what's to come,

we begin to see that God was telling us something for thousands of years,

and unfortunately, most still missed it when he came.

And he actually predicted that as well.

So we're going to start a little trip through the Old Testament. Go to the next slide.

This is for reference. If you ever get interested, read through all this.

We have Jesus through the Old Testament. This is by far nowhere close to an exhaustive list.

It doesn't include any of the prophecies, but it is great examples as we quickly

go through Adam and Eve, Genesis 3.

Adam and Eve sin, and immediately they become aware of their nakedness and shame.

What do they do? Well, they sow fig leaves together. Fig leaves.

Listen, I don't know anything about fig leaves. Read about them.

From what I understand, they're very rough, prickly.

They've got this sap that comes out when you cut them off.

So I'm fairly certain that Adam and Eve's first attempt at clothing was not

particularly pleasant.

But that wasn't the bigger issue. The bigger issue was what they were trying

to do. They sinned, and immediately, they tried to fix it themselves.

Man's first religion. I sin, and I'm going to make it right by myself.

But God makes for Adam and Eve garments of skin, God gives them for coats,

But if you're going to have animal skin, then something had to die for that.

You cannot adequately cover your own sin.

God must provide the covering. We move on to Cain and Abel. Cain works the ground. Abel keeps the sheep.

Abel brings from the firstborn of his flock that we know must be a lamb.

Hebrews 11 emphasizes Abel's offering by faith. And now we begin to see the

flock, the firstborn sacrifice. The picture is developing.

We have Abraham and Isaac. Isaac, the first son that God promised to Abraham,

the beloved son, the promised son, Abraham waited a lifetime for him.

I mean, Abraham's at an age that most of us could only hope to get before he

receives what's promised to him.

And God tells Abraham to offer up Isaac, the son whom he loves.

As they travel, Isaac notices something. They've got wood, we've got fire, but where's the lamb?

We read Genesis 22 verse 8 that Abraham says God will provide for himself the

Genesis 22:8

lamb and Isaac is spared.

Abraham wasn't wrong. God would provide the lamb. We have Joseph,

Old Testament Joseph, son of Jacob, coat of many colors, sold by his brothers

into slavery down into Egypt.

Where Joseph is rejected, stripped of all his belongings and put into prison.

But God raises Joseph up to authority.

And eventually, Joseph becomes the very person that his brothers need in order to survive.

He suffers innocently, he's raised into authority, and he becomes the means

through which others are saved.

We have Moses. Most are familiar with Moses. We know that Moses was born as

a Hebrew child during a time in which Hebrew boys were being exterminated,

very much like what we read in the beginning of the Christmas story.

Yet God preserves his life and Moses grows up into royalty and he's in royalty

where he steps down from that position and identifies with the people who are in bondage.

We have the Passover, in which a lamb without blemish, the blood is spread over

the doorway so that judgment may pass over.

In that we have the Red Sea, that God takes his people out of slavery through water and into freedom.

Those same people later.

We have issues and we have serpents and snakes that begin attacking the group,

biting them, poisonous snakes, which many end up dying. And Moses cries out to God.

And God instructs Moses to build a bronze serpent and put it on a pole.

And those who look to the bronze serpent, though they may be bitten, will not die.

In John 3, verse 14 and 15, right before,

John 3:14

John 3, 16, Jesus says to Nicodemus, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,

so must the son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Then we have David and Goliath. Everybody knows David and Goliath,

and we are all David, right? We're the ones slaying our giants that God is helping

us. But to be honest, we're not David.

In that story, we're the Israelites scared to go out and meet the giants.

And along comes David who fights the battle on behalf of Israel and David wins.

And because David wins, Israel receives the benefit of David's victory.

Jesus steps in front of us. Jesus defeats Satan. And because Jesus won,

we have life. We have freedom.

Those people didn't defeat the giant, their champion did.

Our champion defeated Satan. Our champion defeats sin.

Jonah, right? We know Jonah, Jonah and the whale or the big fish,

three days and three nights, and then emerges alive.

Jesus himself points to Jonah as a sign saying in Matthew 12, 40,

for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish,

so the son of man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth,

jonah points forward towards the death and resurrection of christ,

Last, we have Abraham's covenant. Go back to Abraham.

And this is where things get a little odd. If you don't know too much about

Old Testament history, when two people would make a covenant.

They would each split an animal and they would line the animal's halves on each

side and they would pass through it together saying, if I break this covenant, may this happen to me.

The other, if I break this covenant, may this happen to me.

But in this account, when Abraham, when God makes his covenant with Abraham,

God puts Abraham into a deep sleep so that God himself may walk alone through

those animals saying, if I break this covenant, may this happen to me.

And if you break this covenant, may this also happen to me.

And we know that humanity does break the covenant. Humanity can't keep the covenant.

And ultimately God himself bears the covenant curse through his son, right?

So we have journeyed through the Old Testament, a book of just random stories

that we learned on a felt board, but what we have seen, what we have seen is

that the lamb was prophesied and now the lamb has arrived.

We see in John 1, 29, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Everything has been leading here.

The covering, the sacrifice, the firstborn, the beloved son,

the Passover lamb, the substitute, the one lifted up, the champion who wins for his people.

