Romans 9

Romans 9:1-5

THE PASSION OF A PATRIOT SERMON. Romans 9:1-5; Romans 9:30-33. THE Scripture read in your hearing, a portion of which is selected as the text, does not suggest the more common Thanksgiving discourse; nor do I desire to follow the justifiable custom of giving this hour to a cataloging of the year’s material blessings as the ground of our thanksgiving. If one investigates the origin of the American Thanksgiving Proclamation he will discover that on October 30, 1777, shortly after Congress had received the news of the brilliant victory of Gates at Saratoga, and the surrender of Burgoyne’s army, Henry Laurens, as President of Congress, Samuel Adams, of Massachusetts, and General Roberdeau, of Pennsylvania, were appointed a committee to prepare a Proclamation of Thanksgiving.This historic document was drawn up by Richard Henry Lee, the very man who, a year previous in Congress, had moved that “These thirteen colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free and independent states”. As a writer says, “It is a model of excellent English”, but the thing that impressed me when reading it a few days since was the thorough-going Christian sentiment pulsing in it all; and the evident conviction on the part of those who framed it that material blessing, while an occasion of gratitude, was yet of secondary importance when compared with God’s providential dealings in what John Watson would term “the cure of souls”. When once they had expressed their gratitude for a “Superintending Providence”, the fruits of which were “temporal bounties”, “the successful prosecution of a just and necessary war”, and the “signal victories which had crowned our armies”, they then called upon the people to “unite in solemn thanksgiving and praise”, urging them to a “consecration of service of this great Benefactor,” attended by “a penitent confession of sins” and an “earnest supplication in the Name of Jesus Christ that the remembrance of iniquities might be blotted out.” They concluded with the hope that the same God might prosper the trade and manufacturing of the people who labored, and the husbandman, that the land might yield its increase; but they followed that with the expression of the more intense desire that the schools of education, so necessary for the culturing of the people in the principles of true liberty and piety, and the means of religion appointed for the promotion and enlargement of all that kingdom which consists of peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, might be increasingly the common lot.In other words, it was the unequivocal voice of Christian patriots with an emphasis upon the Christian. In that early document there was no apology for the tribute paid to the Deity of Jesus Christ; no compromise in the language that acknowledged that men were sinful and in sore need of forgiveness and a blotting out of iniquities.A sentiment wondrously akin to that is found in the language of this morning’s text, and I believe that there could be no more profitable expenditure of this goodly hour, big with blessings of the past, and ready to be delivered of future good, than to interpret to this audience the passion of the Christian patriot—even Paul.As expressed by him it involves The Pain of Christianity, the Patriotism of Christianity, and The Problems of Christianity.THE PAIN OF “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, “That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart” (Romans 9:1-2), Conscience is not a modern mental accomplishment; nor is it the latest evolution in what some would have us believe to be developing man; nor even a recent finding of an adequate expression to compass a new experience. It is an old word, and in its very age there is a suggestion of its excellence. The sun is an ancient term, as are the moon, and stars, and these are likely to abide so long as the answering heavens hold these luminaries; and so long as there is with man that faculty which distinguishes between right and wrong, the word “conscience” will claim part in our speech and be reckoned with in our experience.The Christian conscience, however, has its distinguishing feature—pain.It is the pain of an aroused conscience. Consciousness of evil may be well-nigh universal. As Henry Van Dyke says, “There is a mysterious unrest, a vague trouble, a nameless haunting distress with man’s consciousness, suggesting that he belongs to another world from that which is ruled over by mere necessity”, and the moment in which, by the power of God’s truth, the soul is quickened that unrest increases, that trouble grows, that haunting distress enlarges, and the conviction of personal sin is the result, against which a man no sooner finds his peace that the same travail of soul is switched into concern for the other fellow, under condemnation by the transgression of the Law, and doomed “except he repent”. Van Dyke reminds us, therefore, that “the sense of sin is by no means a hopeless thing; it is an evidence of life in its very pain, of enlightenment in its very shame, of nearness to God in its very humiliation before Him”.One of the dangers of this hour to that Christianity which has made our own blessed land possible, as well as actual, is the plethoric prosperity which always tempts even good men to forget the condition of their fellows.

It was the successful Scribe, and the eminently prosperous Pharisee who walked with high head and averted face past the wounded man on the way to Jericho, and doubtless justified the conduct by saying, “Why should I mar my peace by seeing unpleasant things? Why retard my progress simply because another has been unfortunate enough to fall into robbers’ hands?

