Ecclesia Princeton

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

• Ian Graham

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

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Speaker 1:

Good morning friends. It's good to see you all. I don't know how many of you in here are vegetarians, but there is a difference if you eat only vegetables, when you are eating something that is prepared by somebody who knows what they're doing, and somebody who's just given you a plate of steamed vegetables. Right. And the same for those of you who are carnivores in here. There's a difference in a thick, chewy cut of meat that's not cooked that well and something that's really nicely seared. You get that maillard reaction. You get something really juicy on the inside.

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I say all this to say we're going to see whose hands you're in today as we get to Romans 10. Because, as a dedicated reader of God's Word, there are times where I'm like I see the parallels, I see how this lands on our community. There are other times where I feel like I have a plate for you and I'm going to present it to you and I'm going to stand alongside and be like do you like it? Is it good? And what I am confident in is that, no matter what we will come to the table, we will hear the good news that Jesus has forgiven us all of our sins, that he is risen and alive and that he lives forevermore to bring us to him and to draw the world to himself. I'm confident of that. What I am still waiting to see with very much anticipation is what Romans 10 has to say to us. To lead us into that.

Speaker 1:

We've been in this extended section Romans 9 through 11. It is a very much and tightly interwoven section. There are parts that will cause our ears to perk up and be like oh interesting. We talked a little bit about predestination last week, so you can check that out if you were not here. But today what we have for you is a deeply dense section of Scripture, and I just want to be honest about that. It's okay that Scripture demands something of us to read it. Scholars like Michael Heiser, scholars like Richard Hayes, have pointed out how there are links in the scripture to parts that came before and that oftentimes one of our challenges as modern Western readers is to get in step with the lexicon and the vocabulary that these first century Jewish writers were employing, telling the Jewish story in its culmination, as we'll see, in the person of Jesus the Messiah. And so for us, we're going to try to pull back some of these layers and try to work with these things. But again, I stand before you. Public speaking 101 is don't tell people. Hey, I'm reasonably confident, this is good, but there's some hesitance on my part, so I've given you full disclosure.

Speaker 1:

Let's get into the text today. Reading in Romans 10, beginning in verse 1. Brothers and sisters, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved, for I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge, since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own. Okay, so here we find ourselves, continuing to address the question that Paul raised in Romans 9. Address the question that Paul raised in Romans, chapter 9.

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The middle of Paul's extended treatment of what the current circumstances, jesus, the Jewish Messiah, offered for all the world, and the reality that many of Paul's fellow countrymen and countrywomen have not accepted, the reality of this promise, the general question that Paul is addressing is this If Jesus is Israel's long-awaited Messiah, then how can it be so that, by and large, the Jewish people have not responded to this invitation? So this is the scandal that he is investigating. He asks the question in Romans 9, verse 6, has God's word failed or did God change his mind? Did he, in Genesis 12, start working through Abraham and his lineage? And then, by the time we get to Matthew, decide oh, you know what Actually we're doing a new thing now? And the answer that Paul vehemently, consistently offers to us is no. Jesus was thoroughly a Jewish man, son of David according to Romans 1, and a son of God, thoroughly God in the flesh. And so, for us, we have to get in step as best we can with the Jewishness of the story to see how that particular story opens up as an embrace to all. Paul brings us back to this subject that he has been addressing.

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Verse 3 of that section we just read is an important verse because it has had such an impact on our understanding of the word gospel in the last 600 years. What does it mean? That these people were seeking to establish a righteousness of their own. In many explanations, this simply is how the Jewish people sought to observe the law. The Jewish people, we are told, were legalists and they were trying to establish a righteousness of their own, achieving salvation by their works. And then along comes Jesus and he's like guess what? Your works don't matter anymore. Good news, it's all about grace.

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Now, as with all vast oversimplifications, this version just doesn't tell the whole story that Paul has in view here. Paul has already covered the ground of what accounts for righteousness, and he did that in Romans 3, verses 21 through 31. Another famously very easy text to read, and you'll see exactly what I mean here in just a second. We're going to read it all together. All right, everybody, deep breath, hear the word of the Lord, long scripture incoming. Here we are.

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But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed and is attested by the law and the prophets. So when Paul talks about the law and the prophets, he's talking about Torah, the first five books of Moses, by the law and the prophets. So when Paul talks about the law and the prophets, he's talking about Torah, the first five books of Moses, and the rest of the Old Testament scripture, the prophets, right. So we're in. Step there the righteousness of God through the faith of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction. Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed. It was to demonstrate, at the present time, his own righteousness, so that he is righteous and he justifies the one who has the faith of Jesus.

