Classic Christianity – Book of Romans P37 (02-03-20)
Synopsis
What do you ponder over that Jesus did for us, who made us into one body of believers in Christ Jesus? Are you in Christ Jesus? Then you cannot help but say, “Thank you, Jesus”. Can you grasp the magnitude of His love for you? You who once had a heart of stone, have now been given a heart of flesh, a heart that expresses love toward others because of the love poured into you by Christ Jesus. Gratitude of heart is what expresses itself in love in a person who is born again, with the Spirit of God living in him, as He grows in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What trials and tribulations, famine or sword, danger or hardship or persecution, have you already gone through? Did God ever leave you or forsake you during those times? No, it is in those times our roots go deeper into Christ Jesus. We learn the depth of His love for us. He has promised to never leave us or forsake us. In those deepest days of despair, longing to be with Him, feeling you cannot bear one more day on this earth, the pain so great, but Jesus is right there. He is always there.
Are you convinced of His love for you? Can you say like the apostle Paul that nothing can separate you from the love of God? Death cannot separate you, for when you die, you will leave this place and be immediately in the presence of Jesus. Life cannot separate you from God’s love. For even if you were swallowed by a whale, God is right there with you. Angels and demons cannot separate you from the love of God. God even commands the angels concerning you, and the demons cannot harm you. Consider Job, that even the demons are subject to God’s commands, and cannot go beyond the limits set by God. God will not allow us to endure more than we can bear and will always provide a way out so we can bear up under it. Why? He is with you and He loves you. Nothing in all creation can separate you from the of God in Christ Jesus.
So we walk by faith and not by sight. That is where life is to be walked. Like the trapeze artist walking across the Niagara Falls on a tight rope, we are invited to walk across the tight rope with him. That man is Jesus, and with faith in Christ Jesus, as the one who will hold us up so we do not fall, we put our trust in Him. He is the one walking on the tight rope, telling us to walk in life, through the trials and tribulations, with Him. That is when we know we are exercising faith.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Transcript
Let us look briefy at Ephesians 3:6.
Ephesians 3:6
6 This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.
One body. Not a Jew body and not a Gentile body. That to me kind of annihilates all the Jewish Christians getting together and having a Messianic Jewish only gathering. This annihilates this idea of having Gentile Christians together, and saying let us not have any Jews over here. There is one body and let us have worship together, and let us have unity among our differences. Jew, I cancelled the law. Why are you still trying to keep it? I cancelled your dietary laws. Peter said everything is now clean. I cancelled the ten commandments you were under. I cancelled everything you had and were holding onto for your salvation. It is gone and you come to Christ one way and that is by faith. And Gentiles, you do identically the same thing.
So he says to us that all of this was accomplished by this mystery. Now turn to chapter 4 in Ephesians.
Ephesians 4:1
1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.
You have received life and I told you to go love one another. Now, I want you to do so. You grew up Jew, different than the Gentiles, but I want you to learn to love each other. Be humble. Do not be cocky. Do not be talking, “We are God’s people”. All you have to say to someone who talks like that is say, “The heck you are”.
Ephesians 4:2
2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.
What does that mean? You are going to have some trials and tribulations. Bear with one another. Hang in there. Hold onto truth.
Ephesians 4:3
3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
Now, look what it says here.
Ephesians 4:4
4 There is one body and one Spirit,
There is one body. There is not a Jew body and a Gentile body. There is one Spirit. He did not give one Spirit to the Jews and a different Spirit to the Gentiles.
Ephesians 4:4-6
just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Let us now go back to Romans. Do you see how exciting this message is, when it is taught in according to scripture. Do you see how unifying it is when you see how God, in His foreknowledge and purpose, reached out to you and me, who are Gentiles, and reached out to the Jews. There is a girl down here who is Jew. I worked with Ed Hecht for some thirty years, who is a Jew. I never think of him being a Jew. He never thinks of me as being a Gentile. We are children of the living God. I do not care what your background is. You are a child of God and that makes us brothers and sisters in Christ.
