Romans - Part 19

Paul’s How-To’s of Faith and Fellowship - Romans 12:1-8

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are excited about what this morning looks like. Today we are in significant moment in our series on the letter of Romans. We have been following Paul now as he's been laying down a foundation for 11 chapters. That's 18 weeks of our lives so far, all the way back in March of this year is when we started, and we have gone verse by verse following Paul's argument for the gospel. So far Paul has focused on the reader, the church in Rome, and consequently us today, hearing and learning the knowledge of the gospel focused on knowing the truth. But today we transition to what that knowledge should do, what that knowledge should look like lived out in the Christian's life. This is going from, this is going to be a practical teaching from Paul aimed to help believers live out their faith. And here Paul is going to showcase his conviction about the relationship between belief and practice, or knowledge and action, which is something that even today we all struggle with. We still need the reminder and encouragement that if we believe something, our lives should adhere to that. True belief in something equates to a life that lives out that belief. There are those who will say one thing, maybe claim a belief in something, and yet their lives, their actions don't line up with that. And that usually causes us, if we see that in someone, to doubt. Like, I don't know if you really believe that, you say that, but the way I see you live your life doesn't line up with that. We probably know some people who claim to believe in Jesus, who claim to have faith in God, and yet their lives show no fruit. Doesn't show like they know the truth, they don't live in a way that adheres to the gospel. So this is what Paul is gonna address today. He's saying that if you know all this, chapters one through 11, who God is and what He's done, then you should live like this.

Paul is focusing more on the practical aspect of faith, and as we move forward in chapter 12, there are tones of the beatitudes, of the Psalms, of Proverbs, even the law of the Old Testament, where wisdom, divine wisdom, is at the forefront of the text. And it's all about how one's life should be oriented around God's values and the person of Christ. In our passage, there's gonna be themes of humility, of a servant's heart, of love and compassion and kindness, all characteristics perfectly embodied by Jesus, the perfect example of the Christian life. They're all key values of God's kingdom, which when compared to this world, is an upside down kingdom because it values very different things than the world values. Remember this letter is being written in light of the Roman Empire, a kingdom with very prominent values, known for its growing borders through different war campaigns, known for engineering like the Roman aqueducts and the roads, for architecture that has lasted centuries, for the use of the Latin language that unified so much of the world, and also known for their politics, not just at the higher level around the emperor, but down to the lowest people. There was a fixation in the Roman Empire on status. And Jesus, the New Testament authors, including Paul, have that reality in mind when they speak to what God's kingdom values, and who God's kingdom values. The lowly, the meek, the poor in spirit, the widow and the orphan, compared to the Roman reality where one's status is based on merit, and money, and power, and influence. So, knowing the truth of the gospel, how should one live in that reality? In chapter 12 here, Paul speaks directly to the church about how the gospel provides not only salvation from God's wrath and the demise of sin, but also how the gospel provides the power to live changed lives. The NIV Study Bible says that Christ cannot be our Savior without also being our Lord. I love that approach. He doesn't just save us in a moment and then we no longer have continual relationship with him. No, he must continue to reign in our lives. So what does it look like to have Jesus reign in our lives? What does it look like to know the truth and live by the truth? What does it look like to be a Christian? Paul's going to answer that today.

Why don't you pray with me one more time and then we'll we'll dive into our scripture. God, we come before you again this morning. We pray for open hearts and minds to hear your truth. And that there be an openness on us to be transformed by the hearing and reading of your word and that your spirit would work inside of us to draw us closer to you to make us more like you. So bless our time this morning. We pray this in your name. Amen.

I wanna start by reading the first couple of verses of our passage. You guys can read along in your Bibles or on the screen up there it says, "Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, "in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies "as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. "This is your true and proper worship. "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, "but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, "and then you will be able to test and approve "what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will." These first two verses here in chapter 12 are all about believers being holy. And I wanna go phrase by phrase in these two verses because what Paul says here is truly profound and I don't wanna miss out on anything. So we're gonna, today's gonna look a little bit different. We're just gonna go literally word by word and try to understand exactly what Paul is saying.

This first phrase that he says in verse one is, "I urge you, brothers and sisters." Other translations say, "I appeal to you, I exhort you." Paul is encouraging the church in Rome to do something, pushing them towards action, holy obedience and action according to God's will. He's saying, you've just heard 11 chapters of the holy knowledge, the gospel. You have to do something now. There must be a reaction. You can't just hear it and be still. He then says, by the mercies of God, by the undeserved kindness of God, which is a key theme in all of Paul's writings, by the grace that God first gives us, says then do the following. And next he says to offer your bodies, all of who you are, yield yourself to God, give all of who you are over to God's purposes and glory, to be used by him, for him, and to be transformed like him. Then says as a living sacrifice. Now, he's addressed this again in the chapters before, but he's just restating it. No longer are required to do animal sacrifices, to bring about justification, to be seen as righteous before God. Now we give our lives to God. Hebrews 13 says, "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that openly profess His name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, "for with such sacrifices God is pleased." Again, our living sacrifice is what we do and what we say, and that should be unto the Lord. First Peter chapter two, verse five says, "You also, like living stones, are being built "into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, "offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God "through Jesus Christ." We know that it is so important that everything about who we are and what we do, be offered unto God as service to God, as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This next phrase emphasizes that our sacrifice is set apart for God. This is something intentional that we do to give God glory, to give him praise. In the Old Testament, such terminology, holy and pleasing, associated with the worship done at the tabernacle or the temple. Sacrifice and worship were often found together. This phrase "holy and pleasing" describes the aroma of those Old Testament sacrifices. When the animal was put on the altar, we may think that's really gross and kind of is, but God loved it because of what it meant. When that sacrifice was on the altar and that That aroma was being sending into heaven. God said it was holy and pleasing because it meant that the people were recognizing who God is in their lives. They were worshiping Him. They were humbling themselves, coming before God saying, "God, we need You. I can't do this on my own. You are God over my life." So they were worshiping Him with everything. They were living in God's will, being made righteous, and God was receiving all the glory. So this holy and pleasing is a harkening back to that, saying when you do this, when you live your life for God, God is so pleased by that. It's an act whereby we are setting apart ourselves for His purposes.

And then Paul says, this is your true and proper worship. Worship that is coming from all of who we are. Like Jesus says, the most important commandment, worship. I love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and strength. Everything we have, when we give that to God, that is true and proper worship. Some translations say true and spiritual worship. Contrasting again the fact that there is no longer a physical sacrifice being made, but now it is a matter of the heart. It's a spiritual matter within us, of if we are giving to God everything that we have. Paul also uses the word true here. true and proper worship, implying that true happens when you have a correct understanding of the gospel. When you understand all that he's laid out, this argument in chapters one through 11, and then you live according to that, that is true and proper worship. Verse two starts with, "Do not conform "to the pattern of this world." As you know, this world is fallen, marred by sin, and it has its own pattern of thinking and living that does not align with God's design. We as redeemed believers must avoid that, steer clear of that. It's often easy to adhere to the pattern of the world because we are born sinners, and the patterns of this world often revolve around selfishness and what serves us, so we like that. We're like, "Yay, I like this pattern of thinking because I benefit from it. It's all about me. But that's not how Jesus lived. Jesus lived serving others with God's purpose at the forefront of his mind. So we must not conform to the patterns of this world. We must recognize as believers that God's thinking is different. His patterns as the creator, the ultimate, the true designer of this world, that's what we must follow. And if we are not intentional and purposeful "adamant about living according to the way of Jesus, "but instead the way of the world, we will fall, "and we will fail, and we will continue in sin." All right, so do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is talking about the work of the gospel within us, in our minds and in our hearts. Again, that relationship between knowledge and action, belief and practice. As we conform to the truth of God, it leads to transformation in the life of the believer. And this happens through the Holy Spirit's work in our hearts. The gospel works at how we process and think and observe and filter information and what we see in this world. It changes it. And then what comes from us has also changed the fruit of our lives, our actions, our words. They become a reflection of Jesus, no longer a reflection of sin. It's evidence that our minds and hearts are undergoing a transformation by the work of the Spirit. And we are ultimately changed and transformed to be more like Jesus, right?

That's our prayer every Sunday, is that through the hearing of God's word, through the understanding, the more that we learn about Him, the more that our lives look like Him. Then he ends this verse two with, "Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will. So once you have the heart and mind of Christ, then you will see things the way that God sees them. You will better understand what is of God and what is of sin, what is in line with God's heart and what comes from this fallen world." He's talking about the discernment and wisdom that believers can have, that when we witness something, when we experience something in life, We know that maybe the world would say, this is how you should process this. This is how you should think. This is what you should do if this happens. But we know that after we hear the gospel and the Spirit is at work and say, no, that's not, you should do this. It should be a response of love, of compassion, of kindness, responding in God's truth. We will understand what God's will is. So, these first two verses, as you can see, are pivotal to this letter because they signify the beginning of the end and this transition to practical living out your faith. I want to read one theologian's summary of these verses because I think it'll help us understand how Paul would read it or write it if he was writing to us today.

He's saying that Paul's saying, "So here's what I want you to do. I think we have, yeah, thank you. Here's what I want you to do. With God helping you take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, your eating, going to work and walking around life and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what He wants from you and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you and develops well-formed maturity in you. I love that.

How great is that? Such practical wisdom and instruction for our daily lives with God. This is all about a Christian being holy, being set apart for God's purposes, a life lived out to honor and love God. And now Paul's gonna shift. He's gonna shift from an individual relationship with God to the corporate setting of the church. And I love, he's so intentional in that. He's saying your relationship and your, what God is doing in you is not just for you, but it's also for the purpose of his church. So now we come to verses three through eight. And the church shares a common mindset and purpose, and Paul instructs its members to use their diverse gifts to serve this unified goal, God's kingdom, His glory, and His people, all in the love of Christ. This is all about believers being the church. So the first two verses, believers being holy, and now we're gonna be talking about believers being the church. So I just wanna go verse by verse again. Verse three says, "For by the grace given to me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you." Paul has brought this up a lot in his letter to the Romans, but it needs restating. We need to proceed and live life with a spirit of humility. We are all sinners in need of God. We are all believers following Him and serving Him. So view others with humility and think of yourself with humility. And then exercise the grace given to you by God. What you received from God should not be kept just for you. You should be passing that on, pouring that out on the people in your life. It doesn't matter who they are, but with humility, love and serve others.

Verses four and five say, "For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, So in Christ, we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. This is a favorite of Paul. He loves using the metaphor of the church being a body. And it works. And he does so to emphasize the unity that we must have as believers, that we all work together, we're all together working for a purpose. We are obligated to serve for the benefit of each other and for the body as a whole. But it's also important to recognize that we were all created differently, uniquely. God made each of us with our own, the way we think and process, what we like in this world, what we're good at, we all vary, and that is intentional by God. I was thinking this week, I'm thankful for our pastoral team, that Pastor Chris and I are very different. He's a Bears fan, I'm a Niners fan. Well, it's true, but that's not the biggest difference. When we were recently having a conversation that we are thankful that God has brought us together to serve because even as we carry out our pastoral duties, we're different. And if we were both the same, and this church would only receive a very one-dimensional pastoral care, but because we're different, we can reach all of you and shepherd and be pastors in a more holistic way. We're thankful for that. And same for all of you. All this church is better, and it's a fuller picture of heaven because of how different all of us are, how God has gifted you all differently. Each of you are uniquely wired and made, and when we're together, we are a body of believers. And without some of us, we're missing part of that body. So we need each other.

Let's acknowledge how we are made differently and what we bring to the table and be thankful for it. Paul's also saying there's a sense of belonging here. We owe it to each other to serve and to bring it to exercise our gifts. It's kind of like this church potluck that we're gonna have, this fall festival. Some of you are known for the dishes that you bring. And so we know that like, hey, that person is gonna bring this. They always make it and we need it. And without it, our meal will be incomplete. And so that person feels a sense of obligation in a good way of like, hey, I gotta bring this because I'm that person. I always bring it and it's needed. And so again, that's good and I'm not hinting at anyone, but please bring your chili. Everyone bring your chili. It's so, so good. Someone make one spicy too. We gotta make sure we have a spicy one. The church is diverse and we need and belong to each other.

Verse six, Paul continues, "We have different gifts "according to the grace given to each of us. "If your gift is prophesying, "then prophesy in accordance with your faith." We all have different gifts. Paul brings up prophesying, another way of saying that would be the gift of speaking truth into someone's life. If you have that gift, then use it. We won't get into all the gifts and what they mean today, but we're gonna follow Paul's train of thought here, explaining that if you have a gift, that it needs to be used in God's church. If God continually puts truth on your heart to share with someone, don't hold back. Do not hold back that truth. You need to be sure God has put that on your heart for a reason. And you need to share that with the people that you are in church with, this body of believers that you belong to. Verse seven, if it is serving, then serve. If it is teaching, then teach. If it is to encourage, oh, we'll stop at teach, hold on. If it is a gift of serving, then serve. I was just talking with Eric this week and talking about how he is so grateful that he found a place that he can serve in this church. He loves serving and they do the hospitality. And so he has found his gift and now he was joyfully serving in that way. And it's fulfilling to him. I know that many of you are serving in this church in a way that is fulfilling to you. If you have that gift of service, then serve. And if it is to teach, then teach. I know we actually have teachers as people who are career teachers here at this church. And I love that they are actually teaching through the children's, Abby and Amy, who is literally there right now. That's amazing. And we also have people who teach like Carolina and Julie and Becky and Derek and Lauren and Donna and Donna. And they all serve and they teach our kids the truth of Jesus and it is amazing. And so you have been given that gift, maybe just for a season for those times. and we're so glad that you are using that gift.

Verse eight says, "If it is to encourage, then encourage, then give encouragement. If it's giving, then give generously. If it is to lead, do it diligently. And if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully." The first one about encouragement. Did you know that according to research, the ideal praise to criticism ratio is five to one. We more often hear negative comments, criticism, and discouraging remarks compared to positive, encouraging, loving words. And they stick with us, those negative ones stick with us a lot longer. We need encouragement in our lives. If God has gifted you with the gift of encouraging others, church, we need that, we need you. We need you to be sharing that encouragement. We need to be hearing from God through you about what's good and what's loving. What are we doing that is helpful for others? We need your encouragement. If it is to give, then give generously. I don't know what each person gives here. I don't know what you give. But I do see the number, the big number, each month. And I know that we have very generous givers in this church. We are all thankful for those who, all of you who give, and for those that God has enabled to give more. If God has blessed you in that way, then continue to give generously. Paul says, "If it is to lead, then do it diligently." Often people lead when it benefits them. It's easy. It's easy to lead others when the leader is seeing direct benefit from that. But Paul says to be diligent to lead knowing that it will not always be easy, knowing that the call from God to lead his people is a call to lead against the current of the culture around us. And that is hard, but it's so good. So we need to lead diligently, faithfully, depending on the spirit as we lead. And then he ends by saying, if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. I love how intentional Paul is with his words here. One can show mercy and still be struggling with it in our, inside the heart. We can show mercy but be bitter. We can show mercy but become hardened in our hearts about what is happening and the fact that we have to show mercy again. Paul knows that cheerfulness means depending on the spirit when we show mercy. If we rely on our own strength, there will be an end. We only have a bank that goes so deep before we are at the end of ourselves. And we can no longer show mercy with true love and cheerfulness. So in him saying, "Show mercy and do it cheerfully," he knows that you need to depend on the Spirit to do that. So in this whole section, verses three through eight, this is the how-to for being the church, for being a faithful fellowship, a body of believers living out faith corporately. So I just wanna first encourage you, Spring Valley Church, you are doing this. We see this happening right now. And it is so encouraging to be a part of. I hope that you feel encouraged seeing it and experiencing it. We want more people to experience it. So secondly, I wanna encourage us to be praying and seeking that this continues to grow. We want more people to join this church to bring the gifts that God has given them so that we can become a fuller and fuller body of Christ.

Paul's words here about believers being holy and believers being the church are so encouraging, empowering, and uplifting for us. And so I just want to ask a few questions as we reflect on these words. First, do you know the truth? Paul's first word here in chapter 12 is "therefore." He's saying with the understanding that with everything before this, you now have a better if not correct understanding of the gospel. And if you're here today and you feel like you're in a therefore moment where the message of the gospel has finally clicked, where you've heard it and in your heart and mind you want to respond and you want to say, "I now understand. I've heard the Paul's argument for the gospel and I want to believe." I want you to know that that can change You can act on that right now. And if you pray in your heart right now, God, I know that I'm a sinner. And I know that my sin has separated me from you, and I believe that Jesus died for my sins so that I can be forgiven, and I want to repent, and I want to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. You can pray that prayer, and your life will be changed. And the gospel will be the power of living a transformed life in you. you. If you prayed that today, if you prayed that right now even, please come see Pastor Chris and I. We want to celebrate with you, we want to pray for you after the service. And if you're thinking about it, whatever it is, wherever you're at in the gospel message responding to it, we are all here for you. So the first question is, do you know the truth of the gospel? Secondly, what are you conforming to. This past summer at district conference we had our general superintendent, Reverend, I don't know his title, it's very long, but Wayne Schmidt, he's a great guy, and he shared one time the importance of starting his day off with quiet time, worship, with God's Word. He made it a rule in his life that whatever time in the day he consumed, of the world news, he wanted to have more time-consuming, something spiritual, something about God. And he made that rule because he started to notice and recognize that he was being conformed by the news. Constantly thinking negatively and fearfully, always being prone to anger and anxiety, and that wasn't drawing him closer to God. So he made the decision, "I'm going to always in my day have more of God in my life than anything else.

What are you conforming to? Maybe it's work and the desire to excel and achieve and maybe you're conforming to this need to do more and that's taking all of who you are, your heart and mind and it's less about God and it's more about achieving something, doing something. Maybe it's being conformed by social media. You're seeing on social media the things that you want to experience, the way that you should live life, the things that you want, and it's not helpful. It's not drawing you closer to God, but rather, you know, further to yourself and your desires, your heart, and these worldly things that we want. Whatever it is you're conforming to, is it of the truth of God? Is it about the gospel? Is it the way of Jesus? And if it's not, then let the Spirit work and convict and follow His guidance and changing that. And then finally, the last question is how are you serving the church? Well, we talked about how the Spirit should be at work in our lives on an individual level. I love that Paul immediately addresses the corporate aspect of our faith. We were meant to live in community and to serve the community. This community is made up of different people with different gifts and they are all needed. And remember, beyond just your gifts being needed, there's also belonging. You belong to this church. So how are you serving? Recently, a different pastor reminded me of the different types of service. There is serving out of your gifting, and there is serving because of a need. Oftentimes, and the goal is that you're serving in your gifting. Let's say you love children's ministry, then we would love to have you serve in children's ministry. That's great. Sometimes though, there's a need, and the church may need you to serve in that way. Maybe it's not children's ministry. You do not have that gifting. That is okay, but maybe we have a need, and for a season at a time, you fill that need.

How will you serve your church? Now again, I look at this beautiful small church that we have, and I know that so many of you are serving, and maybe in multiple ways. So I don't mean this to be convicting or to put guilt on you, but rather as a reminder that you are called to serve. So do so with cheerfulness and depending upon the Spirit. And if you aren't yet serving in the church, whether in a formal capacity or informally, how might God be leading you to serve? As we continue in our series in the weeks to come, it's all gonna become more practical. It's all gonna become, Paul's words are gonna focus on how our lives should look like and what we should do to live like Jesus. So as we close today and reflect on these questions and the truth of God, I just want you to be encouraged to know that God is at work in your life and in our church and He's not finished. He's gonna continue to work and that's our prayer. That we would see that, be encouraged by it and thankful that He is present in our lives. Would you guys pray with me as we close?

God, thank you again for the truth shared to us through the gospel, for the letter of Romans written by Paul that now as we have heard the argument for the gospel, now we look to what does it look like in our lives? And God, I pray that you would make it very clear to us what we need to do, what needs to change in our life, to serve you, to be conformed to you, God. And how do we serve this church? I pray that this week in our individual lives that you would speak to us. And God, as a church, you would also be guiding us, that we would know how to serve each other well, serve those outside the church well, but that this body of believers would be a healthy and good picture of what you intended the church to be. Continue to equip us and empower us to be your people, God. So we look forward to the work that you're gonna do in us and through us. And we pray this in your name, amen.

