Faithfulness
Romans 3:10-18
The Faithfulness of God
Faithfulness. Whose faithfulness? Certainly not ours, Paul would say, not ours by a very long shot. Idolatry? Yes, that is ours. Human beings living on the planet earth across thousands of years of history have known idolatry by a thousand times a thousand names. But faithfulness is an alien creature, unknown and unknowable by the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve. Human beings, according to Paul, make idols out of absolutely everything and when we tire of the old idols we invent new ones. Such is the universal human predicament.
Remember now, this is the Apostle Paul’s thinking, not Ken Whitt’s thinking. When I made a commitment to preach from the book of Romans I bound myself to faithful proclamation of the Word of the Lord as given to Paul. I am required to pass on to you Paul’s theology, not my own. Even when I turn from proclamation to application, hoping that Paul’s thinking can help us make sense of our lives, I am still applying Paul’s thoughts, not Ken’s thoughts.
Thus, in the first two parts of this sermon series on Romans we heard and applied Paul’s teaching on idolatry. Everyone, according to Paul, is bound by or severely tempted by idolatry. If Paul was here in this pulpit he would be able to boldly tell us what particular idolatries threaten you and me. But Paul is not here, so in two previous sermons I attempted to do that on Paul’s behalf.
You might be interested to know that if it was Ken’s Whitt’s theology you were receiving in this sermon series the message would be quite different. I would not have started with the bad news. When I am stating my theology I always begin with the good news, the good news of God’s love. However, Paul starts with the bad news, the bad news of God’s wrath visited upon sinful, idolatrous, humanity. In Paul’s thinking every human being is without excuse before God. In Paul’s theology we are all as guilty as hell. And there is not a blasted thing any of us can do about it.
Why such an emphasis on the bad news? It is Paul’s intent, in the opening two chapters of Romans, to get us ready to really understand the good news when it comes. Paul’s method of preparing us is to make us wake up to the fact that, like someone going down for the third time in an endless ocean, we are absolutely and unalterably lost. We cannot swim our way out of this one.
It is Paul’s premise, and please do not miss this, that unless we feel this way--hopelessly lost and completely unworthy——we cannot be saved. Thus if I, as a pastor, have someone come into my office who is profoundly distraught about the terrible mess they have made out of a relationship, or the ruin visited on them by the false god of success, I ought to offer up to God a prayer of thanksgiving. That person, in their place of anguished repentance, is now ready for the good news of Jesus Christ. If a believer, who has always appeared to be self-confident and self- righteous, comes to me broken by a problem she can not solve on her own, I, following Paul’s lead, ought to celebrate with her. For now, finally, God has an opportunity to work out God’s salvation in her life.
Personally, I have known a very small number of people——author William James, in Varieties of Religious Experience calls them “the once born”——who say “Yes” to God and are able to turn every spect of their lives over to God without having to be broken by the consequences of their idolatries. But it is Paul’s theology we are looking at today and Paul believed that there are no innocents, and no exceptions. Listen to Romans 3:10 18:
“As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.’”
The fear of God must be put in everyone’s eyes. Everyone must become conscious of the idolatry that is consuming or threatening their lives. In America, in the 20th century, those ido1atr include:
The idolatry of selfAnd the consequences of these idolatries include:
Materialism
Nationalism
Consumerism
The idolatry of power
Sexual lust
The idolatries of pleasure and security
And let me add today, for some of our young people, and others, that Television and Nintendo can become a life consuming idolatry.
The AIDS epidemic
The destruction of the earth Broken relationships
Brokenness in body, mind and spirit
Violence and oppression
Drug addiction
In a word——death
Until you and I are aware, Paul would say, of just how hopelessly trapped by idolatry we are, there is no way out.
Who is Paul saying will suffer the consequences of idolatry? Just pagan unbelievers? No. Paul is talking about himself, and all believers, and all Jews and all gentiles and all people then and all people now. No one is righteous. To the multitude of us control addicts and workaholics and prestige seekers, to the multitude of human beings who are trying mightily to be good enough to earn God’s love, this is all very bad news.
