34. “Hearing the Harmony of God’s Story and Growing in Hope” (Romans 15)

 

Intro:     If you’ve been with us the last few weeks we’ve been in Romans ch. 14 – 15 looking at this situation and issue going on in the church at Rome.  There were two different groups, you had Jewish believers in Jesus and Gentile believers in Jesus in the church, and there was division.  

These two groups differed in their practice – the Jewish believers still continued to practice parts of OT law no longer necessary with the coming of Jesus, the gentiles didn’t do these things.  These differences in practice went deep – to their identity and how these groups saw themselves – the Jewish believers probably would have said something like this – we’re the ones who really devote ourselves to God, unlike those Gentiles……while the Gentile believers probably would have said something like – we’re the ones who really get the gospel and the freedom we have in Jesus, unlike those legalistic Jews.  

 

And while yes, Paul says the Gentile believers were correct in grasping the gospel – they didn’t need to practice the food laws or observing certain days, yet the freedom they had in Jesus was a freedom not to be used for tearing down, but rather for building up the church.  Again and again what Paul has sought to do is to help these two very different groups to come together in and through Jesus.  Because, as we’ve been saying…. in Jesus real community across difference is actually possible.  

 

In our text this morning – v. 7 is really the main command.  This is the direction of verses 1-6 that we looked at last week.  They were moving toward v. 7.  And this is what v. 8-13 are further supporting.   V. 7,  the main command where Paul writes,  Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

 

And we see again what we’ve been saying – it’s Jesus that makes the difference, welcome one another – Jewish believer, welcome your gentile brother; gentile believer, welcome your Jewish brother – just as Jesus welcomed you.  This, in many ways, is summing up what Paul has been driving at throughout this section.  

This morning, I’d like us to focus on how Paul seeks to help the Jews and the Gentiles in the Roman church do this….. What do we see Paul doing in the verses leading up to v. 7 and following v. 7?  How is he seeking to help these believers coming from vastly different places to welcome each other?  What does he think they need to be able to do this?  

 

And I’d like us to consider 2 things we see in this text.  

 

One, is Hope – We need hope – we talked about it last week.  This is how Jesus was strong – it was through hope that Jesus was able to do what he did – willingly choosing the path of suffering, of not pleasing himself, but rather doing what was necessary that we could be restored to God.  And like last week’s passage v. 1-6 and it’s emphasis on hope, v. 13 again comes back to hope.  

Rom. 15:13   May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

 

We need hope. 

 

But the other thing we need, which Paul mentions in v.  4, and which Paul references again and again throughout v. 8-12  is the Scriptures.  In fact, it is by the Scriptures that we grow in hope  – look at v. 4, where Paul writes, 

 

4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

 

This morning, let’s consider these two – the Scriptures and Hope, or as I have it in the title – Hearing the Harmony of God’s Story, and growing in Hope.  

 

1st – Hearing the Harmony of God’s Story –  

 

If you’ve been around Trinity for any length of time you’re probably familiar with my love of jazz music.  There are numerous ways that jazz music can be a helpful lens through which to think about the Christian faith.  

 

When a jazz musician plays a solo, when they improvise, which is a huge part of jazz music, one of the ways you could try and put into words what they are doing is – they are telling a story.  If you really listen to a master jazz musician what they are doing is the farthest thing from just playing a bunch of random notes.  

Through note choices, rhythmic choices, and tensions, they are developing themes, themes that build from one chorus to the next, that carry the listener along  – they are telling a story.  

This week I was thinking about what examples I might use to make this point – And while there are countless examples, it’s never wrong to reference Miles Davis “Kind of Blue,” arguably the best recorded jazz album of all time.  Maybe give it a listen sometime.  Listen to “Freddie Freeloader” and Wynton Kelly’s masterful piano solo – where he does this very thing – he tells a story.  If you listen you will hear him, hitting certain notes again and again, each time he plays a line, he’s sort of setting you up, preparing your ear to hear the note again, though just like in a good story, not in some incredibly bland and overly predictable way – but nuanced, playful, surprising, and may I say…… incredibly satisfying.  

Or…. Listen to Wynton Kelly and one of my favorite guitar players, Wes Montgomery, on the album, “Smoking at the Half Note.” You will hear melodies and harmonies as these two play off each other, as they take the harmony and create a story in their music together.  

 

For me, unlike any other music – jazz just draws you out of yourself as you listen.  It draws you out as you hear the melodies and harmonies, the story the musicians are telling.  

