Romans 4:13-25
“One Promise”
May 22, 2011 - Fifth Sunday in Easter

         So the world didn’t end yesterday. (I wrote that line on Friday fairly confident it would be accurate and even more confident that if it weren’t accurate, then it wouldn’t matter.) Jesus didn’t come back yesterday, and also contrary to Harold Camping, the earth will not be wrecked by earthquakes and finally burn up completely on October 21. The whole “rapture” end-time scenario, whenever it’s supposed to happen, is not at all what Scripture teaches. Contrary to anyone who thinks God is going to airlift out all the real Christians, then burn up what’s left behind, the Bible teaches that God has promised to redeem and restore and renew our world, this world.

         That promise of God to claim and renew this earth is what Paul has in sight when verse 13 of Romans 4 talks about “the promise that he would inherit the world,” which God made to Abraham. How is Abraham supposed to inherit the world if God’s plan is to fry the whole thing?

         Paul focuses on what the Law, the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, taught about God’s design and plan for the world. As we’ll see in a moment, God’s plan began with creation and carries right on through to redemption and renewal of the human race and the world. Smack dab in the center, early in God’s plan, is Abraham.

         At the beginning of chapter 4, we read last week, Paul quoted Genesis 15:6. Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness. Now here in the middle of the chapter he refers further back in Abraham’s story, when God first called him in Genesis 12 and said He would bless Abraham and would make Abraham a blessing. In Genesis 12:3 God tells him, “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

         The rabbis of Paul’s time took that and other passages from the Old Testament to mean that Abraham’s descendants would inherit the world, that the whole earth would one day come to be their property. That’s why Paul talks about God’s promise that Abraham would inherit the world.

         Now we might just pass off that Old Testament idea of Jews inheriting the earth as one more failed religious prediction, as silly in its own right as Harold Camping’s warning about a rapture yesterday. For it’s clear that Abraham’s seed (that’s the literal word here) has not taken possession of the world, nor is it ever likely to.

         Paul was just as aware as we are that Jews would not take charge of planet earth. That’s why he understands the promise to Abraham in different terms. He has his own reasons in verse 14. “Adherents of the law” cannot be the heirs of the promise. Verse 15 says, “For the law brings wrath…”

         The law given to Abraham’s descendants only showed them their sin and put them face to face with God’s wrath. The law was meant to reveal sin and deal with it, but the law could not deliver the promise to Abraham for his descendants to inherit the world. The law prevented that inheritance because the inheritors had broken the law. They didn’t deserve their inheritance.

         When major bridge construction happens, like a few years ago where I-5 crosses the McKenzie River just north of town, the old bridge is blocked off and a new bridge is routed round the old one. The law, then, is like a huge “bridge out” sign posted on the road to Israel’s promised inheritance of the world. Because of sin, because they broke the law, there’s no way for them to receive the promise.

         Paul’s Gospel is about the new way round the old broken bridge. That cryptic phrase at the end of verse 15, “but where there is no law, neither is there violation,” points to an alternate route, a way round the busted bridge. Verse 13 says God will fulfill His promise to give the world to Abraham’s descendants not “through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.” And verse 16 tells us, “For this reason it rests on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants.”

         Faith is the new bridge to fulfillment of God’s promise to His creation and to Abraham. Literally the beginning of verse 16 says the promise comes “from faith, in order that according to grace.” So the promise is to anyone who has faith, not just those who have and keep the law. The route of faith, is open, Paul says, “not only to adherents of the law, but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us).”

         That last bit goes back to last week’s lesson, that in his faith, in his belief and trust in God’s promise, Abraham became the spiritual father of both Jewish believers and Gentile believers. Those who share in his faith are united in one great family of faith in Jesus Christ.

