The Gentiles Will Hope In The Root Of Jesse

[0:00] If you have your own copy of the Scriptures with you, then I'd invite you this morning to turn to Romans chapter 15.

[0:19] If you don't have your own copy of the Scriptures with you, that's okay because we have some Bibles scattered around in the chairs among you. And if you don't know where Romans chapter 15 is, just grab one of those Bibles and turn to page 949 in those Bibles, and you'll be on the right page for Romans chapter 15.

[0:36] This is where we're going to be this morning. We have been walking through the book of Romans now for a little over two and a half years. In fact, almost three years. Now, we've taken some breaks in there, and we've done some other things.

[0:48] That's part of the reason it's taken us so long. But we've been spending a lot of time in this particular book. Now, I know a lot of you have not been with us throughout that entire time. And so, before we even read this morning, I want you to understand how Romans 15 fits into the rest of the book of Romans.

[1:05] Most of the book of Romans is the Apostle Paul's defense and explanation of the Gospel. Most of Romans is devoted to Paul explaining and defending what he means by the good news of Jesus Christ.

[1:21] So the first 11 chapters of this book are almost exclusively devoted to Paul's explanation and Paul's defending of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

[1:31] But beginning in chapters 12, we saw him take a turn to begin in a more concentrated way to help us to see the implications of that Gospel for our regular everyday lives and especially for our lives within the body of Christ.

[1:45] So beginning in chapter 12, he has been instructing us on how to live in light of the truth of the Gospel that he spent 11 chapters proclaiming. And now here we are in chapter 15, bringing that section now to a close.

[1:59] And everything that's going to follow in the rest of this book is going to be Paul's sort of final words to the Romans, some greetings that he has to issue to some of the people that he knows in Rome, and a few things, some requests that he wants to make of them.

[2:13] But here now, in the middle of chapter 15, we are closing out this section of practical exhortation to the Romans, but we are also, in a very real sense, closing out all of these first 14 and a half chapters.

[2:27] Because what we're going to see this morning is Paul sort of tying all together many of the things that he has been saying throughout this book. I want to show you that, so let's read this morning.

[2:39] I'd like you all to stand. We're going to jump in in verse 8 and read down to verse 13 this morning. Paul writes, 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, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy.

[3:02] As it is written, Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. And again it is said, Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people. And again, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol Him.

[3:15] And again Isaiah says, The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles. In him will the Gentiles hope. 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.

[3:35] These very words we ask, Father, that your Spirit would take and help us to understand them, but more than just understand them, to be transformed by them, and to have our faith and our hope and our trust in Jesus increased by them.

[3:49] We ask that in Jesus' name. Amen. You guys take a seat. How many of you have ever been in a conversation with someone, particularly maybe with two or three other people, where they began to talk about things, and to be really honest, you don't really know exactly what they're talking about?

[4:07] That's happened to me a number of times, especially when a couple of guys start talking about technical things. Maybe they work in the same field, or they do similar things at work, and so they'll begin to talk about things, and they'll begin to throw out terminology and phraseology, that to be honest, I have no clue what they're talking about.

[4:25] They'll use acronyms. They're just throwing out words and phrases and things. I have one particular friend who does this actually quite a bit, and he'll start talking about things at work, and sometimes I'll look at him in the middle of what he's saying, and I'll say, I have no idea what you're talking about.

[4:37] I have no idea. But most of the time, I just pretend when people do that. I just go along, and I nod, and if I can say, oh yeah, sometimes I'm in the middle of it, I'll do that, because I don't want to be embarrassed.

[4:49] I don't want everybody to know that I have no clue what you're talking about. I don't know anything about that area. I don't know anything about that field. I know that I'm totally lost and clueless when it comes to some of the things that you all do during the week, just as I'm sure you would be lost and clueless if I started talking to you about Greek or Hebrew and some of the details that I have to get into in the middle of my week.

[5:10] That's not interesting to you. You don't know anything about it. But you might nod along if I were talking to someone else just so that it's not quite so awkward. One of the things I realized this week as I was preparing to preach on this particular passage is that there's some terminology here in this paragraph that if you've not been in church for a long time, or if maybe you have not been in a church that really teaches and preaches and disciples, it's entirely possible that some of the terms, some of the words in this passage won't really make a lot of sense to you, or maybe you have a vague notion of what they mean and what they're about, but if I just proceed to talk as if everybody knows and everybody's on the same page, there's a pretty good chance that some of you are not going to get a whole lot out of this sermon because you'll be scratching your head the whole time thinking, yeah, but what does that word mean?

