The Invitation To Love: Romans 15:7-13

Speaker: David Mitchell

Passage: 15:7-13

What Christ Has Become

It’s good to be back with you. Happy Summer. We’re back in. In Romans. If you’ve been with us at Vintage, we’ve been navigating Romans for the last 18 months or so. We’re getting close to the finish line here. Romans 15, verses seven through 13 is where we are going to be this morning. 

15:7 begins this way, “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed. And moreover, that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. As it is written: ‘Therefore, I will praise You among the Gentiles; I will sing the praises of your name.’ Again, it says, ‘Rejoice you Gentiles with his people.’ And again, ‘Praise the Lord or you Gentiles, let all the peoples extol Him.’ And again, Isaiah says, ‘The root of Jesse will spring up one who will arise to rule over the nations. In Him, the Gentiles will have hope.’ May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” 

In verse eight, this passage tells us what Christ has become on behalf of the Jews and also on behalf of all of us. It says in verse eight that Christ has become a servant to the Jews. 

If we look through the whole realm of Scripture, we see a whole number of things that Christ has become for our sakes. First Corinthians chapter one says that He has become for us wisdom from God. First Corinthians five says that He has become our Passover lamb. Philippians two says that He has become obedient, even to the point of death. Hebrews four says He has become our Sabbath rest. Hebrews six says that He has become our high priest forever. Hebrews seven says that He has become the guarantee of a better covenant. 

As you look through Scripture and look at all the things that Christ has become on our behalf, you see this whole wealth of things that He has become, but Romans 15:8 begins and says He has become a servant. The King of Glory has taken on the lowest seat. It says He has become a servant of the Jews. 

If we look back at Deuteronomy 7:7, the Word comes to the people of Israel, and it says, “He has not chosen you because you are the most numerous of nations, He has not chosen you because you are the strongest of nations, for you are the least of all peoples.” 

When Romans 15, verse eight begins and says that He has become a servant to the Jews, what it is saying is He has come to the lowest people, and taken the lowest position. That is what He has become for our sake and the sake of the whole world. 

This morning, in a sense, we continue in our worship to stand in awe at what He has become. Because if we think about that strategically for a second, if we were Him, and how we might have navigated this journey, He could have come as King of the Jews because He was certainly that. He could have become the high priest of the Jews because He was also that. He could have come as God of the Jews because that is His position and that is His right. But He didn’t come in that way. He came as a servant. 

Living Out Christ’s Example

Jesus will tell His disciples that, “I came not to be served but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many.” Of all the positions that He could have taken, He takes the lowest position becoming a servant to the least of all nations. 

Deuteronomy seven goes on in verse eight and says, “It was not because you were more numerous, but because you were the fewest.” Verse eight says, “It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath He swore to your ancestors. Know, therefore, that the Lord your God, He is the faithful God keeping His covenant of love to 1000 generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments.” 

The movement of God, the position of Christ that Paul is describing in Romans 15:8, is that the King of Glory comes to the lowest of all, and that isn’t low enough. He then takes the lowest position, the position of the servant. He does all of this to keep His covenant of love to 1000 generations. 

Remember, just a few verses earlier in Romans 15:5, it says, take on the attitude, the mind of Christ towards one another. Three verses later, it shows us what His mind and His attitude is. Romans 15 is in the context that we would accept one another, just as Christ has also accepted you. Christ became a servant to the Jews. Now it is our job to say, what does it look like for me this week to take on the attitude of Christ and the mind of Christ? It means to look for those places where I might lower myself to serve not the greatest of these, but the least of these. That is the movement of Christ. 

Remember, the disciples assumed that following Him meant following Him to the throne. Really what following Him meant was following Him to the basin of water where He washed the disciples’ feet Himself. The invitation of Romans 15, first and foremost, is for us to look at the different arenas of our lives — whether in the workplace, in our families, or in our communities — this week and say, God, what does it look like for me to lower myself and to take on the lowest seat amongst the least of these? 

James will tell us He elevates the humble. God has a way of recognizing that sacrifice. We know even that, of course, in the life of Jesus, He has been exalted above all. He is the King of Glory. But first and foremost, this passage is about what it looks like to lower ourselves and to serve this week with our time, our finances, and our talents. 