About this time an observant reader might be saying, “Excuse me, but I thought that this sermon titled, ‘Faithfulness’, was going to be all about the good news. All I have read so far is more bad news.” That’s a good observation. I am just following Paul’s lead here. I think Paul did not trust his readers. Even in this section of the letter, that my New International Version subtitles, “God’s Faithfulness”, much more is said about our idolatry than about God’s faithfulness. Maybe Paul is afraid that if he slips in the good news too soon the people will slip out of their consciousness of sin. So Paul keeps drumming home the point:
God’s faithfulness doesn’t apply until you know how terribly much you need it.
I hope you have had the privilege someday of attending a Twelve Step Meeting like Alcoholics Anonymous. The first step reminds us how powerless we are over our idols:
Step 1--We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--(You can substitute any other idolatry for alcohol.)--that our lives had become unmanageable.
And as soon as we recognize that we can not save ourselves, step two declares:
Step 2--Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
By way of God’s power and God’s power alone we are rescued from the insanity of our idolatries. One of the greatest hymns of the church gives moving testimony to this process:
Just As I Am
“Just as I am, without one plea, But that Thy blood was shed for me, And that
Thou bidd’st me come to thee, 0 Lamb of God, I come! I come!
Just as I am, though tossed about With many a conflict, many a doubt, Fightings
and fears within, without, O Lamb of God, I come! I come!”
This powerful and moving hymn was born within the soul of an invalid woman who wrote these words out of intense feelings of uselessness and despair.” ( Hymn Stories Kenneth W. Osbeck, p. 146) Charlotte Elliott was born in Claphain, England in 1789. By the time she was thirty she was confined to her bed. It was her weakness that taught her that she had to come to God just as she was. It was her weakness that taught here that she would be accepted just as she was. It was her weakness that made her a vehicle of God’s saving power. Charlotte Elliott, lying on an invalid’s bed, wrote over 150 hymns. When she died more than a thousand letters were found among her belongings from men and women around the world who had been brought to Christ because of her hymn, “Just As I Am”
Our weakness is the occasion of God’s faithfulness. Our consciousness of weakness or idolatry, our awareness of our need for a saving power greater than ourselves, opens the door for God to be faithful. The Parable of the Prodigal Son gives a striking example of this “coming to consciousness”. The younger brother has squandered everything in the pursuit of the great triplets of idolatry, pleasure, power and possessions. He had received what Paul in Romans 1: 27 calls, “the due penalty of his perversion”. He was living in the slime with the pigs. But then, the story goes, he “came to his senses”.
Paul’s message to us is that we all have to come to our senses. We have to see and confess the truth about ourselves. And our hope is not that we are able to give up our idolatries and thus somehow become worthy of God’s salvation. The source of our hope is that God takes us just the way we are, idolatries and all, weakness and all, and restores our lives, heals our lives, transforms our lives, gives us an entirely new life in Jesus Christ. Our hope is that God is faithful.
Psalm 117:--2: “Praise the LORD, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the LORD.”
King David, himself enslaved by the great triplets of idolatry, pleasure, power and possessions, prayed to God, as recorded in Psalm 51:
Psalm 51:--3: “Have mercy on me, 0 God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me...”
And how does God respond when we come to consciousness of our idolatry, when we finally know we have to trust in God’s power and not our own, when we come to our senses and know we must be forgiven? God responds just like the loving father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. He responds by running towards us, by welcoming us. God responds with lavish love. God responds this way not just once but over and over again. We yield to temptation again. We are consumed by an old idolatry or invent a new one. We try to make it on our own power, again. We try to live our way instead of God’s way, again. And the moment we come to our senses, God is faithful, not because we have suddenly become perfect or deserving, but just because we have come home.
Now, to some people who prefer going their own way, who are enjoying their idolatries and would just like to be left alone, all of this is very very bad news. But to those of us who are conscious of our weakness and our sin, who have been convinced by the events of our lives that we cannot save, ourselves, all of this is very very good news.
“Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee, 0 Lamb of God, I come, I come!”
Lord God, we have come to our senses, and we are coming home!