Romans - Part 18

A Practice of Praise - Romans 11:33-36

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

The fall is here, I don't know if you're feeling that. of my favorite parts, yes, about fall, is not just the weather, the football season, but usually we're a TV family, we love shows, and there's, you know, the new seasons start coming back. And so we just, one of our favorite shows is Survivor, we're a Survivor family, and the first episode of the newest season just came out on Wednesday, and we watched it last night. Now for you, those of you who don't know, Survivor is a show where a group of people are left stranded on a tropical island. Well, that part sounds great. All they have is the clothes on their back and very minimal food. And they are left to survive, not just the elements, but also the social part. Because every week, someone is voted off the island, and you are trying to be the last person, the survivor, the lone survivor. So it is a very challenging game. And it's brutal. And it's very testing for every aspect of a person mentally, physically, emotionally, even spiritually. And so the game ends when it finally comes down to three people, these three contestants who have survived over weeks of the elements and not being voted off. And you're wondering why. We're not sponsored by Survivor, so this is not a paid advertisement. I promise you it pertains to somewhat. You'll see a great transition coming up. But it finally comes down to three contestants. And one of my favorite parts is that that morning, they're the final three. And the game ends with all the people that have been voted out, are a lot of them coming back and actually voting for the winner. So they get to vote who wins that season. But the final morning, when the final three, usually it's three, when they wake up they get this what they call survivor meal, survivor feast. And it's the celebration of the fact that they made it. There's no more of the game, kind of, there's one last night, but it's the final morning. There's no more days after this. That night they're going to find out who wins. And that morning, after having little to no food, and surviving the elements, and playing the game mentally all the time, they get to have this break. And the people, the producers, they bring in this huge feast. And after usually eating maybe rice and beans, they get to have orange juice, and melons, and amazing fruit, and bagels, all of this just a huge feast for breakfast. And during this time, it's totally different than the game, which is usually go, go, go, and you're strategizing all the time. time they get to take a break and they just get to eat and kind of relax and just reminisce on the season. They're like, "Hey, man, this was..." They get to reflect and just pause and it's a really cool, really cool moment. Transition.

Why do I bring this up? Well, Paul... That was rough. This was rougher than I thought. Paul has one of those moments today where after writing for so long in this letter, he has a moment where he just pauses and he And he reflects on what God has done and who he is in relation to the nation of Israel. And he's brought to this moment of praise, this literary Ebenezer of sorts, where he's recognizing and praising God. Paul stops to reflect and process on the character of God, and it's a beautiful moment here in the letter of Romans. And it's a blessing that we appreciate, and it's enriching for our lives today. So we're gonna dive into just four verses. We've been covering a lot every Sunday, almost a chapter at a time, but today we're just gonna take it a little bit slow and just take four verses that I think are gonna be enriching for us and bring us a lot of joy and encouragement. So let me go ahead and pray and then we'll dive. And God, we've, again, come before you, Lord, and we just pray that you would bless the reading of your word, the teaching of your word, and that you would empower us and equip us to be more like Jesus. And I pray that you would encourage us in our lives to take moments where we pause and reflect on who you are and what you've done. So as we do that this morning, right now together, we just pray that your spirit would be at work. We pray this in your name, amen. All right, we're gonna be in Romans 11, starting in verse 33 through 36. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there, we'll have it on the screen. But if you do look in your Bible, in most translations, there's a little heading, and it's called doxology. Now, what is a doxology? Well, doxologies are conclusions to songs or psalms or prayers and are found throughout Scripture. Sometimes they can be meant as a group response or recitation. Little fun fact, the word doxology, though, is not a part of the original text. If you were to look at the Hebrew manuscript, really none of the headers that we have in our Bible, they're not there in the Hebrew. they've been added later. And so doxology is not there, but it means words of glory, which I think is a really great summary of what it is. And these doxologies are a series of declarations of praise announcing who God is and what He has done, and usually focusing on God's creation and redemption. A more well-known doxology is the song that, if you grew up in church or you've been around the church for a while, you've probably heard "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." That's a doxology found in 2 Corinthians. But our doxology today is a spontaneous praise of God regarding his actions towards his people. Remember, Paul has just written three chapters about the dynamic relationship between Israel and God. And now Paul just pauses to take a moment to put together some words of glory about God. In this section, Paul is quoting two passages, Isaiah 40:13 and Job 41:11. And both of those scriptures in the Old Testament celebrate God's exalted status and wisdom over His creation. These verses point out the dependency that creation has upon its Now as a part of creation, we humans, we have no right to assume His role as Creator or Judge. We do not have anything to offer God that He might need. We have to realize and remember that He is fully self-sustaining. The Trinity, God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they are perfect and whole. And in light of His greatness, all of humanity must recognize His mercy, which He demonstrates by offering Christ that all might believe and may be saved." Now that's a lot, that's just the beginning, but that is all packed in these four verses right here.

So I want to dive in. I want to go ahead and read the first verse, which says, verse 33, "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out!" Now remember, this is all coming after Paul's attempt at an explanation of God's sovereign, redemptive plan with Israel. And Paul seems to take a step back here and to recognize his place and God's place. And Paul's saying, "Even though I'm pretty sure, Roman church, this is how it works, God's ways are above mine, and all of Him is beyond me." has a sense of humility here. And echoes the words found in Isaiah 55, 9, which says, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." That's God speaking to the nation of Israel. We cannot fully understand the ways of God. He is infinite, and we are finite. The more we think about the crazier, like, He is infinite. There is no limits, there is no, like, edge to which we can, these are His borders, this is what we can understand. No, it is, it goes forever. And we, just being finite creatures, have a hard time understanding the infinite. So there is a part of God that will always remain a mystery until we are in heaven and we can have a perfect understanding of who He is. I love the ancient world and the Hebrew imagery here because it's very straightforward. It's based on a world that they could see and what made sense to them from the understanding that God gave them. So when it says the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than yours, they're saying when we look up, this is the ancient Hebrew world, when we look up we see clouds in the sky and the Sun and at night we see the stars and the planets and the moon, that's the heavens, way up there. They didn't know how far that is. They did not have any understanding or measurement of it's this many miles or whatever. That's way up there. And as high as that is, which it could be so high, that's how high God is over us. Now we today have a better understanding through science and all the research that we can do and the technology of how high and how far things are. And maybe even with that, this analogy works even better. that we know that space is so, so far, and even what we've explored is probably more than what the ancient Hebrew people understood, and yet still, God's ways are beyond that, compared to where we are. I recently saw this conversation between two scientists. They were talking about space, and one of them asked, "How do we understand, what's a way to put, measure, how much we know about space?" And so this other scientist responded with, "Okay, take a 12 ounce cup, scoop some water out of the ocean." Now compared to the ocean, what we know about space is that 12 ounce cup. The ocean is how much we don't understand. And I think that's just helpful to us to know that probably God's ways and our ways are even more than that. And that's huge. That is vast. God knows everything, and as the Creator, He's holding it all together. And so now, when we read that verse, it probably makes a lot more sense. Yes, His ways are much higher than ours. His thoughts are above ours. The depth of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight." I think Paul is drawing from this when he says his paths are beyond tracing out. We may not resonate as much with this phrase of "make your paths straight" because we live in a world where the roads are made for us. They are pretty straight. We also on top of that have Google or Apple Maps, whichever you use, and they tell us the most efficient and quickest way to get from point A to point B. We're not having to figure out, "Oh God, where are my paths? How do I get from this place? What's the fastest way?" much told for us. But in life, this is what God will do. If the goal is to progress towards God, towards His kingdom, and to be with Him, as we venture to do that, we also have to recognize that our sin and this world will try to make our path crooked. It will draw us in different directions.

So, in a way, we're taking side streets, we're zig-zagging all over the place because we're drawn by sin and the world to not follow God in the the straightest path. But when we lean on our own understanding, when we follow God with everything that we have, we can look back and say, in that section of time when we are following God, oh, that was the best. That was the best way. Maybe it's not straight, maybe it's not a perfect line, but it's the best way. It was the way that God meant for it to happen. The author of the Proverb is saying, and what Paul is alluding to in our passage, is that God's ways, while we don't always know as we're on that road, he knows. And if he knows what's best, if his ways are higher than ours, then there's no other path that we should prefer to be on. This really also gets to our very human problem of sin, thinking that we know best, that we think we know the best way to get there, the best way to live, the best decisions for our futures, for our finances, for friendships. And in thinking that, in doing what we think, We are placing ourselves in the driver's seat where God actually belongs. We're taking the place of God in our lives, which is a sin. To think that we don't need God, or that we're better than God, or maybe we have a better perspective than God on what's happening in our lives, which when I say it, sounds like, "Well, of course we don't," but we can tend to live like that. That is living in sin. And so this doxology and the words of the Old Testament are telling us, reminding us, the depths of the riches of His wisdom and knowledge of God, His paths are best, even if they're beyond our understanding.

Paul continues in verse 34, let's read that together, it says, "Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?" Have you guys ever found yourself in a situation where you are by default the expert in whatever's going on? Maybe it's a parent and you're with your child, or you're a teacher with your students, or maybe you're just in whatever situation you know most about what's happening and there are other people around you that don't. And in that situation, have you ever had that child or student or the other people who are ignorant to what's going on to tell you what to do? Hey, why don't you just do this? This seems pretty easy. If you just do this, I think it's gonna work out. I think you'll figure out what's, your solution is right there. You ever have that happen? I'm thinking of my daughter and students in the past. Usually those people think that they're helpful, especially the little ones who are trying to be involved, and it's really cute. Some people though, say those things in a derogatory tone and are just like, you are overthinking this. It is this simple, just do this. I don't know if you get where I'm going here. But do you think that you might sometimes barely do this with God? By sometimes I mean like all the time. We probably do this a lot with God where we're in our minds having prayers or thoughts. We're like, God, I have a good read. I'm in this situation, God. I don't know if you know that God, but like I'm living it right now. And I think if you just do this, if you could just do this, I think we got the answer. And we go from asking God what is best in the situation to telling God what we want him to do. And in just the phrasing of that and that approach, we are treating God in a way that is like a vending machine. God, if you just do this or a genie in a bottle, just this is what I want, I think this is best. I've got the wisdom here, God. Thank you for the wisdom you've given me to then tell you what to do. Here we go. Who are we to counsel the all-knowing? I'm not a car guy at all, but a while ago I had this lemon of a truck that just would not stop having problems, and one day the engine just, to my understanding, blew up. And I didn't want to let it go, so my brother-in-law very graciously, who was a mechanic for a time, said, hey, I'll work on it. I'll try to rebuild your engine for you. It was very kind. And he would just give me updates. He's like, hey, I've got this much done. I'm working on this part. And I can't even repeat the parts, because I do not know anything about cars. He's like, I'm working on this. I'm having trouble with this over here. But I'm going to figure it out. At no point in any of those conversations did I feel the confidence or wisdom to say, hey, have you tried this? It sounds like you're taking the long way on that one. I think you should probably do this. Yeah, I think that's what Paul is talking about here. Our relationship with God should be one of clear boundaries and recognizing that we are not God. We do not have his perspective, his wisdom. We do not know what God knows. The counsel should be a one-way street where God is giving us wisdom and counsel. And we should be recognizing that God has all the wisdom And we need to have a position of humility, submitting to God. And if we don't understand asking God, hey, what's going on? Can you help me understand? Rather than telling God what to do. We do not counsel the Lord. It's easier said than done, but something that we should be conscious of nonetheless.

Then Paul moves to verse 35, which reads, who has ever given to God that God should repay them? It's been happening lately. A little example of this, I think, happening is sometimes over a meal, Kinsley and I, my daughter, who's four years old, four and a half, will split a sparkling water. And I'll go in and I'll get a sparkling water and I'll open the can and she'll ask, "Can I have a sip?" And I'll say, "Sure, you can have a sip." And she will then take the can and say, "This is mine. "And you can have some if you want some." And I'm like, "Hold up here. I'm the one that gave you the sparkling water. I am the giver of sparkling water in this family, in this dynamic relationship. I give you sparkling water. You do not give me sparkling water. In fact, I can go get my own. I don't need you for sparkling water. I can go get another can. And I can open it. You can't even open this. I can go buy more. Like, you offer me nothing when it comes to sparkling water. (audience laughs) I kid, obviously. I don't have that conversation with her. But who are we to give God, Who are we to think that we give God anything that He doesn't already have? Like I said at the beginning, the Trinity is fully sufficient, overflowing, not in need. We do not give Him anything that He is lacking. We do give to Him. We talked about giving this morning with our ties, our offerings. We give Him praise and adoration and glory. But it's not because He's lacking it. God has given us everything. The air we breathe, the jobs we have, the families and relationships that we enjoy, the homes we live in, the emotions and the minds that we feel and think with. We are giving Him our broken hearts, our sinful hearts, for God to mend and to transform. And then we give back what God has already given to us, our time, our money, our resources. Who has given to God that God should repay them? No one. Have you ever tried bartering with God? God, if I do this, does this mean that you can do this for me? God, if I just give you my tithe this month, or maybe a little bit extra, 'cause God, you need my money, then will you help me through this tough situation? God is not lacking in any finances. Or sometimes we'll say, God, if I attend church more regularly, because you need me in your church, that means that you'll start to, you'll have to start blessing my life, right? You're gonna start doing some things, I'm gonna start seeing you work in my life. God is not dependent on our attendance. God does not owe us everything. We need to realize in our relationship with God, how we communicate with God, that we have no leverage over God. We have no higher standing in any area over God. We don't come before him with any sort of, At least I have this that God needs from me that he doesn't already have. We have nothing to give in that manner. Again, except for our broken hearts and what he has already given to us, and we give back as a way of worshiping him, submitting to him, depending on him. So, who has ever given to God that God should repay them? No one.

And that leads us to verse 36. He ends this doxology with this, "For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen." It starts with "from God." God is the source. The source of all things good in this world. God is that source. Through God, it's all by the work of God and the work of his Spirit, the work that Christ did on the cross and continues to do in our lives. It is through Him. And then for God. It's all about His glory. As Paul mentioned at the beginning of this book of Romans, the root motivation of the gospel is the glory of God. That God be praised. That He receive the credit, the honor, and the praise. It's all for Jesus. It's all about God's kingdom, and it's only by him and through him that it is possible. So I love this moment in this letter to the Romans where Paul stops for a brief moment to write some words of glory, praising God for who he is and what he has done. It's a beautiful doxology. And I want to ask us today, do we have doxologies in our lives? What does that mean, Pastor Andre? Well, do you have moments where you are praising God for the work that He is doing? Where you are pausing and reflecting on who God is and what He has done for you? So often in life, we just keep going and moving from one thing to the next. And even if we do praise God, it's kind of just a quick thought, "God, thanks for that. I'm gonna go. I gotta keep going." But what would it look like to have moments of doxology in our lives, moments where we really pause and have words of glory towards God? You know, the Bible is full of these moments. Anytime, especially in the Old Testament, anytime something big happened where God was at work, where the main character, the person, or maybe the group of people experienced God's work, the following happened. They paused, they gained some perspective, and then they praised God. Think of Noah after the flood, or Abraham after almost sacrificing his son Isaac, or Moses and the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea by God's hand, or Joshua and the Israelites after crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land. The list can go on and on. There are so many of these moments, and the pattern is always the same. They pause, they take a break from what is happening, what's going on. They gain some perspective. They look at what God had done, and then they praise Him for what He did and who He is. So I wanna quickly share about incorporating that into our lives.

The first is to pause. Even Paul paused in this letter after writing, wrapping up his thought about the nation of Israel, and he just paused, and I can see this. We can kind of like, wherever Paul is writing, and he's vigorously writing about Israel and God, and you can just kind of see him like, take a breath. He's thinking about everything he just wrote, and then he just kind of, I imagine it kind of slowly just writing these words of glory, this doxology, praising God. I'm gonna riff on our Sabbath practice community group content right now. So if you're a part of that community group, This will be repeat, but I think it pertains to what we're talking about. It is so important to have moments of pause in our lives, to stop and reflect. What do I mean by that? Well, God created this world that we live in, and every one of us, we have natural rhythms in life. Even the world does. So, think of spring and summer, where everything is more vibrant and full of life. There is an energy, but we also have fall and winter, where that energy kind of goes down and things slow down and it's usually a time of rest. God created us humans, people to stop and have moments where you look back, get some perspective and then move forward again. For the Israelites, this was most apparent in their practice of Sabbath with which God started in them as he created them to be a nation. It was a day every week where they were to stop, rest, delight and worship God. It's something that God himself modeled on the seventh day of creation where he rested and enjoyed what he had done, what he had created. We are to live a life where we pause regularly. God knew this as our creator and set this up in the nation of Israel. So in pausing from the everyday routine, the Israelites were able to rest, they were to recharge their inner battery, delight in what God was doing in their lives, delight in the the joys of life, even have fun, and then worship God. We have something similar now in our routine. You guys are all here this morning worshiping weekly. We have every seven days we gather together to worship God. But we still don't always stop well, we don't rest well, we don't always delight well. You wanna know why it's hard to stop? One of the reasons is 'cause you live in a world, we all live in a world that doesn't stop. Doesn't stop. We live in a world that is 24/7, seven days a week. I saw on social media recently a man boasting about his three shifts in one day. This was not because he needed it. It's not because he had three jobs. It's one job and he just was bragging about how he can work three shifts in one day, seven days a week, and be outworking everyone. That is not how God meant for us to live at all. That is not sustainable, but that's what the world values. The more work you do, the more valuable you are in the world's eyes. Not in God's eyes. We live in a world that is nonstop. But it wasn't always like this. Did you know that for a majority of history, and even in America, the world operated on six days on and one day off? It was common for cities, towns, villages throughout history to all have the same day off. working. Not always for religious purposes, but a lot of times it was for religious purposes.

And then recently, in American history, that changed. And when I say recently, I mean relative to all of history. It was only in the 1960s that this shift really occurred. And Pastor John Mark Comer, the one who put together the prayer practice and the Sabbath practice that we're going through, shared about this. He references Silicon Valley, which we would all think as the tech capital of the world where things are always going 24/7, probably in unhealthy ways, that even Silicon Valley had Sundays off until the 1960s. And in the 1960s, I forget which year, but it was a 7-11 that started opening on Sundays. And now, as we know from that, from the 1960s to a 7-11 being open to now where it is very common for shops, restaurants, retailers to all be open on Sundays. And if they're closed, we still have Amazon. That is all the time, at the touch of our fingers. And while we may not have to work on the weekend, we are consuming and buying and participating in this nonstop culture of our world. All this to say that our world, the culture we live in, does not value your rest or you taking moments to pause. Rarely do we work for companies and jobs that encourage healthy rest. Now, not only is it outer forces, the world that we live in, that doesn't help us pause, but there is an inward struggle that we have with pausing too. We tend, like I said before, we tend to go from one thing to the next. We wake up and our day is go, go, go. We have to take the kids to school or get to work, and then on our breaks, we're scrolling emails or social media or shopping online on Amazon. And then we gotta go back to work, or you pick the kids up, and then we have after school things, or you're getting dinner ready, you're shopping, you're doing chores around the house, you're keeping up with podcasts, your TV shows, whatever it is, your mind is constantly engaged in something, whether it is work or entertainment, it is not necessarily restful for you.

We have a hard time stopping. Whether good moments or difficult circumstances, we don't often pause to fully process what we are thinking, what our hearts are feeling, and probably not what God is doing in our lives. In our Sabbath practice community group, we're talking about getting into the rhythm of practicing a 24-hour break every week, a day that is different, full of delight, worship, a break from technology, a break from work. And maybe that's the answer. When we're talking about pausing, maybe that is the answer. It's a Sabbath better, all of us. But at least, let me encourage you to more regularly in life, especially when you see God working, to pause. Take a moment, an extended moment. I'm not talking about, cool, that was great. Take minutes, an afternoon. Maybe you journal, maybe you pray out loud, maybe you go for a walk and talk with God, but pause and give your mind and heart time to process and enjoy what God is doing in your life. That leads us to the second point, perspective. In this pausing, we then reflect on the work that God is doing. In these doxologies, the common thread is focusing on God as creator and redeemer. And by doing that, it helps us gain perspective. Oftentimes when we're going through life, our focus becomes more and more about ourselves. We tend to like look down at our own hearts and minds and our focus becomes solely on our desires, our feelings, our satisfactions, our discontentment. And if it goes on long enough, we become selfish. The more we go on in life, the less rest we have, no pausing, we just tend to look down and look inward. Problem with that is that's not how God created us, greatest commandment, right? To love God and to love others. How do we do that if we're only looking at ourselves? Pausing and then reflecting on the work that God has done brings our vision up again. We start to look beyond ourselves. We're thinking of others and what God is doing in life. It's about remembering that we are a part of something bigger, the kingdom of God, his church, his family. And while we matter, of course, we have value, We also need to see how what we're experiencing fits into God's plan of redemption and just recognize that we don't see it all. Even when we do get perspective, His ways are higher than ours, right?