[5:58] Yeah, but what did he mean by that phrase? What's going on there? Because the reality is that since we began this series in Romans so long ago, I'm looking out at you and probably at least half of you, if not more than half of you, I'd say probably more than half of you, were not here when we started this series through the book of Romans.

[6:17] You weren't here. I mean, we've been in existence for just a little bit over five years. We've been in this book for over two and a half years, which means for half of our existence as a church, we've been in Romans.

[6:27] And unless you've been here for most of the time that this church has even been around, you may be a little bit lost at times, especially when Paul is summarizing some of the things that he has been saying throughout this letter and using terminology that he's already used a number of times in earlier chapters.

[6:46] You could be a bit lost and think, I'm not exactly sure what he's talking about this morning. So before we get into the details of the passage and really our avenue to getting into the details of this passage, I want us to look at, I really kind of isolated four terms that occur here that I think need a little bit of explanation.

[7:07] And maybe some of them you know and you think, oh, you didn't have to explain that this morning. But there's a chance that there's somebody on the other side of the room that might have needed that explained. So let me just show you the four terms that I want to make sure that we're sort of all on the same page with and we understand not just what the words mean, but what Paul means when he uses these words.

[7:25] So you can look in verse 8. Two of them are in verse 8. Paul mentions the circumcised. It says Christ became a servant to the circumcised. And at the end of verse 8, Paul mentions promises given to the patriarchs.

[7:38] And so I want to ask, what does Paul mean when he talks about the circumcised? And what does Paul mean when he talks about the patriarchs? And then if you look in the very next verse, in verse 9, there's a mention of the Gentiles, which in fact is a word that occurs several times throughout this passage.

[7:53] You see it again in verse 9 where he says, I will praise you among the Gentiles. In verse 10, rejoice, O Gentiles. In verse 11, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles. In verse 14, he who arises to rule the Gentiles, and him will the Gentiles.

[8:07] I mean, that's a word that's all over this passage. And if you don't have a real good understanding of what does he mean by that, you could be a bit lost as we walk through here. And then the last term is not just one word, but it's a phrase that I want us to talk about in a little bit.

[8:19] And that is this phrase in verse 12, the root of Jesse. What is that? That may be the most confusing one of all. In fact, the title of my sermon this morning is the Gentiles will hope in the root of Jesse.

[8:30] So we get two of those words in there, but I've already had one person say, hey, was that a misprint? Was that supposed to say Jesus at the end? It wasn't a misprint. I meant to say Jesse. It comes from the last verse here, but you may not be 100% sure what's going on.

[8:43] So I want us to walk through those and talk about those and make sure that we understand what those mean. And in doing that, I think we'll get a good handle on what Paul means in this whole paragraph. So let's take a look at the first one.

[8:54] Paul says in verse 8, For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness. Now, most of you, I hope, know what the word circumcised means, but when Paul uses that particular term, it's a way for him to refer to the Jewish people, that is, to the descendants of Abraham, to the nation of Israel.

[9:17] Because one of the earliest commandments that he gave to them was that all the male members of the people of Israel were to be circumcised. And that was one of the things that would set them off from the nations around them.

[9:28] That was one of the things that would make them very, very different from everyone around them. And so when we see this term, the main thing that we need to think is, oh, that's just another way of talking about the Jews.

[9:41] That's another way of talking about the people of Israel. But notice what Paul says about the people of Israel. He says that Christ became a servant to the circumcised, to the Jewish people.

[9:54] That is, I think, an obvious reference to just the plain reality that when Christ came into the world, He didn't come into the world in North America. He didn't come into the world in Russia or in England or anywhere other than Israel.

[10:09] He was born in Israel. And other than a very brief stint as a toddler down in Egypt, He spent His entire life in the nation of Israel. His ministry was spent in Israel, in Galilee in the north and then in Judah in the south.

[10:25] He spent His time there and He ministered to the Jewish people. He healed many of them. He preached the gospel to them. He fed them. He served the Jewish people.

[10:38] He was, in fact, Himself a Jew. That's who Jesus is. Jesus is an Israelite. He is a Jewish person. That's one of the reasons why I've never understood how anti-Semitism can take root in a culture and among a people that at least outwardly claim to be Christian.

