2023-12-10
2nd Sunday in Advent “Lights Together are Brighter”
December 10, 2023 Romans 15:4-7
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Dear brothers & sisters in Christ, Romans 15:4–7 says:
For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. (Rom 15:4–7)
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Let’s talk a little about Paul’s ideas here: ‘hope’, ‘unity’, & ‘harmony.’
Last Sunday, we pictured in our minds a certain traditional routine during the Advent season. It was about going out to a tree farm, or into the woods, to choose a pine tree, putting it in the stand, positioning it just right, admiring its natural view & aroma, & then putting on the lights.
Putting on the lights sounds like a simple step; but it isn’t, is it. How do you do it =
do you go round & round the tree, or do you go back & forth, leaving less lights for the wall-side? Either way, it is not simple to get the lights even on the first try; you end up with too many on top & too few on the bottom, or gaps in the middle. But, you keep moving strands around until it looks balanced. Then you can finally let out that sigh & enjoy the sight.
From experience, I think it’s easier to get things even when you have more lights rather than less. And of course, more lights means more brightness for the whole tree. A well-lit Christmas tree will bring more joy to a darkened room than does a single light by itself. One little light on a ‘charlie brown’ tree is pretty sad; but a single light – joined by hundreds more brings a brilliant glow that fills the room. And if you look at the face of the person entering that room, you’ll see that their mouth opens – as a sign of delight.
Last week, we used Paul’s words from Romans 13 to think about a certain routine as we prepare for Christ, the light of the world, to return. He said: we ‘cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.’ The armor of light is Christ himself, our living Savior & Teacher; so those words encourage us to prepare for His Day with a life that has our faith shining in daily motion. In todays verses, Paul says that we live in unity in the Scriptures, we glorify God with one voice, & we welcome others like we have been welcomed.
WHY is Paul talking about these things here in Romans 15?
Because the Christians in Rome were struggling with various quarrels over differing opinions. For example, there were those who believed they could eat any foods, while others believed they should eat only vegetables. Some wanted to observe the 7th-day-sabbath while others considered any day a proper worship day. Some wanted to keep the Jewish festivals, while others considered those festivals completed now in Christ. Paul knew it was important for him to settle these disputes, and instruct them in how to come together, receive & welcome one another. Because only together would their Light in Christ shine brighter.
Many lights together bring a proper glory to God, for God is not divided; & there is just one Messiah & Savior for all believers in His Church. The Son of God is our unity in hope thru His one sacrificial life, death & resurrection. God’s people are each single lights; and God loves, forgives, & saves each one. That’s a good message. But all those singles shining together is also a good message that the whole world can see even better as they display the one Light of the world.
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In Romans 15, Paul begins with a good point for all of us. Our hope has its solid foundation in everything that was written in the Old Testament. He says, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that thru endurance and thru the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”(v 4). By ‘scripture’ here, he’s referring to the OT. We admit that the OT can be difficult to understand – with its ancient cultures & mysterious prophecies, with its ceremonial laws, and God’s particular focus on the one nation of Israel. But we can’t ignore those Scriptures, for they proclaim the foundation of our hope in the character & promise of God.
Without this foundational hope, our light-in-Christ is like a little bulb disconnected from its power source. We can say that we hope in Jesus, but exactly who is this man Jesus – that we should have hope in Him? He has a history long before being a little baby born in a stable in Bethlehem. He is the One who visited Abraham to cause him to be the father of our faith; Jesus is the Word coming to Moses from the burning bush; He is the Lord who went before Israel as the pillar of cloud & fire to lead them into the Promised Land. And the land of Canaan became the ‘promised land’ only because it would be there that the Savior promised to Adam & Eve, & to all fallen mankind, would be born = in a lowly stable in the city of David.
If Our light of hope in Christ is unplugged from the historic power source of those promises fulfilled, then we find ourselves in the dark, trying to find hope in someone named Jesus who was a nice guy, who died a horrible death, & later people couldn’t find His body. But our hope is much more than that. “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that thru endurance and thru the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” Only with this foundation can we stand on the hope that is in the very kingdom of heaven that the Eternal Son has brought to us. He brought God’s grace & forgiveness, with the promise of life everlasting. This is the hope that unites us together, even when we struggle with some differences in living this life of faith together.
In the OT we see God’s holiness & Law with His people, which defines for us right & wrong; it teaches us to fear & honor God, and it leads us to live in His right ways. In the OT we also see God’s patience with sinners, just like ourselves; we are convinced of His forgiveness for those who returned to Him, to honor & obey Him. That forgiveness was applied thru ‘blood sacrifices’, which foreshadowed the blood of the coming Lamb of God.
In other words, in the OT, we see both ‘Law’ and ‘Gospel’. In those Scriptures we see a God who is not to be trifled with or ignored, and a God who shows mercy to the humble, and who restores His promises to those who trust Him above all things. ‘For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction; to give us courage & endurance & hope in the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.’
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In the OT we see models of faith in people, such as Jeremiah. What instruction does his life give for our faith & hope? Jeremiah’s life can be summed up with one word: rejection. And yet, that rejection could not destroy his hope, and that’s a valuable lesson for us. Jeremiah was a preacher sent to prepare God’s people for when Babylon would come to destroy Jerusalem & the temple, and to take the people of Judah captive. Because the people didn’t want to hear that message, they rejected everything Jeremiah preached.
