Session 43 – Romans; Romans 9-10: Mark Lanier, 10/04/26

ROM 043_Romans PODCAST_Lanier_100426
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[00:00:00] You know, one of, one of the, uh, things that I do for a living is I go around and, and speak at legal events, and there's a, a series that Case Western University Law School puts on each year. It's the Steven Kaufman lecture series on how to try lawsuits. And I was asked to give the inaugural lecture this year, and that was on Wednesday, uh, afternoon, evening, uh, at Case Western University.

And so I had said it, I would. I committed to it a long time ago and, and I was up there speaking. And y- you've got a couple hundred lawyers who generally show up to something like that, and law students and, and a few other people. And this young lady came up to me after I was done, and she said, [00:01:00] um, "I, I, I, I wanted to come hear you."

And I said, "Well, that's very kind. Tell me something about you." And she said, um, "I'm not a lawyer." She said, "I, I, I don't, I don't know lawyers." I said, "Well, what brings you here?" And she said, "I listen to you on the internet." She said, "I didn't know that you were a lawyer." And she said, "Evidently, you, you, you have a whole life I didn't know about."

And I said, "Yeah," I said, I said, "You, you get my hobby. You know, my... The, the other thing pays the bills." And, and, um, uh, but I just... It made me so thankful for our internet team. It made me so thankful for the church that gives us the cameras and the facilities to be able to put things on the internet. And, uh, to those of you who are watching, [00:02:00] I also practice law.

Okay. I'm very excited about today's message. I'm excited for a number of reasons. I have one of our daughters, uh, Rachel, who's also a lawyer, I might add, uh, uh, in from Los Angeles with her husband, Lee, our son-in-law, who's also a lawyer, I might add, and their, their s- son, Caleb, who is r- right over there and paying attention to, uh, his, uh, homework.

Yeah. Um, uh, anyway, uh, I'm delighted to have them here. Uh, we've got some more family in town that may be here that I just haven't seen yet. You may be visiting from somewhere else. I don't know. This is a tough lesson to walk into the middle of, and let me tell you why. We're studying three of the most difficult to understand passages, chapters, in the Bible, and it's, it's really...

You know, this is not John 3:16 stuff w- that's just right there for anybody of any age to really [00:03:00] get. These are things that, that you really need to kinda dig into, and one of the ways we dig into it is trying to understand the context, societal context, society, the culture, what was going on in the world in those days, so that we get a better flavor for some of the language that Paul's using and some of the ideas he's doing, he's talking about and, and we better understand what he's got.

Now, Paul is writing this letter to the churches in Rome. We know from the letter that Paul's writing from the ancient city of Corinth. Most likely it's around 57 AD that Paul's writing this. 56, 57. Now, this is not Paul's first time in Corinth. He spent a little over 18 months in Corinth earlier, around 50, 51, 52, in that time.

And we're [00:04:00] able to better date that because it's when Galilee was the, the proconsul or whatever the title was, and we've got that historically, so we're able to, to, with great confidence, date Paul's first time there. But if you went back to ancient Corinth, it was famous for a lot of reasons. It was a sea town, but it was also the home of the Isthmus Games Now think Olympics, but the Isthmus Games happened every other year in what we would now call odd number years.

So it happened in 51 AD, happened in 53 AD, happened in 55 AD, happened in 57 AD, and they were one of the four big sets of international games where people came from all over to compete. It was a [00:05:00] huge, huge deal. I've put an AI picture up there because, uh, the pictures we have that were actually taken at the time are black and white and kinda grainy.

Um, but I've modified it slightly because while they did run barefoot, they also ran naked, and I decided that that would not work for us. So I've, uh, uh, uh, figured I'd take a little bit of license and throw some clothes on them boys. But, um, they would be running. There would be a... They actually had a starting gate.

It was, uh, made of wood, and generally there would be a rope, uh, uh, s-stretched across it, and a handle would go down so, uh, the rope would fall, and then people could start running so that it was an even start. Uh, uh, uh, but I didn't add that, uh, because they're not starting here. Uh, uh, they, they, they're gonna...

