There are three different verses that I want to zero in on today, and they really encapsulate the Gospel, or the Good News. Remember Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:3 when he said: Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
In all the complexity of Romans, these three verses are so simple that even a child can understand.
The first is the last part of verse 8 and continuing through verse 9: This is the message of faith that we proclaim: 9If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
That’s it. Boom. Dead simple. Nothing needs to be added, no works for you to do. You cannot add anything to what Jesus already did to bring salvation. It’s done. “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
And then verse 13 shows us who this Good News is for: For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Everyone. Not those who are “good”. Everyone is included, no one is excluded. There is nothing that can keep you from the salvation that Jesus made available to you, except your own unbelief. Nothing in your past, nothing in your present. “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Verse 14 addresses the thought that if we just live as Jesus followers, people will come to know him. It addresses the thought that, “Well, I don’t want to offend people by telling them about Jesus” and other similar thoughts that seem to be popular these days: But how can they call on Him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about Him? And how can they hear without a preacher?
My friend, living life as Jesus wants us to is good. It lends credibility to the fact that He has made a difference in our life, but that is not enough. One of the reasons we are here on planet Earth is to help usher others into eternal life. How can our friends, our family, our neighbors, the world be saved from an eternity without God if we do not tell them about this person, this Savior, this God named Jesus?
When Paul said “how can they hear without a preacher?”, he wasn’t talking about the guy who stands at a pulpit on Sunday. Paul was saying “how can they hear about Jesus unless someone tells them about Him?”
If you have had your life changed by Jesus Christ, you are qualified, and even called, to carry and proclaim the message. You are the best person that can tell the story of how Jesus changed your life.
You might be the only preacher that some people will listen to and connect with.
It’s a simple message. “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
So we had a bit of tension in this chapter, didn’t we? The Reubenites, Gadites, and half the tribe of Manasseh nearly started a war, even though their motives were right. Of course, all they had to do was let the rest of the tribes know what they were doing ahead of time, right? Have you ever done anything with right motives, but were misunderstood and someone took offense? This is a common happening, isn’t it?
I’m thinking that The Reubenites, Gadites, and half the tribe of Manasseh might have been afraid of offending the other tribes if they had said in advance, “We don’t know if we trust you to tell your descendants about us and the fact that we are a part of you, so we want to build an altar to remind you and your descendants about us.” I can see how that kind of a conversation could go sideways.
Ah, communication. It can be so very tricky, can’t it?
I really like these short little Psalms. I’m sure you know that these were written as songs, and I can easily see these as songs that became popular to be sung not only in the temple, but as the people went about their days. Don’t you have some favorite songs or choruses from your church that you find yourself singing throughout the week? I know I do.
The headings in our translation for each of these chapters could be the titles of the songs. I’ll read them in order, from chapter 120 to 124. A Cry for Truth and Peace. The Lord Our Protector. A Prayer For Jerusalem. Looking For God’s Favor. And finally, The Lord Is on Our Side.
To be sure, when these were written, they were for much more than just singing at Temple. They were the cry of the writer’s heart, but in my imagination I can almost hear a man or a woman sing these to the Lord as they go about their day with the cares of the world weighing them down, or as they celebrate how God has blessed them in one endeavor or another. Can’t you?
So here in chapter nine, Paul is again speaking to the Jews with a message that was difficult for some of them to hear, but again, good news to us.
He told them that it wasn’t genetic background that makes a person the child of God, but faith in Jesus. No matter how hard you pursue righteousness, if you are relying on following the law to get there, you will fall short.
There is a passage in the chapter that I just want to touch on. It’s where Paul quotes from the Old Testament book of Maliachi, where God said, “I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.”The Old Testament was, of course, written in Hebrew. And the Hebrew language for “hate” here is different than the way we use the word. In Hebrew, it was more of a comparative word used in tandem with “love”. God loved Jacob *more* than he loved Esau. He bestowed blessings upon Jacob which he withheld from Esau. With us, when we say we hate someone, it’s almost an active emotion. It’s an emotion directed at someone. In Hebrew, it’s not that. It’s just less attention, less love when compared to someone else.