[10:59] Even if in your heart you don't really trust and believe in Christ, even if it's a mere outward profession of faith, which is often the case, particularly in what we might call cultural Christianity, where it's just part of the culture to say that you're a Christian, even in that instance, it just seems odd to me that a people devoted to praising and worshiping and trusting in a Jew would ever have anything negative to say about Jewish people just because they're Jewish.

[11:23] It just seems strange and weird to me that that would happen. But nevertheless, that happens. And it's a quick reminder for us that Jesus was Jewish and He came into the midst of the Jewish people and He served them, Paul says.

[11:36] But He did it for a reason. Paul specifically tells us He did it to show God's truthfulness. That's why Jesus came to Israel. That's why He was born in Bethlehem.

[11:48] That's why He was raised in Nazareth. That's why He spent so much time in Galilee. That's why He went down to Jerusalem. That's why He was crucified outside of Jerusalem. Because He wanted to demonstrate and show that God was truthful.

[12:01] That the things that God had said in the past and the things that God had promised in the past, God Himself would follow through on. God is a truthful God and He can be trusted to be true to His Word.

[12:14] That's why Jesus came to the people of Israel. Now notice He elaborates on that though in the next statement. What does it mean to show God's truthfulness? Well, here's at least a part of what it means.

[12:25] In order that He might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs. Now there's our second term that we need to make sure that we understand. The word patriarch simply means father.

[12:36] It is the fathers. And it's normally used in the Bible, Old and New Testament. It's normally used in a very similar way to the way that we talk about the founding fathers of our country.

[12:47] We throw that phrase around and we all know what we mean. We have mental images in our head when we talk about the founding fathers. We picture maybe George Washington. We at least know what he looks like because he's on our money. You might picture Benjamin Franklin.

[12:58] I don't see him as often as I see George Washington. But you might picture Benjamin Franklin, okay? Or Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton. And we get into more obscure ones. But you have an idea.

[13:08] If we say the founding fathers, we know that they are the men who had a leading role in establishing our nation. Well, when the biblical writers speak about the patriarchs, they're referring to those men who had a pivotal role in the establishment of the people as a nation.

[13:26] But even more than that, they mean it in an even more literal sense in that the patriarchs are literally their ancestors, literally their fathers in a sense.

[13:38] And really three men are at the fore when you talk about the patriarchs in the Bible. You have Abraham, Abraham's son Isaac, and Isaac's son Jacob whose name was changed to Israel and that's where we get the name for the nation itself.

[13:51] And so you have these three men who are the patriarchs. They are the fathers of the Jewish nation. So Jesus came, Paul tells us, to serve the people of Israel, the Jewish people, in order that He might show that God is true by fulfilling the promises that He made to the founders of the nation of Israel.

[14:12] Well, what were those promises? What exactly does he have in mind here? Well, the promises are vast and wide, but I think for Paul he has in mind a very narrow range here initially and then it expands beyond that.

[14:30] But what are the promises? I want you to hold your place in Romans because I want to show you these things. I want you to turn all the way back to the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible. And we're going to start in Genesis chapter 12 where Abraham is first introduced to us in the Bible.

[14:46] The father of the Jewish nation, the father of the Israelites is first introduced to us. And of course his name is not yet Abraham here, it's just Abram. But I want you to notice a promise is made.

[14:59] Chapter 12, verse 1. Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.

[15:18] I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Now there are a number of things that are there.

[15:30] He's going to make Abram into a great nation. He's going to bless Abram and Abram's descendants. But ultimately the promise zeroes down on this last phrase, in you, in your descendants.

[15:43] In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Now keep that in mind. Move forward a few pages, a couple of pages in your Bible to Genesis chapter 17.

[15:57] In Genesis chapter 17, God appears to Abraham again. And in verse 4, this is what he says. He says, speaking to Abraham, Behold, my covenant is with you.

[16:07] That is, I'm making my contract with you. I'm making promises to you. That's what I'm doing. Behold, my covenant is with you. And you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be called Abraham.

[16:22] For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, he says. I will make you into nations and kings shall come to you. Now listen to verse 7 because I think this is key.

[16:34] I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant. Now I want you to mark that word offspring because it is incredibly important.