Well, maybe they are. I don't know. But they're running, okay? Uh, the, the Temple of Poseidon, he was kinda [00:06:00] like, since it was a sea town, he was the, the local god of choice for the people. Uh, wasn't quite that grandiose as we've made it, but it was kinda the red-blue paint and, and, uh, overall, I think that the AI i-image generator did a good job.

Uh, to give you more flavor, the people were generally watching on the hills, on the embankments. There... The, the stadium was a nice stadium. It was not paved, obviously, but it was, it was compacted dirt. It was well te-cared for. There was a starting gate. There was a finishing line. The 200-meter race was the big race, the, the final event, and the fans would cheer from the embankments.

They didn't have, uh, seats. Now, this was a huge public event Well, we had the World Cup in Houston this year. It was a huge public event. I used to serve on the board of, [00:07:00] of, um, the, um, Harris County Sports Convention and whatever. I could never remember what all the initials stood for, but they're in charge of NRG Park.

And so I was on the board until early this year when I had to get off it because I couldn't make any of the board meetings. Um, but, uh, uh, one of the things we'd worked hard on was getting everything in shape for the World Cup. And Houston did a lot of things. We had airport renovations. We had all this hotel work that had to be done.

Hotels were primping themselves up. A lot of our tax money was being used to help the public transportation system run smoother because we wanted to show the world how great Houston was as a host city for the World Cup. If you've ever been in a city where the Olympics were going to be held, right now they're planning-- uh, Rachel and Lee live in LA, and they're already doing big work for the Olympic Games coming in LA.

They're working on [00:08:00] transportation. They're working on all sorts of issues. Well, the same would have been true for Corinth Isthmus Games. They happened every two years, and it was a big deal, and they didn't have a lot of hotel vacancy People stayed in tents. That's just the general travel protocol back in that day.

Well, do you know who was a tent maker? Paul. Paul. Paul was a tent maker, and as a tent maker, he'd have certain tools. He would work either in leather or in, uh, collicium, uh, it's, uh, uh, goat hair. And, and, and he would work in those, and he would construct tents, and people could rent the tents, people could own the tents.

He could do the repairs on the [00:09:00] tents. But his occupation was in huge demand in Corinth before all of these games because everybody's gonna need a tent Now, the competitors in these games competed not for a gold, silver, or bronze medal. They competed for a wreath. And depending upon which games you were competing in, you got a different wreath.

So if you were competing in the games of ancient Olympia, by the way, from which we get the word Olympics, you competed for an olive crown, an olive wreath. If you were competing in the games of ancient Delphi, their wreath for the champion was made of [00:10:00] laurel. Now, there were two other games of note. People could compete in the games of Nemea, and they could compete in the Isthmus Games, the games of Corinth.

And those competed generally for a wreath made of wild celery

Or for a time, pine And that time, that transition is one where it's right around the time Paul's writing, so we're not sure were they competing for the pine or the wild celery. But I'm putting my money on wild celery. Seems to be the more likely argument. Something you can talk about over lunch. So you've got these fellows who are competing every two years for a wreath of wilted celery Because I assure you [00:11:00] wild celery does not keep its form for long Especially if you don't have a refrigerator to store it in.

This is, by the way, Corinth, where Paul wrote to them. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a wilted celery wreath But we do it because we're gonna get an imperishable crown

And so you've got these Isthmus Games, you've got these runners, and you've got a prepared track. Now, can you imagine running? You have worked yourself up for this. You have trained. You're one of the expected winners 'cause you showed up at Olympia. You're, you're, you're like the guy, okay? And you're out there, and y- you're [00:12:00] running, and you're winning, and you're doing good, and somebody put a rock in the way, and you trip over the rock before the finish line.

That's bad

That's bad. So that's your setup to better understand the verses we're gonna be looking at today in the letter to the Romans. Okay? Now, to put this into the context of the letter to the Romans so far, God has said, Romans is this: There is a righteousness that we have through faith in Christ. There's a right standing.

There is a proper relationship with God that comes about through our trusting in Christ dying for us. We've got that, and it's a good thing because we goyim, we Gentiles, we who are [00:13:00] non-Jewish

are a bunch of degenerates absent Christ And then, and, and he says that. And then he says, "And you Jews, you've got the benefit of the Torah. You've got the benefit of God's holy words. But if you have that apart from Christ, you don't have what it takes to be in a right relationship with God on your own merit.