In chapter 20 we read about the cities of refuge. These were places that those who had accidentally killed someone could flee and be protected from those who would take revenge on them before a trial had taken place. As the commentator Matthew Henry put it, these were people who were guilty by hand, but not of heart.
If, after a trial, it was shown that the killing was an accident and not a crime of hate or jealousy or rage, then the person would be allowed to stay in that city, and that city only.
It’s interesting to note a few facts about these cities of refuge: all were Levite cities; these places of refuge pointed toward the refuge that we have in Jesus; they were distributed around the country so that one of them was always within a half day’s journey from anywhere in the country; all the cities were on hills so that they could be seen from a distance, so that if a person were fleeing to one, they could keep their eyes on that place, as we do with Christ.
Reminds me of the old hymn, “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus”.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.
The Hebrew language had several different words that are often translated into English as “law”.
I’m not going to give you all those different Hebrew words here today, but I’m going to read a partial list some of their meanings, and I’d like to see if you can pick out which of these words are the word used here in Psalm 119. Here they are: statute or decree, command, precept, judgement, direction (as in “The directions to complete a project”).
Which one do you think? It’s actually the last one I read, and in the Hebrew, the word is Torah. Yes, it is correctly translated as “law” in every English Bible, but isn’t it interesting that the second, perhaps more nuanced definition of Torah is direction. God’s Law is very accurately described by some as an Owner’s Manual for us.
My church is in the last few weeks of a remodel of our sanctuary. It’s been over a year long project, and one of the things we are doing is upgrading our sound system, and being the tech guy at the church, it has been my job to recommend new equipment. Well, now that we have the new equipment, now I have to learn how to use it. Guess what the first thing was I looked for when I opened the boxes. Right. The Owner’s Manual. I want to be sure I get the best sound out of our new hardware, and I want to be sure I don’t break anything. I want to use this equipment as it was made to be used.
God created us, and He knows how we best operate, and how we can best reach our highest potential. And that is why His law was given to us. It was because of His great loving kindness. God didn’t want us thrashing about trying to figure things out on our own. And Psalms chapter 119 is filled with praise to God for giving us directions for our life.
Thank you Lord, for your loving kindness, and for revealing yourself to us through your Word.
Romans 8 begins with the words, “Now, because of this,”. So you have to ask “Because of what?” The apostle Paul is continuing his thoughts from the previous chapter, where he spoke of the conflict we have with our new nature that has been made possible because of God’s grace and the fallen nature of our flesh; the chapter ended with the words, “I thank God I can be free through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
And so because of this, and I’m now quoting the rest of the opening sentence of chapter 8 “… those who belong to Christ will not suffer the punishment of sin.” Or as the KJV puts it “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”
Think of it! Paul just got done saying that the things he does not want to do he does, and the things he does want to do he does not do. So in other words, he still sins! But because of what Jesus accomplished with his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection, we who are his will not suffer the punishment of sin! Why? Because he took our sins upon himself and paid the price. And so, righteousness is accounted to us. And the entire chapter elaborates on this beautiful and awesome truth.
Joshua was an exceptional example of a leader. Here at the end of chapter 19 is another reason why.
After all the tribes have received their various parts of the Promised Land, then the people of Israel gave of their land a portion to Joshua. As a great leader should, he served them and took care of them first, and he did not use the power of his office to take what he wanted. And because of his good example, the people did as the Lord had told them, and have him the city he asked for. But get this…it says, “So he built the city and lived in it.”
He chose for his city not one of the big and powerful cities that already existed. He had to build his city before he could live in it.
Psalms chapter 117 is the shortest chapter in the Bible, and it’s smack dab in the center.
You know what is really amazing about it? The writer wrote something that could not have been accepted by the Jews! Why? Because it says, “Praise the Lord, all nations! Praise Him, all people!”
You see, unless you were circumcised, you could not join in praising the Lord when this psalm was written.
This chapter at the very heart of the Bible, revealed the heart of God. This was a peek at the Gospel message. Paul, in the book of Romans, chapter 15, even used this short chapter as a proof to the Jews that God’s love was for the Gentiles as much as it was for the Jews. That is indeed Good News.