We gotta recognize that God may be up to something and just taking a moment to pause and reflect on what God is doing, even if we understand this much of it is helpful for us, brings us closer to God. In order to gain some perspective in your life, After you pause, right, these all kind of go together, you pause, then ask yourself this, what is God doing in my life? How have I seen him at work this week? If I look back on this past week, and I give myself long enough to process and really think, have I seen him move? Have I seen him move in my life? Have I seen him work in someone else's life? If I look back on this past year, where have I seen God at work? And I think if we pause long enough, things will start to come to our minds, and then we'll be filled with perspective, and that leads us to the next one, which is praise. We praise Him. Finish your personal doxology by praising God for what He has done and who He is. Like all these examples in the Bible, like we sometimes do on our own, take time to praise God for the work that you see Him doing. I'll tell you this story really quick. This last week, Kinsley and I got into this habit. After school, I pick her up and there's this creek by our house. And one day we were driving home and I thought I saw something in the creek. And I was like, oh, let's go take a look at what that is. So I pulled back around and parked. And sure enough, there was a turtle, a little turtle in this creek. And I was like, Kinsley, let's get out. Let's go see the turtle. But before she got out of the car, the turtle kind of slipped into the water. And of course, she's really-- the day is ruined now. She was like, no, I want to see the turtle. And I was like, I'm so sorry. The turtle was there. She's like, "I didn't see the turtle." And so I said, "Why don't we pray? "Let's pray to God. "God, can you help the turtle to come out of the water? "God, we would love to see this turtle." Just kinda like, it's silly, but sometimes I think God appreciates when we bring the silly things to him. Just an opportunity to say, "Kensley, you can pray for anything. "Whether God answers it or not, I don't know, "but we can pray. "We can bring our desires before him." I didn't tell her all that, I just thought that. So I was like, "Kensley, let's pray." So we prayed, "God, can you let the turtle know that we want to see it, and it would be fun if it came out of the water, and she prayed that version of prayer. And we kind of walked a little bit farther along the creek, and sure enough, what do you know? We saw the turtle. The turtle had come back out at a different place. Yeah, it was great. And I was like, "Whoa, that was really cool." And she was like, "That's great, let's go home now." And I was like, "Hold on." That was, like, I'm amazed. I was like, "God, that was crazy. I did not think you were going to show up for turtle, but you did." And I was like, "Let's..." I felt convicted. I was like, we can't just move on with our lives. Like, we gotta recognize that God did this. This is crazy. And so I said, let's thank God for the fact that we saw this turtle. And so we then we prayed a prayer of praise. God, thank you for letting us see this turtle. Next day, she wanted to see this. We're like, hey, can we go see the turtles? There were no turtles. And she was like, I still wanna see. Can we pray? Can we pray that we see the turtles? Like, sure, let's pray to see the turtles. And we didn't see them and we walk a little bit further and what do you know, four turtles. There's two big turtles and I think two little turtles. so I'm assuming it's a little family of turtles. And she was like, "See, we prayed and God brought the turtles out!" And I was like, "Yeah, I do not know what's happening right now, God, but I don't know what her expectations are going to be in life." But she also was like, "Let's just go home." And I was like, "No, remember, if God did this, we need to praise Him. We got to have a moment of praise." And so we're getting into that rhythm of praising God. I share that to say we need to build the habit of praising God. It doesn't necessarily come naturally. We have to work and be intentional in our moments of praise. And again, all of these work best together. When you pause, that should lead to a moment of perspective. And after you have perspective, don't stop there. Give moment to praise. Praise God for what He is doing. And we praise Him because we believe that it is from Him, and through Him, and for Him, all things are for His glory. To Him be the glory forever and ever.

So this week, my encouragement to you is, and maybe today, before you start your Monday, take time and practice this. Take a moment to pause. Maybe as a family or just by yourself, give yourself, don't just give yourself a minute, give yourself an extended period of time. Gain some perspective and praise God. Ask yourself where you've seen God work and then maybe put into words, maybe you do write it out, you write yourself a little doxology, "God, you are this. Thank you for this until you be the glory. Or maybe you take a moment to pray out loud. Or at the least, a prayer from your heart of words of glory to our creator and our redeemer. All right, let's pray. God, thank you for this doxology, these words from Paul, for thousands of years ago when He wrote it. Thank you for encouraging him to pause and to have perspective and to praise you. And I pray that you would help us to have that rhythm in life, to get that practice, that pattern established, Lord, that maybe it's weekly, regularly, at the very least, when we see you work. Or maybe, God, it's when we haven't seen you work and we just need to take some moment to pause and, God, where are you working in our lives? I want to see you, help us to establish a pattern of pausing, of gaining perspective and praising you. And our desire is that our hearts be made more like you, that you help us to be like Jesus to the people in our lives, where you have placed us. And we don't always know why we're doing what we're doing, why we're, where we're at, and the path that we're on, but we recognize that your ways are higher than ours. So God, help us to have humility. And God, I just pray that you would give us boldness and courage to live out our faith, to be a witness. And again, that you would get all the glory, that your church would grow, that your family would see the benefit. So we pray this in your name, We give you all the praise. Amen.

Well, as we end today, as a benediction, I just wanna read our passage again, fully straight through, with this new, hope maybe understanding or reminder of what God is saying here. So, could we stand for this? Is that okay? Can we stand as I read this? Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay them? For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever." And all God's people said, amen. - Thanks for listening. And if you would, please take a moment to subscribe and leave an encouraging review to help others find our podcasts on whatever platform you are listening on. We hope you have a wonderful day. We'll catch you next week.

Romans - Part 17

Patterns of Salvation & Redemption - Romans 11:1-32

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

How are you guys doing this morning? Doing good? For those doing the Sabbath practice, how's your Sabbath going? Are you resting well? Are you able to find some time to delight in something this week? And I see some thumbs up, that's good. I'm trying to do that. I'm trying to rest well, trying to Sabbath well. I wanna give you guys an update on the Snyder family as you've probably saw Pastor Chris is here. No baby yet, continue in praying as this is, yeah, just the time where we want baby to be here. So please, please continue to pray for Lauren, the whole Snyder family, but yes, and I'm sure in the coming days, we're praying that something will happen. And I also want to let you know that we have a meal train being set up, and so there's a sign up, a physical sign up sheet in the back. If you would like to sign up, we're actually gonna make that digital, and we're gonna send out an email probably tomorrow or Tuesday. So if you, you can sign up there and I'll put you on the digital version, or if you just want to wait, but we just want to bless and support our pastor and their family in that way. So be sure to look at that on your way out. Alrighty, anyone feel, this is just me maybe, anyone feel like they came to a Sunday super rushed and life is just going a thousand miles an hour? Is that anyone? Yeah, okay, I see some. Maybe you're hearing like, man, I am well in my resting phase and it is Sunday on the weekend and I am just grooving. That's great. I'm on the thousand miles an hour, like life is just going. So I'm just ready to breathe and slow down and dive into some scripture today.

Today we're just gonna continue in Romans. We are just gonna be going Romans, Romans, Romans. I hope you are enjoying it and not being dulled to what is happening here, but our each week, our prayer that it's engaging and that God is speaking to you in some new way. So we are going to be in chapter 11 today. Paul in this section is wrapping up his conversation about the fate of Israel. For the last nine, 10 and 11, those chapters, He's been talking about and laying out this argument, and it hasn't necessarily been easy to comprehend, but this argument of what is happening to Israel. Remember that Paul himself is a Jew. He's a Jew that punished and persecuted the early church. He was a high ranking Pharisee that was overseeing the persecution of Christians. And he's on this fast track of being high up in Pharisaical leadership. And so there were the very followers of Jesus that Paul is now encouraging and hoping to grow through his letter are the very ones that he was trying to eradicate at some point. And I say that, that's a whole other sermon, but you get, hopefully you understand some of the feelings that Paul has for his own people as one who thought and was in the position of them. His desire is that his people do not forsake God, but come to see Jesus as their savior, just as he did. He understands where they're coming from, the stumbling blocks that they may have in their minds and in their hearts that are keeping them from putting their faith in Jesus. And he's just trying to lay out this argument, this well thought out letter, so that they could understand. So throughout this passage, we're gonna see that he is filled with hope for the future of Israel, that ultimately they would be saved. Today we're gonna talk about this pattern that Paul talks about, which is a pattern of salvation, not new to Israel, but as Paul will point out, it's been seen throughout all of scripture, the Old Testament, and we're also gonna see how God is a God of redemption. So these patterns here that are developing, pattern of salvation and a pattern of redemption. And Paul's gonna lay out how this is our God, and this is the God that has been since the beginning of time. Let me go ahead and pray, and we'll dive in again. God, just be with us this morning. We are excited to be here together and to gather around your word. And we seek a deeper understanding of who you are and what you do. And so we just pray that you would, through your spirit work in our hearts, draw us into your presence. And may we be encouraged and equipped this morning. We pray this in your name, amen. All right, we're gonna start in the first 10 verses of chapter 11. And these first 10 verses are talking about Israel's past. So if you wanna read along with me, I'm gonna start in verse one. It says, "I asked then, did God reject his people? "By no means. "I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham "from the tribe of Benjamin. "God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. "Don't you know what scripture says "in the passage from Elijah, "how he appealed to God against Israel? "Lord, they have killed your prophets "and torn down your altars. "I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me. And what was God's answer to him? I have reserved for myself 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So too at the present time, there's a remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace and it cannot be based on works, if it were grace would no longer be grace. What then? What the people of Israel sought so earnestly, they did not obtain. The elect among them did, but the others were hardened.

As it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear to this very day. And David says, "May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see and their backs be bent forever." Paul is making it clear that this has always been the case. And we've talked about this in previous chapters that some Israelites do believe and some do not. In the first six verses, he's explaining those who do believe and he's even using himself as an example. I am a Jew that still believes. And he also references, this has been a pattern of God as we've seen it before with Elijah and the Israelites in the past, this remnant who have believed. He brings up this example of Elijah that we covered a bit in our summer series, these impossible moments. And Elijah's talking to God saying, God, I'm the only one. Elijah, the prophet, the voice of God is thinking to himself, he is the only follower of Yahweh left. And I don't think he's speaking in hyperbolic. I don't think he's like, "God, I know there's some," but I think Elijah is like, "I am the only one. There is no one out here that believes in you." And God says, "No, I have 7,000 that still have not bowed the knee to Baal, but are worshiping me." And this brings us up to say that even in ways that we do not see, the Spirit is always at work. God is always at work in people's hearts. Maybe the evidence, we don't see it yet, But God, and he's done this even in the Old Testament, God is at work. He's establishing a pattern of some who believe, some who don't, and a pattern of redemption and salvation. So Paul is looking to the past and saying that the pattern still pertains to the present, what we've seen in the past, that God, there's always some who believe, that's still true today. There are some who have declared with their mouths and believed with their hearts, to quote from last week's passage, what Paul wrote. Verses seven through 10 talk about those who don't. The Israelites who have hardened their hearts, they have a pattern of sin and rejecting God. And Paul talks about how God has given them to slumber because they were already closed off, a dulling of their spiritual senses because they have a habit built up of turning away from God. So they do not hear or see the truth. Paul has in chapter nine already referenced the story of Pharaoh and hardening his hearts. but maybe you can today, think of people in your life who you know their spiritual senses are dulled. They cannot see, they cannot hear the truth. And sometimes you just wanna shake them. You won't be like, "Hey, how are you not seeing this?" Maybe they're surrounded by it, maybe they're in church or you know that they have heard of God, that God is present in their life. And you see God working, but for some whatever reason, they don't see God working. You just wanna see like, how do you not see this? That was God right there. How do you not understand this? God was at work in that moment.

That's Paul to the Israelites saying, God is all around them. God is working, but he's not surprised that they don't believe. Because again, this pattern has been around, those who believe and those who don't. We think of two Israel's history. If you start with Abraham, the first one of God's promise. And he had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael from Abraham's own will and power and Isaac, the son of blessing. And it's not Ishmael that God proceeds with, it's Isaac. And then from Isaac, his two sons, you get Jacob and Esau. And the Bible is very clear that Jacob is the one who God loved and Esau, the one that he hated. It's very strong words. And then from Jacob, we have all those who would believe in the Messiah and all those who would reject the Messiah. So there is a pattern present in God's people and plan seen throughout Israel's history of salvation and redemption of those who don't believe and those who do. And what Paul is referencing here, and he's gonna get, we're gonna further get into is that even those who rejected all long ago, all the descendants from Ishmael, all the descendants from Esau, they now have an opportunity to come to know and to believe in Jesus. And that speaks to the redemptive heart of God. All right, let's find out more about this pattern of salvation and redemption as we continue. Verse 11 says this, "Again, I asked, "did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? "Not at all. "Rather because of their transgression, "salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. "But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their full inclusion bring? I'm talking to you, Gentiles. In as much as I'm the apostle to the Gentiles, I take pride in my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. For if the rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy. If the root is holy, so are the branches. Some of the branches have been broken off and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others, and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this, you do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in, granted, but they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith.

Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God, sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree? All right, that's a lot. We got into some gardening stuff right there for a second, which we'll talk about. I just wanna focus on a couple things in this section. Paul is talking about Israel's present. The first 10 verses all about Israel's past. Now we're talking about Israel's present reality in the early church. And the reality is this, Israel's rejection of the Messiah equals the Gentiles opportunity to be saved. Maybe that's not how we would have drawn this up, but this is God's plan of redemption and salvation. Israel's rejection of the Messiah equals the Gentiles opportunity to be saved. And in Israel's present reality, we see a few different things. First, again, that God is a God of redemption. Paul anticipates the thought that maybe Israel is too far gone, did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? And he says no. Rather because they did stumble, salvation was brought to the rest of the world. This is a primary example of God's redemptive plan, turning something so negative and unfortunate, Israel, God's own people rejecting the Messiah, and turning it into God's kingdom glory and gain, which is Gentiles being grafted into the kingdom. Only God could have willed and executed this plan where so much of the world is brought into his kingdom. It's an amazing example of God's redeeming love and grace and heart.

In verses 23 through 24, we see more evidence of God's redemptive heart as he wants Israel to be in the family, to be redeemed. It says that they can be grafted in. That's only something that God who has endless amounts of grace and compassion and forgiveness and kindness can do. How many times do we feel, how many times does it take for us after we feel burned, betrayed or hurt by someone to say, that's enough, I'm kind of done with you, no more. I've been hurt enough and now I'm gonna put some distance between me and you. Now that may be healthy for us, don't get me wrong, that's maybe a good thing. We are finite creatures and we have boundaries and limitations, so that's maybe good. But that also just speaks to how amazing God is that he can be betrayed and hurt and burned over and over and over again. And yet once that person, that Israelite, no longer persists in unbelief, but instead believes God is ready to bring them back in. Endless amounts of grace and love. God wants them to be a part of the family. We get more of this in the next point, which is about grafting believers in. Any gardeners here, anyone who read this and was like, I totally understand what grafting in trees is all about. Yeah? OK. Well, that's impressive to me. That's amazing. I had to learn. I had to research. I was like, what is this process about? I do not know. I'm not often in the backyard grafting my trees together. But I learned that it's about taking a shoot from one tree, a little branch. And you open up. You make an incision and a cut in some other tree. And then you put that one shoot in there. And hopefully it takes, and it'll start growing off of that tree. And there's a bunch of reasons why you can do it to repair a tree. If this section of a tree is damaged, you can hope to mend it by putting some good branches in. Or maybe you just want to have freedom in how your trees are growing and you want to create something. My dad is really into bonsai. He got really into bonsai trees. I don't know if you know those little small ones that look like miniature trees. And so he's been in for about a decade or so. And he's got like 10 good bonsais. And I go with him now sometimes to this bonsai expert over. And we tend to his trees. And he tells us when to wire it, and to shape it, and where to cut it. And a lot of it is just leaving it alone for a whole year. And then you come back, and you have one week of lots of maintenance. And then you don't touch it for a year. But grafting is something that you can do in bonsai. And you can create something. And you can grow a tree in a certain direction. And it's just amazing. It's really cool. And so, Paul is, anyways, Paul is using this metaphor that Israel is this olive tree. And the unbelievers of Israel, those who do not believe Jesus as the Savior, have rejected, who have rejected Jesus, are pruned off, they're cut off from the tree. And then, he's grafting in some. He's making those incisions, he's bringing in other believers, the Gentile believers, and having them be a part of Israel. Now, I just want to be clear, the term "Israel" does not mean that we become Jewish, it means Israel as in the faithful who have put their faith in God.

So in the following chapters 9, 10 and 11, he's been using this term Israel as those who have put their faith in God. And so we become a part of the tree of Israel, those who live by faith. This pruning also may sound cruel, may sound unfair to us, but is God's exercise of justice, and he's perfectly okay to do it, and it's good. And Paul's trying to explain that, that this whole thing, this fate of Israel is actually good in the long run. And good if we back out and see the whole picture, because of what Israel is doing, Gentiles get to come into the family of God. The point is, we as new believers are grafted into the family of God, into Israel, and we must have faith to be on this tree, this tree of life, this tree of the family of God. And if we don't, if we don't have faith, it says in verse 20 that we can be broken off too. This is what God is doing through Israel's present reality. Many of them have rejected Christ, but God is being a redeeming God and grafting Gentiles into the family of God. We'll come back to the grafting analogy later. But the last part of our section that Paul is talking about is a warning of arrogance. He tells the Gentiles who were grafted in, who are part of God's redemptive plan, and maybe they're starting to feel good about themselves in comparison to Israel say, "Hey, man, God's own people don't believe "that I'm here on this tree. "Look at me, this is awesome." He's saying, "You are no better than an Israelite. "Better check yourself." He reminds them that the root supports you, not that you were brought in to be the source of God's work. No, no, no, it is by grace that we are saved. And that means that we didn't do anything to get ourselves onto this tree of life. So don't be thinking all high and mighty of yourself, you Gentiles who are now on the tree of life, but have humility. And he talks about not being arrogant, but trembling. I like this idea of trembling. This term in the Greek is thought of, it's the thought of being afraid, but not just terror, like we're about to be in the Halloween season right now, not that kind of afraid, but it's rather having a proper attitude of awe and respect towards something, often more powerful than you. And in this case, it's talking about God. So tremble before God, have a proper attitude of awe and respect. I think of it, have any of you been to Yosemite? Maybe some of you have been to Yosemite. I love Yosemite and I haven't, it's been a few years, but the part, the whole park is amazing. And it's, you know, the views are incredible. The part that filled me with awe was one of the waterfalls. to Yosemite Falls, and being at the very top, it's very high up, you get up there, you see the whole valley, you see everything, and it's incredible. And it fills me with a certain awe of like, man, God is amazing for creating this. I also don't like heights. I am terrified of heights. And so being up at the top of the falls, my legs are going weak, like 25 feet from the edge. It's very much over there, but I am like more points of contact to the ground. I need like, I start getting lower and lower, but I want to see you over the edge, but I have this proper, I think, a proper view on respect towards what could happen if I am closer to that edge. And I also think of the waterfall itself, and I've touched the water and I feel and hear and see the power of the water flowing down and going over that edge. And I know that one misstep from me, and I could be overwhelmed by something much greater and more and larger and more powerful than I am. And so while there was some fear while I was up there, I also just, it's a proper reverence in trembling, literally trembling, the top of the waterfall.

And I think that's what Paul is talking about, having a spirit of humility while we're on this tree as we've been grafted in, but still trembling, that we are a part of something bigger than us, that we serve a God who is much more powerful and in charge and sovereign, and who has the power to cut us off if we are no longer faithful. having a proper view and attitude and respect for God. In verse 21, he says, "God didn't spare his own people for their unbelief. What makes you think that he'll spare you if you don't believe?" So he gives us, the readers, a warning about arrogance. So, just wanna recap. That was a big section of this chapter, but I just wanna recap again. Israel's present reality, where many of the Israelites have rejected the Messiah, means that the gospel went out to the rest of the world. And we see that God is a God of redemption, that when one believes they are grafted into the family of God, and that we are to have a spirit of humility, not one of arrogance.

And that leads us to the final section of our passage, verse 25. And it says this, "I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited. Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way, all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion. He will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake. But as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs. For God's gift and his call are irrevocable. Just as you who are at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, So they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. We've had Israel's past, we've had Israel's present, and now Paul's addressing Israel's future. What will happen to them? And Paul believes that many of them will return to God, that many of them will be saved. there will be more faithful Israelites to come, descendants of Abraham who believe by faith, and God will be grafting them back in. He's cut them off, but he will graft them back in. And in the meantime, he anticipates the readers, this early church in Rome, to say, "But why in the future? "Why not now? "Why can't God do that now? "Why does it have to wait?" And Paul again approaches this with explaining the pattern of salvation and redemption, that right now it means that Gentiles, more Gentiles can come into the family of God. Israel has experienced a hardening by God, in part to help Gentiles come to faith. God's redemptive plan and pattern turns to the Gentiles as Israel struggles. He says that the nation of Israel are currently enemies of the gospel. Again, Paul's words can sometimes be very harsh and that we read that now and it's like, man, enemies of the gospel, but it's true. They do not believe in Jesus as the Messiah. But the call from God to be a part of the family remains forever. That call is irrevocable. That call doesn't go away. We talked about God being, God who redeems. So this situation, Israel has turned their back on God.