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Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. Through what kind of law? That of works? No, rather through the law of faith, for we hold that a person is justified by faith, apart from works prescribed by the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and then the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we then overthrow the law through this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. Okay, so you got that Great. Now what Paul's doing there is subtle. We did talk about it a year ago when we went through Romans 3, so that is available to you to kind of walk through this passage. But he's talking about works of the law.

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For the people of Paul's ethnic relation, the Jewish people, works of Torah were boiled down to three practices. First was Sabbath keeping. Sabbath keeping marked the Jewish people out as different from their pagan neighbors. It was something they did that those around them did not do, and that is why they guarded it so viscerally. Again, we've talked about this before, but how is it that, through all of these cascading degrees and generations of imperial forces dominating and having authority over the Jewish people, how did they subsist and maintain their identity? One of those is Sabbath, the other 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? Those people are unclean. Jesus is like I know, welcome to the party. The third is circumcision, a physical marker, and Paul will use this as a badge of membership in the covenant people of Israel.

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So when he talks about works of Torah, he's certainly talking about more than that, but he's not talking about less than that. Does that make sense? And so he's saying, like is God's righteousness unveiled through these covenant practices? And what Paul is saying is that no, apart from these practices, jesus has in some way fulfilled the Jewish story. We'll get more into that as we go here. God's righteousness. Here, as throughout Paul, is God's own covenant loyalty, unveiled in Jesus the Messiah. God has been faithful to the covenant with Israel through the giving of his son, but this faithfulness was unveiled in a shocking manner, what Paul elsewhere in 1 Corinthians calls a scandalous manner, and we can get inside the expectations of the first century Jewish people in this way.

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So they're oppressed by the Romans. They have these promises that God will someday restore them from exile, and so in their mind, the equation balances perfectly. God, when he restores us to favor with him, is going to get rid of the Romans. He's going to come and conquer and he will establish the covenant promises given to people like David, that he will never fail to have an heir reigning on the throne of God. He will establish Zion, jerusalem, the Temple Mount, as the central focus, the centerpiece of all the world.

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And along come the Christians saying, hey, all of those things you have been waiting for have happened. And let us tell you how it happened. It happened through a Messiah who did not conquer the Romans but, rather than shedding Roman blood, allowed his own blood to be shed on the cross, dying for his enemies, saying forgive them, father. They don't know what they're doing, that this Messiah has been lifted to life, raised on the third day, and that he is the true Lord of all the world. This is what Paul calls a scandal to people who have been operating under these assumptions. And then the story has turned out quite differently, and so God's righteousness has been unveiled. But for the people with this framework, they're like how can this be? How can this be so? Nt Wright says this. He says and what Paul has been arguing throughout Romans is that in Jesus this righteousness has been unveiled that not only has God fulfilled his promises to do exactly what he said he would do through the lineage of Israel, but through redeeming and fulfilling those promises, he has also redeemed the entire creation. He has judged that which has led us astray and, as we see that often can be located right at the epicenter of our very own hearts. He has judged the idolatry with which we so easily live with, he has unmasked it for what it is and he has conquered them by giving of his life and raising from the dead. And then Paul writes in verse 4, for Christ is the culmination of the law.

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In verse 4 is the word in the Greek telos. Telos is one of those great biblical Greek words. To talk of something as having a telos, or when Jesus says it is finished, is talking about something as having a telos, or when Jesus says to telestai it is finished, is talking about an end, a goal. It's one of the ways that we understand what God is unfolding in the world. We, as we start to explore what it means to be human, realize that we were made for something, and the good news of the gospel tells us yes, you were in fact made for something. You were made to love God and to enjoy him forever. And Paul uses this word, telos, which can have two different connotations when we talk about a goal or an end. You can talk about a goal, as in reaching the place where you've been trying to get to and then stopping right, or you can talk about which I think this word is translated really well in the version that we use here, the NRSV the culmination, that this is where all of this has been going, which doesn't necessarily mean that has to be over, but perhaps is the beginning of the next chapter. Telos can have the force of end or cessation, but that would suggest here that Jesus ends the law.

Speaker 1:

We've seen throughout Romans that the law called the Torah by the Jewish people is not a bad thing that needs to be brought to an end. It is a gift of God that is wrapped up in promise. It must be fulfilled. Look at what Jesus says at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. Do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come.