Why miss my important appointment in order to make a little more comfortable a dying stranger?”What was the interpretation of the “Layman’s Movement”, and the suggestion of the phrase, “Men and Religion Forward Movement”? It was the effort of certain leaders among us to get the great prospered people of our churches to stay their busy feet a little from the call of commercialism in the interests of the bruised and bleeding, and lower their aspiring eyes that they might stretch out their conquering hands to humane and helpful work, and draw on their prospered purses in the expressions of pity and for the redemption of the dying.But the pain of the Christian conscience is expressed by a second characteristic:It is the pain of an enlightened conscience. The Apostle Paul says, “I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost”. The conscience of the natural man is not a sufficient moral mentor; it must first be converted and then instructed by the Holy Spirit. Carnegie Simpson in “The Fact of Christ”, effectively argues that neither “Nature,” with her “baffling and brutal enigmas”, nor yet “history”, with her “dubious murmur of voices;” nor yet “conscience” “apart from the Law of the Lord”, is adequate to “satisfy the desires of faith.” That is only another way of declaring what the great Apostle affirmed in his Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 9:8-14):“The way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest while as the first tabernacle was yet standing: “Which was a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience; “Which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation. “But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own Blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. “For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: “How much more shall the Blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God”? And when once that purging is accomplished the man of enlightened conscience turns his thought to his fellows, and like the great Master asks not to be ministered unto but to minister, yea even to give His life a ransom for many.There are many of us who will not soon forget the appeal in the “Sky Pilot” to which Ralph Connor once called attention in his plea with his brethren to engage in that personal work upon which our modern evangelism has laid special emphasis. Connor said, “If you brethren have gotten to God, go after your man! Go after him and get him. Go after him and grip him. In some way get a hook into him and stay with it.” What does that mean? It means that back of the plan and method, back of the splendid machinery and organization, there must come the great pulsing passion to help men, the great frenzy—the great madness, if you please, that seized upon the Apostle Paul, that thrust him out into the Lord’s work for saving men from sin by bringing them, leading them, dragging them to the Christ.

And when the Pilot was reading one night to Bill and the crowd about him, Bill seemed to be serious, and he came upon the words, “I could wish myself accursed for my brethren’s sake”. “What does that mean?” said the Pilot. They thought for some moments and then Bill said, “Why, it means to go to hell for ‘em.” “You must not be shocked”, added Connor, “that is exactly the meaning of the word, ‘I could wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethren’s sake’.” Bill put it right.

The passion that sends a man to hell for another, the passion that sends a man to any kind of death for him, that is a saving passion, and that is the Christian’s passion.It is associated with the burdened spirit. “I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart”. Query —Has the temporal prosperity, sweeping across America from sea to sea and from Canada to the Gulf, a prosperity that has given us beautiful homes, the modern garage, a retinue of servants, and a success that has enabled not a few but a great crowd to count their possessions in terms of millions, and well-nigh the majority to count theirs in those of thousands, tempted us to slip from beneath the pain of the Christian passion, so that we no longer lose sleep because some of our fellows are in sin and others are in awful sorrow and others are dying; so that prayer is now an exercise in elegant English, and no longer a cry of anguish; so that evangelism is now an organized hunting party, giving itself to two weeks of spiritual sport, instead of fathers and mothers and friends going forth to the desperate undertaking of finding the child loved better than life, yet lost in the great world-forests of sin? The great Theodore Cuyler, writing concerning the changes which had come over the evangelical ministry of America in the thirty or forty years preceding, declaring that impassioned preaching had passed, but deplored far more the fact that agonizing prayer was now unknown. What is this but a confession? The burden Paul knew is no longer shouldered, and the acknowledgment of Christianity is being relieved of its pain; which is only another way of declaring that it is losing its passion.Apart from passion there is no patriotism; but the language of Paul, properly interpreted, involves THE OP “For I could wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethren’s sake, according to the flesh”. Think of the elements that enter into such a patriotism: unselfishness, self-sacrifice, everlasting insistence.It is a patriotism of unselfishness. The “ego” has perished out of Paul’s life save as he can employ it in contribution. There was a time when he had “confidence in the flesh”, when he reminded himself of his “good stock”, of his “noble tribe”, of his burning “zeal”; but when once he found Christ he considered all those to be lost. The attainments of the past he despised as no longer worthy of parade. The spirit that characterized him when he was going near to his crown was with him through all of his accomplishments, and he was ever “ready to be offered”! Unlike the astute politician he worked not the world for his own sake, but gave an unstinted service for the world’s sake.If a man attempt to catalogue the blessings for which such a land as ours ought to be thankful, he would be compelled to name as chief of Divine favors God’s great self-offering.

