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. Paul
Harvey, a great radio commentator from years ago, liked to tell this Christmas
story to illustrate the incarnation of our Lord Jesus. It went something like
this. A man was blessed with a
God-fearing wife and children. He was a decent man but took no interest in
church--not even when his wife invited him to Christmas Eve services. "The children are singing." But no,
he'd stay home. Mother and children left, making their way through the falling
snow. Ah, alone! He threw another log on
the fire, made some cocoa, and settled in for a cozy time. But no sooner was he
seated than a bang rattled the picture window. "Snowballs," he thought. He raced to the window and looked. No
one. Yet no sooner did he sit down than the window rattled, again--and again.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Angrily he peered out, but he saw nothing but snow. Finally, the man bundled himself up and
trudged out. He heard the banging but couldn't see its cause. He drew closer.
Then he saw them. Sparrows! Maybe two dozen. Some were huddled beneath the
juniper bush. Others were flying up and into the window. Again and again. Aha!
They only wanted to get warm. But then he saw that some were hurt. Others lay
still; they were dead.
3.
The
man had to stop this. The birds were killing themselves. So he ran to the
juniper, waving his arms. "Stop!"
he shouted. But the more he waved and shouted, the more frenzied the birds grew.
Rather than saving them, he was only scaring them. Then the strangest thought
shot through him. If only I were a bird, I could show them the way; I wouldn't
scare them. Just then, the distant church bells began to ring out, and in a
flash he understood the mystery of the baby in the manger and what drew his
family inside that church down the street. And he sank to his knees in the
snow.
4.
It's
a fanciful story, yes. But it stirs an emotion by making us think of God's
non-threatening sign of love to sinners. Look for the baby in the manger
wearing swaddling clothes--that's God! That's your Savior. Luke 2:12—12And
this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths
and lying in a manger.” He's come
not to scare you but to attract you, wearing not a crown but diapers. How God
feels for you! How God longs to save you. Do you see what he means to you?
5. Here in Romans
16:25-27 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 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?
6. These and all of
history’s unanswered questions are, for Paul, answered in Jesus Christ. He’s
the mystery hidden for long ages past. He’s
the one glimpsed in prophetic writings.
He’s the One who has come and stands fully revealed today that all
nations might believe and obey Him. He’s
the one who has at last enabled us to sense not only the love but also the
wisdom of God. He’s the One whom God
receives glory, forever and ever. The
Old Testament didn’t 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.”
7. 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 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!
8. 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.”
9. 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.
10.
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.
11.
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.”
12.
Paul’s confidence, of
course, wasn’t 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.”
13.
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, that we
celebrate on 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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