But God's call still goes out and says, in verse 10 or chapter 10, he was saying, "I hold my hand out to a disobedient and stubborn people." He's waiting and he continues to wait. And the question remains, will they answer? And Paul believes that they will. They will eventually answer the call. Verse 32, everyone, including Israelites, are dealing with sin nature. They are born sinful, bound to disobedience, but that disobedience is an opportunity for God to have mercy. Talk about a God of redemption. Any moment we see, we are disobedient to God, Any moment we see someone else living a life of disobedience, we should automatically think that's an opportunity for God to redeem that situation. Imagine the witness and testimony it will be to see Israel, a nation that has rejected Jesus for so long, finally come to saving faith. What a testimony to God that will be, to God's unending work, faithful covenant to His people. To see a people so entrenched in denying Jesus have their eyes open, their ears able to hear, and their hearts finally aligned with God. I mean, the celebration that will happen on that day. Paul is filled with hope. I want to share a story with you. I grew up in the church, and I grew up at a different church with this family who had a son who was the same age as me. We grew up in elementary and junior high and youth group together. And it was very clear by the end of high school or end of our youth group days that he was not following Jesus anymore with his life. And as many of us went off to college and continued in church, wherever our colleges were, he fully embraced a non-Christian secular lifestyle and has turned his back on faith, knew what he was doing and just went in that direction. Eventually I came back to work on staff and served on the board with his dad and leadership positions with his mom. And so I would hear in times of meeting and prayer requests, them praying for their son. And they say that right now he is not at all interested in faith, but they maintained a relationship with him and they're doing their best to continue to be a witness and a presence of Jesus in his life. And they had broken hearts. There was pain as they would share this and sorrow over the current state of their son, not walking with God. but they still had hope and prayed that one day, at whatever time of God's choosing, whether soon or far in the future, that their son would turn back to God. And right now, still not necessarily, I don't know where he's at with God, but I know this, he's closer than he has been in the past decade. He's closer, he's open, he's listening. His ears and his eyes are not as dull as they once were.

The conversations that he's having with his parents They share that, I mean, they're encouraged that he is partaking even and wants to ask questions. They continue to pray and hope and they believe in a God. They've seen God's pattern and work throughout scripture, throughout history. They know that God can redeem anyone in any situation. And so they're praying that that would be true of their son. And without a doubt, if he ever does fully commit to Christ, I know that there'll be rejoicing, tears of joy, and a huge appreciation and relief of the work that God had done, and evidence that God had never quit working in their son's life. And they continue to hope. I don't know about you, maybe you can think of someone in your life that that story relates to, that there's a person in your life, that that is them. That you are continuing to pray. They're not with God right now, they're not walking with God right now. They know who God is maybe, or maybe they don't, but you're praying and hoping in the God who can redeem anyone that that will be true in that person's life. We have to continue to hope. We know who God is, what he can do. We believe in a God who redeems. I wanna leave you with a few reminders and thoughts of encouragement. The first reminder is that we serve a redeeming God. How can you see a world in a way that highlights God's redemptive pattern? If you see someone, if you know someone who's in a bad place or an unbeliever, instead of judging them where they're at in that moment, maybe at their worst, or just signing off on that that is their fate forever, why don't we pray and hope for God to redeem them? We can be so quick to judge and just say, "Ooh, that person, yikes, too far gone." No, that is not what God is about. That's not the God that was, he sees that and he is hoping and praying that that person will come to him. and we should have the same thoughts. We wanna align our hearts with God and remember that we serve a redeeming God. If God can redeem Paul, who was killing Christians in the early church, and was anti God's own kingdom, and God can redeem him, God can redeem anyone. Whoever you come across, as bad as they might be, view them in God's eyes and see, that's an opportunity for God to redeem. Secondly, a reminder that you can be grafted in.

If you're here this morning and you believe, praise God that you are here as a believer, and you are now on the tree of life, and Jesus is your source, you are evidence of God's redeeming plan, pattern of salvation. And you gotta rejoice and recognize that you are part of the family of God. And if you have not yet declared, with your mouth and believed in your heart, then hear this today, you too can have faith and belong to the family of God. God's heart is that through his son Jesus, you would come to believe, and you can be grafted into the family of Christ. And then lastly, it's a reminder that we must have humility. That warning to the Gentiles also goes out to us. We cannot be arrogant in our faith. So the question for us today is, are you becoming superior in your heart in any way regarding your faith and your relationship with Jesus? When I say superior, meaning, Are you comparing yourself to other believers and thinking you are better than anyone? Do you ever have thoughts like this? Well, I've been here longer at this church and therefore I am entitled to this, this and this. I've been a Christian for more years. So my word and thought weighs more heavily than that person over there. I am so, I don't know if we use on fire anymore. I feel like that was a generational term for being, But maybe I'm more spiritual than that other person, just the way I live my life. So I'm closer to God and yeah, I matter more to God than that other person. Or maybe I know so much more of the Bible. Man, I know my Bible a lot compared to some of these other people. It can be as simple as at least God loves me this much compared to how little God loves that other person. As if God did not love others the same amount. And some of those might have sounded ridiculous to you, but I know for a fact that those are all thoughts that Christians have towards other believers. We can begin to feel superior over others.

And so let's embody Christ, who is the perfect example of humility, and recognize that we are all sinners in need of Jesus. That's our status right there. There's no greater than compared, when we look around, all of us on the same level, we are all sinners in need of Jesus. We sit before Jesus with a sin problem and we all need the same thing, salvation. So have a humble heart. I wanna ask yourself this week as we close, these are some questions for you to reflect on and go and may the Spirit work in you and all of us. Ask yourself this, what is God trying to tell me? Where am I seeing God's redemptive plan being worked out? maybe in my own life or in the life of someone I know, and ask God to continue to give you a spirit of humility in your faith, keeping you humble. The more humble, that's not a humbler, I don't think that's a word. The more humble we are, the more we stay in tune with our need for Jesus. The more superior in our faith we start to become, the more distant we find ourselves from the need, our need for God. We don't think we need Him as much. So remain humble, ask for that humility.

Romans - Part 16

A Matter of the Heart - Romans 10:1-21

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well we are continuing our series in Romans. We are in chapter 10. And then last chapter was dense, it was complex. There were a lot of issues around God's sovereignty and mercy and justice. And today Paul is gonna remind us that salvation is a matter of the heart. This is still in support of this larger argument that Paul is making, that the nation of Israel failed to attain righteousness through faith and instead tried to earn their way to heaven. and try to earn their salvation. And Paul's gonna say, it's not about that, it's a matter of the heart. And today I hope that this chapter serves as an encouragement and a reminder of how our faith, what God cares about most is our hearts. I wanna walk through this chapter and just guide us through Paul's thoughts and the truths that he addresses. So I know we just did, but we're gonna pray one more time for you to bow your heads. God, we come before you eager to understand your truth, who you are and what you do. So I just pray that as we dive into your scriptures, that you would help us to understand, God, that your spirit would be working in us right now, that we would be, just something would stick out to us that would help us to feel closer to you, to feel like we know you in a deeper sense. And God, you use this time for your glory. We pray this in your name, amen.

So I wanna start by just reading and then kind of, again, just going through it. We're gonna start in verse one. If you have your Bible, you can turn there. It'll be up on the screen. Verse one says, "Brothers and sisters, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them and they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. In this section, Paul is explaining that the Israelites thought that they were the culmination of the law, that their own righteousness was the goal. They thought, here's the law that God has given us, we are the missing piece. I'm what really matters in this equation. If when I follow the law, I become a better person, and that's the goal, that's what God wants. It's about me, it's about me being better. But really, the law was supposed to help the Israelites see what really matters, which was their inability to fulfill the law, their inability to follow the law perfectly. And it was actually there to show them that they have a need for Christ. They have a need for God. Christ is the culmination of the law. The law points to him and the law is fulfilled in Christ by him living his perfect life. The law draws us closer to God. as we strive to be like Jesus, we have to depend on Jesus to follow God. We so often think of the law as rules of do's and don'ts that restrict us. We don't like rules naturally. When in reality, the law that God has given us helps us live life to the fullest, as God intended and as God designed. And when we live in God's design, Whilst life will still be full ups and downs, we at least experience the goodness of God through it all. When we don't live according to God's law, we put distance between us and God. We move away from God. And whether life is hard or good, if we aren't living the way that God designed, we'll be living in that season of life, distant away from Him. And we never want to do that. We wanna be walking closely with him.

So I wanna ask this morning, the first set of questions is this, how often are we making the law about us? How often are we using the law to either think better of ourselves to think, look how good I am, look at all that I'm doing God. Or are we using the law to even, that we can think better, that God thinks better or that others will think better of us. I want others to see how good I am compared to God's law. Look at this. Sometimes we need to understand that it's not about us. We need to get out of the way. We gotta remove ourselves from being the primary focus and see that the law, while it helps us and it grows us and it draws us closer to God, it's still not about us. It points to Christ. And when we are walking in His perfect ways, as God designed, it's not us that's glorified, but it's God that is glorified. So in this first section, he's explaining, this is how the law works. To the Roman church, to the Israelites there, this is how the law works.

Let's continue reading in verse five. It says, "Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law. The person who does these things will live by them. But the righteousness that is by faith says, do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven? That is to bring Christ down. Or who will descend into the deep? that is to bring Christ up from the dead. In this section, Paul is explaining how the law can be misunderstood. Paul mentions that this was the case all the way back when Moses wrote the law. And I love how often Paul does this, brings in the Old Testament, because it stresses the continuity of scripture, that the Old Testament ties into the New Testament, that Jesus' words are supported by the Old Testament, the old laws and vice versa. Scripture supports scripture. When we seek to understand what the Bible says, we do so by looking at other parts of the Bible. Paul is doing that very thing here by bringing Old Testament references in to understand who God is and what God does. And that's an example for us. I think too often we try to solely understand God based on our own experiences, based on just what we know and what we've learned about God. And while those things have a part to play and our understanding of who he is, our primary way that we should be seeking to understand God is through his word. It's the biggest tool we have to understand his character.

So that's what Paul is doing right now. And he's doing that by quoting Deuteronomy. And he's bringing in these old words from Moses and he's saying, sorry, my notes, where'd they go? Technical difficulties. He's quoting Moses from Deuteronomy and kind of combining some of these old verses and kind of adding his own take on it to help explain to the Roman church, this is what it's about. And it's about, we'll find out. Okay, okay, hold on. We'll edit this out, everyone who's, don't worry about it. (laughs) We won't, that's the, yeah, we can't. (laughs) Okay, yeah, Paul's explaining it. Doing the law is still a good thing. That never changed. It's just not the thing that will get us into heaven. The doing of the law is not the thing that will get us into heaven. It's rather, it's an indicator of where our hearts are at, and therefore, where our relationship with God is. If we are following the law, that's probably an indicator that we are wanting to be close to God. If we are not following the law, then that's probably an indicator that we have no care or intention of following God. Now there's discrepancies in that, and we can follow the law, we'll get to that, and still not be close to God. But the law is an indicator, usually an indicator of where we are, where our hearts are at in relation to God. And so church, I wanna ask, where are our hearts today? As indicated by us following God's instruction. Are we abiding by His word? Do we have a desire within us to follow Him and His instructions and His wisdom that He has given us in scripture? Or are we trying to do our own thing? Saying, God, I know you've said this is how it should be, but I like to do it this way. And my heart's over here. And the law is also consequently just out of our radar. Paul is tying together scripture, the entirety of the Bible, helping the Roman church see that this isn't new, but this is how God intended the law to act and to be all along. So that's how the law can be misunderstood. Let's continue reading in verse eight. It says, "But what does it say? The word is near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart. That is the message concerning faith that we proclaim. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified. It is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As scripture says, anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame. For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. The same Lord is Lord of all, richly blesses all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. This section, Paul is explaining how faith works. If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. There it is, a matter of the heart. This is how faith works.

Notice what Paul isn't saying. He's not saying, he's not saying if you obey all the commandments and you hold them perfectly for the entirety of your life, then you will be saved. It's not it. He's not saying God, if you follow God as to the best of your ability and try with all the effort, and God sees that you're giving everything you can, then you will be saved. No. He says, "Declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart and you will be saved." God, salvation is a heart issue. It's not works, it's not abilities, it's not effort. It's about your heart. When I was up at Tahoe, I was with some other churches and met our, or re-met and spent some time with our new district superintendent, Mike Skor, great guy, Pastor Chris knows him really well. Maybe some of you do too. But he was speaking about Abraham from Genesis and how Abraham's faith worked. And he said this, he said, "We wanna equate obedience with God, or obedience with earning God's favor and attention. And if we do this, this and this, then we will receive this, this and this." And that's not what God intended. He also pointed out the difference between the disciples and Pharisees. And see the Pharisees thought they had to do something to get God's attention and approval. And if they didn't, they would feel guilty about it. The disciples were spurred on to grow and be deeply transformed from within by the love of God and the desire to be like Him. And even when they messed up, it wasn't necessarily guilt that they felt, but this desire to grow and be more like Jesus. And so I wanna ask, which one are you today? Are you like a Pharisee? And I don't mean that in a mean way, 'cause we often talk about the Pharisees as the bad guys of the New Testament, but are we trying to do things to earn God's attention and approval? And if we don't do certain things in our Christian walk, are we feeling guilty? For example, in however you do your morning time or your walk with God, if let's say you wake up and you wanna spend 30 minutes with God, are you doing that to try and please Him? Are you saying, "God, look what I'm doing. "Look how I spent my 30 minutes. "See how I was spending time with you." And if you miss that time, are you feeling guilty? Are you thinking that God is disappointed in you? Or are you spending time with Him in the morning because He is someone that you love? And like anyone else, like in any other relationship, time with them is important and it's how you grow closer to them. Do you see the difference there? One's this checklist and when we're doing something to see God's approval, the other one is out of love, motivated with a desire to have a deeper relationship with him.

There used to be this insurance commercial, I don't know which insurance provider. I'll do my best to describe this funny scene. It was some women who had a bunch, this one woman had a bunch of pictures, like printed out pictures on her wall in her living room. And she invited her friends over to like her pictures. And it was supposed to be this play on like Facebook. And she's like, look at my vacation photos right here. And the one friend's like, oh, I really like that one. And the other friend's like, that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. And the one lady's like, I unfriend you. And she's like, no, that's not how this works. And I feel like that's Paul right now, just over and over again, trying to tell the Israelites, that's not how this works. Salvation and how you think of it happening, that's not how it works. You've got it wrong. You think it's if you try so hard and you earn, no. It's a matter of the heart, Israelites. And for us today, church, it's a matter of your heart. The problem with it being workspace is that you can do the right thing and be rotten on the inside. For example, let's say I mess up or I'm rude to my wife. I can do the right thing by apologizing. I can say the words, I'm sorry, blah, blah, blah. But on the inside, I can be bitter, I can be selfish and private thinking like, I was not wrong in the first place. I'm just doing this to make you happy. Like, you know, all those things that no one here relates to that. No, you guys are all amazing. But we can be rotten on the inside and still do the right things. And so God being infinitely wise knows this and never set up this earning system by saying, if you just do the right stuff, no. He's like, I know what really matters and it's people's hearts. And so I want your hearts. God cares about your hearts. Faith is a matter of the heart. Declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart. That's how faith works. Let's continue in verse 14. "How then can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. but not all the Israelites accepted the good news for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our message? Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message and the message is heard through the word about Christ.

Paul's now sharing about how sharing the gospel works and people need to hear the gospel. Believing and knowing God, our creator, Jesus, our savior comes from hearing the message of Christ. Someone needs to preach and witness and testify 'cause how else will the gospel be proclaimed? And how can anyone preach unless they were called to do so by Jesus? Well, guess what? We all were in the great commission by Jesus as go and make disciples, which includes testifying to who God is. So think of it this way, if you're with a bunch of people and there's some who don't believe, that means that there's someone there that needs to hear the gospel. And if you're with those people, don't be looking around saying like, hell, I wonder who God called to reach these people. I wonder who that is. I wonder when they're gonna come into this picture and share good news. No, it's you. You are all sent, you are all called to share the gospel. There are only two parties, those who need to hear and those who can share. There's not the third party of like, I'm just the witness to like see it all happen and wonder how God works. That's the main, no. Either you need to hear it or you can be sharing it. We talk about this weekly, you have the responsibility and the ability to share God's word. As little or as much as that may be, right? You can share that they need God, that God loves them, that God sent His son to die for their sins and to save them. You can share just what God has done in your life. I'm still learning about God. I don't know everything, but I know that he's done this for me. Boom, gospel being shared right there. The gospel needs to be heard. And by the way, this shouldn't stop once you become a believer. Just because you've heard the gospel once and accepted Jesus doesn't mean that you don't need to keep hearing God's truth. On the contrary, you need to hear God's truth regularly, daily, routinely. You wanna grow closer to God? That happens by spending time hearing from Him. That comes most often through His word, Sundays like this, community groups, your own daily devotion, prayer time, silence. All those things are ways that we are growing closer to God, hearing from Him regularly.

Paul also writes this phrase, "How beautiful are the feet." We don't say that anymore. It's a great, it's a beautiful feat, sir. It's not something we often say anymore. And so I just wanna remind us that this reference is a reference to the messenger of victory, who would, after the, in the Roman Empire, after there was some war and victory, they would send out these messengers to go to all the villages and say, "Hey, the battle's been won." And the term used, I think we talked about this at the very beginning of our series, the term used there was the gospel. We think of the gospel as strictly about the Bible and God's word, but the term in the Roman empire was, the gospel message was a message of just victory. And so you had this gospel messenger who would go out and tell all the villages, Rome has won. And the phrase often used was like, how beautiful are the feet of the messenger who gets to share about the victory with people? And so Paul is using that term here. How beautiful are the feet of the one who gets to share about the ultimate gospel message. The victory that we share in is the ultimate victory. It's Christ's victory over sin and death. There is no better gospel message than Jesus's gospel message. And God delights and considers it beautiful when we share his gospel. That is a message that we ourselves, people need to hear for the first time and we need to hear over and over again. Paul tells the church in Rome that sharing God's truth is a must. Now you've probably heard, even from Pastor Chris and myself, preach the gospel and when necessary use words. Well, that's only partially true. We should live in a way that glorifies God and points people to Christ, but we do so through our actions or inactions so that opportunities can arise, so that moments can happen when the gospel can be shared. It's not necessarily realistic to just walk up to a person and start sharing the gospel. If you have that gift, that's amazing. But we emphasize the whole, your actions and the way you live pointing to Christ, because hopefully and prayerfully, by doing that, it'll lead to a conversation. It'll lead to the gospel being shared in words and getting to testify to the work that God has done in your life. So that's still true. Preach the gospel when necessary use words, but that part of when necessary, be waiting for that. Don't think of it as like, hey, I never get, I don't ever have to share. I'll just do the part where I live really well and hopefully somehow they meet God. No, do that, but also be ready. Be ready to share the gospel. Couple of questions for us to just reflect on. Do you realize and do you know, and do you live in this way that You are commissioned by Christ to share the gospel. You are sent. You don't need anything official from this church or from the pastors here. You are sent as a believer to go out in your world, in your community, in your family, your neighbor, wherever it is, and to share the gospel. And do you know that when you do that, God delights in it and he's saying, how beautiful are the feet that brought my message to someone else? And are you ready? Are you ready to share? Again, as little or as much as that may be. If you've got that 10 point, like gospel message ready, good on you. That's awesome. Amazing. If you're like, all I know is that God's been doing some stuff in my life and I can share that. Great. Share that. Point to how Christ is at work in you. So that's how sharing the gospel works.

