1.
Please pray with me. May
the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in your
sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.
Amen. The message from God’s Word
this 4th Sunday in Advent is taken from Romans 16:25-27, it’s
entitled, “God’s Mystery Revealed,” dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. The Apostle Paul loved
a good mystery and maybe you do too. Maybe
you can remember sitting in front of the television screen as a child watching
the detective trying to unravel his case to discover who committed the crime. Only to find out that you’ll have to wait
until next week to find out if he cracked the case. In our text today from Romans 16:25-27 the
Apostle Paul says, “25Now to him who is
able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus
Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for
long ages 26but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has
been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to
bring about the obedience of faith— 27to the only wise God be glory forevermore
through Jesus Christ! Amen.”
3. Here the Apostle Paul
is referring to the biblical mystery of Jesus Christ. In Scripture “mystery” is a technical
theological term. It identifies some
previously hidden or only hinted at facet of God’s eternal plan, which has only
been recently revealed. Christ, Paul
realized with wonder, is the greatest of all the mysteries of God. How could God forgive the sins of past
saints? How could God not simply declare
human beings righteous in His sight, but actually make them righteous? How could God, committed as He was to the
Jews, open wide His arms to the Gentiles too?
How could Jew and Gentile ever find common ground, enabling the race to
be drawn back together into one? How
could God’s love for all the human race be so stunningly displayed that
hardened sinners would suddenly halt, reconsider, and kneel, broken, before God?
4. These and all of
history’s unanswered questions are, for Paul, answered in Jesus Christ. He
is the mystery hidden for long ages past.
He is the one glimpsed in prophetic writings. He is the One who has come and stands fully
revealed today that all nations might believe and obey Him. He is the one who has at last enabled us to
sense not only the love but also the wisdom of God. He is the One whom God receives glory,
forever and ever. The
Old Testament did not make all things clear. But in the New Testament, the
mystery is now revealed. God in Christ has united Jew and Gentile together in
one Body. Paul also writes in Eph 3:4–6, “4When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the
mystery of Christ, 5which was not made known to the sons of men in
other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets
by the Spirit. 6This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs,
members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through
the gospel.” As St. Augustine, one
of our early Church Fathers has put it, “The
new is in the old concealed, and the old is in the new revealed.”
5. Here at the end of
Romans 16 Paul gives us a grand doxology where he wraps up his lengthy letter
to the Church at Rome. This is the whole
Epistle of Romans in a nutshell. God
strengthens us through His Gospel in Jesus Christ, through the preaching of
Christ, the mystery that was long hidden and is now broadcast through the
length and breadth of the world to all nations.
This Gospel brings about “the obedience of faith” that is, it imparts
the faith that clings to the righteousness of God so that people are rescued
from the old dead end way of living and made partakers of the living Body of
the Son of God, whom they eagerly await from heaven. And for this Gospel—this joyous good news—all
glory goes to the Father of Jesus Christ forever!
6. This doxology that Paul
uses here near the end of his letter to the Romans reflects everything Paul has
said in this New Testament Epistle. You
may recall how the book of Romans began with Paul’s assertion in Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it
is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”
7. Our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ is at the heart of Paul’s message.
Jesus is the key, the revelation that unlocks the mystery hidden for
long ages past. God’s gracious plan of
salvation has been effect since Adam and Eve—yes, even from eternity. But for a long time it looked like the
personal possession of the Jewish nation.
But, all of that changed when Jesus came to earth, completed His saving
work and commissioned His followers to proclaim the salvation to all the world. Thus, the “mystery” of God’s grace—disclosed
to Paul and proclaimed in his gospel—is that by faith in Christ as our Savior
from sin, death and the devil’s power, God’s salvation is for all people, Jew
and Gentile alike.
8. The Apostle Paul had
experienced the power of God in the gospel not only in the spiritual rebirth it
brought into his own life, but also in seeing that miracle repeated in hundreds
and thousands of lives in connection to the work the Lord had privileged him to
do. His gospel had brought the power of
God into the hearts of both Jews and Gentiles, setting up centers of Christian
worship all the way from Jerusalem to Illyricum.
9. Hence Paul is confident
that this Word will now also establish the Romans both through the written
message he is sending them and through the spoken Word when he comes to visit
them.
So confident is Paul that he could say in Romans 15:29, “I know that when I come to you, I will come
in the full measure of the blessing of Christ.”
10. Paul’s confidence, of
course, was not misplaced. For almost
2000 years now, that Word has advanced, particularly to the west—to Spain and
beyond—to the point of also having reached us and won our hearts. Moved by that gospel in general, and in
particular by Paul’s exposition of it in his magnificent Epistle to the Romans,
we too join with the apostle in saying, “To
him who is able to establish us by the gospel… to the only wise God be glory
forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.”
11. Christians can differ
honestly about many doctrines. They can
dispute about practices. But on one
thing we all agree. We all love the One
Jesus Christ whose coming into our world in the form of a little baby, which
we’ll celebrate at Christmas, explained the mystery of God’s plan, and revealed
once and for all the full extent of His mysterious, wonderful love in dying on
the cross to save each and everyone of us from our sins. Amen.
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