Sermon Tone Analysis

Houston, We Have a Problem

Failure of Mission

Failure of Mission

Astronaut Jack Swigert on Apollo 12 reportedly contacted Mission Control with phrase, “Houston, we have a problem” when their spacecraft was disabled on the way to the moon.

His actually comment was slightly less poetic, but equally calm.

The phrase denotes a forced calmness in dealing with what could be a horrible situation.

If you try to follow God for any length of time, if you try to obey even just the Sermon on the Mount, in order to be right with God and walk closely with him, if you try for only a few weeks, you will quickly be radioing mission control, “Zion, we have a problem.”

You may have your Bible.

You may know all the rules.

You may breathe the traditions of the church.

The Heidelberg Catechism may ooze out of your pours.

You may wake up singing hymns or praise songs every day.

But, if you try to earn your way to God, it won’t take long for you to realize that you have a problem.

Last week, we talked about the problem of sin for the Gentiles.

They have all gone off and worshipped idols, other gods besides the one true God.

And as a result, they have been handed over to depraved, broken, messed up, bodies and minds and now engage in all sorts of sins.

But what about the Jews, they knew God, they worshipped God, are they all right you might wonder.

Just think about the list of sins Paul listed out for us last week in : How did it go not lying, not gossiping, not being greedy, living with no malice, obeying your parents, not worshipping any of the idols of our world.

If you are still feeling pretty good, let’s glance through the Sermon on the Mount: did you hate anyone this week, speak ill of anyone, turn the other cheek when someone insulted or offended you, loved your enemy, gave generously and secretly… If you examine our lives honestly, we will all come to the conclusion that we simply cannot obey the commands of God well enough to avoid sin.

The power of sin in our lives keeps us away from God.

We are stuck.

This is the reality many religious people would like to ignore.

We want to be worthy of God on our own.

We want to be good enough or at least better than.

Better than those people who protest during the national anthem or better than people who protest the people protesting during the national anthem.

Or better than those people who do that thing we would never do.

Or better than those people who never do that thing we never fail to do.

The Jews claim they have the Torah, the law of God, and that makes them right with God, in good standing.

But, Paul points out, they still break the law, they still sin they still fall short of God’s standard.

Even having been given the law, they have failed to live in such a way that the world might come back to God.

Instead, they have used the law as a way to divide and separate from the world and push people away from God, rather than draw people to God.

They have failed to fulfill their side of the covenant with God made all the way back in the time of Abraham and renewed at Mt. Sinai.

But, Paul had an insight many of them missed.

The Torah and the prophets couldn’t save them.

No matter how good they were, they still sinned.

And, no matter how many sacrifices they offered, they still couldn’t be in the presence of God.

They lived under judgment and separated from God all the time.

Well, not entirely all the time.

There was one day when one person could be in the presence of God.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Day of Atonement

And in that way, we are not too different form many Jews in Paul’s day.

They believed they were somehow better than, or at least closer to God, than those Gentiles.

They had the Torah, the law of God, the first 5 books of the Old Testament, as well as the rest of the Old Testament.

They had the sacrificial system to make them right with God again when they sinned and made a mistake.

But, Paul had an insight many of them missed.

The Torah and the prophets couldn’t save them.

No matter how good they were, they still sinned.

And, no matter how many sacrifices they offered, they still couldn’t be in the presence of God.

They lived under judgment and separated from God all the time.

Well, not entirely all the time.

There was one day when one person could be in the presence of God: Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

On the Day of Atonement the High Priest would take off his brightly colored and ornate clothes and put on a plain white garment as a symbol of repentance.

Then he would go to the altar and sacrifice a bull as a sin offering for the priest and himself.

Then he would take live coals from the altar of incense, put them in a censer, and carry them into the Holy of Holies, the very presence of God.

The censer would fill the room with smoke so that the Mercy Seat, the space between the two angels on the ark of the covenant, would not be completely visible to the high priest.

God was still hidden in smoke.

Then, he would sprinkle the blood from the bull he has just killed over the mercy seat and on the floor before the ark.

Except, for a day every year, on the Day of Atonement, known as Yom Kippur, the High Priest would take off his brightly colored and ornate clothes and put on a plain white garment as a symbol of repentance.

Then he would go to the altar and sacrifice a bull as a sin offering for the priest and himself.

Then he would take live coals from the altar of incense, put them in a censer, and carry them into the Holy of Holies, the very presence of God.

The censer would fill the room with smoke so that the Mercy Seat, the space between the two angels on the ark of the covenant, would not be completely visible to the high priest.

God was still hidden in smoke.

Then, he would sprinkle the blood from the bull he has just killed over the mercy seat and on the floor before the ark.

Then the priest would come out of the Holy of Holies back to the people.

He would take two goats and cast lots over the goats.

He would kill one of the goats and then take its blood back into the Holy of Holies, and sprinkle its blood on the mercy seat.

Then he would come out of the Holy of Holies and return to the second goat.

He would lay his hands on that goat and confess the sins of the people over the goat.

Then he sent this scapegoat out into the wilderness to symbolically carry the sins of the people away.

But, it was only one person and only one day.

The day after the Day of Atonement, no one could go into the Holy of Holies.

The people were still separated from God, And every year, they had to go through all the ritual again for one person, for one day, to stand in the presence of God and not die.

No matter how well they followed the law, all it u do was convict them of sin, it can’t really reconcile them to God.

And then Paul uses an image of a court of law and says that everyone stands before God with their mouth silenced, that is they have no defense.

They are guilty.

They know they are guilty.

The audience knows they are guilty.

The judge knows the are guilty.

Because no one can follow the law perfectly, no one will be declared right by the law.

The law serves rather to demonstrate and prove to us our sinfulness.

And so here we all stand, awaiting the verdict of a just judge for the sins we have committed.

If salvation depends on our obedience to the law, our good moral behavior, we are all in a heap of trouble and without hope.

And then we pick it up today at verse 21.

But before we turn to scripture, let us pray.

Text

All Under Judgment

The Faithfulness of Jesus

This is a pretty dense few verses so we are going to break it down a little bit today.

So, following Torah can’t save us, but God is still faithful to his covenant, so he has another plan that the Old Testament already points to if we read it carefully enough.

Remember, the problem is that no one can obey the Torah, or fulfill the law, completely.

Everyone keeps sinning or falling short.

So the righteousness, the faithfulness of God is given through and here it gets tricky.

It’s either having in Jesus Christ or the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.

The Greek is tricky so different translations take either option.

The NET says:

That’s why Paul can say in that everyone stands in the courtroom of God with no defense.

All are guilty.

All will be convicted and punished for their sin.

This is the natural state of affairs for both Jews and Gentiles, for both you and me.