[16:48] It is not, of course, the first time that we come across this word and the significance of this word in God's promises to Abraham. Because in moving from chapter 12 to chapter 17 where he makes a covenant, we have skipped over a pivotal moment in God's relationship with Abraham.

[17:05] And it concerns this issue of offspring. Remember, the promise to Abraham, in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. That is, in your descendants that I am going to give you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

[17:15] And now, an eternal covenant made with Abraham and Abraham's offspring. Now go back to chapter 15. Let me show you. Chapter 15.

[17:28] We'll jump in in verse, let's say, 3, where Abraham's a little whiny. Abraham said, Behold, you have given me no offspring. Same word. You haven't given me any offspring.

[17:40] And a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven and number the stars.

[17:53] If you're able to number them. Then he said, So shall your, and here it is again, So shall your offspring be. There are promises made throughout God's interaction with Abraham.

[18:07] And they almost always come down to two factors. The descendants of Abraham, normally called the offspring, or literally, the seed of Abraham. And then what God will do through those offspring, that is, he will bless the entire world, all the families of the earth.

[18:24] That's the crux of the promise made to Abraham. There's going to be a descendant. There's going to be a seed, an offspring that comes from you. And through that seed, through that offspring, I'm going to bless everybody.

[18:36] Well, no, this is not something limited to Abraham. Remember, the patriarchs are not just Abraham. They're also Isaac and Jacob. And when God passes the promises made to Abraham on to Isaac and then on to Jacob, we see these same things coming up again.

[18:50] So flip forward a few chapters in Genesis. Go all the way to chapter 26, where God sort of passes on the promise He made to Abraham. He's going to pass it on to Abraham's son, Isaac.

[19:02] Chapter 26, verse 4. I will multiply your offspring, there's that word again, as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands.

[19:15] Here's the key. Here's the main part of the promise. In your offspring, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. You see that again? In your seed, all the nations will be blessed.

[19:27] He promised it to Abraham, promised it to Isaac, and now He's going to promise it to Abraham's grandson, son Jacob. Turn over a page or two in your Bible to chapter 28. Genesis 28, 14.

[19:39] Again, God is speaking to Jacob. Your offspring, that's the same word, seed, your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south.

[19:52] And in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. That's the crux of the promise given to Abraham.

[20:03] Through your seed, through your offspring, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Well, now that's all fine and well. But we always, when we're reading the Bible, we always need to keep in mind what comes before the story that we're reading and what comes after the story that we're reading.

[20:23] Because all this language in the story of the patriarchs in Genesis, all this language about seed, about offspring, it didn't start there. In fact, it started much, much earlier in the book of Genesis.

[20:36] And this is what we've got to sort of wrap our minds around if we want to understand what does it mean for the promises God made to the patriarchs to be fulfilled. Let's rewind.

[20:47] I want to rewind all the way back to the beginning here, to Genesis chapter 3. And then we'll go back to Romans, I promise. But I really want you to understand what did God mean when He made these promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

[21:01] Of course, Genesis chapter 3 is one of the saddest, if not the saddest, chapter in the entire Bible. It recounts for us how humanity, how Adam and Eve, fell into sin.

[21:13] It recounts for us the entrance of sin into the world and with sin came death. And all that, if you know the story, all that happened because Satan came in the guise of a serpent and he deceived Eve and Adam, who should have been watching out for her, stood alongside and went along with it and they both broke God's command eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that God had said you cannot eat it.

[21:39] And so they sinned, they disobeyed God, they fell, and God has something to say to all of them, to Adam, to Eve, and even to the serpent about all these things.

[21:50] And it's what God says to the serpent that I want us to focus on. Chapter 3, verse 15. Speaking to Satan, he says, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between, and here's this word again, between your offspring, your seed, and her seed.

[22:11] The woman now has an offspring, a seed. But listen to what God says about the offspring or the seed in Genesis chapter 3.

[22:21] He, that is the seed, shall bruise your head. That is, he will deliver a kind of death blow. Right? If you stomp on a snake's head and you do it well, game over.

[22:34] Right? He will deliver a death blow to you. He will bruise your head and you, in the process, shall bruise his heel.

[22:45] So right after the fall, right after sand enters into the world, right after death comes into the world, right after Adam and Eve mess everything up for everybody after them, right after that, God says, I'm going to send someone.