You're just not good enough." And so everybody, if God has a principle of a judge, if he's not running a kangaroo court, and he's truly gonna assess the penalties and the blessings, doesn't matter how good you are, all of you incur a penalty of death Except God has changed [00:14:00] that through the Messiah. Through the Messiah, he took on the penalty of death so that you could have a right relationship with God.

And so there's a righteousness that's found in Christ. And he then continues his letter to say, "Now, what does that mean? How does that affect the way we live?" And he walks through that, and then he starts thinking through, how might someone object to what I'm saying? And one of the clearest objections that he has to confront is, well, wait a minute.

If Jesus is the Messiah Then how come the Jews, who have been anticipating a Messiah forever and a day, don't recognize him as the Messiah? And why aren't all of the Jews crowding our churches? [00:15:00] Now, there clearly are Jews in church. Paul, Jew. Three thousand on the day of Pentecost, Jews. The entire church for almost a decade, Jews.

Nothing but Jews. But out in the Mediterranean world especially, the Gentiles are coming into the church. And it's particularly a problem in Rome, not a problem, an issue in Rome, because the Jews got sent out of Rome, that would include the Jewish Christians, for, uh, several years. And so they've come back, but, but there, there's the, the, the Jews have come back in at this point, the Jewish Christians have come back in at this point, but there's still this issue that Paul has to confront, and that is, well, all of those promises that God made to Abraham, did God fail at his word?

And Paul's been addressing that in Romans chapter 9, and the way Paul addressed it is he said, "No, first of all, God [00:16:00] called whom he called You know, the, the Jews aren't all of the offspring of Abraham. It went through Isaac, not Ishmael. And with Isaac, it went through Jacob, not Esau. And so it's always been a question of who God called.

And then beyond that, while God kept the seed alive, he did it through his mercies. Remember at the golden calf? The story of Israel is one of they are redeemed from the exodus slavery. They go out into the wilderness. While Moses is getting the Ten Commandments, they start worshiping a golden calf. God could wipe them all out.

God doesn't wipe them out. He kept the seed alive. He kept his promise. We get into the prophets. He takes someone named Lo-Ruhamah, no mercy, in-- if we translate her name, [00:17:00] and says, "I'm gonna have mercy on no mercy." And God changes the name, and God not only redeems his people, he not only sustains them through the captivity, he not only brings them back, he not only keeps his word of bringing the Messiah, he overperformed.

And he says, "I'm gonna take you and not just have mercy on you. I'm gonna make you my child. I'm gonna adopt you." So God's word never failed. We just weren't reading it right. That's what Paul's kind of indicating here. Okay, then Paul says, "Next issue." And this, by the way, is everything we've dealt with in Romans up till now.

So now fresh material. New issue. Why the unbelief among the Jews? Why the hardening, if you will, of Israel? And Paul gives [00:18:00] us two-- or answers it in two different ways. First, he gives us a human answer, looking at it as, as humans. And then he gives us a divine answer So let's look first at the human answer, and that's what we'll get to this week.

Now, I'm dealing this week with, I think, seven verses, and I wanna read all seven of them to you and with you. Then we'll get into the lesson itself. But let's take just a moment to read them together, okay? And by that I don't mean out loud, but I mean, like, you read to yourself. If you wanna read it out loud, uh, it's fine by me.

"What shall we say then?" This is his next question. What are we gonna say about this? "That the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it; that is, a [00:19:00] righteousness that is by faith. But that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law." Why?

"Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They've stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it's written: 'Behold, I'm laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame.'" Then Paul says, "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.

For I bear them witness that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the [00:20:00] righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own right relationship with God, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes."

All right? So here's how we're gonna divide this up to understand it better. I wanna talk first about the race upset. Then I wanna talk about the stone that's on the racetrack. And we'll close with the zeal, ignorance, and finish line that Paul gives us. So let's start first with the race upset. Remember, this is our Isthmus Games.

At the time Paul is writing, they're in preparation mode for Corinth. If we've got the dating right, they're preparing for the [00:21:00] Isthmus Games. He's in full work mode with his tents. It is preparation time. So he says, "What shall we say then? That the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness..." Pursue. Pursue in Greek is, uh, a word diōkō.