The Promises Made To The Patriarchs

In Romans 15, it tells us why He did this. It says He became a servant of the Jews for two reasons. Number one, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be fulfilled or confirmed. Number two, so that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. 

First of all, the reason Christ did this — the reason He took the lowest seat amongst the lowest people — was so that the promises made to the patriarchs and the forefathers might be confirmed. This morning, I stand back and worship the fact that God makes promises and keeps promises. 

When you make a promise, you are obligating yourself to something or someone. When you make a promise, you are, in a sense, constraining yourself. If I was God, I wouldn’t constrain myself that way. Yet again, back in Deuteronomy chapter seven, it says, He did this because He loved you. And because He kept His oath and His covenant to 1000 generations. 

We have a God who not only makes promises but keeps promises. Remember that the only way that He was able to keep this promise was by Jesus, the King of Glory, becoming a servant. This was how God constrained Himself and obligated Himself to us.

When we think of these promises, Paul references them earlier in Romans. Romans 4:13 and on says it was not through the law that Abraham and His offspring received the promise. The promise comes by faith so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring. 

Hebrews seven says He is the guarantee of a better covenant. It may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring, not only to those who are of the law — that is the Jews — but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the Father to us all. 

In this passage, when Paul is saying He did this, Jesus lowered Himself so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed. He’s not taking us back to a promise made last week or earlier that day or earlier that month. He’s taking us back 4000 years to a promise that God made and is now being fulfilled and confirmed. 

In January, a lot of people will say, “I got a word for the year from God.” That’s great. Abraham got a word for 4000 years. That’s a long time. I don’t know if you’ve ever waited that length of time to see a promise fulfilled. 

When the scriptures talk about perseverance and patience in the promises of God, I think that means waiting from morning till afternoon. I think, okay I’m going to have a little bit of a rough lunch and feel awkward about things, but then it’s going to be fulfilled. 

Paul is declaring through his words that this promise is confirmed, the promise that was made 4000 years ago to the patriarch Abraham. What’s fascinating is if we go back to Genesis 15, where the promise is made to Abraham, and look at that dialogue, Abraham is speaking to God, and he says, “God, I don’t have a son. Who is going to inherit my property, my household?” He says it’s all going to go to Eliezer from Damascus.

God speaks back to him and says, “Abraham, I’m going to make you the father of many nations.” Notice, in the receipt of the promise of God, Abraham was not asking to be the father of many nations, he was just asking for one son. What is so striking for us when we look at the promises of God is that you and I, understandably so, can be so narrowly focused on our immediate needs, and yet God is expanding it and saying, this is about something far bigger than you.

Abraham is asking for the inheritance of his household. God is speaking about the inheritance of the earth. Abraham is speaking about one generation. God is speaking about a covenant of love made to 1000 generations. 

This morning, it is worth us pausing for a moment and reflecting on the promises of God. Not through a narrow, immediate sense but through a global Kingdom of God sense. Sometimes we might be asking for something that is to meet our immediate needs, and God cares deeply about those. But God will also, through that promise, multiply it to the blessing of 1000 generations. 

In Genesis 15, God enlarges the vision. Paul will say of God in Romans 4:17, “He gives life to the dead and calls into being the things that were not.” This is the kind of promise God makes. God doesn’t make these on-the-margin promises that are easy to overlook. God makes promises that we hold Him to because He Himself, by Himself, is faithful. He calls from the dead and makes things so that are not. This is what God does. 

When Jesus walked here on planet Earth, He focused on those things where He goes to the tomb and says, Lazarus, come forth. Where He goes to the bedroom and says, little girl arise. This is the kind of God that we have. These are the kind of promises that He makes. 

Romans 4:18, we’re talking about this because it says in 15:8 that Jesus or Christ became a servant to the Jews so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed, and Paul has been speaking about this to the Roman church. Romans 4:18 says this of Abraham, and we can resonate with this. He says, “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed, and so became the father of many nations just as it had been said to him, ‘so shall your offspring be.’ Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead, since he was about 100 years old, and Sarah’s womb was also dead.” 

What’s fascinating about the way God allows the story of his servants to be told is that we read the life of David, for example, and we see all these failures. Yet we read in the Scriptures that David was a man after God’s own heart. God writes a story of honor and blessing. It says of Abraham here, that Abraham against all hope, in hope believed. Yet we know that there was a moment in Abraham and Sarah’s life when they tried to make the promises of God come true all by themselves. 