But the message of Psalm 117 doesn’t end there. It says, “For His loving-kindness toward us is great. And the truth of the Lord lasts forever.” I like the way the KJV says it, “For his merciful kindness is great toward us…” We should praise Him because his merciful loving kindness is great toward us. Do we deserve it? No. But His merciful kindness is great toward us. That is the truth. “And the truth of the Lord lasts forever.” It will never change. It will never waver. He won’t change His mind. Forever is a long, long time.
And then the psalm ends with the only response we should have to this life changing truth: Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! He deserves our praise. He who created all that is, He who holds your life and mine in his strong right hand loves you and He loves me. And that will never change. Praise the Lord!
Ok, so there was a lot of talk of sin in today’s reading. Before I give my thoughts on the reading, maybe we should define the term.
What is sin? Sin is a word we don’t hear much in our culture today, much less in our churches. I think part of the reason is that we don’t want to make people feel bad, and we don’t want those steeped in our culture to think we’re narrow-minded and judgmental. (Oh my goodness, there’s a whole ‘nother talk right there…that of being judgmental. Maybe we’ll broach that subject another time.)
Well my friend, sin is a subject that God is not afraid to talk about, and it’s something important enough that He sent His son to Earth to die so that the result of sin would not keep you and me from having an eternity in His presence.
What is it?
Sin is falling short of God’s perfection. It is failing to be holy and clean and righteous.
With perfection as a standard, now we can see how hopeless our plight is to earn the eternal life that we so desire. How in the world can anyone ever make it??? Exactly. Without Jesus, we are sunk. And the realization of that fact is the beginning of salvation. Let’s turn now to some comment on today’s reading.
Paul is now addressing believers.
Romans 6:6 says “We know that our old life, our old sinful self, was nailed to the cross with Christ. And so the power of sin that held us was destroyed. Sin is no longer our boss.”
You see, before we joined ourselves with Jesus, before we gave ourselves to Him and asked Him to save us, we had no choice but to sin. Other translations use the words “…we should no longer be slaves to sin…” A slave has no choice but to obey his or her master. Before, we had to sin. But now, our relationship to sin is no longer that of master/slave.
Then verse 12 says, “So do not let sin have power over your body here on earth. You must not obey the body and let it do what it wants to do.”
Notice the language here. “…do not let sin have power over your body…”. If I let something happen, that means that I have a choice.
How is this possible? Because we are no longer under the judgement of the law, but under the free (to us) gift of grace. Grace costs us nothing, but it cost Jesus His life.
What is grace? We defined sin, so we should define grace. In a nutshell, grace is not getting the judgement that I deserve and getting forgiveness that I cannot earn. Long articles have been written about grace, but in the interest of the format of this podcast, this abbreviated definition will do.
So moving on to verse 13, “Do not give any part of your body for sinful use. Instead, give yourself to God as a living person who has been raised from the dead. Give every part of your body to God to do what is right.” So Paul is saying here that we should make the choice, we should decide to voluntarily give all of ourselves to God to do as He wants us to do.
What are we to do then with Paul’s confession in chapter 7, verses 14-24, when he talks about doing what he does not want to do and does not do what he wants to do? He even says, “I am a slave to sin.” Is he contradicting himself?
No.
He is talking about the conflict a believer has within himself when he sins. A person who has no relationship with God has no such conflict. But because the believer’s heart has been changed, he struggles against the not-yet-perfect flesh, or as some people call it, the “sin nature”. Although we are called to be perfect, we still live in these imperfect bodies. So that’s the bad news. We are still imperfect. The good news? As Paul says in the final verse of chapter 7, “God’s Law has power over my mind, but sin still has power over my sinful old self. I thank God I can be free through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
The struggle is proof that God is working in us. Pity the person who does not experience that conflict.
There are three different verses that I want to zero in on today, and they really encapsulate the Gospel, or the Good News. Remember Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:3 when he said: Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
I really like these short little Psalms. I’m sure you know that these were written as songs, and I can easily see these as songs that became popular to be sung not only in the temple, but as the people went about their days. Don’t you have some favorite songs or choruses from your church that you find yourself singing throughout the week? I know I do.