[23:00] I'm going to send a seed. And he, he through his own suffering, through his own bruising, will undo what Satan has done and will defeat the enemy.

[23:12] And then you fast forward through Genesis and all of a sudden, if you're reading the story of Abraham after you've already read the first few chapters of Genesis, this language about a seed is going to jump off the page to you.

[23:26] And you're going, I've heard that before. God said he was sending a seed. Now he's telling Abraham the seed is going to come through you. And then he's telling Abraham's son the seed is going to come through you. And now he's telling Abraham's grandson the seed is going to come through you.

[23:39] And so what there is is there's a movement, this promise about a coming seed who would set all things right and defeat the enemy is being passed down. But there is an element added when the promise is given to Abraham and Abraham's descendants.

[23:54] That is, this seed will not only rescue you, Abraham, it will not only rescue your descendants, but all the families of the earth will be rescued through the work of your offspring.

[24:08] And so when we come, to Romans chapter 15, and when we read that Jesus Christ came into the world in order to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs, we need to immediately think Jesus has come into the world and he is the seed.

[24:29] He is the promised one. He is the one that God said all along, I'm going to rescue the world through him. People from, as Revelation says, every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

[24:42] This is God's plan from the beginning. From the beginning. I think sometimes we are easily misled to think that God in the Old Testament is only concerned with the people of Israel.

[25:01] He doesn't care about anybody else. And then you get to the New Testament and for whatever reason, God is somewhat more concerned about other people. But I don't think that's the case at all.

[25:13] We're not dealing with two different stories, one about Israel and one about the church. We're dealing with one overarching story that began in the garden. And in this story, God is going to send His chosen one into the world to rescue people from every family, from every nation and people group.

[25:34] And that has been His plan all along. It's not new when we open up to the New Testament. It's not a new idea. It's an old idea. The Gospel is not a new message.

[25:46] The Gospel is a very old message. In fact, in Romans chapter 4, Paul says that Abraham believed the Gospel. In Romans chapter 1, Paul says that through the prophets, that's the Old Testament, God declared the Gospel beforehand.

[26:01] This is not a new message. This is not something that has just come on the scene with Jesus. This has been God's plan all along. And so, where does Jesus have to be born?

[26:12] Well, if the seed of the woman is the seed of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, He has to be born among them. He has to be one of them. And so, He's born through Mary.

[26:24] And His adopted father, Joseph, not only has a claim to be a descendant of Abraham as well, but He's also a descendant of another person in the Old Testament that we are told the seed will come through Him.

[26:40] You see, if you fast forward way past Genesis, and we won't turn there this morning, but if you fast forward way past Genesis, and you go all the way past, say, the Exodus, and you go all the way past the book of Joshua, past Judges, and you get to the point in time where Israel was actually living in the land promised to them, and they actually had a king who was ruling over them, God made a promise to one of those kings.

[27:06] God came to King David, and God made a promise to King David in 2 Samuel chapter 7. You can check this out later. He made a promise to him that through his seed, it's the same word, through his offspring, God would establish an everlasting kingdom.

[27:28] And so we have a promise made in Genesis 3 that a seed would come, a promise made over and over in the second half of Genesis that the seed would come through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and then later in the Old Testament the promise that that seed would come through a specific descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that is David himself.

[27:44] And now here we fast forward to the New Testament, and what do we find? How does the New Testament begin? Matthew chapter 1, verse 1. A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

[27:56] The son of David, the son of Abraham. It was always the plan. It was not a new thing. All this is in Paul's mind when he speaks of the promises made to the patriarchs.

[28:11] And I bring David into the mix because that's exactly what Paul does at the end of this paragraph. Take a look down at our fourth term. We'll come back to Gentiles in a moment. But take a look down at our fourth term, the root of Jesse.

[28:23] Verse 12, Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah. And again Isaiah says, the root of Jesse will come. Now that's a weird term, and most of us probably are a little bit baffled by that the first time we come across it.

[28:36] Until you recognize that David's father was named Jesse. And the root of Jesse is in fact another way that the prophets use a handful of times to describe David and David's offspring.

[28:51] So that the root of Jesse is the promised seed that would come through David. The root of Jesse will come. Now this is Isaiah writing, long after King David has died, and he's looking into the future and he's saying, the root of Jesse, he will come.