None of us likes to have people criticize & reject us because of something we say & believe. As a pastor, I can’t imagine preaching all my life and receiving nothing but negative criticism Sunday after Sunday & year after year = who could endure it? Nevertheless, by the Spirit, Jeremiah endured and kept proclaiming God’s truth.
Since the people rejected him, false prophets sprang up to preach what the people wanted to hear; & that was more pressure on Jeremiah. Jeremiah also endured the physical persecution of beatings, imprisonment, & even being dropped into a muddy cistern. In spite of all the persecution & rejection, Jeremiah was still able to write, in Lamentations 3, ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him’ ” “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.” (Lam 3:22–24).
Jeremiah knew that if God is your source of strength, you have the right hope – with a solid foundation; no strife or trouble can ever take that away. That’s the kind of courage Holy Scripture gives us, in both the OT promises & in the NT fulfilment in Jesus=the Christ. It’s with that hope that we are little lights to the dark world. And when our lights are joined together, & are unified in the same hope of Christ, the good news of our Savior shines even brighter.
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To those believers in Rome, who were struggling with various quarrels over differing opinions about food, worship days, & festivals, Paul instructs them of where their true unity and harmony comes from. He says, ‘May God grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together -you may with one voice- glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.’
We confess that the sum total of all the Scriptures is Jesus Christ. We remember that the Risen Jesus walked with those Emmaus disciples, and explained how he himself was the fulfilment of Moses, the prophets, & the Psalms. How fortunate in our day the NT itself explains for us how Jesus is the focus & fulfilment of the Scripture. Now, because Jesus is one, and He is our hope that unites us to the one God, therefore, Jesus also unites us to one another. All who believe in Him and who listen to & obey His teaching are one Church.
So, in accord with Christ Jesus, and together with one voice, for what does God the Father receive glory? For His mission of mercy to the condemned world. The Father sent His only Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins; and not for ours only, says 1John.2, but for the sins of the whole world. On Easter Sunday evening, that’s how Jesus summed up the entire meaning of the OT when he entered that locked room and proclaimed ‘peace’ to his hiding disciples. In Luke 24 it says, He “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem’ ” (Lk 24:45–47).
So, our hope is in Jesus our Savior, and our unity is in the prophetic & apostolic Scripture that proclaims him, his work, his grace, and all his teachings. Whether for God’s people of the past, or the present, or the future, we have the same hope and unity. Which brings us to last part of Paul’s instruction to those believers in Rome. One thing would make their message to the world around them even brighter: harmony. They were to make every effort to address their differences in light of their one Savior & His one Scripture, and so to be in harmony with one another. He says, ‘that together you may -with one voice- glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Just as many lights on a Christmas tree are brighter together, so are the united voices & lives of many people to the glory of God. And as the many lights are joined by one strand, we too, are joined together by the One Christ. There is but one cross, one sacrificed body & one blood of redemption. Eph.4 says there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God & Father of us all…’ In 1Cor. 10 Paul also reminds us that in the Lord’s Meal there is one loaf.
In 1Cor.12 he says there is one body, altho the body is made up of many parts, it is a unit. And we are -together- the body of Christ.
Because this is true, so Paul applies their unity to their struggle for harmony. He says, “Therefore welcome one another, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” (v 7).
We know with personal experience that welcoming & harmonizing various personalities in the body of Christ is not an easy thing.
It seems to me that the person with what we call a ‘type A’ personality often gets picked on. You know, type A: competitive, organized, impatient, outspoken. But what about the other types? I’ve read that there are 4 types of personalities: ABCD. Type B is relaxed & patient, adaptable, procrastinating. Type C is an introvert, thoughtful, & does not like change. And Type D is a pessimist, anxious & unsatisfied. Each have their pros & cons. How can these different personalities ever be harmonized in a useful, functioning group? By having a higher priority than their own desires & ideas.
By having God himself prioritize their lives by His Word & Spirit; by all of them following ‘type J’, the one Savior of Bethlehem; the one King & Judge who is returning soon.
Our harmony is in Him. Our pride is not in our personality ‘type’, or in our personal holy history, or because we have avoided certain sins; none of those are reason to boast. As we are in Christ Jesus we have a harmony with all who are in Him. As Peter said in Acts 10, ‘God shows no partiality; He accepts people of every nation who fear Him and do what is right.’
And using the examples of the OT, Paul declares in Galatians 3: ‘for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, thru faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, …slave nor free, male & female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.’
And finally, the Apostle John is given a glimpse of the future, in Rev.7, and the Spirit tells him to write what he sees: ‘after this I looked, and saw a great multitude … from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, …crying out with a loud voice, ‘salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’ This is why Paul tells those quarreling believers in Rome: ‘Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.’
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When you take a trip in an airplane at night, from 30,000ft you can barely make out those little individual lights here & there; mostly what a person sees is the dark expanse between them. But as you near your destination, you can see the glow from a long way away. And before long, all those individual lights are brightly shining together == like they’re welcoming you to their city. Like the Christmas tree, strung with hundreds of lights, that welcomes you into the room with delight.
So it is with each soul with that hope of Christ. We have been united together and share the same mercies & blessings of God in the light of one Son & Savior for all. In Jesus is life, & that life is the light of men; He shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not
overcome it. ‘Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory
of God.’
Amen.