3-17-24 Kasey Campbell: A Thousand Generations

Morning! We’re back in the book of Romans today. If you missed it, last week, we talked about not being ashamed of the gospel (or the good news of Jesus) because there is power in it. Paul comes to Rome, where honor and shame are a big deal, and preaches Jesus crucified on the cross (a criminal’s death) and preaches faith in His Name and in His resurrection. In that society, It was shameful to be weak; it was shameful to be poor, and it was shameful to be sick. It was very status-oriented. Rome sees any teaching that doesn’t make you richer, stronger, smarter, better, or more powerful as shameful. Weakness is bad. If you don’t have it all together, if you have problems, if you need a Savior, then that’s shameful. Paul is not ashamed of that message of humility, weakness, and acknowledgment of our need for Jesus. He is it as true strength, true life, true power, cloaked in humility, love and service to others. That’s why he writes to the Corinthians 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 NKJV For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.” 20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 22 For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 26 For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. 27 But A Thousand Generations | 1 God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 29 that no flesh should glory in His presence. 30 But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption— 31 that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.” The ancient Greek world was renowned for its philosophers. It was a culture that loved reasoning about the nature of things, so it was normal for people to re-examine Christianity logically. The problem was that the more they thought about it, the more the gospel Paul had brought them seemed silly. That God would decide that the Savior of the world, the Messiah, to be brutally beaten and crucified and then be brought back to life after three days in a grave became a message that was embarrassing to tell others about. In some cases, they even re-interpreted or glossed over certain elements until they either made more sense or sounded more appealing. But here Paul Paul says that when the truth of the gospel is clearly stated, it produces two opposing responses. To people who are spiritually rebellious toward Cod, it sounds to their ears like something invented by a mentally, logically, or intellectually incompetent person. To people who are seeking God in the integrity of their hearts, it is a message that reveals how powerful God is and how much He loves us. The true gospel message has the power to expose a person's deepest attitudes toward Cod. Jesus made the same point. When He said he was the Light of the world (John 3), He explained that people's reaction to Him reveals their hearts. A Thousand Generations | 2 When people see Jesus, they also see, by contrast, and conviction of the Holy Spirit, their own moral condition and are faced with their need to repent and their need for a Savior to be in a relationship with God. Also, when the resurrection of Christ is preached, people's fundamental belief or unbelief in God and His power to do miracles is exposed. So, Paul is not ashamed of the good news of Jesus Christ. It exposes our hearts and leads to salvation. Now, he will go on to say something else in verse 16 of Romans, which we’ll look at today. And what he is saying might slip by us as Bible readers in 2024, but Paul is making a very profound statement about how God keeps His promises and how much God loves you and me. God is trustworthy, and He has a plan for your life. God loves you and He invites you and me to join His family, which He wants to be ever-growing. God will keep His promises to you because He is a faithful God. And God wants you to be a carrier of His presence. He wants to fill you with His Holy Spirit so you can help bring God’s love to people, too. But these points can be very easily missed in the next part because it’s very short. So short, in fact, that we tend to fly right past it! Let’s take a look: Romans 1:16 NKJV For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. He says that the Gospel is for the Jewish person first and then for us Greeks or Gentiles. Gentiles are basically ‘other nations’ that aren’t Jewish. What’s going on here? Is God racist? Does He love people more because they’re Jewish? Do you ever feel like God loves you, but based on your reading of the Bible, He just loves you a little less than He would a Jewish person? God is not racist, He’s not sexist, He’s not ageist. The Bible says that God is love. Later Paul writes Romans 2:11 NLT For God does not show favoritism. A Thousand Generations | 3 Or, there’s no partiality with God. So what’s the deal? Why is the gospel to the Jew first? It’s because God keeps His promises to people. It’s because He keeps His promises to His family, to His kids, and to those who choose to follow Him. Deuteronomy 7:8-9 NKJV “Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; You see, when God makes a covenant or a promise where a person believes Him by faith, He never forgets it, and He always keeps His end of the bargain, forever and ever. ‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away,” Jesus said. Paul says in 2 Timothy that even if we fail, fall, and break our promise to God, He won’t ever break His to us. He says, 2 Timothy 2:13 NKJV If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself. In the Psalms, this is called ‘lovingkindness.’ the Hebrew word is hesed, meaning ‘promised love.’ Psalm 103:2-4 NKJV Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: 3 Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases, 4 Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, So when you and I choose to put our faith in Jesus and His work on the cross, we enter into a blood covenant, so to speak, where God has now promised His love to you. He has promised faithfulness to you and to your children. He has promised His grace, mercy, kindness, and favor because that is His character toward those who call upon His Name. Look at one of the promises God makes here to Abraham. Now I want you to understand something. Abraham is called the father of faith. Yes, of course, I understand that his line became the Jewish people. But you need to understand that the reason God sent the Gospel to the Jew first is because He is keeping a promise to a man who followed Him by faith! A Thousand Generations | 4 And God does not show favoritism - God also keeps His promises to us as we follow Him in faith. Let’s look at this promise: Genesis 17 1:9 NLT When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am El-Shaddai—‘God Almighty.’ Serve me faithfully and live a blameless life. 2 I will make a covenant with you, by which I will guarantee to give you countless descendants.” 3 At this, Abram fell face down on the ground. Then God said to him, 4 “This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of a multitude of nations! 5 What’s more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram. Instead, you will be called Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations. 6 I will make you extremely fruitful. Your descendants will become many nations, and kings will be among them! 7 “I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 And I will give the entire land of Canaan, where you now live as a foreigner, to you and your descendants. It will be their possession forever, and I will be their God.” 9 Then God said to Abraham, “Your responsibility is to obey the terms of the covenant. You and all your descendants have this continual responsibility. In this covenant or promise of faith, we have the responsibility of repentance and walking blamelessly (or walking by the holy spirit so we can reflect the character of God), we have belief in God that is manifested by faith in God, and we have Abram receiving the Holy Spirit (his name is changed - breath, or ‘ha’ is added), and we have Abram receiving blessings on him and his descendants by faith. And this chronological order of the gospel going ‘to the jew first and then the Greek,’ isn’t racism; it’s promised love and faithfulness! A Thousand Generations | 5 It’s a promise of God to parents for their children. It’s also a plan to reach the most people possible with the good news of Jesus. In different times and seasons of history, God has used different ways to reach people with the message of grace by faith. Strategy #1 was ‘Don’t eat the apple.’ Genesis 2:15-17 ESV The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Did Adam and Eve die when they ate the apple? Physically, no, but spiritually they did. They were separated from God. God had mercy on them and made their clothes out of animal skins and did not abandon them. But they weren’t walking with God every day anymore. It was different. They now had to call on Him in a different way that took more faith. Genesis 4:25-26 AMP Adam knew [Eve as] his wife again; and she gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, for [she said], “God has granted another child for me in place of Abel, because Cain killed him.” 26 To Seth, also, a son was born, whom he named Enosh (mortal man, mankind). At that [same] time men began to call on the name of the Lord [in worship through prayer, praise, and thanksgiving]. And we still have this problem of sin in the world. One family, Adam and Eve, they sin; they choose to do wrong. And just one generation away, we have the first murder (Cain and Able). We can’t seem to escape this sin problem. So the next plan (strategy #2), instead of simply telling people not to eat the apple or ‘not to do bad stuff,’ is a bit more extreme. The plan is to get rid of all the bad apples. That’s the flood. A Thousand Generations | 6 Genesis 6:5-8 NKJV Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah found lovingkindness from the Lord. Even though his generation was evil and wicked to the point where it made the heart of God sad - God had grace on Noah. There was one person who had faith in the Lord and so God showed His lovingkindness. But sparing Noah was also fulfilling a promise. Do you remember what it was? It was the promise of hope even in the midst of the curse of sin falling over the earth. Genesis 3:15 NKJV And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.” Now, this might not sound like a promise at first, but it’s the promise of a Savior, born as a human (seed of a woman) who will overthrow Satan and the enemy of death. It’s a prophetic declaration that One Man would come from a woman and carry out the overthrow of evil and darkness. And He did. Jesus, born of a