It is said that a missionary family was returning after a rest in America to the work in Tabriz, Persia. They had reached the crest of a high hill; the hot plain sweeping toward the Aras river was before them; the great, bare rocky hills about, and the gray city in the distance, scorching like an oven.

It was such a dreary sight that the little girl looked into the missionary mother’s face and said, “Mamma, why did we come?” “This is not nearly so nice as America. To which God’s woman replied, “No, my child; and that is exactly why we have come.” The Christianity that seeks a self-comfort has never yet stood on Calvary heights; nor had any intelligent vision of the Cross; nor even caught the faintest breath of Jesus—the unselfish Patriot of all centuries!It is also a patriotism of self-sacrifice. “I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh”. Our moral victories in America, our spiritual supremacy, are alike dependent upon the spirit of self-sacrifice which may be engendered and maintained in the Church of God. It is now pretty generally conceded, not alone by the more thoughtful souls among us, but even by the majority, that altruism expresses at once the Christian spirit and gives to the people who exercise it the promise of surpassing greatness. I never see a man in our own churched America, trampling under his feet the ethical principles of patriotism in the interest of personal greed, without being tempted to tell him the story of a heathen that by it he might have his civilization corrected and possibly his profession of Christianity repudiated. An old Japanese man named Hamaguchi sat on his balcony looking upon the hamlet below where villagers were making preparations for a merry evening.

Suddenly an earthquake smote the land; it trembled under his feet, and, as he looked, lo, the sea was running away from the land. The people of the little village which nestled at its edge were watching the receding waves with wonderment, not realizing any danger, when the old man, springing up, said to his little grandson,“Tada, quick, light me a torch!” The child kindled a pine torch and the old man hurried to the hilltop where his own rice stacks stood ready for transportation.

One by one he lighted them. The flame shot up as if from tinder; great masses of smoke met and mingled in a cloudy whirl. Tada was terrified and kept weeping and calling, “Why?” “Why?” “Why, Grandpa?” But the old man only answered, “Let it burn, lad!” “Let it burn! I want the whole village here!” The whole village came. Mothers and children last of all drawn by concern and curiosity. “Grandfather is mad. I am afraid of him”, sobbed the child. “He set fire to his own rice. I saw him do it!” The old man only answered, “Are all the people here?” “Yes”, was the response, “we are all here.” “What made you fire this rice?” “See”, cried the old man at the top of his voice, pointing toward the great deep! “Say if I be mad.” The sea was returning. It towered like a cliff.

It coursed swifter than a kite. There was a shock heavier than thunder as the colossal wave smote the shore and bursting into foam, deluged the little village. It drew back, roaring and tearing out the land as it went. Twice, thrice, five times it struck and ebbed. Each time with lesser surges, and then it returned to its ancient bed and stayed, muttering its anger. The homes were destroyed but the people were safe, and falling at the feet of the old man they confessed his wisdom, and acknowledged their gratitude that by the destruction of his own property he should have redeemed their lives. Shall men wear the Name of Jesus Christ, be reputable members of our churches, and behave with less intelligence and humanity than shown by a heathen? God forbid!

If we have unholy traffic let it go. If we have property that will be depreciated by a righteous administration, better infinitely strike a match to the most imposing structure than get revenue from a traffic in souls.But in our second passage, verses thirty to thirty three, we have suggested at least some ofTHE OF The very first of these is the problem of a professing church. The chosen of God in Paul’s day was Israel. Concerning them he wrote,“Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might he saved. “For I bear them record that they have a seal of God, but not according to knowledge. “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:1-3). It is the old, the apostolic presentation, if you please, of the twentieth century problem. The anxiety for tomorrow ought not to be commercial! For the modern man the burning question of the next few months is not that of the presidential election; the exercise of wisdom is not even in putting one’s ear to the ground to catch the latest news from Wall Street. The lives of men do not consist in the abundance of the things which they possess. The future course of history is not dependent upon stocks and bonds; the destiny of state is not in the hands of Senators and Congressmen. Washington did not make the America of the past; nor will Coolidge make the America of the future.