         So the beginning of verse 17 tells us just how the promise to Abraham is fulfilled, quoting another passage from Genesis, from chapter 17 verse 5, where God says, “I have made you the father of many nations.” Again, that didn’t happen back when. Abraham was the physical forefather of two or three nations through his sons Isaac and Ishmael, then through his grandsons Jacob and Esau. But he only became the father of many nations when he became the father of all who believe in Jesus Christ. He became through faith the father of every nation on earth where the Good News was heard and believed.

         Faith guaranteed the promise that Abraham would inherit the world, because that faith, that trust was in God. The God in whom he believed, says Paul, is the one “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” That’s exactly what God did for Abraham and that’s what He promises to everyone who believes.

         That phrase “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things which do not exist,” is a definition of God. It’s what God does over and over in the Bible. In the beginning, God created, called into existence, a universe which did not exist before. Then He brought life to a dead, empty world and breathed life into the dead clay of Adam’s flesh.

         It’s also, as Paul explains in verses 18 and 19, the story of what God did with Abraham, who “hoped against hope,” as he trusted God. Verse 19 says Abraham knew his body was as good as dead because he was nearly a hundred years old. Sarah was beyond child-bearing age and had been childless all her life. Yet God poured life into Abraham’s nearly dead flesh and put a child that hadn’t existed before in Sarah’s womb.

         Abraham’s faith was believing this promise, the promise that despite every appearance that it was impossible, he would be the patriarch of descendants beyond number. Verses 21 and 22 say that “No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” Abraham believed in a God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

         New Testament scholar N. T. Wright says Paul means us to understand that faith in Jesus Christ is continuing that same creative and life-giving work of God. When people believe in and trust Jesus Christ like Abraham trusted God, the dead come to life and new things begin to exist. For Paul, the Jewish people, who were dead in their trespass of the law, came to new life in Christ. Meanwhile a whole new people who never existed before, Gentiles who believed in Jesus, a multi-nation people counted as Abraham’s descendants through faith came to be. God called what didn’t exist into existence. The Church was born.

         Paul continues the message from last week. You and I and anyone who will believe are invited and welcomed into Abraham’s great family of faith. The promise made to Abraham is the same promise made to us. God gives life to the dead and calls new things into existence. He will raise us up and give us renewed life in a renewed world.

         Trusting God for life out of death and existence out of non-existence is the good news of Jesus. It runs through all our texts today. In Psalm 32 the composer trusted God and wrote words our Lord repeated on the Cross, “into your hands I commit my spirit.”

         In the Gospel lesson from John 14, Jesus asked His disciples to trust Him, to believe that He would come and call them out of death and into life, into the place of life that He prepared for them. When Philip wanted to see the Father, wanted to see the God who can give life to the dead and call new things into existence, Jesus said that they had seen the Father just because they had seen Him, had seen the Son.

         From Acts 7 we read about the death of the first Christian martyr. As the stones flew and crushed him to ground, Stephen looked up to his Savior in heaven and trusted in the life God gives, echoing the Psalm 31 like Christ Himself, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

         The great irony in the texts for us this morning is that the man who’s telling us in Romans about Abrahamic faith in the God who makes the dead live and the non-existent be is the same Saul who stood there holding coats for those who threw stones at Stephen. So when he says God can bring into existence that which didn’t exist before, he knows whereof he speaks. He knows it personally. God took the old dead life of a Pharisee named Saul and turned it into the vital new life of the apostle named Paul.

         That’s why Paul is sure about what he says in verse 22, “Therefore his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Paul had felt it happen for himself. Righteousness according to the law didn’t count for much as he helped kill Christian believers. He needed righteousness given to him by grace through faith in Jesus. That’s how Saul became Paul. God justified him, made him righteous with a righteousness that was not his own.

         Verses 23 and 24 are the good news for you and me, “Now the words, ‘it was reckoned to him’ were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also.” It’s not just Abraham, it’s not just Paul, it’s for anyone who will come to God by that new bridge, that new way of faith “in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.”