Maybe this morning, when it comes to the promises of God, you find yourself in those first three verses, against all hope. And in a hopeless place, where it’s hard for us even to well up the courage to imagine that what God said might come true, we have to, in our way, return to Deuteronomy seven. It says, “I have hope, not because my circumstances suggest I should have hope. But because He is God, He is faithful. And He will keep his covenant of love to 1000 generations.” 

Paul, to this Roman Church, is declaring 4000 years later, Church, this promise that was made to Abraham — that at one point in his life, he tried to make come about all by himself — that promise is now confirmed. He is looking out at a sea of followers of Jesus, both Jews and Gentiles for the first time in human history, worshiping together in spirit and truth, something that even 50 years previously would have been deemed impossible. Here it is made possible. The promise made to Abraham was not that you would be the father of a nation, but that you would be the father of many nations. Here Paul is writing a letter to many nations and saying, do you see that that promise came true? 

What I think is so important for us to receive is that we put ourselves in the position of that Roman Church, receiving it just like we’re receiving it today. But the reality is, if you’re anything like me, I can spend a lot of time asking God that I might be the recipient of a promise. What Romans 15 is about is not that we are just recipients of a promise, but that we are the fulfillment of a promise. The church in Romans 15 is people saying, God doesn’t keep his promises. And Paul is yelling at them, you are His promise. 

When you find yourself doubting the promises of God, and you say, God, I just need to receive a promise, the first thing we need to do, according to Romans 15, is acknowledge, yes, we receive His promise. We must also realize that we are the fulfillment of His promise. It says of Jesus that He endured the cross, despising the shame, for the joy set before Him. We say, “God gives me joy.” And He says, “You are my joy.” The joy set before Him.

Second Corinthians 1:20 says, “All the promises of God find their yes in Him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for His glory.” This passage invites us to consider wherever we’re at and consider what Christ did so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed. It invites us to consider what it was like for Abraham to live day in and day out for a season of His life against all hope. 

Maybe this morning you’re having a hard time hoping against hope. Maybe you’re having a hard time feeling hopeless. Maybe this morning, you’re having a hard time understanding the scope of the promises of God. Like Abraham, the focus was on one generation and God was talking about 1000 generations. In Romans chapter 15, it says that He did this so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed and so that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. Then in Romans 15, verses 10, 11, and 12, verse 10, begins again, he said, verse 11, begins and again, he said, verse 12, begins and again, he said. That is what the fulfillment of God’s promises feels like. When God keeps His promises, it’s again and again and again to 1000 generations that promise is kept. 

This morning, I want to encourage you that if you are in that place where you feel against all hope, I want to invite you to remember, first and foremost, that you are the fulfillment of God’s promise. Also remember and say, God, I trust you that you can do it again and again and again. 

The Gentiles Might Glorify God

It says that He did this so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. We need to pause and realize the goal of Christ Jesus, in lowering Himself to the lowest of all, is not only to fulfill the promises He made but also so that you and I might glorify God for His mercy. 

If I was God, or if you were God, we would have done this so differently, right? Let’s imagine we’re political strategists for a moment. We might say, “God, you’re trying to get geopolitical influence. You want to love and serve a nation.” But the goal is that that would ultimately multiply into many nations. We’d say, “I’ve got a plan. Let’s get me elected. I have yard signs. And I have bumper stickers, which seem to work well. Bumper stickers have a proven track record of changing people’s minds.” 

That is what we would do. If we wanted to have geopolitical global influence, we would say, “How do I get to the position of the highest power?” God says the way you get geopolitical influence, the way you change not only a nation, but many nations, is you find the least of these, and you go serve them. You lower yourself. He did all of this so that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. 

God is unchangeable. God is glory all by himself. He doesn’t need me to worship Him. This doesn’t appear to be for His benefit. Yet He does all of this. He lowers himself so that in that Roman Church, but also here in this church in Fort Collins, we might glorify God for His mercy. 

Do you ever notice how worship is not about changing Him; it’s about transforming us? It’s about coming and taking our rightful place before the God who fulfills His promises again and again and again. And that is why we worship Him again and again and again and join the patriarchs in that song of worship. 