And diōkō can be translated to pursue, but it also means to chase, to run hard after. This isn't just like, "Hey, I'm going for that." This is like, "Ugh." It's a race word. The Gentiles who weren't in the race, they didn't chase after righteousness. They didn't chase after right standing before God or a right relationship with God, but they've attained [00:22:00] it.

And this they've attained it, kata- katalambanō is, is... Kata- katalambanō is a, a word that can be translated to overtake. Like, "I passed you." Uh, to seize. I, I got it. I won. I got this. You're ahead. You're running away. She passed him up. I got this. You're chasing after. I caught you. So the Gentiles who weren't racing, they weren't pursuing, they weren't chasing righteousness, they got it

And this is the same word that Paul used in Corinthians. "Don't you know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? Run so that you can katalambano, so that you can get it, so that you can win it. You can seize it. You can grab it. You can obtain [00:23:00] it." Same word. So the Gentiles who did not per- chase after the righteousness, they've attained it.

But, he continues, Israel, who did chase after it, Israel who did pursue it, who did run hard after this, they ran after a law That would lead to a right relationship with God. But they never succeeded in reaching that law. And that word reaching, uh, phano is, is, uh, an idea of arriving at. Um, they, they never got there.

Uh, it shouldn't say to, to arrive at, it should just say to arrive at, to reach . These are racing [00:24:00] verbs that Paul is using Paul's saying, "Look, they ran hard. They couldn't overtake. They arrive at, they reach." What Paul has done here in these verses is put Israel and the nations, the ethnoi, the goyim, put them into the race on a track And Paul says there's a scandal here There's a pun here that Charles and some of the Greek speakers will get because scandal actually comes from a Greek word that Paul's using.

But I just mean it scandal right now. There's a scandal here. I mean, look at the scandal. If you understand the race analogy, look at this. What shall we say then? Gentiles who didn't pursue, who didn't chase, who didn't run after righteousness, they [00:25:00] got it They weren't cha- they weren't even in the race. I got you a good AI image of what Paul's saying.

You ready?

Paul says, "How does this guy get it? Why are you giving him the wreath? He's just been up there eating hotdogs the whole time." And by the way, my little AI pun here, he's wearing a Nike jersey. Niké, Nike is the way we spell it and say it now, but Niké, same spelling basically in the Greek, means victory. How does hotdog face get a, get a victory?

What's this? You mean to tell me the guy who never entered the race, who never trained, who never got in the starting blocks, who spent the [00:26:00] whole race in the stands eating hotdogs is gonna get the crown? That's a scandal.

And don't you know you have some ultra-or-orthodox Hasidic Jews who are really kind of offended that these Greeks get in a right relationship to God when just last week they were doing orgies to Bacchus That's a scandal!

But Paul's already made the point, God's mercy isn't owed. Nobody gets it because they are deserving of it. God has said, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." It does not depend upon human will or exertion. And the word Paul used for exertion back then, [00:27:00] I saved this for now, but in Romans 9:16, trekontos, treko.

We get the word trek from it. It's running

Paul's already been using running verbs in this passage of Romans 9. It doesn't depend on human will or human running. It depends on God and his mercy. So Paul says, scandal, what are we gonna say? The Gentiles who weren't even in the race, they get the crown? The runner gets the crown? Yes, because the crown is a right-standing relationship with God that comes by faith It comes by faith.

Now that's scandalous gets bigger in the next verse. [00:28:00] Because Paul then says, "But Israel"

Who pursued, same verb, they ran, who pursued dioko the law. Oops, I don't wanna put it... I didn't have it there. Hold on. They pursued, same verb, dioko, a law that would lead to righteousness, did not succeed in reaching... What are these last two words? Did not succeed in reaching that law

Israel who pursued a law that would lead to a right standing with God did not succeed in reaching the law That's not what we would expect Paul to say. Did he have a mind glitch while he was dictating? Shouldn't he have said [00:29:00] righteousness? And he's using that same word arrive at, reach But he says that law.