[29:08] The seed will come, Isaiah says. And here we are in the New Testament. And he has come. He is the one through whom all the promises of God are fulfilled.

[29:23] And chief among those promises promise that in this seed and through this seed, all the families of the earth will be blessed. And when we see the word Gentiles over and over and over in this paragraph, we are to immediately think all the families of the earth.

[29:42] Because Gentile is just another word for somebody who's not an Israelite, who's not a descendant of Abraham, who's not Jewish. And the promise made to Abraham was that through his seed, through his descendant, all the rest of the people in the world, all the rest of the families of the earth would be blessed.

[30:01] That is, all these nations, all these Gentiles, a blessing will come to them through the work of the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, the seed of David.

[30:13] Now it has happened. It has happened. He has come and He has opened up a way to turn back the curse of the serpent. The people of Israel could never do that.

[30:27] If you read in Genesis and you read those promises made to Abraham and you keep seeing the word offspring or descendant or seed and you keep thinking, oh, this is what God's going to do through Israel.

[30:39] This is what God's going to do through the Jewish nation. Then you need to take a closer look at the rest of the Old Testament. Because the rest of the Old Testament is very much a testament to the fact that the people of Israel couldn't get the job done.

[30:56] They couldn't do it. They were never able to reach out to the nations. They were never able to be the descendant or the offspring that would reach out and establish and bring a blessing to the nations that surrounded them.

[31:11] They were never able to do that because they couldn't maintain their own faithfulness. They couldn't be faithful long enough to do any good for anyone else because they were caught up in this continual cycle of rebellion and repentance, of rebellion and repentance over and over and over.

[31:28] The people of Israel fail so that when you arrive in the book of Matthew, what you're looking for and what you're longing for is somebody who can do what Israel couldn't.

[31:39] But he has to be a descendant of Abraham and he has to be a descendant of David and he has to be able to stand in the place of Israel.

[31:51] And that's what Jesus came to do. He came to undo the work of the serpent by being all that Israel could never ever be.

[32:03] Let me show you that from the book of Romans. Turn back to Romans chapter 3. Now in Romans chapters 1 and 2 and the first roughly half of chapter 3, Paul is describing, he's showing us just how sinful all people are.

[32:23] And he starts in chapter 1 by describing the sinfulness of the Gentile nations. And then he moves in chapter 2 to describe the sinfulness of the Jewish people. And then he moves in chapter 3 to lump them all together to say things like, there's no one righteous, not even one.

[32:38] He's looking out over the mass of humanity, Jews and Gentiles all together and Paul is coming to the conclusion, everybody's a sinner. Everybody. And then he says something remarkable.

[32:51] Verse 23 of Romans chapter 3 sort of sums that up. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

[33:06] Now note verse 25. Whom God put forward. Reminds me of verse 8. Christ came to be a servant to the circumcision.

[33:21] Now God put Him forward. But why? Why should God do that? God put Him forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

[33:35] Now propitiation is another one of those Christianese words, those Bible words that you may not be totally familiar with. But a propitiation is simply a sacrifice that removes God's wrath.

[33:48] That's what it is. And God sent the seed, Jesus Himself, into the world and the means by which this seed would crush the head of the serpent would be by dying and taking the wrath of God on Himself.

[34:07] See the goal of the serpent all along was to force God to pour out His wrath on the objects of His love. To force God to pour out His wrath on those who were made in His image.

[34:21] To prevent those who were uniquely created and designed to bring glory and honor to God in a way that the rest of the creation could not. And Satan's goal was to turn it upside down so that rather than those people living and existing for the praise and glory of God, God would have to pour out His wrath on them.

[34:40] But instead, God promised long ago and fulfilled through Jesus the promise that He would send the seed into the world and the seed has now been bruised.

[34:52] that is, the seed has taken upon Himself the very wrath of God that we deserve. That's what He has done.

[35:03] That's how redemption is won. That's how we are saved from our sins. He has sent Him and He has borne the wrath of God for us and in our place.

[35:15] And then notice the phrase, it is to be received. That is, the benefits of His work on the cross are to be received by faith. That's how you get the benefits of that.

[35:28] How can you know that the death of Jesus works for you? How can you know that the death of Jesus takes the wrath that you deserve? And Paul says, it's received by faith.

[35:40] And that's not new either. That's not a new idea either. I told you, the gospel's old. The gospel's not a new message at all. Look in Romans chapter 4. I'll show you this.