 

If we’re listening to the Scriptures well – it’s meant to draw us out – to, in a sense, hear the harmonies and the beautiful notes of God’s story – And as Paul puts it in v. 8 and 9 if we’re hearing the notes and harmonies of this story rightly – the story we hear is a story of God’s amazing faithfulness and mercy through Jesus.  That’s the story the Bible is telling.  

 

But it really matters how we listen to the Bible, if we’re hearing the story rightly.

 

You may be here and this is all completely new for you, you’re just taking it in, that’s great, we’re glad you’re here. 

 

But likely many of us have some kind of background in the church.  Some of us maybe come from or grew up in a church tradition that talked about the Bible, maybe seemed to respect the Bible, and yet didn’t really unpack it.  You didn’t spend much time reading it and listening to it.  You didn’t really dig into the jungle of the Bible to see the depths of it’s riches and how it all comes together in Jesus.   It’s possible to spend your whole life connected to some kind of Christian tradition or church, and yet you never really get into the Bible – You don’t know the story…..  

 

Some of us come from a background where it seemed like the Bible was taken really seriously, but mostly the emphasis was on you – the Bible was thoroughly gleaned and you were presented a pretty long list of things you were supposed to do and things you were not supposed to do….  But that is very different from what we have here.   

 

If we have any doubt that it’s possible to fundamentally mis-hear the Scriptures, we only have to hear the words of Jesus – when he was speaking to religious leaders in John 5 he says to them – you search the Scriptures – they were diligent – you search the Scriptures because you think in them is life, but it is the Scriptures that testify about me.  

Do you see what Paul’s doing?  Do you see how it’s different perhaps than how some of us have heard the Bible?  The Bible is the story of God’s faithfulness and mercy through Jesus.  

 

Look with me at what Paul writes in v. 8-9,  

For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, 9 and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.  

This is how we are to hear and take in the Scriptures.  It is a story of God’s amazing faithfulness to his promises.  V. 8 Christ became a servant to the circumcised, that is the Jewish people, Israel, for the sake of God’s truthfulness.  God is a God who makes promises.  

 

When Adam and Eve turn from God and sin in the garden, God makes a promise to save.  When humanity seeks to make our own way back to God in the tower of Babel, Gen 11 and God frustrates and judges that completely misguided plan….. the very next chapter, Gen 12,  God calls one man and his family to himself – God calls Abraham and makes promises.  He promises to be with him, to be Abraham’s God, to bless Abraham, not just for Abraham’s sake, but that through this family, the whole world would be blessed.  

 

The whole story of the Bible is a story of a God who has freely chosen to bind himself by making promises, and who is faithful and true to all his promises, even when his people fail and turn away, and sin.  Because God will fulfill his promises, and he will bring the nations back to himself, he will renew the world, he will save his people from every tribe and nation.  

 

This is why Jesus came into this world as a servant, why he lived, why he died on the cross, why he rose again…. So that God could fulfill and be true to all his promises.  In Jesus, God has shown his faithfulness and his mercy.  

 

What Paul goes on to do in the following verses, rest of v. 9 – 12 is to recall some of the musical notes from the story – to make his point – Did you hear these notes, did you hear the harmony of God’s story….  And as Paul has done throughout Romans he is at pains to emphasize God’s faithfulness and his mercy – Gentile Believers – don’t forget the story that you have been brought to share in ……….Jesus is Israel’s Messiah – your spiritual roots go all the way back to Abraham.  Jewish believers, don’t forget that God’s intention to bless you and fulfill his promises was always for the sake of the world – to bring the nations back to himself.  

 

Look, v. 9, Paul writes, quoting from Psalm 18, 

 

As it is written

“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles,

and sing to your name.”

 

Psalm 18 – is a Psalm of Israel’s king, David, celebrating when God delivered him from his enemies.  As the NT often does, Paul sees this victory David experienced pointing to an even greater victory God’s Messiah would experience in his resurrection.  The risen Jesus, is heard then, praising God among the Gentiles that God in his grace has brought to salvation in Jesus.  

 

The next quotation is from the end of Deut., Deut 32 – In this chapter Moses foretells Israel’s failure to keep God’s covenant and so they are going to be exiled – and yet God will bring them back and he’s going to bring the gentiles too and both will join in and praise God together for his faithfulness and mercy.  

 

Rom. 15:10   And again it is said,

“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”   (remember that note?)

 

In v. 11 Paul quotes from Psalm 117 a very short Psalm that is about the exact thing Paul has emphasized here – God’s faithfulness and mercy and his world-wide purpose to save.

Rom. 15:11   And again,

“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,

and let all the peoples extol him.”