I mean, that's a big question. What does he mean? Did not succeed in reaching that law. Okay, sneak peek. Assuming we get to it, verse 10:4, "Christ is the end of the law." He's the finish line for everyone, for, for righteousness to everyone who has faith So Paul, what shall we say? Gentiles who didn't pursue righteousness, right standing with God, they've attained it.

A righteousness that's by faith. But Israel, who was in the race, pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, did not succeed in reaching that law. It's like they never crossed the finish line. They're still running. Why? Well, [00:30:00] to get to that, we need to go to the next point. So that's the race upset.

That's the scandal. That's the, that's you and me in the stands getting the award. Okay? But there's something even more provocative in what Paul writes, and that's concerning the stone that's on the track

Why? Why didn't Israel get it?

Paul says because they didn't pursue it by faith

Because they've been trying real hard by the law, but they did it as if based on works. And in that way, they've stumbled over that tripping rock They ran the race, but they tripped

Now Paul here has [00:31:00] already made clear he's got tons of Jews reading this with him. He's not talking about those Jewish people who have accepted the Jesus as the Messiah. He's just trying to say, you know, what about those that haven't yet? What do we do about that? He says, "First, we try and understand the problem."

Th- there are, y- you know, if, if I were-- I had dinner with a Jewish friend of mine in Cleveland, um, Wednesday night after the Case Western thing, and he said to me, c- 'cause he teaches at synagogue and, and he knows I teach at church and, and we, we were talking, y- the, the Jewish high holy days have just finished and, and, uh, we're, we were in Sukkot at the time and, and so we were talking through this, uh, stuff, and he said, "You know, if I was gonna reduce Judaism down to one central tenet, it's that we try to do good works."

And I thought that's really [00:32:00] appropriate. They study God's law to try and do good works, and some of the best people I know are Jewish people who care deeply about trying to do right and trying to do good. Now, th- you're gonna have extremes in everything. Just like you can go to a church and you can find people who are wonderful Christian people, you can also find people there that frankly, I don't want people to know they go to church with me

And so, so I, I, I, you know, we're, we're talking here in generalities But Paul says they, they, they didn't pursue it by faith, but they just thought this was a-- They're just trying to do the works of God, which is admirable, a commendable thing. But i- they run the risk of tripping over that rock And God makes this point in Isaiah, and Paul quotes Isaiah.

It's written, [00:33:00] "I am laying in Zion a tripping rock, a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense. And whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame." Now, I put this slide up earlier. Why the unbelief? Why the hardening of Israel? The human answer, because they didn't pursue it by faith. It- they didn't pursue it.

The, the, the people didn't pursue it But there's a divine answer too. And Paul puts both of these out there together. And that divine answer is, he hardens whomever he wills. See, there's a level of divine freedom. God has the ability to act as God. But there is also a recognition of human responsibility They did [00:34:00] not pursue it by faith, but as if, hos in the Greek.

He says they had the wrong focus. They were focused on the law for doing what they should be doing But they weren't focused on what the law was announcing, what the law was leading and pointing to. They did it, uh, they pursued it as if it were based on how good they do. But I'm laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and this quote out of Isaiah becomes very important because it's God putting the stone there.

You can't watch the race get run and see a stone at the finish line and somebody trips over it, and look around and say, "Well, what nimrod put that rock there?" Because God put it there God says, "Behold, I'm laying in [00:35:00] Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame."

Well now, actually what Paul did is he kinda did a rabbinic trick here. You can tell he studied to be a rabbi under Gamaliel, 'cause this is what the rabbis did. He took two different passages on, in Isaiah and married them up. In fact, what he did is he took one Isaiah passage and he cut it in half, and he inserted another one in the middle.

Very typical. But if you're trying to read this in your Bibles, you'll say, "Well, did, is, was he drunk? I mean, where did he miss this?" No, this is a rabbinic thing. "Behold, I'm the one who's laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone of a sure foundation. Whoever believes will not be in haste."

Paul took that and put it into his verse. He quoted Isaiah 28:16 and put it up there, but he stuck [00:36:00] into the middle Isaiah 8:14, "And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel." I got an email from someone saying, "Please make sure that this is talking about individuals."