Let's go ahead and finish our chapter now in verse 18. But I asked, this is Paul, did they not hear? Of course they did. Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. Again, I asked, did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, I will make you envious by those who are not a nation. I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding. And Isaiah boldly says, I was found by those who did not seek me. I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me. But concerning Israel, he says, all day long, I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people. In this last section here, Paul is explaining how sinful hearts tend to work. Paul anticipates and knows that Israelites have some negative feelings when it comes to other nations receiving salvation by God. They were God's chosen people, were the special ones. And when they start seeing someone else receive the blessing and grace and love and salvation of God, it's not always positive feelings. They're like, "Oh, that's great." No, it's... It's kind of like a kid, and maybe you guys can relate, we can relate certainly at this. There's lots of toys in a kid's life, right? And some, they all have phases. And so Kinsley's had some favorite toys, and for a season, it's like all she's played with. And then sooner or later, we'll just end up at the bottom of the toy bin. And it's down there and we're like, all right, that toy is gone. and we'll kind of go through these purgings, like, "Hey, let's get rid of some stuff. Let's give this to another kid." And she hasn't seen it in months, and we'll bring it out. She's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, where's that one going? Whoa, hold on. That's my toy." We're like, "Well, you haven't played. Let's let another kid enjoy this." "No, that's mine." "Well, you haven't played with it in a long time. No one else can have it. It's still mine." It's kind of what Israel, that's what they feel when God starts offering salvation to the whole world. He's like, "Hey, now the whole world can experience it." He's like, "Whoa, me, we're the people. God, what are you doing?" Sinful hearts tend to make it all about us. We become prideful, selfish, self-centered, and we can no longer have a godly perspective and joy in someone else coming to Christ, experiencing the love of God. Are you mindful of your heart when someone comes to Christ? Some people are saved and we rejoice and we welcome them in with open arms. Oh, so good that you're here. And yet sometimes, maybe this is just me, sometimes when I hear about someone coming to Christ, for whatever reason, I'm skeptical. I'm like, did they? Really? You sure? Something about that kid whose toy is now being given away. We can be possessive of our faith, of our faith community. We can be possessive of our priority in a church family. There's a whole other heart issue that we have to deal with here. That's pride, possessiveness, priorities that are in disarray when it comes to God's kingdom. Sometimes it's helpful just to think this. When we get to heaven, I'm sure we will all be shocked by some people that are there with us, that we are sharing eternity with. We're gonna turn and be like, really? You're here? (audience laughing) You? Like, yeah, I love God. Like really? Okay, well, let's do eternity together. Just recently, a pastor friend was telling me of someone in his life who wants to become a pastor. And this person does not look like a typical pastor or a typical Christian, because before their coming to faith, They were living a life that was not at all close to God. This person has full face tattoos of a clown, has face implants to make them look more like a clown. And so it's just, his life was full of partying with wild satanic people. And because of a broken relationship, he's come to know Jesus in this miraculous way. And when this friend was telling me about this, and there's an article about it, I was reading this article, I was like, really? Really? Are we sure? Are we sure about this? And I had a heart check after reading this passage. And I was like, okay, I'm sure that God's not up there being like, really? I'm sure God is overjoyed about this person who maybe was so far away from him, coming to him and saying, God, now I love you. And I had to have a heart check. Does my heart reflect God's? Shouldn't I be overjoyed when someone's eternity is changed for the better? So just as believing is a matter of the heart, our reactions towards people believing is also a matter of our hearts.

The end of Paul's words here also points to how God works in a variety of ways. Salvation only through Christ, but how people are reached is different. We're all different and God's reached us uniquely about how we operate and how we think, we all don't have the same exact story. So even in this room, we all didn't come to know Jesus and be saved in the same exact way. Maybe some of us grew up in Christian homes and we've known Jesus or Jesus has been around our lives for all of it and we eventually came to faith and believe in him. Or some of us didn't come to know and believe in Jesus until adulthood and having lived a life away from God, but then came to know Him and believed in Him. Or maybe some of us have had like off again, on again relationship with God. If I was walking with you, but then I stopped and now I'm all in, but it's been back and forth. Or maybe some of us are sitting here today and still hesitant about what a relationship with God looks like. Paul says here, verse 20, Jesus was found by those who weren't even looking. And maybe that's some of your stories, that you were just living life, You're doing your thing, walking your own way. But God made himself very apparent to you and you couldn't ignore him anymore. He also writes in verse 21, God held out his hand continually, waiting for a disobedient and stubborn people. And maybe that's some of your story, that you've known God your whole entire life, knew that he was there for you, knew that he wanted you, but kept refusing to take his hand, kept refusing to surrender. saying, God, I don't wanna do that right now. I don't want relationship with you. I know about you, but I don't want it. Isn't God good to work in a variety of ways to reach a variety of people? It speaks to his desire, his heart of wanting so many to believe, wanting so many to come into his kingdom and be a part of his church family, his eternal family. I just love it. And I love that we all have different stories that highlight different aspects of God. God did this for me. That's amazing. God's grace really reached you in that. God was faithful in this story. It all ties back into sharing the gospel too, that maybe your story will reach someone in a way that my story can't, or maybe my story will be helpful in a ways that this story isn't. And isn't God using all of it for His glory? So we've seen how the law works, how the law is misunderstood, how faith works, how sharing the gospel works and how our sinful hearts tend to work. And through it all, the common thread is that faith is a matter of the heart. I just wanna end by asking these questions as you reflect on these this morning and maybe throughout this week. Do you have a heart that wants to draw closer to God? Do you have a heart that believes that God raised Jesus from the grave and that he is Lord? Do you have a heart that wants to share the gospel with other people and is ready to share the gospel with other people? And do you have a heart that isn't prideful or selfish, but rejoices when others come to know and believe in Christ? I encourage you this week to bring your heart before God, be vulnerable and honest with Him and ask Him through His Spirit to do the work, to bring to light some things like, "God, what can I work on? Where is my heart off a little bit? How can my heart be more aligned with yours?" And trust that the Spirit will work and transform you to be more like Christ and trust that God will continue the work that He has begun in you. He won't stop until you're with Him in heaven.

Let's pray. God, thank you for your gospel message. Thank you for the work that your spirit is doing in our lives. And God, I pray that through your word, we'd be encouraged and empowered and equipped to be gospel messengers, to bring your message of victory through Christ to people in our lives. You would give us words, God, in those moments, I pray that you would bring opportunities this week, moments to share with someone, the love of Christ. Again, maybe it's just a personal testimony or maybe it is scripture that we're sharing with someone. But I pray that when those moments arise, that through your spirit, we would have the courage and the boldness to share, to not ignore it, to not let and think that someone else will take care of it, but that we will feel the need to say, I'm ready. I'm gonna share right now. It takes faith, it takes trust. And so God, we trust and know that you will give us what we need in those moments. And God, I pray that you continue to work in us. Make us more like you. This whole church, our desire is to be representatives of Christ in our community, in our families, in our friends. So God use us for your glory. We're thankful for all that you're doing and know that you will continue to use us for your goodness and for your kingdom. We pray all this in your son's name, Amen.

Romans - Part 15

Mercy & Justice - Romans 9:1-33

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We reentered our series in Romans and I am personally excited to know that by the end end of 2023, we'll have covered the entirety of the letter of Romans. That is a lot. It has been, at times, like drinking from a fire hose, or trying to. Yeah, there's so much to dive into, many more conversations to be had, there's so much more study that we all need to do on our own. We've just kind of, hopefully, loosened the soil, so to speak. And now, we'll have covered, by the end of the series, all of Romans, but there's still so much more to dive into and dig and just wrestle with. But I wanted to remind us again, 'cause some of you are newer here and didn't know that we started in Romans at the beginning of this year. And so, kinda put some things before us again that we've covered long ago.

And that is that this letter of Romans was written by the apostle Paul to the early church in Rome to believers. And they are dealing with all sorts of questions and issues and trying to figure out what does faith look like, what does being a church look like. And there's some reoccurring issues that Paul is trying to address and sort out, and one of them is that, is an issue that revolves around who gets to be saved, and this issue of Israel, and Israel's relationship to Jesus and their eternal destination. Last week, Pastor Chris talked about it being all good. You guys don't have to say it this week. No, there we go, it's all good. And it's all good because of Jesus and God's love for us, the salvation that only comes through Christ. And because of that salvation, the eternal perspective that we get to have, knowing that we'll be with God in heaven one day, is really a good message. If you haven't listened, you should go listen to it. A good message from a very encouraging passage in Romans. And now following that, Paul is anticipating questions from the readers. I don't know if you remember this, but this is kind of what he does. He'll say something and because he's not there in person, because they didn't have a phone call or Zoom to set up, like, "Hey, I'm going to tell you a bunch of stuff, and then if you have questions come," he's like, "I've got to do it all at once. So I'm just going to assume that you're going to ask these questions." And so he's set a bunch of things in chapter 8, and now he's just anticipating certain questions, and he's going to answer those questions. So he's saying, "Well, if it's all good, then what about Israel? Is Israel all good too, since they are God's people? if they are God's people, then why do they have to face judgment? And if this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because Paul has addressed this before in this letter, and therefore we have addressed this in our series before, but each time it's from a slightly different angle.

And today, in chapter 9, the tone of these questions is, "Is God good if Israel gets punished?" Is God a good God if Israel also faces the wrath of God? Just a heads up, scholars say that chapter eight, the one we just finished last week, if that's the most important chapter in Romans, chapter nine is the most difficult chapter because it deals with God's sovereignty and goodness and his mercy and justice. I just want to remind us that Paul didn't write any of this to be divisive, but to encourage believers about who God is and what he does. Often people pit God's mercy and justice against each other, or don't feel like they can coexist at the same time. But let's remember that all of who God is, and all of his character is good. He is a good God, all of him. We are finite creatures trying to understand our infinite creator. So that can be hard for us to comprehend sometimes. How does mercy and justice work? But let's assume, let's start at the place that God is a good God. So we're going to dive into our chapter this morning. Like I said, he's asking some questions. And the first question that he's going to ask is, "Did God fail?" Did God fail Israel? I want to read our first couple of verses here.

We're going to be in Romans 9, starting in verse 1. "I speak the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit. I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption of the sonship. Theirs is the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God overall, forever praised. Amen. It is not as though God's word had failed, for not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Lord, because they are his descendants, are they all Abraham's children? On the contrary, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. For this was how the promise was stated, at the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son. Not only that, but Rebekah's children were conceived at the same time by her father Isaac. Yet before the twins were born, or had done anything good or bad, in order that God's purpose and election might stand, not by works, but by him who calls, she was told the older will serve the younger, just as it is written, Jacob I love, but Esau I hated. All right, there's a lot, chapter nine, difficult chapter. In the first five verses, Paul is in anguish over why more Jewish people do not believe in Jesus. He's anticipating the church in Rome asking the question, "If it's all good, if we are more than conquerors," going back to the last chapter, "then why aren't more Jews saved? If the Jews were God's chosen people, the Israelites, why did so many of them fail to believe in Jesus?”

And to probe even deeper in that question, he's really getting at the thought that we we humans love to ask, which is, whose fault is it? Whose fault is it that more Israelites don't believe? Is it the Jews' fault, or is it God's fault? Did God fail the Israelites? In those first five verses, he's explaining that God is not at fault. He's reminding the church that the Jews had everything on their side. They had the adoption into the family of God available to them by heritage, which means They grew up in the culture hearing about God, God as their God. They had all the stories of how God had worked and all those Old Testament stories. They had all those available to them. They had the covenants between them and God. They received the law of God. They had the temple, they had the promises of God, and they are the family from which Jesus came. So they had every opportunity to know Jesus, to receive Jesus, but they did not. And this deeply pains Paul. He shows this Christ-like mindset by saying, "If I could, if I could be cut off, "if I could be the sacrifice, and if I was cut off, "but it meant that every other Israelite, every other Jew, "be a part of God's family, I'd do it." But it sadly doesn't work like that. And he knows that, he's in anguish over it. But he's saying that Israel had so much opportunity, and that makes the reality of their situation, some of them being separated from the family of God that much more painful. So again, who's at fault? Is it the Jews or is it God? And he says in verse six, "It is not as though God's word had failed, "for not all who are descended from Israel are Israel." Paul's making it clear, it's not God's fault. Let's answer the question right now. It's not God's fault. He did not fail Israel. He's reminding the people that, this goes all the way back to the Old Testament. There's a distinguishing factor being made between those part of the lineage of Abraham, of those who embraced faith and those who didn't. It says in verse eight, in other words, it's not the children by physical descent who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring.

And Paul points to Abraham's promised son Isaac as an example and the two sons that Isaac had. Both Jacob and Esau were natural descendants of Isaac, promised to Abraham. but only Jacob bore the promise of nationhood. See, Jacob was one who embraced faith in God, and Esau sold his inheritance and embraced sinful impulse rather than faith. So Paul's making the distinction that not all of Israel has their faith in God. Some have embraced sin, and that's sinful impulse. To say that God is at fault for more Israelites not believing is to question the power and sovereignty and goodness of God. And Paul wants to be clear that God did not lose Israel, that somehow God was not powerful enough to keep them, but instead Paul is saying that they chose sin and rejection of Christ. Paul's relaying the truth that God has never had a peaceful relationship with the Esau's of this world, those who routinely choose sin over God. But God has a peaceful relationship with the Jacobs, those who are embracing their faith in God. So first question, did God fail and who's at fault? God did not fail, but Israel, the Jewish people, are at fault. Second question that Paul anticipates the church asking is, is God unjust? Let's continue reading in verse 14 when it says, "What then shall I say? Is God unjust? Not at all. For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God's mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh, "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." Therefore God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden. Alrighty. Remember, God is good.

Paul's asking the question, "Is God unfair in how He dispenses His mercy?" Is God unjust? Let's just pick apart that question and what's at stake here. By definition, mercy is something that is undeserved. You don't deserve mercy, it's a gift from people, or in this case, from God. So God is completely fair in whom He gives mercy to. He is all wise, He is good, and He is completely fair in who receives His mercy. Paul then quotes Exodus in this quote of Moses, and the scene here really quickly is when God is introducing Himself to Moses for the first time. In fact, it's the first time He's introducing Himself to anyone. Before this moment in Exodus, people just refer to God as the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob. He doesn't yet have a name. They just know that Abraham and all of his of his descendants worship this God. Well, when Moses has taken the Israelites out into the desert, and then Moses is up on the mountain, and he says, "God, I wanna know you. "Can we meet face to face?" And God says, "No, we can't do the face to face thing. "You can't handle that. "But I will tell you my name, and I'll tell you who I am." It's a very powerful, it's a whole 'nother sermon. I can't get into it all, but this is the moment that Paul is quoting. And God says to Moses, "My name is Yahweh, first time." And he says right after that, so that's my name, and this is who I am. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious. I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. It's the first time that we hear who God is and what he does. And so we know in this conversation that Paul is referencing now about Israel and who receives salvation, this is exactly in God's character. This is who he's been always. He doesn't say it's only gonna be Israel that receives salvation. He implies that some will not experience His mercy. Paul then follows that question with, is God unjust in holding Israel or anyone accountable in rejecting His offer of salvation? And he answers this with the example of Pharaoh from Egypt, in this time that Moses had appealing to Pharaoh to let God's people go. Do you remember that scene? It's going back to Exodus in the Old Testament. Israelites are enslaved, and God sends Moses an heir and says, "Hey, I want you to go ask Pharaoh "to let my people go." And there's an interesting play here throughout Exodus of what happens to Pharaoh. The scene is about who is rejecting who. Who rejected who first? Did Pharaoh reject God first, or did God reject Pharaoh first, hardening Pharaoh's heart. So to answer this question, it's kind of like a case study that Paul brings into the middle of his argument here. He says, if we wanna talk about a little bit about how God works, we gotta go back to Pharaoh 'cause this is gonna make it clear. Who rejects who? Does God reject people or do people reject God? And so let's really investigate, and I just wanna, we don't have to turn there. But in Exodus, this is what happens. Moses goes to Pharaoh, and this is kind of the order. Yeah, this is so good. There's so much to cover. This is what happens. Moses has this conversation multiple times about on behalf of God, going to Pharaoh and saying, God wants you to let his people go. In the first five times, Pharaoh hardens his own heart. It says in chapter seven of Exodus when Moses and Aaron go, and they show that they are messengers of God. There's this whole scene with a staff and it turns into a snake and then Pharaoh's like, he experiences this and it says after that, "Pharaoh hardened his heart." And then the first plague comes, or the plague of frogs comes, and after that plague comes, it says that "Pharaoh hardened his heart." His own heart. Then the plague of gnats, chapter 8, "Pharaoh hardened his heart." Then the plague of flies comes, "And hardened his own heart. Now, the next plague happens. It's the plague of dead livestock, but all of Israel's livestock lives. All of the Egyptian livestock dies. This is, again, just God reaching out to Pharaoh saying, "Hey, I'm being serious. You better let my people go." And this time, Pharaoh did not harden his own heart, but it says that his heart was unyielding, which means he wasn't going to stop. He wasn't going to let go of his position of being against God. And then we see what God does.

The next time is the plague of boils, nasty things all over the bodies, and God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Then right after that, Pharaoh hardened his own heart. It says in Exodus 9, 34, "When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again, and he and his officials hardened their hearts. Then we go back, I'm just gonna lay it out, the whole case study. The next part is that God hardened his own heart, or yeah, hardened Pharaoh's heart. And by this time, Pharaoh has developed a pattern of ignoring God, hardening his heart, facing another plague, and still not yielding to God, not changing his mind. And he even says that he has sinned. He knows that he is against God, and yet he is entrenched in his ways. And then, after the plague of locusts, he is crying out for Aaron and Moses to ask God for forgiveness. He says, "I can't handle this anymore. Please ask your God to stop these plagues." He recognizes that he has sinned. And so God takes the plague away. But God hardens Pharaoh's heart. And then there's the plague of darkness and the plague of the firstborn, and after all those, God hardens Pharaoh's heart. Let me fast forward a little bit, and Israel is let go. Pharaoh says, "Yes, go. I can't handle any more of this." And so the Israelites have left the Exodus. They have left Egypt. And in chapter 14 of Exodus verses 5 through 6, we hear this. When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds. pattern of sin comes back. They changed their minds. They had been in line with God's will. Yes, let the people go. But then Pharaoh changed his mind, and he gathered up his army and his chariots. And then a couple of verses later it says that the Lord hardened his heart so that Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, would pursue the Israelites. So I say all that. Here's the tally. Five times Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Four times before God even did anything. and then five times that God hardened Pharaoh's heart.

Why do I share all this? Why is this important? Why does Paul bring it up? It's to help us see that Pharaoh's own choices and God's justice are in line. God's hardening of Pharaoh's heart comes only after Pharaoh has done it first. So God doesn't reject anybody who doesn't reject him first. Their own choices of rejecting God are in line with God's punishment, justice, and wrath. Hopefully we understand this helps us see a picture of God's mercy and justice at work, and how God operates, and when He does harden someone's heart, or spare someone, like it says in this chapter in Romans that God spared Pharaoh for this very purpose that his glory might be seen, when he does that, God is still good. Even if he doesn't save or redeem that person, God is still just and he is still merciful. God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy. So is God just and holding people accountable to their decision. Yes, yes He is. This also shows that salvation is grace from beginning to end. It's Jesus who first reaches out to us and it's only by His grace that we are saved. Jesus reaches out and then we have a choice to respond to the reaching out of of God in a positive way, moving towards Jesus, or in a negative way, moving farther away from Jesus, like Pharaoh did. God first came to him through Moses saying, "Hey, I want you to do this." And Pharaoh took the step away saying, "No, I don't wanna do that. "I'm going farther away from you, God." All right, let's come up for some air for a second. How we doing? That was a lot. Even me right now, I'm like, did that make sense? I hope it made sense. I hope that that provided some clarity as to the conversation that Paul is having in Romans and clarity to how God operates. We know that God is perfectly just and we know that people harden their hearts towards him first, and then God can harden their hearts after that. We also know that God didn't fail.

So, our last question, is God good? And this comes from verses 19 through 24, which read, "One of you will say to me, "then why does God still blame us? "For who is able to resist his will?" And Paul says, "But who are you, a human being, "to talk back to God? "Shall what his form say to the one who formed it? "Why did you make me like this? "Does not the potter have the right to make out "of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use. What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath, prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory? Even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles." So this last question is, you know, again, a bunch of questions that Paul's gonna answer. says, "Is God's decision to only save some inconsistent with His goodness? Is God still good even though some will face His wrath?" And again, I want to pause just as Paul does here and remind ourselves, do we think we are wiser and smarter than God? Paul says in verse 20, "Who are you to talk back to God?" We have to approach the situation trying to understand God rather than already assuming that who He is and what He does is faulty. We also have to remember that God's ultimate end is His glory. God's glory is the most important thing in the universe, and it's what He cares about most. Yes, He loves us, He cares about us a lot, but in a way that only God can, He is all about His own glory. I'm giving all these reminders because the truth is, this is such a tough conversation.

Paul knows it and acknowledges it. And the answer to this question is this, and if you only hear one thing today, let it be this. God is glorified when his mercy is at work, and God is also glorified when his justice is at work. There's usually two reactions to that. Some of us are comforted knowing that God is glorified in both. We appreciate his mercy and we appreciate his justice. We like his justice both equally. Yes, God is glorified in both. For others, it's uncomfortable to hear about God being glorified in His justice and when He exercises His wrath. But it's necessary for us to wrestle with this, these truths of who God is and what He does, and to recognize that He is still glorified even when He is being just and exercising judgment. In verses 23 through 24, Paul is getting at the point that God is God, He is perfect. And even if He did, kind of this hypothetical, if He did, in choosing to show His wrath upon someone like Pharaoh, did all that just to make His glory known, wouldn't He still be good? Is God still allowed to do that? Yeah, He is. Now, the early church wasn't necessarily questioning what happened in Exodus, but are wondering again about Israel and why more of them are not believers. They are wondering, did God predestine Israel to fail? Did God raise up his people just so that they could not accept him? And if so, if that's the case, then is God good in that? Why would God do that? Why would God purposely just raise up a bunch of Israelites to have them not accept Jesus?