 

And Finally in v. 12 Paul quotes from Isaiah 11, a prophesy about Israel’s Messiah, their promised king

Rom. 15:12   And again Isaiah says,

“The root of Jesse will come,

even he who arises to rule the Gentiles;

in him will the Gentiles hope.”

 

Listen to these notes, hear the themes, guys this is the story….. 

 

 If you were a Jewish Believer in the church in Rome or a Gentile believer well versed in the Hebrew Scriptures – Do you realize what Paul has just done? 

Paul has just quoted from all 3 main sections of the Hebrew Scriptures, the OT  – Law, Prophets, and Writings – or sometimes just referred to as Psalms.     This is a bit of a mic drop.  Here it is, Paul says.  Did you catch all those notes – this is the story.  In Jesus God has been faithful and God has been merciful.  

 

This is how the book of Romans began – the gospel, the good news of Jesus, promised beforehand through the prophets in the holy Scriptures.  The Gospel, which is about God’s Son – who died, who rose again, who is the reigning king and Lord, through whom Jew and Gentile can come to belong to God’s family.   

 

Here’s why this matters – when you hear the story this way – the way Paul is laying it out, when these themes of God’s faithfulness and mercy through Jesus ring out – it draws us to hope.  

 

Hearing the Harmony of God’s Story – leads to – Growing in Hope. ….   Why?  

 

One of the reasons hearing the Scriptures like we’ve been talking about draws us out and causes us to hope because it situates our lives and stories in the context of God’s grand story of redemption through Jesus.  It helps us see our own stories in light of the bigger story of God’s faithfulness and grace – it places our little lives and stories in the Big Story giving our lives meaning, purpose, direction…. 

 

Podcast ILLUST  – a better story. 

 Just this past week I was listening to a podcast from English L’Abri, if you’re not familiar with L’Abri, it’s a Christian ministry that provides a place for people to discuss religious and philosophical beliefs, and explore questions about God. 

 

The episode was titled, “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God” – it’s not in any way a triumphalist take on what’s happening in the world with belief in God – the guest speaker, Justin Brierley, who wrote a book recently with this same title acknowledges all the de-churching statistics and all that….  

And yet, one of the things he points out in his long experience interacting with atheists and agnostics is that the tone of the conversation has really changed.  If you are around my age or older you probably remember the sort of militant atheists of the 2000’s – Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. Books like “The God Delusion” weren’t just straightforward philosophical arguments against God’s existence – they were aggressively against belief in God, they were passionately trying to convert people to atheism.  

 

One of the changes that has happened is in the decade and a half since the mid 2000’s, there has been a growing number of intellectuals: scholars, historians, philosophers, that are pointing out that the atheistic story of the world – that there is no God or supernatural or anything like that and we all just got here through chance and evolution, it really fails to account for the world we actually live in – the story doesn’t fit aspects of reality we sense are true. 

 

We’ve referenced the work of historian Tom Holland a number of times up here – but he is one example of a person who has shown that many of the values central to life in our society, values like mercy, love, forgiveness, the fact that modern people condemn things like slavery and strongly believe that all people are equal and all human life is equally valuable … values like these and many others, they don’t come from ancient cultures like the Greeks or Romans, they don’t come from the Enlightenment, they come from Christianity.  And Tom Holland, who I believe would still call himself an agnostic, though it appears like he is perhaps making his way back toward belief, acknowledges that so many of the things he believes and values come from the Christian story and really only make sense in that story.  

 

In the podcast, one specific person mentioned was a woman named – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

 

– she is a Samali born ex-Muslim.  She was part of an extreme radical Muslim cult, the Muslim brotherhood.  She escaped to the Netherlands and was a prominent atheist.  I wasn’t really familiar with her before listening to this podcast, but she was sort right there with the other 4 prominent atheists I mentioned previously (Dawkins, Hitchens, and the rest of the crew).  She shared stages with these guys, published her own anti-religion book with the title “Infidel.”

 

But a year ago in Nov. 2023 – she published an article with the title: “Why I am now a Christian.”    In the article she mentions a number of things that has led to this change in her life.  She mentions the work of Tom Holland, for example.  She writes about global problems and the need to return to Christian roots that have produced many of the institutions and values of modern society like democracy, freedom, mercy, humility….  But she also talks about why she personally felt this need.  She writes…. 

 

“I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?”

 

She then goes on to write about how when she was a Muslim she saw the power of a unifying story to draw people in, and what she has found in Christianity is a better story than that found in Islam, and a better story than that in atheism.  

One of the reasons the Christian story causes us to hope if we listen to it, is it’s not about us, and that’s really freeing isn’t it?  