Instead of understanding what salvation is, which is life, and because people have concentrated on the fact that you can be saved by merely saying Jesus died for my sins. Listen. Who wants to go to hell? If all I got to do is say, “thank you, Jesus, for dying for my sins”, and that is all I have to do, then I will do that. But there is no commitment to life that way. Such a person is saying to God, “I do not want you to live in me. I will keep you on the cross for forgiving my sins”.
We have to understand how the Christian world has taken truth and watered it down. You hear that Sunday after Sunday, watered it down, and people have reduced salvation to the cross, instead of including the resurrection. Oh, we acknowledge. “I believe in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ”. So you ask someone, “What is the meaning of the resurrection?“ “I don’t know.” “What is the meaning of the cross?” “Oh, that is where my sins were taken away”. “What is meaning of the resurrection?” “Not sure.”
The meaning of the resurrection is he was raised from the dead so that that life that raised him from the dead can raise you from the dead. In case you have not figured it out, you have a worse problem than sin. It is called death. The only solution to death is life. The only life available to us is Jesus. The Christian message is not a religious message. It is a practical message. You are born dead and when you are dead, you need life. If you do not choose life, then you are going to remain dead. When you choose life, then you are going to get eternal life, life eternally. When does it begin? The minute you have the Son. There is no one else who can give it to you.
All these other things come out in conversation with people. So you like Buddha. Fine. So you like Mohammed. Fine. Can he give you life? You like Moses. Can he give you life? You like the pope. Can he give you life? No, but I like Luther. Can he give you life? Can Calvin give you life? No one can give you life except Christ Jesus. He is the only one raised from the dead capable of giving you and me life. Life, that is what salvation is about.
We tolerate these things. We tolerate co-mingling law and grace in our churches. We tolerate the emphasis on the cross at the exclusion of the resurrection. The mindset in many people is this, “As long as you have a good choir and good programs, that is all that matters. Just keep me entertained. Keep my ears being tickled. I do not need truth. It hurts. I just want some fluffy stuff.” It says that in scripture, that in the last days, people will not listen to truth.
2 Timothy 4:3-4
3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
“Al I want is fluffy stuff. Just give me an emotional experience. I do not want any meaning to it. Just let me feel good. Let me tingle.” I can rub your back with a feather and get you tingled. I want something concrete for my life. I want something real. I want something I can hang onto. That is what Jesus will do for you.
Romans 8:31
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things?
What are we going to say? This is what we are going to say.
Romans 8:31
If God is for us, who can be against us?
We do not have to fear man. We do not have to walk around fearful that we are not going to be popular. I have told people before, that I decided a long time ago that I am not going to be running for sheriff. So I do not care how popular I am among peers. You should not either. You have a situation: “Paul is telling me, brother is not there. He is anti. He is nuts.” So I do not care. I do not fear him. Do you? If God is for you, who can be against you? Now, if God is not for you, then you would be in trouble. Look at that. God is for you. He has reached out to you.
Romans 8:32-33
32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?
Who is going to bring a charge against the Jew, or the Gentile?
Romans 8:33-34
It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
Sometimes we do not even know what to pray for. Do not worry about it. God will intercede for you.
Romans 8:35
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Is that not a question? Can anything separate you from the love of God? No!
Romans 8:35
Shall trouble
How many of you have ever been in trouble? Did that separate you from the love of God? Did you ever think it did? Yes, we do. One time we thought we were separated because of our evil behavior, but now God has reconciled us through his physical death.
Colossians 1:21-22
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation
Have you not heard that every time you sin, God turns his back on you? Have you ever heard that one? How many of you heard that one, every time you sin, brother? It is like having God spinning on a chair. He sees old Jim sin. Then he confesses, and He comes back again. But then Jim sins again, so God spins around again. So God is twirling around up there, quite busy. Yet, that is what you have been taught. Is that true? No. Your sins have been placed on the back of God never to see them again. He is not twirling around on a chair. Nothing can separate you from the love of God.