He's talking about the houses of Israel. All of these verses, he's talking about the groups of people. It will become... Now, the groups of people are made up of individuals. That doesn't mean individuals aren't a part of this. I'm not, I'm not running from that. But you've got to accept what Paul's writing here for what it says.

"He will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem." He takes that stone of offense and rock of stumbling and sticks it in the middle of his verse. So he's got one stone that does two functions And God is the one who put the stone on the running track.

Who put it there? [00:37:00] God did. As it is written, I am laying. Behold, he do in the Greek means, hey, look it. Pay attention. Pay attention. I Am laying in Zion. But here, pay attention, rock in the Greek ordering, in Zion. So we've got it. We've got the quotation. The Lord of Hosts, he will become a sanctuary, a stone of offense, a rock of stumbling.

And look at this. Isaiah, that Paul quotes, is talking about God, Yahweh The Lord God, Jehovah, God the f- the, the, the God of, of Moses on Sinai. Behold, he will become, the Lord of hosts will become a [00:38:00] sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling. But for Paul, that application of the Lord God is actually also an application of Christ because Christ is the Lord God.

Behold, as it's written, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling- And a rock of offense, which is scandal in the Greek. Scandalous So now we've got the stone on the track as well as the race upset. But we need to get to the zeal, ignorance, and the finish, which continues this train of thought, though we chop it off and call it Romans 10.

Very interesting here. Look at what Paul says: "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for [00:39:00] them," the unbelieving Jews, "is that they may be saved." That they may be healed. That they may be brought into the right relationship

This is the same Paul that just wrote all of that stuff about God's choices and God's sovereignty But it's Paul praying for salvation for these folks. Paul prays. The sovereignty of God does not stop Paul from interceding because Paul clearly recognizes that it makes a difference I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God By the way, do you know the Greek word for zeal?

Zeal[00:40:00]

Z, long E, L Zeal. They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge They have a zeal for God, they just don't understand yet. Yet. And I keep saying that because Paul's gonna end all of this whole stuff like chapter and a half later by saying, "God's bringing in the Jews. God's not abandoning the Jews.

Don't think God's abandoning the Jews." So I have to say yet in this. I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Now zeal, that, I have a zeal for driving. I think I cut three of you off on the way to church this morning. Because I was going down Cypress Wood [00:41:00] with zeal

M- my right foot is a zealous foot And it marries up to that oblong gas pedal as an expression of my zeal. But I wanna tell you something. Zeal needs to be accompanied with knowledge. Because you can floor the gas pedal, but if you've got an upside down map, all it's gonna do is get you lost faster

That's, that's what it's gonna do. I mean, hey, I may be going the wrong way, but I am going fast. I may be headed to, to, to Loserville, but I'll beat you there

I mean, this is coming from Paul who understood zeal that's not informed. [00:42:00] I mean, I can just see Paul when he's dictating the letter to the Philippians. He's pacing. He's doing the dictation. He says, "Show them my resume." And he does it He does it in Philippians 3. He says, "Uh, tell them about on my resume my qualifications.

Tell them I was circumcised on the eighth day." That's better than all you women

All you latecomers whose parents weren't paying attention to the calendar, I'm of the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin's 2,000 years earlier. He said, "I can trace my lineage all the way back." I've gotten on that ancestry.com. I wanted to try and get myself back to, like, Benjamin. I can't. I'm stumped right now. I got back to the late 1500s, though, [00:43:00] where my great great great great great great great great great great great great granddad played the flute in King Arthur's court.

Now, why he had to play the flute and bring that upon the family, I don't know. But at least it wasn't an accordion. Tribe of Benjamin, my resume, man, I got it. I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews. That means I can still speak the language. I can still read Torah. I was, uh, at NYU. Uh, I had to speak at NYU Law School on Friday, and as I'm walking in, there's this big, uh, truck announcing, a, a Jewish Messiah, uh, that, that's, uh, the Messiah's come, Hamashiach, the Messiah.

And, uh, uh, and it's got, like, a hotline for you to call if you wanna have your questions answered about Judaism and the Messiah. And, uh, it says on the big truck, says, uh, you know, "Call 24/6"-[00:44:00]

I just thought it was kind of funny. Because you don't call on the Shabbat, okay? No, no, no, no, no, don't use the phone on Sabbath. Call 24/6, it's manned. That phone is manned 24/6, but nobody's working on the Sabbath. Thought that was pretty good. But, uh, yeah, Hebrew of Hebrews. Guy came up to me on the street and, and he's in Hasidic garb.