 

if our lives and stories are ultimately up to us – our hope for the future is incredibly fragile – it all rests solely on what you can achieve and control.  Any failure, suffering, or tragedy can steal your hope, smash it, and destroy it forever – disease, illness, a devastating accident to you or someone really close.  If our stories are ultimately up to us our hope is fragile, our lives will be stressed, and our posture will be one of anxiety.  

 

Here is a story, that not only makes so much more sense of what we deep down intuit to be true and good and beautiful – but it takes the weight off our stories and lives.  Because our lives are carried in the larger story of God’s faithfulness and love.  

 

I’ll just mention one more – we see it at the end of our text – the story of the Bible about God’s faithfulness and mercy through Jesus grows us in hope when we take it in and listen because God himself is speaking and working in us as we listen to his word. 

 

v. 13 – 

Rom. 15:13   May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

God is at work by his Spirit.  This story isn’t just satisfying to a need to make sense of things, it’s not just convenient to take off the pressure, it is supernatural.  

 

• God who spoke things into existence – speaks to us in his word.  

• This is why you can come into church – or come to a Bible study or something – and you read the Scriptures and you go from being a person who perhaps didn’t believe, to someone who now is beginning to trust in Jesus.  God creates faith, where there wasn’t faith.  

• OR you can come weighed down – anxious, tired, struggling, confused – but then you hear the story – and there’s hope, there’s rest, there’s growing clarity.  

• Because this book isn’t dead and lifeless, it’s author is speaking to you now.  

Story of RUF and student transformed…. 

 

Before I came to Trinity, I worked with college students doing campus ministry with our denomination’s campus ministry, RUF, at the University of Delaware.  Two times a year we would take students on an equipping retreat where we would meet up with a few other campuses and we’d have an intensive weekend of training student leaders or anyone who was interested in really digging in deep into the Bible.  Students would learn how to interpret the Bible, study systematic theology, lead Bible studies, or go through the Bible in a class I often taught called “Bible Survey.”  This was different from many of our other retreats that were more laid back – between Friday night and Sunday morning, we’d spend 10-12 hours digging into content.  

 

I remember one retreat when I was leading Bible Survey – there was a student from our campus that came on the retreat and she was going through a really hard time in her life.  She was struggling, overwhelmed, there were problems at home, struggles in school, I think she would have said she felt depressed.   She felt crippled by life and all the pressures weighing on her. 

 

She comes on this retreat, and we spend the whole weekend reading and thinking about the Bible and the story of the Bible.  We start in Genesis and we trace the whole story of the Bible all the way to the end in the book of revelation.  We read large chunks of Scripture, digging into the details, while connecting the themes of the story we’ve been hearing this morning – God’s faithfulness and mercy through Jesus.  

 

After the weekend we met up for coffee and she was a different person – she was sort of glowing, with a lightness, with joy, and peace, and hope.  A whole new bigger, grander, beautiful story of God’s love and grace and faithfulness had swept her up into wonder.  

• Imagine you’re a student – could be high school, college or a grad student – and you feel stressed out, you wonder what the future holds and whether you will succeed in what you hope to do or if you will fail, and sometimes you just feel overwhelmed. stressed by exams, stressed by the unknowns of what’s ahead of you.

• Or imagine you’re a parent of young kids and you’re tired and exhausted, and you wonder whether you’re doing enough, and whether you’re doing a good job, and sometimes you just feel like a failure….. 

• Or imagine you’re someone who has messed up in your life in pretty significant ways and it feels like no matter what, there’s just no way you could ever undo what’s been done…. 

 

Or imagine you’re a Jewish believer or gentile believer in the 1st century in a small church in Rome and sometimes you feel really annoyed with the other group in your church and you struggle to welcome them as the gospel calls you to….. 

 

What do you need? 

 

You need the story of God’s faithfulness and mercy in Jesus to lead to hope – You need that story to re-frame your story, your life, your identity, your struggles and failures – so that as you are drawn up into wonder and joy in Jesus – who has loved you, and shown you mercy and welcome  – you can follow him, you can trust him with your life, you can welcome others as he welcomed you.   

Let’s turn to a time of prayer – each week after hearing from the God who speaks to us in his word, we turn and speak back to God – acknowledging and confessing those places and instances in our lives where we have not trusted and loved him, where we’ve not loved others as he calls us to – we come to God with our sins and struggles and needs – to the God who invites us to do this that he might give us grace and help and mercy in and through Jesus.  So let’s spend a few moments in silent prayer and confession and then in a short while I will close in prayer.