And so Paul wraps up this chapter by countering that thought, by reminding the people that Israel rejected Jesus because they refused to humble themselves before God. They refused to receive salvation by faith. They thought they could do it themselves. They thought they could earn it. They thought they didn't need God, which is the age-old, going back to the garden, the original sin, when Adam and Eve took the fruit. "I don't need God. I can be a God. I don't need Him." That's what Israel struggled with, too. Think of all the rejection and sin that Israel did since leaving Egypt, in the desert, having to wander for 40 years because they were not submitting themselves to God, all the problems with the judges and kings and being captured by foreign nations and being in exile. Israel had developed a pattern, just like Pharaoh, of saying one thing but sooner or later sinning against God and rejecting God, hardening their hearts. Their mindset was we can do it on our own. And if we think of the time of Jesus, think of the Pharisees with all their rules and regulations trying to earn their way to heaven, when the whole time all they needed to do was entrust their lives to God. God did not predestine Israel to fail. Rather, chose to reject God and then Jesus over and over and over again. Paul presents this evidence from Scripture that this is always how God has operated, and there's even evidence that God knew this was going to happen, and He foretells about it. So he, in verses 24 through 26, he's referencing Hosea. He says, "I will call My people who are not My people, and I will call her My loved one who is not My loved one." And in the very place where it was said to them, "You are not my people," they will be called children of the living God. So he's saying that God will have compassion on whoever he wants to have compassion on, and that person doesn't have to be an Israelite. That can be a Gentile. That can be someone not of the chosen people.

And then Paul quotes Isaiah referencing that even back then, God was letting people know that only some of Israel will It says in Isaiah, or in our chapter, "Though the number of Israelites will be like the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved, for the Lord will carry out His sentence on earth with speed and finality. It is just as Isaiah said previously, unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah." So Paul is relaying to the church in Rome, this is nothing new. The salvation that Jesus brings, it's been talked about for hundreds of years, and the The reactions of the Israelites and the Gentiles was already known by God. And God told us through the prophets that this is how it was going to be. Only some of Israel would believe, and God would then start to welcome Gentiles and other people into his family. He's again emphasizing that becoming a part of God's family has nothing to do with heritage. Just being an Israelite does not mean that you are a part of God's family, but it's all about to do with if you're embracing faith in God. The truth is that while some may be questioning if God predestined Israel to fail, in reality, even though it was Israel who failed and hardened their own hearts, and yet God continued to intervene in his people's lives, continued to have mercy. And if he hadn't, if God had just left Israel alone, it would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah. And any reference in the Bible to Sodom and Gomorrah is a reference to the most evil town and cities ever, towns and cities so evil that they needed immediate destruction. God wiped them off the face of the earth. So he's saying God knew that Israel, not all of Israel was going to believe, but that didn't stop God from still having mercy and continuing to reach out. And if God had just let Israel go, if He had just taken His hands off and said, "You know what? I'm done completely," they would have ended up like Sodom and Gomorrah. That was the route that Israel was headed. They were headed to such evil. But God is so good to continue to reach out to Israel again and again and again. Salvation is only obtained through Jesus, not what Israel thought in trying to earn their way. Israel pursued the law instead of pursuing Jesus. And Paul explains all this to say that God is good, God did not fail and God is just.

So Paul has answered his questions. And what about us today? What should our response be to Paul's words in the letter of Romans? Well, very quickly, there's three things that I think we should have because of this truth right here. And the first is a spirit of humility, a humble heart. Let's not make the same mistake that Israel made, thinking that they could do it on their own, and in so doing, rejecting Jesus. Let's admit our need for God every single day, and live dependent on His Spirit. Let's not harden our own hearts, but remain open and desiring of God's influence and guidance in our lives. We need to have a humble heart. Recognize who is God and who isn't, all of us. Remember our place. Remember that even in seeking to understand God and his ways, we start from a place of knowing that God is good. Be a Jacob, like from this passage right here. Someone who embraces faith in God. Don't be an Esau, someone who gives into sin routinely over and over again. So church, do you have a humble heart? Do you recognize God's goodness and his justice and mercy? Even if you don't fully understand how that works, do you still worship Him and worship the God who is perfectly just and is perfectly merciful? Secondly, be comforted. Know that the work that God has begun in you is one that He will finish. He won't give up on you. Even when you have moments of hardening your heart, we all do it. We have moments where we turn away from God and say, "Oh, I want to do it my way. I'm hardening my heart. I'm entrenched in this moment of sin. Know that He still extends grace and mercy and love to you. God desires and strives to have relationship with you. He wants to bring you closer to Him. So if you're sitting here wanting to know God more, continue to step towards Him, move towards God. When He's reaching out to you, have a positive reaction. Don't turn away. And be comforted in knowing that when we serve and worship God, we are bringing such joy to Him. We worship the One who has defeated sin through His Son, Jesus Christ. So are you comforted in knowing that Jesus is at work in your life? Are you comforted in knowing that He won't give up on you?

Even when you have moments of hardening your heart, he still wants you and he's still pursuing you. And then lastly, our response should be of sharing our faith with other people. When you are a part of God's family, you begin to take on the heart of God. And the heart of God is one who wants people to know him. So we should want other people to know God. That means that you need to share with others what God is doing in your life. It doesn't mean that you're sharing as a perfected work. None of us are perfect. We still are struggling. Life is still messy. We're all works in progress. But we know that God will never give up on us, and we can share that with others. Say, "Hey, God's not giving up on me. "He's still working on me." And I think God wants to work in you too. You just share that God has reached you, and He wants to reach others. You share what you know of God. You don't have to worry about having all the answers. You just share what you know. You testify to what God has done in your life, as little or a lot as that may be. Today's passage is a heavy one, and it's dense, and maybe you're walking away with more questions than answers. But share what you know. Share what you've learned. And be okay with saying, "I don't know." Someone has a question like, "I'm not sure. I'm figuring that out myself." the very beginning of this chapter, Paul says he was in anguish for more people not knowing Jesus. I'll be honest, I struggle with this. I want to have the heart that Paul has, being in such pain and anguish and despair over people not knowing Jesus. Sometimes I feel like my attitude is a little too, I'm just too, it seems like I'm okay with it. I'm like, "Okay, well, if they come to know Jesus, if Jesus is at work, I want to be like Paul. I want to say, "No, I'm upset. I want people to know Jesus. I want to be motivated to reach them, to act out in love and have a desire that they would come to know Him, and I want to be a part of that. I want God to use me and other people coming to know Him." So our prayer as the leadership and pastors of this church is that you are transformed. You continue your transformation in being more like Christ. That God would use all of us for this church and for this surrounding community, that His glory would be known, that God would be glorified and His glory would be saturated here. We are those instruments to reach this community, to reach people in our lives. Don't think it's not you. It's you. God wants to use you.

So let's do that. Let's do this together. Let's do this in faith. But to reach the people in our lives and our community for Jesus with confidence and humility, those things can be done together, recognizing that it is so important that people know who God is. Let's pray. God, thank you for your word and for tough passages like Romans chapter 9 that make us think, that make us pause, and make us try to figure out who you are, God, and how you work. And I pray that in our hearts, in everyone's hearts here who's wondering that, I pray that would still give us peace. That would not be unsettling or upsetting, that we can't really figure out how you're perfectly merciful and perfectly just at the same time, but that you would give us peace in that. Knowing that you are infinite, we're finite. We're not going to fully understand all of who you are, but that doesn't keep us from wanting to pursue you more, to know you more, knowing that it won't be until heaven that we fully, fully understand you. God give comfort to those who are unsettled right now, who need your peace. I pray that your spirit would come to them and comfort them, Lord, that they would know that you are at work in their lives. God, we also pray that you would give us humble hearts, that we would continue to live our lives knowing that You are God, we are not. Help us to keep that perspective. And God, we also pray that You would give us confidence and motivation to share our faith. So often we can just be content with our faith being just, "It's just about me and You, God. I'm just going to go about my day to day, just worried about me." But God, You've put people in our lives. put people in our lives that need to be reached and we can't keep thinking that someone else will do it. So God, stir in us a desire to be a part of the work of your kingdom. We love you God. We come before you humbly and with joy and expectation that you are going to be working in us and through us. We pray this in your son's name. Amen. Thanks for listening. And if you would please take a moment to subscribe and leave an encouraging review to help others find our podcasts on whatever platform you are listening on. We hope you have a wonderful day. We'll catch you next week.

Romans - Part 14

Blessed Assurance: It's All Good! - Romans 8:31-39

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, I'm excited this morning to jump back into our Roman series. We, I think we kicked off the first year with this and we went all the way until I think it was the end of May. And then we took a break in our impossible moments series for the summer. And now we're gonna jump back in and we're gonna finish out the rest of the book of Romans and finish just before Thanksgiving. So I'm excited about this. It's gonna be a great time. Maybe some of us have been around this. You're familiar with Romans. Maybe this is first time you're hearing of our series in this, but I just wanna say welcome. So glad that you are here. And so we left off just before the end of chapter eight. And Paul up to this point had been writing to the church in Rome, this letter. So this is a standalone letter that would have been written in its entirety to the church in Rome. And we kind of have a disservice in that and that we only see bits and pieces of it week in and week out. And so we, as a whole, the book of Romans is all about the power of the gospel. And Paul here in his very much lawyer analytical mind has broken down each and every piece of the power of the gospel. Some to a point where you think he's arguing with someone where he just keeps coming back. And then what about this? And then what about this? And what about that? We're gonna have a little bit of that today in our chapter, the end of chapter eight. but Paul here is making the most solid concrete with absolutely lock down power of the argument, of the power of gospel, where it comes from, what it's about and how it changes our lives. And so this has been our heart in this series to really dive into this letter and try to take it chunk by chunk and try to piece together what Paul here is saying. 'Cause sometimes you just, you get lost. you're just feel like you're either lost because he's saying all this stuff, or you feel like you've just been handed, you just been a dump truck of information on you that you're just in information overload. And you try to be, where do we even begin with this? And so we are here coming to a point, some scholars would say that is like the pinnacle of the book of Romans.

Paul here has been since verse one in chapter one, building this entire argument about the power of the gospel, and Paul's gonna cap it here, and then we're gonna hit this downward slide on the other side, and basically what this means to our lives. And so this is kind of a turning point in this series, a perfect time to jump back in in this book, but we're gonna be in Romans chapter eight, starting in verse 31. And so just a quick recap on chapter eight itself, so you can get some context and background. Paul here has been talking about this idea of how amazing this Christ is. He says in verse one in chapter eight, "Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." This is this beautiful picture in this passage of all about the gospel of Jesus. And then in verse 15, he says, "The Spirit that you received," the Holy Spirit that comes on us when we accept Christ, "The Spirit that you received does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again." because we were slaves to our sin before we came under Jesus. He doesn't make us slaves again, rather the spirit you see brought you to a place of adoption to sonship in Christ Jesus. And by him that we can cry out to God, Abba Father. When we come into this relationship with Jesus and we accept his salvation, his love and his grace and his mercy, it changes us. It changes our last name. It changes our inheritance. It changes who we are, and we are given a completely new identity, which is under the umbrella of Jesus Christ. And this is amazing here that Paul Key continues on in verse 18, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." Paul here is saying that when we are adopted, we were brought into this new family, that our present sufferings aren't important. Our present sufferings don't matter. We're gonna dig in a little bit more on this this morning, but compared to the glory, our inheritors that we receive, what is that glory? That's salvation, that's eternal life in heaven with Jesus for then and forevermore. And then Paul, just before this, in verses 28 to 30, it says, "And we know that all things God works for the good of those who love Him and who have been called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he called. And those he called, he also justified. And those he justified, he also glorified." Paul takes us through the steps of when we accept this salvation piece from Jesus, this happens, and then this happens, and this happens, and this happens. And today we're gonna dig into Paul talking about this incredible assurance that we have been given in our gift of Jesus that he gave to us. And so before we dive in, I'd like to pray real quick. And then we're gonna take this little section by section and learn about God's assurance today.

Heavenly Father Jesus, thank you for this morning, God. Thank you for our worship through singing, God, as we worship through your word now, Jesus, I pray that you would use this moment to transform us. Maybe in this moment, we could be given a little more of a boldness, maybe God, that we can live out our life knowing that it's all taken care of. And then we don't have to worry about what might be around this corner or that corner, or think of the stressors that may try to derail us off of the focus that you want for our lives. And so Jesus, I pray that your servant Paul and his words would transform our hearts this morning through the power of the Holy Spirit. We thank you, Jesus. Amen.

Well, Paul here is gonna jump right in and basically just throw out this argument. He starts here, verse 31. He says, "So what then shall we say in response to these things?" What shall we say to all this argument that Paul has started from verse one, all the way to this point, eight chapters later. So what do we say then? If God is for us, who can be against us? If God is for us, who can be against us? Did he not spare his own son, but gave him up for all of us? How will we heed not also along with Him graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one, Jesus Christ who died. Not more than that, who was raised to life is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. These verses here, Paul says, so now that we have this basis understanding of this power of the gospel in Jesus Christ, but from God the father through Jesus Christ into the Holy spirit, into our lives, what do we say then? So Paul's basically saying, so what now? Where do we go from here? What do we do with all this information that we have now? And Paul here in these is gonna out lie this idea of these promises and these good and wonderful blessings that when we belong to Jesus, we are given ourselves. In these blessings, I'm not talking about the perfect paycheck. I'm not talking about the perfect house, the car, the shoes, the phone, the health. I'm not talking about any of that stuff. I'm not talking about the newest gadget, the newest gizmo, whatever that you have been lately chasing or focused on or thinking about. I'm not talking about those blessings. Paul here is talking about this new life, this new affections, this new home in the heaven that we have been given that has prepared for us by Jesus. God himself, and Paul wrote this, God himself gave the gift of his son so that each of us might be able to experience this great depth of love for us. This is a good blessing. But let's just think about that. He gave Jesus, God gave Jesus And Paul here is making an argument of, if he is gonna give us Jesus, which is the greatest thing that we need, won't he also give us the things that he has promised? Wouldn't he also give that to, if he was able to figure out and solve our biggest problem of death, don't you think he can take care of all the little things too? Don't you think he has a power to be able to take care of that? Don't you think that he is faithful, that he is loving, that he is full of good blessings for us? Paul here is saying, what's more about this is that we don't have to worry about what others might say about us or do to us because we know that God is for us. That God is doing everything that he possibly can, more than what enough that we need to be able to solve all the problems, all the things that we're struggling with, we're walking through, we're dealing with, we're facing every single day, every single moment. And he says right there, "And if God is for us, who can be against us?”

Church, I wanna tell you today that it's all good. I want you to say that with me. We're gonna, I'm gonna start this and we're throughout this sermon, I'm gonna kind of point out and I'm gonna say, church, what does this mean? And you're gonna respond back to me and you say, it's all good. All right? So I wanna practice saying that together. Ready, ready? On the count of three, one, two, three. Oh yes, I love it. That's it, okay? I'm not doing like quiet church today, okay? We're gonna have a little talk back here with this, all right? So it's all good. And then what is in this is the idea of God's justification in Christ, that we are justified. A simple way to break this word down is just if I had never sinned. That is how Christ or God views us because of Christ's gift for us. Is that we not only, it's not like just like Jesus did a repair job on us. Like, you know, you got the phone and you like break the screen and you gotta take it somewhere to get it fixed And you don't go to Apple because, or any name brand, 'cause it's like $500. You find some guy on Yelp or a friend of a friend, you order a screen off eBay and have it shipped from China, and then you follow the YouTube video and try to fix yourself, right? Anybody else? No, that's just me, I'm the weirdo, okay. But when you get that screen back on, your phone just never the same, right? The button never clicks just right, the camera, the front facing camera just has a weird color to it. Like your phone is never the same as it was when you opened that box that first day and pulled it out and set it up. I love tech, I'm a nerd, okay? So this is, just stick with me on this one, all right? Jesus doesn't just fix our broken screen. Jesus takes us and gives us a brand new life. Just if I, it's like getting that phone repaired and just if you had never cracked the screen, just if you had never used it, just if it was a brand new life. That's what Paul here is talking about. And because of that church. Yeah, okay, I know some of you are slow with that, but we'll get there, okay? By the end of this room, be on it. But Paul here is saying, so if that is truly the case, who can condemn us? Who can put us down? Who can push us to the side? Who can say you're not good enough? Who can say you don't have it all together? Anybody? Nobody.

Nobody can say that God has already justified us and he is now moving on to the next piece, which is a sanctification piece and ultimately glorification with the face of Jesus in heaven is where we're headed. And so when we have this thing, Jesus, God has made us holy. He is making us holy and he will one day make us fully holy. So when life hits you, remind yourself that God is for you. When people say that you're not good enough, remind you that Jesus says you're good enough. When someone decides that you're no longer worth loving, you can remind yourself that God loves you. When you're hurt by someone who's supposed to be your friend you remind yourself that God is for you. And when Satan tries to tempt you or throw you off your tracks or remind you that you can't do this, you're not good enough, you're not worthy, you're not even worth an ounce of anything that God is for you. And so again, who can be against you? There is no commendation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Jesus took all of that, took it to the grave on the cross, and then now is taking care of that for you. And because of that, we can live a celebrated life, right? It's all good, I love it. That you know what I'm saying here, church, right? Yes, there we go. That Jesus, when he died, he was raised again, and he's sitting at the right hand of God, interceding for us saying, "Hey, that's my kid right there. That's my son, that's my daughter. They're mine. That adoption piece, they're mine. They have my last name. They're part of my family. That's who they are. And now we can see these great blessings, good blessings. And we can remind ourselves. Yes, I'm gonna keep doing this. So either you can be a part of it or you can just be there and not be a part of it.

Paul continues on. He says in verse 35, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness, or danger or sword? For it is written for your sake, we face death all day long. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." Paul reminds us, who can separate us from the love of God? Nothing. Paul here, he's talking about these amazing blessings and time and time again, He's saying why life matters now. 'Cause before, if we think about life before, it didn't always matter, right? Life didn't always matter before Christ, but life because of Christ matters to each and every one of us. But what if somehow we could lose these blessings? I don't know about you, I might be a little skeptical. And I might think, how can we know for sure? We might lose it. 'Cause the reality is there's other blessings that we can lose, right? There's other things in life that we can lose. One day you can have great health and the next day you wake up and you can get news that you got your terminal illness, you got cancer, you got something that is going to change your life forever. Life's fragile. You can have the nice retirement plan set up, the 401k, the investments, the Roth IRA, You can have everything set. And one day you wake up and the market does that. Just like that. And it's gone. I'll pay you later, dad, for that. That was perfect timing. But that's true, right? You can wake up one day and the person who's supposed to be the lover of your life will tell you, I don't love you anymore. You can have your church betray you. It happens. You can have your pastor betray you. That new car you got that still got that new shiny car smell on the inside could get hit on the way home this afternoon, it'd be over, it's gone. Blessings in life disappear. And so I think for us, it's hard to wrestle with this, to go like, God, how do you say that this is for sure, for sure? How can we know that we know that we know? And Paul here, he's breaking this down and reminding us that nothing can separate us from the love of Jesus. The greatest thing that nobody could ever overcome death, Jesus overcame it and he gave that to us. And so we may die here on earth, real possibility, everybody faces it, but our biggest problem of eternal death has been flipped upside down because the power of Christ that we can live in eternity with Jesus in heaven. And nothing can separate us from the love that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Why? (congregation murmurs) Yes, Joseph was early, I love it. He's locked in. Notice though that Paul doesn't say here that we won't encounter things that will try to hurt us, will try to destroy us or try to separate us from the love of God. See the most of them time we have, we can't go a single day without the enemy trying to come at us, right? We can't go sometimes in even an hour without something trying to come at us to knock us off our groove and to try to pull us into despair and darkness.

Paul here, he's actually quoting Psalm 44:22 and says, "Yet for your sake, we face death all day long. "We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." It's kind of a bit aggressive language here, right? But this verse was written all the way back in the early days of Israel. And Paul here, I think is doing two things. One, he's reminding us that even ever since that verse was written, every single day something has happened. The enemy knows they're gonna lose. And so they will do every single thing that they can to knock us off our game, to mess up our focus, to pull our thoughts away from where they need to be on the cross. Paul is reminding us that long time ago has always been a point of struggle. But not only that, that there's this promise to point us to Jesus, even in the midst of that, that nothing can separate us from God, nothing. Because that verse, year after year after year had been worshiped, prayed over, repeated, And yet God still brought victory. God still took and held the promises that he had given us of life eternal in heaven. That even though that verse, it may be true, that Jesus still wins. The other promise in this is our focus on a good future. That if all of this is true, even a tiny bit, that in the good blessing, the good security and the good future that we have in eternity, Paul finishes out this section in a few verses, he says, no, in all of these things, We are more than conquerors. I love that. We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We are conquerors. It's all good. Where we're not only just barely surviving, we're not just barely scraping by. We're not just a little bit of life left in us. We are conquerors. We are victorious in Christ Jesus. We come through on top by the power of the cross.