Everything has been leading to this. And this is what Paul is writing in Romans 1 and 2.

He's talked about 1 through 4, about the curse, about the need for justification

through faith, about the fact that we are not saved through the law, that we are all sinners.

And no matter how good you think you are or how righteous you think you are,

you aren't. But then he offers the hope that we have in Christ through justification,

through faith by Jesus Christ.

Now, I'm gonna skip three through five and we're gonna come back to it.

I think that is very important and we're gonna go to it, but I gotta do it in

a little bit different order than the way Paul writes it, unfortunately.

And I think you'll understand after we get to it. So we'll move to chapter 5, 6 through 10.

For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

Verse 7, for one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for

a good person one would dare even to die.

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we

be saved by him from the wrath of God.

For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much, much more.

Now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life?

And 11, more than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Christ dies for the ungodly. And Paul is here saying, listen,

guys, it's rare that somebody would die for even a righteous person.

Maybe somebody might die for a very particularly good person,

maybe, but while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

He didn't die for us once we became righteous. He didn't die for us once we

cleaned ourselves up, once we got our lives together, or finally,

finally deserved it. No, while we were still sinners. And he says much more than.

Paul makes this incredible argument that if Christ died while we were still

sinners, now reconciled to him, how much more does he love you now?

So if God loved you enough when you were his enemy to send his son to die for

you, how much more does he love you now that you have been reconciled to him?

Think about that. He pursued you while you were running. He loved you when you were opposed to him.

He moved towards you when you had nothing to offer him.

In Ephesians 2, Paul says, you were dead in the trespasses and sin in which

you once walked. You were dead.

And then two big words, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love

with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses,

made us alive with Christ. We were dead, but God.

We were separated, but God. We were under wrath, but God.

We couldn't save ourselves, but God. And he didn't do that because we finally

became lovable enough. He did it because he loved us.

So I want to say in here why that's important, because if you are a believer

and you feel far from God right now, God's not the one who moved.

I'm going to put up a picture real quick.

That's my buddy, Jake. We actually tragically lost him a few weeks ago.

He was a golden retriever, as you can see.

And he was the best. He was the best dog.

I know everybody says they got the best dog, but Jake was the best dog.

He loved hanging out, loved swimming, loved to play fetch. I mean,

he wanted to just be under your feet. He wanted to be with you,

whether you in the bathroom, in bed, at the desk trying to work.

And he's like this huge 80-pound dog under your legs. He wanted to be close to you.

He wanted to be near you. He wanted to play fetch, play frisbee,

go on walks, to pee on everything.

And I can tell you that if there was ever a moment when I thought to myself,

man, I just don't feel close to Jake.

I just haven't gone on a walk with Jake.

It wasn't his choice.

This is important because it's very common for us to say, I just don't feel

God close. I just, where has he, this has happened. How could he let this happen? Where is he?

And we're playing this game of spiritual peekaboo where we've covered our eyes

and gone, God, where are you?

And he's saying, I'm not the one that moved. I'm here.

So I do realize that I've used my dog to kind of explain the love of God.

But I want you to understand, you know, it's using his creation to explain our creator.

And this part's so important because we move to a very important verse that,

we're coming back to. That I'm going to be honest, I'll speak about tithing.

I might speak about a lot of it, like speaking about suffering.

I don't understand it. That's hard.

Because Paul jumps right into it with verse three, where he says,

not only that, but we rejoice in our suffering.

Paul just kind of drops this, we do what? Paul says, we rejoice in our sufferings,

knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character.

Character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame because God's love

has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

That's still hard to understand, but

Martin Luther talks about tribulation developing what it finds within us.

So if someone is prideful, bitter, or weak, tribulation can actually expose and deepen that.

And if someone is humble and faithful and spiritually strong,

tribulation or suffering actually develops those qualities.

And so Paul says we rejoice in the fact that our hope in Christ is so deep that

even when suffering comes along, it enhances our love.

Our spiritual strength, our faithfulness.

That's hard to take in, but God's promise is deep.

If we look to Noah, we all know about Noah. Noah survives the flood.

The ark is his physical thing that actually carries Noah and his family safely through the water.

And eventually God says, come out, leave the ark, go live.

Listen, I don't know about Noah, but the first time that I hear thunder or feel

rain, I'm running right back to that ark. I'm like, nope, seen this, seen this.

And that's why God gives Noah the promise, the covenant, the promise of the rainbow.

The reason that the rainbow comes with the rain is because you need it when the rain comes.

God doesn't hide his promise.

And he never promised no more rain. He never promised no more clouds or thunder or storms.

He promised that he would never again destroy the earth with that kind of flood.

The key line is the storm did not mean God had forgotten his promise,

but that the presence of rain did not mean the covenant disappeared.

Suffering does not cancel out reconciliation because even though we found peace

in God through Jesus Christ, we did not find peace with Satan.

Satan did not agree to that.

We still live in a fallen world. We still experience grief and pain and sickness

and rejection, loss, and unless God, Jesus, comes back, eventually death.

Jesus never promised us a life without trouble.

But suffering does not mean God has changed his mind about you.

You have this feeling that I don't understand what that peace means I've never.

Felt that peace I've never given my life to Jesus I'm telling you right now the invitation is there,

that's not waiting for you to suddenly become.