Tomorrow the notables of this present hour will be no more; and the day after the world will begin to forget not only what they did, but even what they said. Influence lasts, I grant you; but personalities easily perish, and with the loss of the latter there is a decline of the former.I come then to remind you that the Christian people of America want to acknowledge no king but Jesus.

A writer says, “Some years since when I was in Paris I went into the salon and saw two pictures. One of these represented a king lying on his deathbed. He had just breathed his last and the servants, who but a moment before were engaged in heeding his slightest bequest, were now in the act of rifling his caskets. Beneath the picture was written the inscription: ‘William the Conqueror’. It might have been truer had the inscription read, ‘William the Conquered’. The other picture represented a man lying in a rocky tomb but angels were keeping watch; and to that tomb, now empty, all ages and all generations are looking, for they know that out from it He came who was the Conqueror indeed, and is the Victor evermore.”If I understand the call of the Church of Jesus Christ, it is not to any religio-political kingdom upon the earth; but it is to an attitude of expectation, looking for that coming Lord whose right it is to reign, and whose scepter shall be felt from sea to sea, and from the rivers to the ends of the earth; and it is to an engagement of faithfulness the while, as that of the loyal wife who waits the home-coming of her husband, rather than of the faithless wife who takes advantage of his absence to become the paramour and mistress of another.

A loyalty like that does not express itself in listlessness nor yet in dreamy idleness.Maltbie Babcock, once preaching in New York, declared, “Jesus Christ is everything to me. I know He can be everything to any man.

And because I know He can be everything to any man, then woe is me if I do not do everything in my power to let every man who does not know Jesus Christ share Him with me. There is no escape from this logic. If I love Jesus Christ, which means that I am loyal to Him, which means that I keep His commandments, I am in touch with everybody to the ends of the earth who needs Him, and I cannot wash my hands and say that he must excuse me from the great mission of the world”. Have you not noticed that Paul, after having expressed his desire to sacrifice himself for Israel’s sake, passes in this second text to the proposition that Gentiles shall be brought to God? Not by any righteousness which they have, but exactly upon the same ground of redemption for Israel, namely faith in that Son of God who had become a “stone of stumbling” in Zion, and a “rock of offense”; and yet upon whomsoever believeth shall not come to shame.That makes the task of the Church of God the propagation of the faith that is in Christ. The twentieth century needs a new Renaissance; and Martin Luther ought to live again to declare that “the just shall live by faith”. Christ, and Christ alone, is the answer to the twentieth century needs; and in Him is every blessing, temporal and spiritual, whether essential to the salvation of the individual, or necessary to the greatness of the nation. Years ago when the evangelical ministry, and particularly every Protestant church in the land believed and propagated this faith, even a Unitarian, Sir John Bowering, was so profoundly impressed by our strong conviction that he wrote:“In the cross of Christ I glory, Towering o’er the wrecks of time; All the light of sacred story Gathers round its head sublime. “When the woes of life overtake me, Hopes deceive and fears annoy, Never shall the Cross forsake me; Lo! it glows with peace and joy. “When the sun of bliss is beaming, Light and love upon my way, From the Cross the radiance streaming Adds new luster to the day. “Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure, By the Cross are sanctified; Peace is there that knows no measure, Joys that thro’ all time abide.” I am convinced that today, if that same ministry and those same churches turned again to the proclamation of this faith, the people who have denied Jesus as Lord would be convinced in great numbers, and the nation whose partial success has come in pure consequence of the place given to Him, would be prospered in proportion as that Name was exalted.Many of you know how Garibaldi relinquished the comforts of his home at Caprera to fight the battles of his king. The magic of his name and the fire of his patriotism wrought marvels for his country, but he refused a reward. His grateful king prepared a surprise for him. When he returned home his rough, long neglected and tangled farm had been changed into elegant grounds with lawns, gardens and shrubbery. In the place of his cottage stood a villa with every convenience. As he walked from room to room he saw a full length portrait of King Victor Immanuel which explained the mystery.

The lesson drawn by one is an appropriate appeal to the Church of God at a great Thanksgiving service. It is this, that if people would sacrifice their personal comfort that righteousness and purity might prevail in the land, they would assuredly find a transformation in their own homes, and in the state, and even in the social order itself, the explanation of all being discovered in the reproduction of the likeness of their Victor, King-Immanuel.