And those who are in God, the final outcome will always be good. Whether good on this side of eternity or on there. Last week, we wrapped up our impossible moments series and we had talked through a lot of this stuff. And we spent the summer going story after story after story after story of how God showed up in so many people's lives. And we gave out the bubble gum, you guys remember? Chew. And the idea of the E there is an eternal perspective. Paul here is saying that because of the gift of Jesus that we have in His grace, we're able to have an eternal perspective. Because before that we couldn't, right? Before that we didn't have the ability to fix it ourselves. Every greatest attempt that from any greatest person ever still fell short. But it's in Jesus that we were given the power for Him to transform us, to justify us just if I had never sinned. That gives us the eternal perspective. We know how the story ends, right? We've been singing a song this summer that we know how the story ends. we will be with you again. That's our eternal perspective. We know that these sufferings of this world do not compare with the glory that will be revealed to us. We know that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. We know that there is no condemnation for us. We know that all things work together for us. We know that the final outcome for the children of God will always be good. and that no affliction, no distress, no persecution, no famine, no nakedness, no danger, no sword, no death, no life, no angels, no rulers, not things present, not things to come, not powers, not height, not death, not COVID-19, not politics, not racism, not school violence, not high fuel prices, not inflation, not hypocrisy by other Christians, not negativity in the church, not nothing ever created will be able to separate us from the love of Christ Jesus that is our Lord. There's nothing. Rest in that promise today. If you're to take away anything today, take away this. I want you to be encouraged. Be encouraged today. Why? It's all good. It's all good.

Paul here is reminding us in the church and in Rome of this very same truth, that no matter what we face, God still has the final word. Even when we think all hope is lost, even when we think everything is falling apart around us, even when we think I don't even know how I'm gonna wake up tomorrow, Jesus is right there. He's still got something to say about it. Even if you and I are done talking about it, Jesus still has a word. It's because of this power, the resurrection of Christ Jesus, we too share in the same blessed assurance that many of us have experienced. Each of you has a story. And I know a lot of some of your stories that you guys have been at the end of your rope. You guys have been there and you thought, I don't know what tomorrow's gonna hold. I don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring. I know some of you and others that have gotten to such the dark place that you thought about taking your lives. And if I was to ever try to tell something to you in those places, in those moments, it's all good. It's all good because we have a blessed assurance in Christ Jesus. So I got a couple of questions for us to take away this morning when we close out. The first question is to think about how God has been good to you. Maybe it was a green light this morning. I took my daughter to some testing this week, just some placement testing for school. And we got a green light and I just in the car, I was like, thank you Jesus. And Addie turned to me, she's like, for what? I was like, that green light, baby. We don't always get those anymore. How has God been good to you? I hope it's something bigger than a green light. Maybe it's just a green light and that's okay. Let's start there. How has God been good to you? Do you remember when maybe you were still a sinner before Jesus? You remember how Jesus reached out to you? Remember when you were walking in death and slavery and God's love still shine through the darkness. How has God given you new life and new freedom? Has God promised you this new home in heaven? How has God given you victory in this life? And then the second one, which I think is even more important, is who needs to know of this goodness of God in your life? Who needs to hear about this blessed assurance because, (congregation murmurs) It's all good.

See, the reality is the world around us is hurting. Our world is hurting and Jesus brings healing. The world is confused, but Jesus brings clarity. The world is dying and Jesus brings life. The world is in darkness and Jesus brings his light. So who in this world needs to know about Jesus? I love Cheryl even starting this thought this morning of us of different people in our lives that need this assurance, that are struggling through so many things. The exact same thing I'm talking about here. So you already have names on your mind. I'm just here to remind you that it's all good. And people in this world need to know why it's all good and how it's all good. I had three names that came to my mind. My friend, Mike, my barber, Ian, and another buddy of mine, Daniel. And they're all going through stuff right now. Who in your life needs to know the goodness of God? The world needs to know that God offers them love from which nothing in creation can separate them from. 100% guarantee. You don't get those in life anymore. A 100% guarantee. The question for us is, will we tell them? Will we tell them? Or will we just continue to live our lives with God's goodness in us? Show up on Sunday and praise Jesus and get in our car, go have lunch, spend the rest of our Sunday and start our work week over again. Will we tell them, will you share God's goodness with others this week, even now? It doesn't mean you gotta bash them over the head with Jesus immediately. For me right now, God has asked me just to tell these three dudes in my life that I'm praying for them and that the life that they're walking through right now, some hard stuff, is that somebody is in their corner, thinking about them and praying for them. It's where it starts. Somebody did that for your life, right? Somebody did that for your life at some point, and it changed you. Challenge yourself to do that this week, seriously. We got these Oikos cards in the back of the seats, and those cards are there just for you to write names down and to carry with you to be intentional about praying for them, intentional about remembering them, intentional about showing up in their life. That's what those cards are about. So maybe you need to take one, maybe you need a fresh one. We haven't talked about it in a while, but challenge yourself this week to put names before you to start praying over them for you to have an opportunity maybe to invite them to an event, to church, to coffee. It doesn't have to be a church thing you always bring them to. He could just be hanging out and praying the whole time, Jesus, open up a door, Jesus, open up a door, Jesus, open up a door. And it might not happen, but you're there. You're showing up, it's half the battle. So why do we do this? We have blessed assurance. We have great blessings. We have a wonderful, great future. - It's all good.

Pray with me. Jesus, we thank you for this morning. God, we're so grateful for your son, Paul, who took time to write this letter for this church in Rome, that even thousands of years later, we would dig into, we would be reminded of your goodness. So Jesus, I pray that today, as we go from this place, that you would peep those names of those people on our hearts and on our minds, that we would continue to pray for them, we would continue to lift them up to you, we would continue to show up with the presence of Jesus on who we are in their lives, not for us, not for our glory, not for the say, "Hey, look how many more people I saved," but to go, "There are so many hurting people in this world that need you, and this is where I start." So Jesus, I pray that you would put those names heavy on our hearts today and this week and the next week and the next week and the next week to continue to share your goodness with those in our lives. Jesus, we thank you, we love you, we praise you today. Amen. - Thanks for listening. And if you would, please take a moment to subscribe and leave an encouraging review to help others find our podcasts on whatever platform you are listening on. We hope you have a wonderful day. We'll catch you next week.

Impossible Moments - Part 13

Series Recap

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We have come to the end of our summer series. This is the last Sunday of Impossible Moments. We hope that you've enjoyed this series, that each week we've gone about studying a different impossible moment in the Old Testament. And we're hoping and praying that this could be a resource for all of us as we go through life and face difficult situations and your own impossible moments. We're hoping that you'll be able to have God's word on your heart. And that no matter what you face, you could even use this series. You could rewatch or re-listen to it and it can be just a source of comfort and joy to you. So today's gonna be a little bit different. We're not gonna introduce a new impossible moment. We are going to together, Pastor Chris and I, gonna look back on these last 12 weeks and kind of draw from all those various texts some important themes that we feel like have surfaced to the top and are reoccurring. Now there are many, there are many things from all these different texts, but we're just gonna focus on a few of them.

Yeah, absolutely. When we look at this and Pastor Andre and myself, we took time this week and kind of started compiling all the different amazing stories that we went through this past summer together and we were just floored. I mean, it's time after time after time again, these incredible, amazing moments when God shows up in the life of people, shows up where when all seemed to be lost, when people were at the end of the rope where there was no hope, there was nothing, their back was against the wall, were stuck between a rock and a hard place and yet God showed up. And yet. That was kind of the theme that we had in this and and there are so many ways that God intervened in the life of so many of these people and we just covered a snippet it feels like of the Old Testament there's so many more stories We could have gone into But God intervenes in so many incredible ways to benefit his glory to benefit who God is and There's there there's times where overcoming these impossible odds brought joy and life and his Righteousness into the world and whatever each scenario was there was only one explanation and that was God The only answer to how could this have happened? How could these people be saved? How could these people be redeemed? How could these people be rescued? It was simply God.

And when we look at that we see this character of God and he is a God who redeems And if you're jotting some notes down you can write that down that God is a God who redeems and we started even week one Where we kicked it off pastor Andre talking about baby Moses and This time in the Israelite history was a scary one They were stuck in slavery in Egypt to Pharaoh but basically be free labor to build whatever Pharaoh does hide to build and The Israelite population kept growing and growing and growing and so Pharaoh actually got fearful that he was actually going to be just outnumbered By all of these Israelite people in his own nation And so to put an end to this he said every baby boy and I believe it was like two and younger or something that Had been born killed He's like I'm gonna cut off the population. I'm gonna slow this down I'm not gonna allow this to happen anymore, and I can't even even begin to imagine Being a father or a mother in that time in Egypt Life is already horrible. All you have is your family to hold on to and then all of a sudden babies and children being ripped out of homes. Why? Because of the fear that Noah had, or no, no, the fear that Pharaoh had and his scared mindset and really being a coward in the way that he was trying to lead by fear. So Moses' mom has no other option but to take a chance. Puts baby Moses into a basket, takes him down to the river and lets him go. I can't even imagine being mom right there in that moment to set your baby into the river and just hope and pray that God would do something. And what I love about that story is the most, the last person you would think, Moses is rescued by Pharaoh's own daughter. And through a series of events, Moses' mom actually gets to raise the child as a surrogate mother and a nanny. And then God in this moment is redeeming Moses for an incredible plan that he has for his life. Later on, we read and we know that the story is that Moses is the one who eventually leads the Israeli people free out of Egypt. And it all started that day on the banks of the Nile River. God in his redemption makes a way even when there seems to be absolutely no way. Another story we talked about was Noah, which is one of the greatest stories of redemption in the Old Testament. And the fact that Noah in his faithfulness is leading and being an example to what is going to happen. God's had it with the human race. They're wicked, they're horrible. There's only one honorable man, one righteous man, and that's Noah. And God says, "I gotta hit the reset button." And so he sets Noah to build this boat, which has never been built before, there were boats then, to rescue people from rain, which had also never happened before. And Noah in his faithfulness sets out as a witness and is God's redemptive plan for humanity. I think in that moment, if anybody had come to Noah in humility and just said, "What's going on?" And heard the story of Noah and repented, I think Noah would have led him on the ark. I really think, but what we know about that day and age, only Noah was righteous. God had a plan for redemption. And even though there was so much more room for people on the ark, it was only eight people, Noah and his family that were saved in that time. Redemption was offered to all who were willing to repent and believe, how only few accepted. When we look at these different characters in these historical accounts through these stories, we see a really main common theme in them and that is godly character. There's a level of godly character that is with each and every one of these people that is awe-inspiring.

That we see and hear that their obedience did not necessarily equal their success. And that can be true for us today as well. That even though that we may be stepping in this way and follow God and be obedient in what he wants, that may not equal our success. We may have some success, but it doesn't automatically guarantee our success. We can go back to Noah. We know that some might look at his life and say, "Really, dude? All those years building the boat, you could only save your family?" But I love the way that God looks at it. God looks at it and he sees a faithful father who led his children, who led his spouse, who cared for those that were closest to him, that knew him. I love that part there. That if we're gonna lead anybody in our life to Christ, it's gonna be the people that know us the most that will see our true selves. I guarantee Noah didn't have perfect days. I bet Noah came home, maybe frequently, threw down his tools, Mrs. Noah's there. What's going on? Oh, it was another day, but he didn't give up. He stayed faithful, and his family and his children saw that in Noah and saw this godly character. Genesis 6:9 says, "Noah was a righteous man." And then in Hebrews 11:7, "By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen in holy fear, built an ark to save his family." That is the first time in the history of the scriptures that that word righteous and person was ever put together. There were none before that, to that time, that had ever even deserved that recognition of their character. I think when we see the story of Noah and his godly character, the fact that Noah's family were his only converts, I think is success.

And God sees that as a success as well. Another incredible story was Gideon. Pastor Lauren shared on this one, and Gideon sets out as an army of 30,000 facing 135,000 Midianites. The odds are against him. And then God in this series says, "Hey, Gideon, tell your army if anybody is afraid to just leave." And I can't, again, imagine Gideon going, "Wait, excuse me? We're already down and you want me just to let those who are scared leave?" And God says, "Yeah." So Gideon goes before the army and says, "Anybody who's scared left." His number goes from 30,000 to 10,000. And Gideon goes back to God and said, "Okay, God, what's the plan for a battle?" And God goes, "I got one more thing for you, buddy." He's like, "What?" He goes, "Take your whole army down to the lake, and I want them to tell them to drink water from the lake." So they go down, they drink water, and he tells them, he goes, "Anybody who just put their face down in the water and sucked it up and drank," he says, "send them home." He goes, "Only those who took a knee and squatted down and sipped water like this looking around." He goes, "That's your army. Those are the ones who are keeping an eye out. Those are the ones who understand what is going on around. Those are the ones who are keeping aware of their surroundings." And in the end, 300 men were left. And Gideon goes into battle, trusting God with a four to one ratio against him. And yet God brings victory. God brought victory to them. And it reminds us that we can trust who God says he is and who he says we are. So that when we face our impossible moments, we can know that he will equip us in whatever we need to do that he's called us to. 'cause sometimes this godly character is a moment for us in an impossible moment to grow, to change, to deepen our faith and relationship with God, knowing that he is going to do what he's going to do and we are called to this obedience, even if it doesn't necessarily equal our success. I bet Gideon thought he was gonna die on that battlefield that day. And yet he charged in a battle, knowing that Yahweh, that God was behind him. See, God's more focused on and concerned with our character, with our Godly character than any talent, human ability, human strength when we face these impossible moments together.

Yeah, part of that Godly character that develops in us is a spirit of humility. Humility is this virtue of submitting to God and really having an accurate view of where God is and where we are in light of where He is. It's about recognizing God as the one who reigns sovereign over all, and recognizing that we are made in His image. We are below Him, we serve Him, and we worship Him. These impossible moments in Scripture teach us that He is the one who works the miracles and performs the wonders. It's not the human heroes in the story that get the glory, but it's God. So humility in our series was a theme of our characters giving God the glory and not seeking any personal gain or fame, though that may have happened. Think of Daniel rising to power after he obeyed God, or think of David becoming king, or Solomon and the fame that he gained, all because of their godly character, but also because they were first humble before God.

In our series, we had a few different examples, and two that I'll point out are Solomon, recognizing that he could not reign over Israel better than God. He needed God. First Kings 3, 9 says, give your service, this is Solomon speaking, give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people God, that I made a sermon between good and evil for who is able to govern this, your great people. Solomon had a humility in knowing his limits. God, he knew that God had put him in that place, but he knew that God was the perfect King, the perfect ruler. And so he's humbling himself saying, God, I need you. Help me. There's also David who was characterized for a spirit of humility. Confidence in God, but he himself being humble. David knew who the miracle worker was. Where any victory truly came from, he knew that God was behind it. First Samuel 17, David says this, the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion "the paw of the bear will deliver me "from the hand of this Philistine." And Saul said to David, this is in the David Goliath battle, "Go and the Lord be with you." And so there, as David is trying to say to King Saul, "Hey, I can do this." He's really not saying, "Look at me and what I did." He's saying, "Look what God did through me." He's having humility in that moment, giving God the credit, giving God the glory, saying, "I'm his servant. "He's used me before, he's worked through me. "I think he'll do it again." but he's pointing to God.

The second way in which we saw humility in our series was people who were for the first time exposed to God in his power and then turning to him, humbling themselves before God. And often it was people who were faced with God's power or miracle who then humbled themselves. So think of Nebuchadnezzar, when Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into the fire, fiery furnace, and then they were saved. In that moment Nebuchadnezzar recognizes God as the true God, seeing that no one else could have done this. And in that moment, this is a king of Babylon who is at the peak of his power and he is humbling himself before Yahweh. Daniel 4, 3 says, this is Nebuchadnezzar speaking, "How great are God's signs, how mighty are his wonders. God's kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and his dominion endures from generation to generation. So this is a foreign king humbling himself, recognizing the true power of Yahweh. And then later in that book, in the book of Daniel, King Darius, a different king, is interacting with Daniel. And Daniel is unjustly thrown into the lion's den. But he's saved by God without a scratch. He emerges the next day alive. And King Darius says this in response to seeing Daniel alive and seeing God work. He says, "I make a decree that in all my royal dominion, people are to tremble in fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, enduring forever. His kingdom shall never be destroyed. His dominion shall be to the very end. He delivers and rescues. He works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth. He who has saved Daniel from the power of the lions.”

And so the takeaway for us in this series, And this theme of humility is that we too should be desiring that God gets the glory, not us. So I just wanna ask, are we striving for that today and in our lives this week, are you striving that God's name be praised? Were we too self-focused right now that we're looking for something more about us, a little bit more fame, a little bit more glory, some more recognition. Instead, we should be striving that God receive glory and worship and are we eager to give him what he deserves? Now these Old Testament, these moments were in a good example of humility, but they also point to the one who was perfectly humble throughout his entire life and that is Jesus Christ, the ultimate example of humility. Philippians 2, five through eight says this, "In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God, something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing. By taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. In our lives today, when facing impossible moments, impossible situations, think of Christ and his example. humble yourselves before God, remain humble through all your circumstances. And when you endure and God provides a way for you to be on the other end of that impossible situation, continue to praise Him in your spirit of humility.

We have humility, our focus is different, right? We have a different perspective maybe on things when we have this humble heart and our perspective moves our focus to God, that it's more about God than it is about us, that it's more about God's faithfulness than it is about anything else. You talked about Daniel and the fiery furnace, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego took this stand against Nebuchadnezzar that said, "No, we're not gonna worship this statue idol thing that you built. We know the one true God, we know Yahweh, and we're only going to worship Him. And even though that in that it was gonna jeopardize their lives, they knew what the punishment was before they had to make that choice. King Neb made it absolutely clear that you going in the furnace was a result of not bowing down in worship. And yet they still obeyed because they had this eternal perspective that God's faithfulness might happen on this side of eternity, but God's faithfulness also might happen on the other side of eternity, but God's faithfulness will happen. They didn't step into that furnace knowing God is gonna save our physical bodies without harm right now in this moment. No, they were probably walking in going, "Okay, God, see you in a couple minutes. I'm headed your way." But God saved them in that. And their eternal perspective changed. God showed up and made a miracle happen before the eyes of not only them, but everyone else, including King Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel in the lion's den is another great example of this. Again, decree given out by some hoodlums trying to control King Darius to say, "Hey, King Darius, we're gonna trip up Daniel and we're gonna say that for the next however many times, you can only pray to King Darius." And Daniel goes, "I'm too old for this." By this point in the book of Daniel, if you study that he had been through time and time and time again, of people trying to control Yahweh and he knew who was boss. And so without fear, he opened his windows and for not just once hiding, but publicly for everybody to know, prayed, and continue to pray his three times a day for everybody to see. And Daniel knew what the consequences were. He knew that he was gonna be thrown into the pit with these ferocious lions that were gonna tear him from limb to limb, but it didn't matter 'cause he had his focus on heaven. He had his focus on God and eternity, knowing that here and now is just so short compared to eternity.

See, when we have this eternal perspective, no matter what we're facing, no matter what we find ourselves going through, there is this peace and there is God's presence, even in the midst of chaos. And when we went through this series time and time again, we saw just these small glimpses of these amazing God moments that when faced against overwhelming odds, stacked against them, God brought his peace and his presence even in the midst of all of that. Moses in the Red Sea, seeing what he thought was gonna be drowned or being killed by the Egyptians. Joshua and his battle against the Amorites, that they were losing the battle, knowing that the sun was gonna go down and they were gonna be killed off in the dark. He prayed a bold prayer for God, stop the sun in the sky and God did. God went against physics and science. You know what that tells me? It tells me he's even in control of that. He is greater, he is even beyond that, which we know and celebrate and think about being regular time and time again. God can stop that, he can do what he wants. He is God. Having an eternal perspective changes our focus on what's important. Joshua knew it, Moses knew it, David, Daniel, Elijah, Gideon, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, they all knew this. And when we have, and we see the faithfulness of God, our life is different. I love what it says in Philippians 4, seven, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your higher hearts and your minds in Jesus Christ. That's our perspective we have to have. And that's perspective we saw time and time again from these people.