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And so one of the primary tensions that exists in this Roman church with Jewish and Gentile people trying to figure out how to live together is addressed throughout the New Testament. We see this in Acts 15. The first question that the Jewish Christian leaders are asking as Gentile converts begin to come into the church is what sort of faithfulness are these Gentiles supposed to embody? And they ask themselves questions about things like circumcision, things like Sabbath keeping, things like table fellowship. And if you read in that chapter, they come to certain conclusions about what the Gentiles are supposed to do and where they don't have to fully step into the physical markers of being a Jewish person. And so Paul is again illuminating this tension. Let's go on. In verse 5. Moses writes, concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that the person who does these things will live by them. But the righteousness that comes from faith says do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven that is to bring Christ down or who will descend into the abyss that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim.

Speaker 1:

I want to put just a little bit of a pause, craig, on the announcement section of the slides. There's a little sermon question slide. I'm going to put that up there right now just as a little interlude. One of the practices that I'm trying to start implementing in our church and this will take on different forms depending on the amount of time that we have. Sometimes we'll have a lot of time 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 questions and I picked this week very intentionally because you might be like, yeah, what was all this about Jesus and his love for you profoundly but if you have any questions, you can use that website, that QR code, and please feel free. No commentary on anything mean or unkind, but just questions. Okay, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Paul then quotes from Leviticus 18, verse 5, and Deuteronomy, chapter 30, which gives us a very strong clue as to what he's saying here. Okay, at first blush, when we read this, it seems that Paul is contradicting everything we just said. He contrasts the righteousness that comes from the law and the righteousness that comes from faith, and seems to hold them at two polar opposites. But our translations do us a bit of a disservice here, in that they present this conjunction as adversarial, as if they have to remain opposites. New Testament scholar Christopher Bryan translates this little section like this he says, yes, moses does write Leviticus 18, verse 5, but its key terms are then further explained in Deuteronomy 30. And so the summary version of what Dr Bryan is saying is that these two texts work together. They explain one another.

Speaker 1:

Leviticus 18, verse 5, seems to suggest that doing the law will lead to life, but Deuteronomy 30 further explains that this doing of the law will only be possible by the grace of God. Are you with me? Mostly All right, good, all right, verse 6. Moreover, the Lord, your God, will. Oh, this is actually Deuteronomy 30, verse 6. Let's read that for you.

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It's a longer section, so I want to read this over you. He says so that you will love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul. In order that you may live, the Lord, your God, will put all these curses on your enemies and on the adversaries who took advantage of you. Then you shall again obey the Lord, observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, and the Lord, your God, will make you abundantly prosperous in all of your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your soil. For, okay, if you read in Deuteronomy, you will get to a section in the 20s where it just seems like God is saying hey, this is not going to go well for you and I've got a lot of curses that are wrapped up when it doesn't go well for you.

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When we arrive at Exodus 30, we have arrived at a turning point where God is saying when I restore you, when I bring you back home, here are all the blessings that will be in my wake. And this is where Paul hyperlinks to and trying to point us in the sway of Romans 10 to Deuteronomy, chapter 30. And the kind of summary version that Paul is trying to hold together is that all of this will be a gift of grace, a gift of faith. This passage in Deuteronomy 30 is about the return from exile, and in Paul's day this passage would have been read with eschatological hope. Eschatology is one of those great theological words that just means the study of last things. And so for Paul and his compatriots, when they read Deuteronomy 30, they knew they felt in their bones absent Jesus the Messiah, that this was something that they were still waiting on. And what Paul is trying to say is that those Deuteronomy 30 hopes of homecoming, of God's blessing, of the renewal of the covenant, have all taken place in Jesus the Messiah. But again, we're putting ourselves in that storied world right. And so for these people with these assumptions, this is a hard thing for them to land on. This good news about Jesus feels like a total rewrite of the script for them, and they're dealing with the tension of that Okay.

Speaker 1:

Paul quotes, furthermore, in Romans 10 from Deuteronomy 30. He says but the righteousness that comes from faith. Verse 6, says this Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim. Your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith that we proclaim.