Lee, you'd like this. He's in Hasidic garb. He comes up to me and he says, "Are you Jewish?" And I looked at him and I said, uh, "Shabbat shalom." Uh, said, "No, I'm, I'm Goy." He looked at me, he says, "Oh." And I said, "I know what you're thinking. What's a nice Goy like me standing by a truck like this for?" But I said, uh...

He, like, he's kind of nervous about me then. Paul's, Paul's in on the Hebrew. He's a Hebrew of Hebrews. He's a Pharisee. That's the strictest bunch of the Hebrews. And then know what Paul says on his resume? "As to [00:45:00] zeal." I was a persecutor of the church. I was so zealous for God that I was responsible for the stoning of Stephen.

I was so zealous for God that I was throwing Christians into jail. I was so zealous for God that I was trying to find any Jew who had accepted Jesus as Messiah and ruined them Zeal is a good thing, but it needs to be informed. He says, "I was, man, I was following the law as to righteousness under the law.

I, I was doing it." Paul says, "I bear them witness. They have a zeal for God." And Paul can bear them witness 'cause he was one of them. But it's not according to knowledge because they're ignorant of, they're ignorant of the righteousness of God, the right standing before God, the not guilty, the, the, the all that's involved in, in having people [00:46:00] right before God, all of the righteousness of, that comes from standing in a right relationship with God.

They're ignorant. They don't know it. That's their, their agnosis. They, they are unknowing

And the interesting part of this is this is all part of a letter that if you go back 40 lessons ago, I said in Romans chapter 1, Paul is writing, and he has in, what we in rhetoric could call a prophesidio, a, a, a, a summary statement where the matters which I intend to discuss in this letter are briefly set forth in a methodical way that has brevity, conciseness, and completeness, where I don't have any unnecessary words.

I'm just gonna give it to you net-net, in my legal language. Just, not just the net story, the net-net story, and here it is. This is the whole letter in two verses. "I'm not ashamed of the gospel," which [00:47:00] is Paul's, the declaration of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. It doesn't shame me. That's the cross of Christ.

"I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God to save everyone who believes, the Jew first, also the Greek, because in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed." So in the gospel, in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, we have the revealing of God's right relationship with humanity.

It's all there. It's revealed from faith for faith. The righteous, the ones in right standing with God will live by faith. That's in the Hebrew Bible And then he says it again in Romans chapter 3. He said, "But now the righteousness of God, the right standing with God, has been manifested apart from the law, [00:48:00] even though the law and the prophets bear witness to it."

The right standing with God, the right relationship, is through faith in Christ Jesus for all who believe. So it makes sense in this same letter that in Romans 10, Paul will say they're ignorant of this righteousness of God, which comes from faith in Christ, in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

That's the right standing with God. That's the right relationship with God. So they're ignorant of that. Not ignorant in a negative sense, just they don't understand it. They don't get it, like Paul. And they're seeking to do, establish their own. They're trying hard to do everything they can, but in doing that, they're not submitting to what God's calling them to because Christ is the end of the law

For righteousness to everyone who believes [00:49:00] I think Christ is the finish line, is the way this needs to be read. Now, there's still a debate over what Paul means here, and you've got great theologians. I have great theologian friends who read this differently. Some think Paul means that it's the termination of the law, that the law no longer applies to us.

Some think-- Some read it as the goal. I tend to see this as the goal. It's the point of the law. Paul says it in Galatians. The point of the law, the law serves as our pedagogy in, in relat- in, in Galatians, the, the tutor, the, the one who taught us our manners, who took us to Christ, who led us to Christ.

That's the, the, the goal. The... I, I... In, in my mind, if I go back to the Isthmus Games analogy, you know, they get in the, the heistplex, the, the starting gates. [00:50:00] They're gonna run the 200-meter race, and they run around the oval track, but they don't know where the finish line is, so they just keep running and running and running and running.