         There is the ultimate guarantee of what Abraham believed about the one “who gives life to the dead.” God showed us He can give life to the dead in the most absolute and complete way possible. He raised up Jesus Christ into a new and everlasting life. The resurrection of Jesus is the promise that He will do the same for anyone who believes.

         I want to make sure that everyone here today hears the promise. In Jesus Christ, God raises the dead. Abraham felt trapped by death at a hundred years old. Saul’s heart felt dead as he tried to keep the law by killing its violators. You may feel dead when sin and guilt and fear and hurt drain the life out of you. To you I say the good news of Jesus is that God raises the dead. He can raise you.

         The other part of the promise is that God makes new things exist where they didn’t before. Like when He made the world, God makes something out of nothing. For decades Sarah felt nothing stir in her uterus. Saul’s life was headed nowhere. You too may feel you’re not going anywhere, like you’ve accomplished nothing, like you yourself are nothing. Hear the promise: In Jesus, God makes something out of nothing. He made a baby in Sarah. He made a new road for Paul. He will make you into something new and good.

         Verse 25 says that Jesus our Lord “was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.” Jesus took all that death and the nothing which is sin and gave us life and righteousness in their place. Believe in Jesus and He will do that for you.

         But don’t forget the rest of the promise, the promise with which we began. God promised Abraham the world. It’s not just about me, not just about you. It’s about God bringing men and women of every nation on earth together in faith in Jesus so that He can save them together, so as Paul says later on in Romans 8, He can save the earth itself.

         That’s why Harold Camping and company are so terribly wrong. It’s not just thinking they knew the date of Jesus’ return. Their mistake is thinking faith in Jesus is just about getting yourself out of harm’s way by getting forgiven and escaping to heaven before all the really bad stuff starts to happen. No, the promise is not just about you, not just about me, not just about individuals getting raptured off into paradise. It’s about a new family, Abraham’s family of faith, and about a new earth, a whole world becoming the kingdom of God.

         Our job is not to warn everyone to get out while there’s still time. Our job is to invite everyone into the glorious new thing God is making in this world, a fantastic family of faith which came into existence when He raised Jesus from the dead. Paul invited Jews and Gentiles to enter and live together. For us it means inviting and living together in Christ as whites and Asians, as people with bank accounts and people on food stamps, as graduate students and folks who never finished high school. The promise in Christ’s resurrection is the world being inherited by a great multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-economic, multi-everything community of people who live together by trusting God

         On our vacation, our friends told us about their time in Texas. They mentioned visiting Fredericksburg, where a statue commemorates a treaty with Native Americans. In the spring of 1847, a band of German settlers feared for their lives. They had been sold a land grant which sounded marvelous. What they hadn’t been told is that their land was in Comanche territory and that the Comanche were fierce and vicious.

         Yet their leader John O. Meusebach was convinced that he would make peace and so he set out to negotiate with the Comanche chiefs. As the discussions went on, the Comanche occupied the hills to keep watch for some trick by the white settlers.

         On the hilltops, the Comanche lit signal fires and frightened the children of Fredericksburg. Since it was nearly Easter, parents concocted the story that the fires were the Easter Bunny boiling his eggs, getting them ready to dye. Meanwhile the negotiations were finished, the treaty was signed and German and Comanche agreed to live together in peace. Unlike most treaties with Native Americans, this one was never broken. Two completely different peoples managed to keep that peace.

         Until just recently, to commemorate the Meusebach-Comanche treaty, the people of Fredericksburg lit “Easter Fires” on the hills every spring to remember how a seemingly impossible peace became a reality.

         We come together as different people to live in peace because we remember what God did at Easter. He raised Jesus from the dead to invite us in. In a just a few more weeks we will remember how the Easter fire of Pentecost began the Church and brought together people of different languages. It’s God’s promise to the world. Jesus died and rose to bring us all together in faith. May we believe and celebrate that great promise today.  

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2011 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj