Faith is Messy | Pastor Johnnie Simpson Jr

Romans 4:13-25 New King James Version

13 For the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. 

14 For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise made of no effect, 

15 because the law brings about wrath; for where there is no law there is no transgression.

16 Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all 

17 (as it is written, “I have made you a father of many nations”) in the presence of Him whom he believed—God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; 

18 who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, “So shall your descendants be.” 

19 And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. 

20 He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, 

21 and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. 

22 And therefore “it was accounted to him for righteousness.”

23 Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, 

24 but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, 

25 who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification.

Do you want to know what word I am tired of hearing these days? Unprecedented, everything going on now seems like it is happening for the first time with no end in sight. When we think we have something under control here comes something new and improved to add another unprecedented complication to the situation. Unprecedented pandemic, unprecedented economic conditions, unprecedented political conditions, unprecedented weather, unprecedented electrical infrastructure failure, it seems like the hits just keep on coming and each issue is unlike any issues we have ever seen before. The problems keep piling up and the pressure keeps coming and I can't see my way out. I am reminded of the adage "if it isn't one thing it is another." How do you press forward when you cannot see your way out? How do you keep going when it seems like you have run out of road? How do you trust God when everything around you is falling apart? We have to have faith, we all need faith and faith is not this perfect sequence of actions faith is hard, faith is strange, faith is messy.

We find a messy situation in Romans, Romans is Paul's last letter that we know of, Romans is written somewhere around 57-58 AD. Paul was writing to a church that was a community of Jewish-born Christians, people who were born Jewish, followed the Biblical laws and believed Jesus was the Messiah. The other part of the community were the Gentiles, people who were not raised Jewish, but heard about Jesus and decided to follow him. This Roman church was made up of Jews and Gentile coming together into one community to follow Jesus, this was something they had never done before. Two communities coming together who would not normally deal with each other, are now together operating as a church. In this community, the Jewish-born Christians thought they were better than the Gentile Christians because they were descendants of Abraham. 

The Roman church was divided, the church folk was trying to decide who is in and who is out. There were people putting barriers up to block others from getting in. People came together to create this church, in Rome, in the middle of Roman oppression. They are trying to start a church, not just any church but a church following the man the Romans crucified, Jesus, in the capital of their oppressors, following someone that could get them all killed, even with all that going on, the church folk still got something to argue about, just messy. A whole bunch of rules put in place that no human being can complete all on their own. How are the people of God going to find their way? 

Paul says that even though this church is doing something unprecedented, there is someone else in scripture that did something unprecedented for God and that person is Abraham. Paul is writing Romans, however, Paul is writing this Roman letter with Genesis in mind. God told Abraham in Genesis that he would be the father of many nations, that his descendants would number the stars in the sky. Abraham had to have faith, Abraham had Isaac, then Isaac had Jacob and Esau, Jacob's name was changed to Israel, and Israel had 12 sons, who would later become the 12 tribes of Israel and be a great nation of people, there it is wrap up the story in a nice little bow and everyone can go home...or maybe not. 

Abraham wavered when faced with a situation he had never seen before. Yes, we applaud Abraham for his faith now, just like Paul did in Romans, but the situation was not so clear back then. God told Abraham and Sarah they were going to have a child, and from them, many nations would come. On two separate occasions, Abraham was traveling with his family in a foreign land, and while traveling Abraham lied and said that Sarah was his sister, so someone tried to take Sarah from him only to give her back when they found Sarah was already married. Abraham and Sarah's actions could have messed up the promise. 

Another time Abraham and Sarah came up with a plan, Abraham and Sarah were going to help God by having Abraham have a child with Hagar instead of Sarah because God must not have meant it when he said Abraham and Sarah because she was "too old." Hagar had Ishmael who goes on to be a great man and nation as well, but he is not who God was talking about when God made the promise to Abraham and Sarah, not Abraham and Hagar.

Another time Abraham laughed when he heard God tell him he was going to have a child. After he finished laughing Sarah laughed too. Abraham knew what was going on in his and Sarah's body when he heard the promise, he was 99 years old and Sarah 90, and even though Abraham stumbled, he didn't stay down, he trusted God in his weakness and it still worked out for his good. In Genesis we see the man mess up over and over again, by the time we get to Romans, it is the result that is remembered over everything else. That is the legacy the people of God are willing to fight over, that is what he is remembered for, that is the legacy and family people want access to. While the people are looking at bloodlines and who begat who, Paul came to let them know that it is faith that gets us in the family, not blood, not laws, not people, faith. 

We are heirs of Abraham not by blood but of faith. We are adopted into the family by the work of Jesus Christ and faith. The many nations that Abraham is the father of is not limited by geography, it is unlimited by faith. We are justified by faith through grace. We don't earn this access we are given it by God when we believe. We can have faith even if it is not this picture-perfect example of how to behave in certain situations, even if it is messy. You may be in a Genesis moment in your life right now but keep pressing forward your Roman's victory is on the way. It may look bad right now, it may be very messy right now but, in the end, God wins. What is going on right now is just a snapshot, a single picture, the world hasn't seen the whole album yet. This is just a quarter, we still the rest of the game to play. We just need to keep the faith.

God who brought life out of Abraham when Abraham was as good as dead also raised Jesus from the dead can breathe life into your present situation no matter how dead the situation seems to you. The work is finished through Jesus Christ, the many nations come through Christ, and the barrier between Jew and Gentile was lowered by Jesus. Christ gave himself up for us all. We can have a messy faith in God. 

Such faith means that we can trust God to work through us, even when our bodies fail us. It means we can trust Jesus to lead us, even when we wander through a thicket of difficult moral choices. It means we can trust the Holy Spirit to uplift us, even when we disappoint ourselves and others. Being righteous does not come from moral perfection, but it is based on being made right with God through our faith in Jesus.

Dealing With the Contradictions (Romans 7:14-25)

Human behavior is something we all strive to understand, we offer degrees in psychology and sociology, those who work well with others or are likable seem to go further in life, we spend time trying to be with and to better understand our mates. We spend a great deal of our time trying to figure out why and how somebody did something. We spend so much time trying to figure these things out because the stuff that we want to do, we sometimes don’t, and the things that we don’t want to do, we sometimes find ourselves doing. We become this walking talking mass of contradictions. I know I should work out a whole lot more than I do, but I’m still working on it, I know I need to drink less sugary drinks, but I am working on it.

Michel de Montaigne (Renaissance Author) said:

‘I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.”

Thomas Merton(Catholic Monk) said:

“The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.”

During the time of this writing you had Pious Jews in the area that believed in strict observance of the law, the lived every day scared that they were going to break it. You also had pious early Christians out there struggling to observe the rules as well. This life becomes a struggle of the flesh and the spirit.

Paul doesn’t minimize his struggle and neither should we; yes we are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and the apple of God’s eye but we still have our struggles. The Apostle Paul exercises some self-examination if you will, he takes a “selfie” without the camera. As I was researching for this sermon, one of the commentaries I read said that some scholars don’t want to believe that the Apostle Paul was speaking on his own struggles, that he didn’t have any. They go so far as to say even though he is writing IN FIRST PERSON, using terms like ‘I’ and ‘me’ he did that just to relate to the readers of the epistle, but didn’t really have any struggles to talk about.

That is why a lot of the secular world doesn’t want anything to do with Christians because some of us walk around like we are perfect, and the higher “rank” you think you have in the Body of Christ, the worse off it seems to be. Don’t be on the Trustee board, or a Baptist Deacon, elder, or mother of the church. Then you are really big stuff, but the men and women of the cloth seem to be just as bad. I am in a few Facebook groups and there are people in there who will get mad if you don’t address them by their titles when responding to their posts in the groups. You want me to call you Chief Apostle, Archbishop Primate, Presiding Prelate or whatever and have the nerve to say something about it every time someone doesn’t do so. Why? I am not one to despise small beginnings but if I had 10 names in my title, and only 2 members in your congregation, maybe I would be a little short on honorifics, pomp, and circumstance and little longer on some ministry. We all struggle, there is no use trying to pretend that we don’t, the bible says

Romans 3:23New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

23 since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;

We cannot think of ourselves as perfect, if we did, I think it would be hard for us to see the God in others.

So what do we do about it?

1. It won’t be effortless

Verse 17 – Paul can speak on the flesh and “nothing good, that dwells within me” because God gave him an understanding of Donald Lawrence’s song before he wrote it, we are not natural beings having a spiritual experience, but we are spiritual beings living a natural experience. And in this natural experience we will always have a way out.

1 Corinthians 10:13New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

13 No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

2. Expect to encounter enemies

Verse 21 – When I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.

A man with no enemies is a man with no character.

Quoted in Paul Newman: A Life in Pictures, ed. Yann-Brice Dherbier and Pierre-Henri Verlhac (2006), p. 120

Variant: If you don't have enemies, you don't have character.