woman, conceived by the Holy Spirit - fully God and fully man, has triumphed over all of the works of darkness and fulfilled the promises of ages that a Savior would come to make a way for the human race to be reconnected to the loving God who made them. Sparing Noah in the midst of wiping out evil was one way God fulfilled His promise. There had to be a seed of mankind still alive, or else this prophecy, this promise, wouldn’t be true. And we know what happened. God flooded the earth, and only one family was left. Unfortunately, we still have a sin problem. A Thousand Generations | 7 No more bad apples, and within a generation, evil is back. The first manifestation of the spirit of the antichrist even arises. There’s a guy named Nimrod who rises up and gets everyone to build a tower to the sky in pride and in worship of how great humans are. That’s Genesis chapters 10 and 11. But God isn’t done being faithful to humanity. His lovingkindness has not failed, and His mercy has run out, even though His heart is saddened and grieved. So new plan. This is where Abraham comes in. Strategy #3: Let’s plant an apple tree that’s resistant to rot. The apples might not go bad as quickly. God starts a family of faith. I hope you see it that way from now on. God starts a family of faith; he’s not being racist; He’s looking for a person and a people who will choose to follow Him. Love isn’t love unless it’s a choice. Abraham was a rich man’s son living in Ur of the Chaldeans. He stood to inherit all of the wealth and estate his family had. He could have very easily chosen worldly riches and status and respect that His family had built, but instead, he responded to God’s call to become a follower of the Lord. Genesis 12:1-3 NKJV Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. 2 I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing.3 I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” This final statement promises Abram that "in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed." It points beyond his own family to the entire human population. If Abram will walk with God in faith he will become part of God's redemptive plan. God is beginning a new chapter in His history of salvation and is inviting Abram and Sarai to be the first parents of a new believing nation. A Thousand Generations | 8 From them would arise a nation that would support faith in God rather than erode it, and through them and into this new nation would flow the promise of the "seed of the woman.” With Abraham, God decides to stop trying to halt the widespread moral decay and evil and instead focuses on the family. He nurtures a family descended from people of faith. Rather than wipe out the human race every time it gets bad enough, He lets ungodly nations and ungodly people follow their own downward course (within boundaries) and raise up a believing nation where He could incarnate His Son. He chose this course because it would allow Him to forgive all people who repent and accept His mercy by faith. Because of the righteousness of faith, Abraham’s family had the Holy Spirit to help them resist evil and pass their faith on to subsequent generations. From Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Jesus Christ, over 2,000 years, faith in the One True God was passed down, even if not all of the kids in the family or all of the generations were really following Him. The passing down of the seed, the mustard seed faith of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, could be made manifest in Jesus, who came and brought Strategy #4 - bring a dead apple back to life. In Jesus Christ, who is incarnated into the Jewish family of faith, all who have faith in His Name can be raised to new life in God now and be raised from the dead on the last day. Romans 8:29-30 MSG God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun. A Thousand Generations | 9 In God’s glorious gospel plan, He has shown His grace, mercy, and kindness. He’s shown the power of a kept promise; He’s shown that He does not ever fail to perform what He says He will do. He’s shown that though evil may be rampant, darkness may fall, and the enemy may steal, kill, and destroy, His promised love never departs from those who follow Him in faith. So as we read Paul’s words, Romans 1:16 NKJV For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. We can know that God is trustworthy and faithful. God keeps His promises to you, to me, and to all those who choose Him, and He will do it for over a thousand generations, even when we fail and fail. God loves you so much that He made a way for you to be in His family of faith. And it came through the Jew first, but not it’s offered to us gentiles, not because God loves one person more than another, but because He keeps His promises always and forever. 2 Corinthians 1:19-22 NLT For Jesus Christ, the Son of God, does not waver between “Yes” and “No.” He is the one whom Silas, Timothy, and I preached to you, and as God’s ultimate “Yes,” he always does what he says. 20 For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” And through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for his glory. 21 It is God who enables us, along with you, to stand firm for Christ. He has commissioned us, 22 and he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything he has promised us. A Thousand Generations | 10