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Paul is then saying that this gift is not some other worldly gift. It is present in the believers right now through the life, the death, the resurrection, the ascension, which we celebrated on Thursday, of Jesus the Messiah, and it is evident in the pouring out of his spirit, as next week is Pentecost Sunday. The Messiah has come down, the Son of God, the Logos, made flesh, given for us, that which brought the world to life, as, in the words of Eugene Peterson, moved into the neighborhood. But he's not just this otherworldly being. He is the son of David, according to the flesh. Matthew and Luke trace his genealogy and are saying these long-held cascading promises are now fulfilled in this first century Jewish man, jesus of Nazareth, fulfilled in this first century Jewish man, jesus of Nazareth. The word is near. He has descended into the abyss and brought victory over the grave from its depths. And thus the word is near, because Jesus's word has gone down, has gone through everything we could ever go through in this life and has overcome it all. As he says in John 16, take heart, I have overcome the world and he has established our lives.

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One of the hopes for the Jewish people at this time is that the temple would be restored to proper worship. Paul writes this sometime in the 50s, maybe early 60s AD. In 70 AD, the Romans would march into Jerusalem and would destroy the temple completely. But part of what Paul is proclaiming to the people here, scandalously counter-intuitively, is that God has not been about restoring the worship in a specific brick and mortar building at a specific zip code somewhere in the ancient Near East. That God has been establishing proper worship in the human heart. That he has, in the words of Deuteronomy 30, circumcised our hearts, made our hearts symbols of His covenant loyalty, sanctifying us that we, both individually and and collectively, are the holy of holies for which the Spirit of God desires to come and dwell. Verse 9, because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved, for one believes with the heart leading to righteousness and one confesses with the mouth leading to salvation. Paul then connects the nearness of this word that has come down from the heights, that has drawn up from the abyss, with the words in our own mouth. It's easy for us to make this a simple proclamation of faith, but we can miss the way that this confession, jesus as Lord, would immediately place the first century Roman Christians into conflict with the claims of the Roman Empire.

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It just so happened that the Roman Empire made use of two of Paul's favorite phrases. First, the word that we translate gospel in the Greek euangelion has its biblical origins in places like Isaiah 40, Isaiah 52. But Caesar also had his own gospel, his own good news. Nt Wright says this. He says, in the context into which Paul was speaking, gospel would mean the celebration of the accession or birth of a king or emperor. Though no doubt petty kingdoms might use the word for themselves, in Paul's world the main gospel was the news of, or celebration of, caesar. And so it just so happens that this word that Paul holds so dearly has resonances both within his sort of Jewish community but also in the pagan community. He goes on. He says when Paul preached his gospel, then politically, it cannot but have been heard as a summons to allegiance to another king, which is of course precisely what Luke says Paul was accused of saying Again. I tell you this often because it is such an easy way to see what was at stake here.

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The Roman Empire consisted of so many small cults and the Roman Empire had all the tolerance in the world for these little cults. They would allow them to do whatever they were doing as long as they didn't disrupt the wider economy. That says Caesar is Lord. But along come the Christians who aren't living a little private faith out but are proclaiming a counterclaim that actually Caesar is not Lord but Jesus is in fact Lord. And this was the friction point, the grounds for all of the little and big persecutions that would crop up, especially in the first three centuries of the life of the church. Christians would not acquiesce to the claims of Rome's greatness. They would say Caesar is claiming to be Lord, but we know that the world's true sovereign was crucified and is risen. And this was the friction point. If the Christians would have been content just to have a nice private faith, just one story amongst many stories, they would have been left alone. But that's not what we see in church history. And this is because the gospel proclaims a counter-narrative to that which Caesar proclaims All right. Another of Paul's favorite terms we find here proclaims exactly this Jesus is Lord.

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Again, the imperial propaganda machine had a counter-claim at the ready that Caesar is Lord. Paul was announcing that Jesus was the true king of Israel and hence the true Lord of the world, at exactly the time in history and over exactly the geographical spread where the Roman emperor was being proclaimed in what styled itself a gospel. In very similar terms, nt Wright says this. He says the lordship of Caesar, which, though certainly political, was also profoundly religious. Caesar demanded worship as well as secular obedience, not just taxes but sacrifices. He was well on the way to becoming the supreme divinity in the Greco-Roman world, maintaining his vast empire not simply by force though there was of course plenty of that but by the development of a flourishing religion that seemed to be trumping most others by absorption or by greater attraction. Caesar, by being a servant of the state, had provided justice and peace to the world. He was therefore to be hailed as Lord and trusted as Savior. This is the world in which Paul announced that Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, was Savior and Lord.