Romans 8:35
or hardship
How many of you have ever been through hardship? We have. Does that separate you from God? No. If God will cause it to work together for the good, the way He will cause it to work together for good is when you are going through trouble and hardships, it will draw you to Jesus. But it can also draw you away from Him if your faith is not in the right place, if you think God is punishing you. “Oh, God is getting me for that?” Is that true? How can He be getting you for it when He put it on His back and paid for that. Did we just read that there is now no condemnation awaiting those who belong to Christ Jesus. What does that mean? There is no condemnation awaiting those who belong to Christ Jesus. What does it mean in the Greek? Same thing. God is not punishing you. If He did, you would live in total punishment. If a person thinks the reason I do not get punished is because I am so good, you are really deceived. Jesus said there is not anybody who is good. When they called him good, he said, “Why do you call me good, for there is no one who is good. If you want to call me good then call me God for only God is good.”
Romans 8:35
or persecution
This is what he is saying. If God is for you, who will be against you? If you are going into the market place of life and be available to be a body through whom Christ is to live His life, to be a branch, are you going to have persecution? You sure are. Why? The world does not like Jesus. They will like him up to a point but “do not let him get close to me”. People in the world do not like Jesus. Just look at the film by Mel Gibson. People were up in arms over this. Why? It tells the truth and people do not like the truth.
If you are going to be a truth teller, do you know what separates you from the world? You talk about sanctified! We are set apart. Do you know what sets you apart?It certainly is not the way you dress, or whether you have a bun on the top of your head, or whatever else you are dealing with, that is not how you separate yourself. Do you know what separates you from the world? By what you believe? You are separate from the world because you believe in Jesus. That belief in Jesus separates you from the entire lost world and even separates you from the religious world. There were some statistics that came out in regard to pastors who really believe in Jesus. I will have to share that with you some time.
Romans 8:35
or famine
Most of us have not been through that.
Romans 8:35
or nakedness or danger or sword?
That is certainly something the apostle Paul went through. The apostle Paul did not make up some words in order to be powerful. Paul has been through all of these things, trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger and the sword.
Romans 8:36
36 As it is written:“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[Psalm 44:22]37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Because we are recipients of the love of God, we are more than conquerors in this world. If God is for me, then who can be against me?
Romans 8:38-39
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 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.
That is what God wants us to be, to be convinced. If you got faith in something, you have to be convinced of something. I have faith that this chair will hold me up, but until I sit in it, it is just words. But when I sit in it, I exercised faith.
There was a guy that used to do tricks over Niagara Falls. He would ride his bicycle on this tight rope across the Niagara Falls. People would stand and applaud. He would ask, “How many of you think I can do that again?” “Amen. Oh, yes. You are something else.” “How many of you think I can do it with someone with me on my bicycle?” “Oh yes. You can do that.” “Who would like to volunteer?” There were no hands raised on that question.
Faith has to have some legs to it. When we come to Christ, we do not just come with some intellectual assent that I believe in Jesus. You come to the fact that you not only believe in Jesus but in what Jesus did. I believe Jesus took away my sins on a cross, if I was the only person on the face of the earth, Jesus would have died for me. I believe that when he was raised from the dead, then he was raised, having fulfilled the law with life, and upheld the law in that the wages of sin is death. So he entered into my death with me. He was raised from the dead so I too can be raised from the dead unto newness of life in Christ Jesus.
That is a miracle of new birth. The day I was born again, and the day you were born again, was a miracle. You will never experience a miracle compared to the day you were born again. Where Ezekiel said “I gave you a new heart”.
Ezekiel 36:26
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
My heart was as hard as a brick before I came to Christ. The thing that angered me the most about Amy was her crying. “I would say, Why are you blubbering all the time?” Then I came to Christ and I cry more than she does. I was driving home listening to music, with tears streaming down my face. That is a new heart. There is no explanation to it except Jesus gave me a new heart.
God is saying, “I took away your heart of stone and gave you a heart of flesh.”
In salvation, you will never find a miracle like that. Have you ever gone to one of those healing services, and wonder if anyone is well? Is anybody well in the Christian world? You cut my leg off and grow it back and it would not be anything compared to the day I was born again. Yet, people get hung up on that and ignore the born again experience. Why? Maybe you have not been born again. When you are born again, you are a new creation. You are born again. All things passed away and all things passing away.
2 Corinthians 5:17
17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
All things have become new, new in attitude, new in the way you think, new in the fact that you love Jesus. You can talk about that stuff before you know Him but it is only when you know Him. It is not the fact that you love Him but that He loved you first. I could not love Him until He loved me first.
1 John 4:10
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
God is the initiator. “I love you so much I gave My Son to you.” We respond to that and say, “thank you, Jesus”. So we are more than a conqueror. I am convinced of something. I sat in that chair. I know that will hold me. I am convinced of something, that neither death nor life, will separate me from God. When you are absent from the body, you are present with the Lord. You cannot be separated from God.
2 Corinthians 5:6-8
6 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
You are here folks. When you die, you die here. What happens when you die here? You go there. When? Immediately. How can people say you are soul sleeping when He says nothing separates you from the love of God? When you are soul sleeping, you are separated from the love of God. When you are absent from the body, you are present with the Lord.
John 14:1-3
1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.2 In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
What do you think it is? A building? No. “I prepared a body for you.” That is where you are going to live in. You are not going to live in a palace up there. You are going to live in a body, a glorified body. Thank God. When you are young, like Kevin, I do not need a new body. When you get this old, you are going to look forward to that occasion. At least it provides some comic relief for you in the mean time.
Death cannot separate you from the love of God. There is no separation. When you are in the presence of Jesus, you are eternally present with Jesus. Do we understand that? You are there in the presence of Jesus. Nothing can separate you. Death cannot separate you. There is no pause. You just leave this world and go immediately into His presence.
What can separate you from the love of God? Death can’t. Life can’t. Angels can’t. Demons can’.
Romans 8:38-39
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 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.
If that is not good news, I do not know what good news is. There is nothing you can do or say that can separate you from the love of God. You say, “I tried”. You cannot do it. You bump down the hill, He goes down with you. If you were Jonah and went into a whale, He went in there with you. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. Throughout all eternity, nothing can separate you from the love of God. That is why for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
Philippians 1:21
21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Why is it gain? Because immediately when I leave here, I go there. That is why I do not fear death. There is nothing that can separate me from the love of God.
When I had my heart attack, the doctor said, “I will do open heart surgery? There is a place in there that might have cardiac arrest.” I told him, “it is a great place to go. I am not doing it”. I am so glad I am not doing that. I feel like a million bucks. That man wanted to rip me open. Why? I did not fear death. That was something established before I got there. That is why it is important to have policies formed in your head ahead of time. That way, when tragedy hits, you are already prepared for it. Establish truth, “I am not afraid to die. Therefore, I am not afraid to live”. If you are afraid to die, then you are afraid to live. For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Why? Nothing can separate me from the love of God.
Let us pray together.
Father, how can we ever say thanks for the things you have done for us? Thanking you for this wonderful forgiveness that was provided at the cross so we might be able to have life called eternal life, to be raised from the dead with nothing that can separate us from the love of God. Trials can’t. Tribulations can’t. Death can’t. Life can’t. We are God’s children, adopted into the family of God. We look at each other and we call each other by name, in essence, our true identity is that we are children of the living God. The people in this room who know you are children of the living God. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, not just in name, but in experience, joined to the head, Christ Jesus. One body, one God, one Spirit, one hope, in Christ Jesus. Father, we thank you for the magnitude of this salvation that is ours, freely given, freely received. Thank you in Jesus name, and for His sake. Amen.