Last of our themes this morning, again, there's so many more and we're just focusing on these four, is how in these impossible moments, obedience to God by his people, equated to a witness occurring and people knowing who God is. So when David obeyed God and fought the Philistine, the enemy heard about who Yahweh was and saw the power of God. As Noah obeyed the instructions to build this ark, as crazy as it sounded during that time, he was a witness to his own family about who God is and what he does. When Israel obeyed God's direction through Moses to walk through the water and then saw that water close in on the Egyptians, it was a witness to Israel, to Egypt, and to the rest of the world about how God takes care of his people, that this was the God of the universe. When Jericho was destroyed and Rahab obeyed the order to tie a red rope so that when the city fell, she and her family would be saved, that was a witness. So what God is capable of and the fact that he redeems, even people outside the nation of Israel. It was a witness to the rest of the world of who God was. And when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego obeyed God, which meant not bowing down to the king to worship him, they were a witness to all of Babylon, about God being the true God above any other gods. And the same with Daniel, when he was obedient to continue worship, to continue praying in his spiritual practice, instead of stopping regular communication with God, he was a witness to how God is deserving of our everything, even if that equates to our physical death. He's a witness to God being the creator over his creation, and to a witness to God who rules with true justice. So today, church, Spring Valley, as we are talking about our obedience, know that your obedience to God, And whatever situation you find yourself in is a witness to those around you. Your obedience to Christ is a witness to your family, to your kids, to the grandkids that you watch. Your obedience to Christ is a witness to your coworkers, to those above you, your managers, or to those below you working. Your obedience to Christ is a witness to your spouse, to your immediate family, to your girlfriend, boyfriend, to your close friends, those who need to see most how you are obedient to God and how you, as you do that, you are pointing them to Christ. Your obedience to Christ not only anchors you in this world that is trying to pull you away from God, constantly vying for your attention, seeking your loyalty and allegiance, but it also encourages and points people to the truth. Your obedience is like a beam of light in the darkness of this world. It can be a road marker for someone else in their own spiritual journey. And as you are obedient, they're looking to you and being encouraged to say, wow, okay, I need to do that. I need to be like them. Thank you for reminding me of what it looks like to follow God. Your obedience can be the loudest way to spread the gospel without even saying a word. And so here at Spring Valley, our prayer is that we are all together striving to be obedient followers of Jesus, conscious and intentional about how our obedience can be used by God for His glory as a witness for His kingdom.

So where does this leave us? Where do we go from here? Well, I got some people who are gonna pass out something this morning for you. I want you to take this home as a reminder of the series with us this past summer. And it's bubble gum. Yes, I'm, yes, we are handing out bubble gum today. Pastor Andre and I, we were working through this series and we came up with an acronym for us to remember this

And the first of which is "see." We see the character. We see these godly character matters. There's this core piece to each of these accounts of these people when they faced impossible moments that when they this unwavering character that is grounded in God as they walk through these impossible moments depending on God it changed who they are it grew their character it it made them put roots down deeper into their faith of Jesus and I think for us maybe the question to ask when we step into these impossible moments, maybe big, maybe small, maybe somewhere in between, is to ask ourselves the question in this, what might God be trying to teach me in this moment? What does God want me and my character to grow here and now? Again, this focus isn't for us to build up our success, But it's to give God the praise, the glory, and the honor that He is so deserving each and every time. God could be trying to mold something in each and every one of us as we walk through these impossible moments.

The next letter is H for humility. Time and time again, as Pastor Andre shared this morning of this idea at the center of the godly character, was humility and the remembering it's about God's glory. It's not about ours. For some of us, we want to step in and just grab life by the horns and say, I'm gonna take care of this. And sometimes we need to step in with the boldness and the faith that God's got our back like Gideon and make that happen. But at the center of Gideon was a humility to trust in God, that even if it didn't turn out the way they hoped, that God was still God. So when we walk into these moments of impossible situation, ask ourselves the question, how can God get the glory in this moment? How can we point people to Jesus in this time to give him the glory?

The next letter is E for eternity. to have an internal perspective. Trusting and knowing that this in our lives is in God's hands. Eternity, salvation is gonna happen for all who believe and accepted in Jesus Christ and believe on his name. So we may be rescued in our impossible situation on this side of eternity, but it may not be until we reach the other side that we have our focus and our rescue of God. I met a, ran into a friend yesterday I hadn't seen since pre-COVID. And we were talking and COVID came up and we were talking about how one of the greatest things that I think each of us realize is how fragile life is. That we run around thinking we have control of this life and That all that'll never happen I don't know how many times I said that and it kept happening and happening and happening and happening life's fragile Life's just a snippet here eternity is forever Let's focus on the forever Even while in the here and now now it doesn't mean that poof all of our problems are gonna disappear We're still gonna have our stress and our worries and their anxiety and our angst and everything we have to wrestle with every single day while here on earth. But when our perspective is a heavenly perspective, it changes the focus of how we deal with the here and now. And we all can do this to put our trust in the name of Jesus. That is our eternal perspective.

And then the last letter is W, is our witness. Our witness in focusing on Jesus. See some of you, you figured out the acronym before that, I'm proud of you. But you have an opportunity that as we walk through life, as Pastor Andre, I love what he said, he said there, he said, "Our obedience is like a beam of light "into the darkness of this world. "It can be a road marker for someone "who is on a faith journey. "It can be the loudest way to spread the gospel, "even without saying a word." That's what it's about. not forgetting what God has done for us before, time and time again. Pastor Lauren last week talked about the story of Rahab and how Jericho was scared when they heard the Israelites were coming for them. Why? Because they had heard the stories of God's victory. And we are here, how many years later, talking about these stories again and again. Why? Not just for the fun of it, not just to have a fun summer series, but to remember who God was so that we know we can depend on who He is and His nature and His character for now until forevermore.

So what does this mean for us here in 2023? Well, I think for us is when we face impossible moments, I want us to take a second and chew on it. To think about how our character might grow, how our humility might be more grounded in Jesus, how our perspective would be changed from here now to then and forever more in heaven, and then how our witness for those around us to then help direct and pull more people and push them to the cross of Jesus Christ. That's what we want you to do.

Impossible Moments - Part 12

Rehab’s Faith - Joshua 2 & 6

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Welcome, we are so glad you are here today. I am honored to be back again and get to share with you another impossible moment. Today we are talking about Rahab. So it's, I feel like it could be a popular story but maybe a lesser known story. The cool thing about Rahab's story is that it's a smaller version, or a smaller part I guess I should say, of a larger story. So most of us, I think, if you've been in the church for any length of time, know the story of the Battle of Jericho. And that is the larger story. So if this is like a movie, and the movie was about the Battle of Jericho and walking around the city of Jericho and the walls come tumbling down, Rahab's story is like the setup. Or it's like the flashback to give some context, okay? So we're gonna dive into Rahab's story. Jericho, great story, another impossible moment, Completely different sermon, all right? So we're gonna focus on Rahab's story today. The other cool thing I love about her story is that Rahab has some really impossible moments herself, but then God uses her to bring about other people's impossible moments. And we're gonna look at all of that. We're gonna even like peek into the New Testament a little bit, even though this is an Old Testament story. We're gonna be in Joshua two, mostly today. So if you wanna go ahead and turn there, I'm gonna give us a little bit of background here. So we have the Israelites. They've been wandering the desert for 40 years. They came out of Egypt. They were disobedient. They had to be in the desert for 40 years, wandering around in circles. And Moses had led them this whole time. But Moses had died, and now Joshua was his successor and had taken over. So Joshua was kind of gearing up and getting ready to lead them into the promised land. The Promised Land was this area of land that God had promised the Israelites for like hundreds of years before that they were gonna have this land. And so they've been waiting a very long time for this land, but they had to take on some cities. They had to have all these battle plans. They had an army. They had to conquer some places in order to take this land. So that's where we are.

We are in Joshua 2. We're gonna start in verse one, And we're just gonna read through most of it. And we're gonna see what Joshua is doing here and how Rahab plays into this story. So Joshua, son of Nun, secretly sent two spies from Shittim. He said, "Go over the land, especially Jericho." So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there. The king of Jericho was told, "Look, some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land." So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab. Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land. But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from. At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, they left. I don't know which way they went. Go after them quickly, you may catch up with them. But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof. So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan. And as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut. Before the spies laid down for the night, she went up on the roof and said to them, "I know that the Lord has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone's courage failed because of you. For the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below. Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that you will show kindness to my family because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters and all who belong to them, and that you will save us from death. Our lives for your lives, the men assured her. If you don't tell what we are doing, we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the Lord gives us the land.”

So as you can see, Rahab was like a major player here in this overarching story of the Israelites taking over the land. We don't actually know a ton about Rahab. We know she was a prostitute or had been at some time. We know she was a citizen of Jericho and that she had a family. And we know that she knew who God was. She had some frame of reference for him. The people of Jericho knew the stories of the Israelites. Some of these stories like the Red Sea crossing and coming out of Egypt, that was 40 plus years ago. They were still had this sense of fear and trembling because of what God did with the Israelites. She literally said their hearts melted in fear because of them. So there was already this sense of awe and fear towards Yahweh. Maybe they didn't necessarily worship him, but they knew who he was. Now there's some uncertainty of if Rahab was still a practicing prostitute, or if that was her past, but she was literally referred to as Rahab the prostitute. There was no question of what her profession was or had been, there was no question of the sins that she had committed, but that didn't stop God from using her in really big ways. Rahab declared a faith in God, and that in and of itself is an impossible moment. If we just like pause right there, like that and of itself between her profession, her citizenship, the fact that she was a woman helping two men from an enemy nation, All of these things create in this impossible moment for her to even declare a faith in Jesus.

But as it says in the second part of verse 11, "For the Lord your God is God in heaven above "and on earth below." She knew that Yahweh was Yahweh. And she knew who God was to the point that she was willing to stake her life on it. She lied to the king's representatives who came and asked her about the spies. She hid two enemy spies in her home. And then she trusted those enemy spies enough that they would keep their word and protect her family. But she could do that because she trusted in God. She knew that he would come through, despite the danger she was in. Rahab didn't grow up an Israelite. She didn't grow up knowing the law. She had no frame of reference or relationship with God like the people of Israel did. I mean, we already know the Israelites struggled to be obedient to God and have faith in Him and trust Him when things got tough. And yet Rahab's over here just living in this faith that is incredible. But she didn't have that history. And yet she still chose to trust in who God is. But here's what I find so interesting is that she learned about God through the stories and the testimonies of the Israelites. She placed her faith in Him because of what she had heard from other people who didn't know Him, who did have a relationship with Him. Your story, your faith journey is not just for you. It's for other people too. It's for their faith journey. It's to encourage others. Rahab would have no idea who Yahweh was had it not been for the stories of the Israelites and what God had done in and through them. So don't discredit your story. Don't keep it to yourself. It could be an encouragement to other people.

All right, we're gonna pick back up with Rahab and the spies in verse 15 here. "So she let them down by a rope through the window for the house she lived in was part of the city wall. She said to them, "Go to the hills so the pursuers will not find you. Hide yourselves there three days until they return and then go on your way." Now the men had said to her, "This oath you made us swear, sorry, this oath you made us swear will not be binding on us unless when we enter the land, you have tied the scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down. And unless you have brought your father and mother, your brothers and all your family into your house. If any of them go outside your house into the street, their blood will be on their own heads. We will not be responsible. As for those who are in the house with you, their blood will be on our head if a hand is laid on them. But if you tell what we are doing, we will be released from the oath you made us swear." Agreed, she replied, "Let it be as you say." So she sent them away and they departed, and she tied the scarlet cord in the window. When they left, they went into the hills and stayed there three days until the pursuers had searched all along the road and returned without finding them. Then the two men started back. They went down out of the hills, afforded the river and came to Joshua son of Nun and told him everything that had happened to them. They said to Joshua, the Lord has surely given the whole land into our hands. All the people are melting in fear because of us.

This recon mission that these spies went on wasn't, didn't end up actually being super profitable as far as military intel went. They didn't get a lot of information about this city. But as we know the story of Jericho, they didn't need a whole battle plan. They just walked around in blue trumpets. They didn't need a major military battle plan. But what they did need was a confidence boost. They needed to hear that God had gone before them and was gonna give them the land. And that's what Rahab's testimony did for them. It encouraged the spies, and they were able to take that back to Joshua and to the people and say, God has given us this land. This encounter with Rahab, this impossible moment in and of itself, the fact that God led these two spies to a prostitute's house who was going to protect them, grew the confidence and the faith of the Israelites. Secondly, this recon mission, it was for the purpose of Rahab. David Guzik, who's a commentator, he said, "There was another purpose at work in sending the spies, to save Rahab. In this, we see the extent God goes to in bringing one woman in her father's house to salvation, someone seemingly impossible to save.” God went to huge lengths to save one family out of Jericho. Without this encounter between Rahab and the spies, Rahab's family would have died. He went to great lengths to save her. And he is willing and wants to go and has gone to great lengths to save us. For those of us that have come to know Him or will come to know Him, He has done incredible things to bring us to salvation.

Real quick, we're gonna jump ahead to chapter six. We'll have it on the screens, but if you wanna turn there, we're gonna be in six, starting in verse 20, or chapter six, starting in verse 20. And this is right at the end of the battle of Jericho. So we're just kinda like dropping in here into the back end of the story. So they've marched around the city for seven days. And when the trumpet sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed. So everyone charged straight in and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it. Men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys. Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, "Go into the prostitute's house and bring her out "and all who belong to her "in accordance with your oath to her." So the young men who had done the spying went in and brought out Rahab, her father and mother, her brothers and sisters, and all who belonged to her. They brought out her entire family and put them in a place outside the camp of Israel. Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord's house. But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute with her family and all who belonged to her because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho. And she lives among the Israelites to this day.

The walls just came crashing down. But did you catch what we read about Rahab's house earlier in chapter two? Her house was literally built into the wall. We don't know for sure, but I imagine when all the walls come down, her house would have been destroyed along with it, or should have been. I imagine like you had like a bird's eye view or a panoramic shot of the city that I just see just all this rubble and the walls down, but then just her house just perfectly untouched. I don't know that there's a lot of theological significance with this except to show us how cool God is. He's so powerful, He's so big that He can destroy an entire city and keep one house that's built into the wall still standing. Truly impossible things are impossible with God. He can do them. He is so powerful. He is so big. The entire city was set for destruction. The Israelites were only supposed to take the silver, the gold, the bronze and the iron pieces and take them to the house of the Lord. Everything else was to be burned and destroyed. This type of destruction was actually really common with the Israelites when the Lord would have them conquer a city. And the main reason for that was because you had this baby nation trying to learn to be set apart. trying to learn this law and follow God and do what was right. And so God wanted to destroy completely anything that would infiltrate that, anything that would negatively influence that. So he often commanded them to devote everything to destruction so that they would not be influenced to worship other gods or to have pagan practices. So this was actually very common. But God spared Rahab. Her life had been so transformed that God wasn't worried about her negatively influencing the Israelites. He allowed her family to live among them. It just, it wasn't gonna be an issue. Rahab's faith was so evident and so strong that it was actually referenced twice in the New Testament. First we see it in Hebrews 11 verse 31, says, "By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient." And then in James 2, 25 through 26, "In the same way was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”

That's an impossible moment to me. Rahab's faith to that degree shows that God can use anybody. I mean, the New Testament writers still refer to her as Rahab the prostitute. That kind of, that identity had kind of been attached to her, but it didn't matter. God still used her for his glory and to accomplish his plans. Not only that, not only was her faith so big that it was acknowledged thousands of years later, but she actually became part of the lineage of Jesus. We see it in Matthew 1:5, Rahab was the great-grandmother of a man named Boaz that you might be familiar with, who was the grandfather of Jesse, who was the father of King David. And then we see that lineage continue from David to Jesus. She became a part of the impossible moment of Jesus coming to earth. Because she trusted in God. Because she was willing to stake her life on it and believe that he was who he said he was. There's a lot we can take out of this story from Rahab, but there's a few key things that I wanna focus on as we finish our time together that I really feel like point us to Jesus and boost and impact our faith a little bit. The first one is that our sin doesn't disqualify our salvation. Rahab didn't let her past or her present or her sin or her struggles or her citizenship or anything like that stop her from seeking God and putting her faith in Him. She didn't even discredit herself. She was bold enough to say, I believe in God. Will you spies, will you go into this agreement with me to protect my family? She didn't believe the lie that because she had the odds stacked against her, because she wasn't part of the Israelite nation, that she couldn't be saved. She didn't believe the lie that her sin would prevent her from receiving salvation from God. She knew and had confidence in the Lord and in His saving grace, despite her past. Maybe you felt that way about yourself. Maybe you think, I have this sin issue, this struggle. Maybe it feels like a monkey on your back that won't go away. Maybe you feel like that way about someone else. Maybe there's a family member or a friend that you just maybe feel like it's too far gone and isn't possible to save. But we can see from Rahab's story that no one is beyond the hand of God. No one is beyond his reach. There's hope for us all. Now, that doesn't mean we just choose to live in our sin. We still have to take that and lay it at the feet of the cross and give it over to God probably multiple times. and continue to trust that he has died for us and that he has forgiven us and ask him to keep working in our hearts and our lives, especially around that sin issue. But just because we struggle with that sin, it doesn't disqualify us from being saved.

Number two, God desires to adopt you into his family. He doesn't wanna just save you for the sake of saving you. He wants to transform you and bring you in, adopt you into his family. This is how much he loved Rahab. He didn't just save her and her family and say, "Okay, be on your way. Good luck." He literally brought her into the Israelite and she lived among the Israelites to the point that she married into the family and became in the lineage of Jesus. She wasn't an Israelite, but she was the far off grandmother of Jesus. She was adopted into this family of God. That's how much he loved her. That's how much he loves us. That's how much he loves the person you're praying for right now, that you want to come to know God. That's how much he loves the parent or the child or the spouse or the best friend or or the neighbor who you know doesn't walk with Jesus. He wants to transform their heart. He wants to bring them into the family. If you don't know Jesus yet like that, if you don't have a relationship with Him, this point is for you because I want you to know that He wants to transform your heart. He wants to adopt you into the family. And if you already have a relationship with Jesus, this point's also for you. just in case you missed it. This point is for you too, to not keep your mouth shut about what God has done in your life. Rahab knew the stories of God because of the testimonies of the people. How are your people gonna know what God has done in your life if you don't tell them? This is supposed to be an encouragement for you to continue to invite them to church or events, to invite them into your home, maybe for game night, you're just hanging out, to coffee, just being yourself and being a light, or, and I might step on some toes, to actually tell them about what God has done in your life, to boldly share with them the transformation that you've experienced. Us pastors, we love being here. We love this job, most of the time. We love sharing these things with you, but we're not just here to give you facts and information. We're not here to entertain or make you feel good with lots of fluff. Y'all can go read your Bibles and commentaries and all that stuff for yourself. We're here to equip you and to encourage you to go into your places and to be with your people and to tell them about Jesus. We want you to feel confident to go out, whether it's in your home or your neighborhood or your workplace, wherever you are, wherever you spend time to be that light. The Bible doesn't say you pastors are the light of the world. You super Christians are the light of the world. You theology students and Bible scholars are the light of the world. That you was plural, like y'all, y'all are the light of the world, all of us. We're all called to be disciples and go make more disciples. We don't know like anything about Rahab's family. We don't know if they believed in Yahweh. We don't know if they had a professing faith in him or if they were just kind of along for the ride. but her faith literally saved their lives. Now, hear me out. Your faith cannot save someone else's. Your faith will not save your children or your spouse or your parents. That's an individual thing with them and God, but your faith will create an opportunity for them to get to know who he is. So it's hard. It can be awkward. It can be weird. It can feel intimidating, but we are all called to be disciples, to share our story, to go saturate our communities. Because we never know what our story will do for someone else, to encourage them, to get to know Jesus and to be transformed and adopted into his family.

And finally, God is the God of redemption. And this feels so basic. You probably have heard it in a million other sermons, but God is the God of redemption. Not only did he save Rahab because of her faith, but he redeemed her. To redeem means to buy back or to pay the debt for. Her life was redeemed, as we've said, to the point that her faith was acknowledged multiple times in the New Testament. and she ends up being the far off grandmother of Jesus and being put in the lineage of Jesus, it doesn't get much more redemptive than that, my friends. Jesus has redeemed all of us, all sinners who claim Him, who proclaim Him and put their faith in Him and receive His gift of salvation have been redeemed. Rahab put this scarlet cord in her window as a sign, as a symbol of the salvation that was coming. It's reminiscent of the Israelites when they were still in Egypt and they had the plagues and they had to, for the 10th plague, they had to brush the lamb's blood over the doorposts of their home so that when the angel of death came, it would pass over their home and spare them. and it hearkens forward to Jesus. The blood of the lamb that was shed for us. He redeemed us. We deserve death. We're all sinners. We all deserve to pay the price of death, but not anymore. We have been redeemed. The debt has been paid. So we know from her story that our sins don't disqualify us, our bad decisions don't count us out. Our past doesn't define our future because we are bought with the blood of the lamb. Our lives and our stories are redeemed because of the God of redemption.

Pray with me. Jesus, we thank you. We thank you for these impossible moments that we've been studying that just point us to how good you are, how big and powerful and mighty and awesome you are. God, may we be encouraged in our faith because of the big and small moments that you have shown us through these Old Testament stories. May you encourage us to go out and to tell other people about what you have done, both in the Bible and in our own lives. Help us to live boldly. Help us to invite, to talk to people, to have spiritual conversations. Help us to remember that we are a redeemed people who live on this side of the resurrection and we get to celebrate that. Thank you for your redemption. Thank you for adopting us into your family, for loving us that much, and for caring for us to the point of bringing us in. We love you, Jesus. We thank you for this day. Pray over our people as they go out into their worlds, into their spaces, with their people, God. Be with them, bless them, protect them, give them opportunities to share your love. We love you, Jesus. We thank you and praise you in your name. Amen.