Paul says, "Man, I admire their zeal." But there's a finish line, and it's Christ. Christ is the termination and the end Makes sense? Okay, that's, that's that little part of Romans. Now we still got a lot to go

Um, one of the, the emails I got was, uh, a request, uh, came in last night, "Mark, please make sure and tell everybody this is talking about the individual in this verse." Like that, that's us trying to take our theology and read into it what we think it already says. What Paul's doing here is he's answering a question in context.

It's something very different [00:51:00] Now that doesn't mean we can't take it and try and apply it to the questions we have today. We certainly can. But, but please, please, let's not be people who have an opinion. "I believe this is what the Bible says, and I'm gonna go back to this scripture, and I'm gonna read it and explain how that says what I think it says."

We never wanna be those people. We wanna be the people who say, "Okay, let me try really, really hard to set aside what I already think it says, and let me read it afresh in context and try to understand all of the things that might be going on here, and then try to paint a good picture." And then from that, we can understand how it affects us, or as I like to call it, points for home Point for home number one Uh, you can quit running around in circles and just stand on [00:52:00] Yeshua Hamashiach, Jesus the Messiah

It is a worthy goal To wanna be in a right relationship with God I was talking to our son on Friday, and he said, um You know, if people accept that there is a God And they look at the universe, which clearly is designed, clearly is designed in a way that humanity is kind of the pinnacle. Whether you want it to be evolution in the way it unfolded or just a declaration of God, uh, we are...

I-- this whole universe is wired for us [00:53:00] to exist, to exist in a conscious way. If there is a God who set all of this up, are we not silly to think that such a God would be interested in us? But how equally silly is it that we would not be interested in such a God and want to be in a relationship with Him?

I teach lawyers every summer how to try cases the way we try cases. We had about 1,200 people show up this summer, and for two days, I teach them. I speak 22 hours over two and a half days

But I add an extra hour on Thursday, and I tell people, "You get your continuing legal education credit for the 22 hours that I teach, but I can't get you credit for it. But if you wanna [00:54:00] come 7:30 instead of 8:30 on Thursday morning for one hour, I'll give you Shipley's Donuts, which are the best ones in the world."

"And I'll tell you what I really believe to be the secret to my success. But be warned, it's a faith talk." Because any success I've had in life has come from the fact that I am in a relationship with the divine one that is based upon what he's done for me, not based upon how I've earned it. That's, that's, that is the basis for all of us We should never, ever, ever think that our relationship with God is rooted in what we have earned.

It is rooted on our trust [00:55:00] that Christ has made us right with God by his death. And through his resurrection, we are resurrected into a new life. Point for home number two

Zeal does not replace knowing God You can have all the zeal in the world. You can, you-- I, I, I have friends who are really better people morally and ethically than I am But it doesn't take the place of Jesus Christ standing and interceding and paying the price for everyone's imperfections. I'm leading a reading group right now in C.S.

Lewis on Monday nights at St. John's Law School in New York. Um And C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity [00:56:00] is what we're reading right now. Um, C.S. Lewis says, "You can take the best of the best of the best of the best, but they're not good enough." And if anyone thinks that they are, they've stumbled over humility.

It's like the guy who got the-- went to church one Sunday and was given a box. The church leaders came up and said, "We wanna recognize you. You've, you, you've got humility, and we just love it, and so we've got... Here's your humility award." And it was this gorgeous humility pin

Next Sunday, he wore it, and as soon as the church leader saw it said, "Oh, you have to give that back."

Zeal doesn't replace knowing God. [00:57:00] Being ignorant of the right standing of God, seeking to establish their own, they didn't submit to God's righteousness, Christ. Point for home three: pray like Paul. "My heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved."

Pastor Jarrett talked this morning, and he's spoken before about praying for his brother for 17 years to know the Lord

Okay, here's your lunch topic. How you running your race? Something to talk about. Let me bless you, and we'll, we'll call it a day. Lord, in the name of Jesus, we pause and say thank you for who you are. Thank you for what you've done in Christ. We pray that we, we won't lose our zeal, Lord, but that our zeal will be expanded by the joy of knowing you [00:58:00] better, of resting in the intercession of Christ, the all-sufficient intercession of Christ, through whom we pray.

Amen.