Receiving The Promises Of God

There’s a reality that we experience and this is what Paul is writing to this church about. It’s that we can resist or get frustrated or exhausted with the fulfillment of the promises of God. To Abraham, the patriarch, it was said, “You will be the father of many nations.” The truth is, they felt great about that when he was the father of one nation. But when the grace of God indeed did extend to many nations, they weren’t too thrilled about that. 

It was confusing and complicated because here they were in a church sitting next to people who, for 1000s of years, they had fought with and had conflict with. Similarly, the Gentiles are confused about this fulfillment of the promise because it does not make sense that through all the regions of the world, the gods did not take the lowest seat but took the highest seat. The gods there chose power. They chose the most numerous of nations, not the fewest of nations. 

You have these two groups who are both somewhat resisting and confused by the promises of God and by the fulfillment of the promises of God. We understand that. When the grace of God extends to us, we worship. Sometimes when the grace of God extends to others, we get frustrated. We feel like Jonah, and we want to run the other way. 

In Romans 13 or 14, Paul has to tell the Roman people that vengeance belongs to God, not you. We kind of like being the hit squad for God. We’ll say, God, send me out there to take some people out. But God’s grace is extending to 1000 generations. 

We also resist the promises of God because they can take so long — in our minds and our experience — to be fulfilled. Often, we can get so distracted by longing for more from God — which is understandable — without pausing first and realizing what God has already done. 

The invitation, then, is to say, what does it look like to step fully into those promises? We know with Abraham, against all hope, in hope he believed. He stepped into the promise, but not without resistance. We see in his life fear, doubt, and his own self-government. He had his sense of being and said, I’m not sure God is going to fulfill this promise. So I’m going to try and do it myself. 

I want to respond that if He makes the promise, He alone can fulfill the promise. We must resist the urge and the temptation to take those matters into our own hands. There are places, of course, where God calls us to take full responsibility for our own lives. But for us to step fully into those promises means to know those promises, to meditate on them, and to speak the truth of His promises over our circumstances. 

In a sense, that is what Paul is doing in his letter to the Roman Church. He is speaking the promise of God over them. He’s saying, see how He did it? See how He did it again and again and again? Maybe you’re in a circumstance right now where it’s really hard to get out of that hopeless place. Whatever I say isn’t going to help. But what will help is what He says, which is, child, I didn’t choose you because you were the most numerous or the strongest. I chose you in your weakness. I will keep my covenant of love to you and 1000 generations. 

Be Filled With Joy And Peace

Lastly, he says in verse 13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and with all peace.” We see in this passage the interconnected relationship between both joy and hope. It says that He is the God of hope. In Romans 4:18, when it says that “Abraham, against all hope,” the only way that he could move from a hopeless place to a hopeful place is by coming before the God of hope and saying, God, I need you to replace my current reality and my current circumstances with your promise and your Word. 

Romans 15:3 calls Him the God of hope. Earlier in Romans eight, Paul explains that we do not hope for what we already have. We hope for things not yet seen. Romans 8:25. But if we hope for what we do not yet have we wait for it patiently. Patiently feels great until it’s 4000 years. That feels like a bit of a stretch. 

Romans 15 says we are not only designed to have hope but we are designed to overflow with hope. Why on earth would we need to overflow? Because God knows in a community that there will be days that you are next to somebody who is empty and they need you to overflow into their lives. They need your hope when they’re hopeless. 

To overflow, I want to invite us to do three things today. Number one, to worship the reality that of all the things Christ has become, He has become a servant to the least of these. Number two is to recall the promises He has made, not only to the patriarchs 1000s of years ago but also to us. Number three is that we might glorify God for His mercy. 

Romans 5:5 says, “Hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” When you say, God, I want to overflow, how am I going to overflow? Romans five says He will pour it out. The invitation today is for us to open ourselves up and to be a container for what He has poured out so that we might overflow with hope for one another. 

Let’s stand together and pray. 

Father, God, we thank You for Your Word. Jesus Christ, we bow before You in worship this morning, that of all the things You became, You became a servant to the least of these. This morning, we come back and we remember again and again and again how You have kept Your promises to 1000 generations. 

We remember how You have fulfilled your promise. God, we come at times when we feel against all hope, and we come before You as the God of hope. We say, God, would you do it again? Would you pour out Your hope in us? We thank you for your goodness and kindness and our unity together as a church. We love You and thank You in Jesus’ name.