As quoted in Words of Wisdom : From the Greatest Minds of All Time (2004) by Mick Farren

Simply put, all the greats are hated on.

If you are in a position where everybody likes you all the time, you might want to take a look at some of your values. Does that mean you need to get into a fight everyday, no, but you cannot please all the people all the time without lying to somebody.

Furthermore it will not be easy, success takes a lot of hard work, they say you need 10,000 hours of practice at any given skill before you become proficient at it. I was watching the movie Rocky II at home on Friday and Rocky’s trainer a character named Mickey was talking Rocky and he said to be able to last in the ring 45 minutes you need to train for 45,000 minutes, now that is a 1,000 of practice for every minute he needed to last in the ring.

We have become this culture with a microwave mentality to the point that we expect success to come without much time and without much effort. I have seen it in the way we treat our athletes. Now I am not the biggest Lebron James fan, I will be the first to admit it, but the man has a tremendous amount of pressure on him, everybody is expecting him to be the next Michael Jordan to the point that if he does not lead his team, and I say lead as in start, and contribute the most not like some of the others who just happen to be in the right place at the right time on winning teams; but I digress, if he does not lead his team, whatever team it is, to 6 or more championships, he will be viewed as a failure. There is video out, someone edited it together Michael Jordan’s “Maybe” video with Lebron James’ “Rise.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEVCjUG1Mww

The video shows Lebron and Jordan talking in voice over’s and Jordan says, “maybe its my fault, maybe I led you to believe it was easy when it wasn’t, maybe I made you think my highlights started at the free-throw line and not in the gym.” Repetition is the mother of skill, we need to find time to fill our time with the things of God.

3. Expect to call upon your extraction

Full Definition of EXTRACTION

1:  the act or process of extracting something

2:  ancestry, origin  - This is the definition I am focusing on

3:  something extracted

Verses 24-25 – the way we deal with it is practice, by ourselves we are wretched, but with the help of the lord we are the righteousness of God. Our daughter Elle Bea has a toy she likes to play with, a doll by the name of Caillou, nice looking toy, but the head comes off, often. The first time the doll’s head came off; Elle Bea could not be consoled, even after I put the head back on, she was still crying for a little bit, now the head comes off and she calmly walks over to me, hands be the doll and just says ‘Daddy’ she has had practice turning her problems over to her father because she knows that he can fix it. 

The bible says

Matthew 18:3-5New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

3 and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

We ought to spend more time handing over our broken things to our Heavenly Father, he has the know-how to put things back together. That is why I appreciate some of the traditional  Gospel songs, they tell us we can’t make it on our own.

Jesus, keep me near the cross,
There a precious fountain—
Free to all, a healing stream—
Flows from Calv’ry’s mountain.

Refrain:
In the cross, in the cross,
Be my glory ever;
Till my raptured soul shall find
Rest beyond the river.

We need Jesus to keep us near the cross

I serve a risen Savior
  He’s in the world today.
I know that He is living,
  Whatever men may say.
I see His hand of mercy;
  I hear His voice of cheer;
And just the time I need Him
  He’s always near. He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today!
He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way.
He lives, He lives, salvation to impart!
You ask me how I know He lives?
    He lives within my heart.

Verse 1
I've had many tears and sorrows,
I've had questions for tomorrow,
there's been times I didn't know right from wrong.
But in every situation,
God gave me blessed consolation,
that my trials come to only make me strong.

Chorus
Through it all,
through it all,
I've learned to trust in Jesus,
I've learned to trust in God.

Through it all,
through it all,
I've learned to depend upon His Word.

I’m a testimony
Look at me, I'm a testimony,
I didn't make it on my own,
I'm not standing here all alone.
It is Jesus who gave me this opportunity,
look at me, I'm a testimony.

Verse:
(It's Jesus) who made me a possibility,
(nobody but Jesus), who never gave up on me.
(Jesus), who put all His trust in me,
(Jesus), found me, fixed me, and decided to use me;
look at me, I'm a testimony.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

7 even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep[a] me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.[b] 8 Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, 9 but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power[c] is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

Isaiah 40:28-31King James Version (KJV)

28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:31 But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

That is how we deal with the contradictions, we call for help, we cannot make it on our own, in out weakness God makes us strong. God keeps us putting one foot in front of the other, keeps giving us grace and mercy which are new every morning. God gives us the ability to carry on.