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What this means, as Wright so helpfully points out is that to proclaim Jesus is Lord is not just something we say with our lips, it's something that we say with the whole of our very lives. Salvation is by faith, through allegiance to Jesus, our King, which means living out the sacrificial call of discipleship. We can't just do whatever we want and then slap the vague slogan on it like, oh, jesus is Lord, jesus is Lordship, and the gospel of King Jesus integrates our lives so that the whole of our lives heart, soul, mind and strength, or, in the world that we live in, the things that we try to break down, our jobs, our political allegiances, our hobbies all integrated under the Lordship of Jesus, not separated, which so often is our default mode is to keep things separated. Jesus is wanting to draw these things together, and this is why so much in our culture that claims to be done in the name of Jesus, that seems so holy and so devoted, is so distorted, impoverished and misguided. This is why faith in Jesus is not simply about having the right doctrine, whatever that may mean. It's about the status of our hearts before him. This is why Jesus says you have heard it said do not murder. But I say unto you if you look upon a brother with anger in your heart, you have committed murder already.

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The claim that Jesus is Lord is theological. The Lord God is one and that oneness is revealed in Father, Spirit and Son. And it is political that we have no king but King Jesus, that no one, not any earthly king, politician or president, gets our allegiance other than King Jesus. Paul says this in Romans 10, verse 11. The scripture says no one who believes in him will be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. The same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Paul is drawing these scriptural quotations from Joel, chapter 2. I'm going to read a little bit of Joel for you here today. Joel says and my people shall never again be put to shame.

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Joel 2, much like Deuteronomy 30, is about the return from exile, the homecoming, and God renewing the people by the riches of his grace. That phrase that I will return the years that the locust has eaten I don't know about you, but that phrase has just struck me the last couple years. It's so much of the distance that we feel in our lives between that which we think should be happening or that which we experience. So much of the disintegration of our lives is not only about the thing that happened. It's about the time that you lost right, and here's God with all of his promise, saying I'll never put you to shame. And all those years that you lost in true grieving, as I was weeping alongside you, all those years that you lost, when it seems like the dreams were lost or diminished, and again I'm always just trying to expand my own imagination for what the restoration will look like. He will return to us the years that the locust has stolen, and that is good news in and of itself. Us the years that the locust has stolen, and that is good news in and of itself. The end of this section of Joel 2 is also that which is quoted by the apostles at Pentecost, as the spirit is poured out, as we look forward to Pentecost Sunday next week, if we again put ourselves in the shoes of the Roman church.

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These people were often marginalized because of their faith in Jesus, by their culture, their refusal to take part in the civic religion that Caesar is Lord. Many of them had lost jobs because their trade guilds were often mingled with devotion to pagan deities or to the emperor, and they simply had to bow out and say I can't work this job because of all that it entails by my presence here. Shame and exile were a common experience for this earliest Roman church. And here Paul is saying to these people in the midst of this vast city, this collection of maybe 30 people that are hearing this letter written to the Roman church, read presumably by Phoebe, he's saying my people will never be put to shame, that, though your daily lived experience may be minimalization, marginalization, you are mine, my treasure. And he's reminding them that they are the bearers of the true story of the world, that, to quote Paul elsewhere in Romans, that these people are more than conquerors, through Christ Jesus, who loved them, that neither death nor life, nor angels nor demons, nor the present nor the future, nor any powers, nor height nor depth, death nor life, nor angels nor demons, nor the present or the future, nor any powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation would ever be able to separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And as I invite the worship team forward today, I just want to invite you to consider as these people dealt with this cultural alienation, this feeling of exile.

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Where are the places in your life that the scripts that our culture tells us that we have to hold on to lead us into shame and accusation? Now, for us, so often in the modern world, shame is this kind of self-inflicted wound and we buy into the stories of success that our world sells us. We buy into the lie that we have to make something of ourselves if we experience the distance between what we think we should have made of ourselves and what we assess ourselves to be. That's where shame resides and we often carry around that script of the world's assessment of our worth and our value, script of the world's assessment of our worth and our value. And instead of allowing Jesus's assessment of us that we are worthy because of what he has done for us, we are worthy of his love because he has shed it for us on the cross, we buy into these smaller scale stories and versions. And I wonder, today for us, is shame such a prominent character in our lives, the unreliable narrator for so many of us? Where have we allowed shame to tell us a different story than the story that God puts forth?