[35:53] What shall we say then, verse 1? What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, okay, justified means declared righteous, so you're rescued from your sins and you're righteous before God.

[36:13] If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. But what does the scripture say? Now, I left off here earlier in chapter 15 and I left off because I wanted to get to it here.

[36:26] Paul is going to quote from Genesis 15 right here. What does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

[36:39] Now, to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. The one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. David himself was saved by trusting in the promise of the seed.

[36:57] That's how he was saved. Abraham was saved by trusting in the promise of the seed. All of the fathers were saved by trusting in the promise of the seed. All of them.

[37:09] Not a one of them could stand before God and say, I've done everything that's necessary. I've followed the rules. I've fulfilled everything that you've said to fulfill.

[37:21] No. All came by faith alone in the promised seed. And now we, living after the fact, after Christ has already come, are saved by faith in that same person.

[37:34] It's not changed. It has not changed. Abraham lived somewhere around 1850 B.C. and nothing has changed since then. Through all these millennia, God has been saving His people in the same way through faith in Jesus Christ because this promised one would do all that is necessary laying down His own life to take upon Himself the wrath of His Father so that He might undo the work of the serpent way back in the garden.

[38:06] all of that is wrapped up in the phrase the promises to the patriarchs. All of it.

[38:18] And where does it go? Oh, not just to Abraham and not just to his descendants. To the world. Jesus came for two reasons.

[38:28] To confirm the promises to the patriarchs and then look what He says next. Verse 9 of Romans 15 and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy.

[38:43] This is why God works in this way. In order that even the Gentiles even someone like me I have no rightful claim upon the mercy of God.

[38:56] I have no reason to presume or assume that God should show me mercy or grace or rescue me in any way. I can't even claim anything by way of dissent.

[39:07] I have no claim. And yet He says that God's purpose in sending Christ was that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy.

[39:21] And to be honest with you the rest the rest of this paragraph really is serving two purposes. One it's a string of Old Testament quotations proving what Paul was saying proving that the seed was going to come to rescue not just Jews but Gentiles as well.

[39:39] Just a string of quotations but also it's not just proof it's also praise. It's a kind of praise that God that Paul is offering up to God for the great work that he promised he would do and now that he's done and is doing.

[39:53] Notice I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. That's from David. 2 Samuel 22 Deuteronomy Rejoice O Gentiles with his people the Psalms Praise the Lord all you Gentiles and let all the peoples extol him and then finally verse 12 from the prophet Isaiah when this root of Jesse comes the one who arises to rule the Gentiles what will the Gentiles do?

[40:18] They will hope in him. That's his purpose that's what he's doing and that's what he's accomplishing. All of this the promises to the patriarchs the promise in the garden all of it aimed at the glory of God and the hope of those who trust in his promised one.

[40:36] That's what it's all about. You might say it's an interesting lesson here on the story of the Bible.

[40:48] It's an interesting sort of lesson on tracing through this these promises through the Bible. What what do I take away from that?

[40:59] What do I what do I do with that? What you do with this is you hope in it. That's what you do. Verse 13 May the God of hope that's who he is he's the God of hope hope comes only through Jesus Christ and not in any other way.

[41:17] 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.

[41:29] That's what this is about. This is about your hope and your peace and your joy and your rejoicing and praising God for the salvation that he has brought even to people like us.

[41:42] That's why Paul wrote Romans. He wrote Romans so that these Gentile Roman Christians would see and understand the gospel that he's been preaching all over the world and understand that in Christ God is doing a work that rescues even the Gentiles.

[42:01] Even the people with no claim whatsoever seem to have been left out from the beginning and yet they were not they were always in mind they were always the goal so that God might receive praise from every tribe and tongue and people and nation and people from all those nations might have hope in him.

[42:21] And I don't know what it is that throughout the week and on a daily basis seems to crush your hope and make you feel frustrated and like things are not going to turn out right things are not going to go well I don't know what it is maybe that you just cannot stand your job and it's a grind on a daily basis or it may be sickness that's come into your life or your family's life or it may be marital problems or it may be problems with your children or it just might be aging and it's not going the way you thought it was going to go I don't know what it is that ruins your hope I just know what it is that gives hope and it is the gospel promised from the beginning fulfilled in Christ and it says believe and hope in him let's pray if