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God's righteousness has been unveiled in Jesus, the Messiah. His word will not fail. He has been loyal. Because he is loyal, he will not fail, because he does not give up on his promises. You don't have to go up to some otherworldly heaven in order to access these promises, because Jesus, the word made flesh, has come down to us to be God with us. But he is not just God with us. It would be a beautiful thing to have the creator of all the world walk beside us to suffer all that we suffer. But Jesus doesn't just suffer alongside of us. He is the one who overcomes that which ails us. He has broken every curse. He will wipe every tear from our eye. He has defeated death by his death on a cross. We have been summoned by God, and if we respond and just say, jesus, you gave your all for me, I respond yes to you. Confess Jesus with your mouth and you will be saved by this God who has given himself for you. Give him your allegiance, your heart, your soul, your mind and your strength for you. Give him your allegiance, your heart, your soul, your mind and your strength, and we receive this promise that we will never be put to shame. We trade the script that we so easily live by, for the beautiful script that God gives us.

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I think about this and it's an example I love and so I've used it before, but, man, I come back to it often. There's a man named Colin Wilkinson who was the original portrayer of Jean Valjean in the London production of Les Miserables, and he played that part beautifully for decades, and when the time came for them to make a motion picture production of the movie, I don't know 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 in Oklahoma. She's like you want to see this movie. I was like, sure, sounds great. I show up in this movie. They start singing immediately and you ever get that sinking feeling like are they going to sing the whole time? I didn't know the story, I didn't know what it was, and sure enough they did. Sorry to spoil it for you, but I'm sitting there and, to my own poverty, did not know the story and by about 20 minutes in I am just weeping uncontrollably. I'm like this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. What is this? Turns out it's quite famous, right.

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The book is even better, looks good, but I would you know just this became. I tend to get a little idiosyncratic about things, a little bit obsessed with things. I started just like I read the book for each child that was born. I would sit and read a book on my phone because you're up in the middle of the night. It's like two options you can doom scroll or you can do something productive. Thankfully, I did something productive and read Les Mis by Victor Hugo. I started researching this movie. I was like, wow, this is really impressive. Russell Crowe not a great singer, but okay.

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I came upon this little tidbit about the bishop in the movie. The bishop is one of the most beautiful characters everybody can see, really really stunning, especially in the book. The little tidbit I come up with is wow, the bishop was the guy who used to play Jean Valjean. He writes of his experience in transitioning roles. So going from being the main character to going to be in this minor major character in the story and if you don't know the story, jean Valjean does a lot of things is kind of wayward. And this bishop gives him this extraordinary grace and liberates him from his life of enslavement to this system. Extraordinary grace and liberates him from his life of enslavement to this system. And he says you know, to receive 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 an immeasurable gift. And I think about how God is just wanting to exchange the role that we've been playing, to give us His script, to give us His role, to show us what he is wanting to do in and through our lives, the beauty of His promises and what he's done in Jesus. And I end where I started.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if we made sense of Romans 10 today, but I do know that the Holy Spirit is present here, that he's faithful to his word, that his word does not return void, that he is drawing people to himself, that he is offering you a different role than perhaps you have conceived yourselves, in a different script, saying my people will never be put to shame. I will return the years that the locusts have eaten. Let's pray together. Come, holy Spirit, god, by the power of your word, lord, would you untangle that which we struggle to untangle with our limited wisdom? God, god, but beyond that, would you meet, dear sons and daughters, with all the force of heaven here this morning. God, for those who are weeping, lord, would you show them that you are there, god, that there's never been a moment where you haven't been there.

Speaker 1:

God, for those of us who are subscribing again and again to the story that shame and accusation tells us, god, would you tell us the truth, lord, lord, that you have done everything for us, that it is by grace, through faith, that we are saved and all we have to do is say yes to you, to lay hold of the promises that you put before us and to trust you, god. And that trust will be manifested in beautiful things heart, soul, mind and strength. Allegiance given to you, god. And that trust will be manifested in beautiful things heart, soul, mind and strength. Allegiance given to you, lord. But it all starts with trust, lord.

Speaker 1:

God, I pray that, through the power of your word, the telling of your story, lord, that you would draw us deeper into life with you. I pray that you would have your way in these moments as we respond and worship God. Let the Holy Spirit descend upon your way in these moments as we respond and worship God. Let the Holy Spirit descend upon this place in power. Lord Jesus, remind us of your promise, lord. Tell us the truth. Lord. We need you, we love you. We pray these things in your name, in the beautiful name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We pray Amen, ecclesiastes. I'm going to invite you to stand. Let's allow the Lord to meet us here In a few moments. We