Sunday, June 14, 2015

Romans 9:1-3

Romans 9:1-3

Paul's Continual Anguish

Prepared by Dr. John E. Marshall

 

         It is wonderful to revel in Romans 8, to celebrate God's love for us, but Christianity requires more than self-interest. Due to the grace-gift we have in Jesus, it is incumbent on us to do all we can to share it with others.

         Even as Paul basked in the sunlight of Romans 8, a cloud suddenly darkened his thoughts. His kith and kin were not responding to God's love offered in Christ. Most Israelites were refusing to accept Jesus as Messiah.

         This was almost more than Paul could carry. He bore a burden for his kin, loving them with a love as deep as life itself. The weight was so severe that it brought from Paul one of the most mind-boggling claims ever made.

 

Romans 9:1 I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience

is testifying to me with the Holy Spirit.

 

         The claim coming in verse three is of such staggering proportions that Paul prefaced it with preparatory remarks. Knowing some would challenge his assertion, Paul built to it gradually. He first of all made a threefold oath.

         "I speak the truth in Christ". He spoke as one united to Jesus. "I am not lying". There was no stretching of the truth here; he wasn't exaggerating.

         "My conscience is testifying to me with the Holy Spirit." Paul was confident enough to name the Holy Spirit as a witness to the reality of his love. Based on his threefold oath, we are confident Paul's next statement reflected the true feeling of his heart.

 

Romans 9:2 that I have intense sorrow and continual anguish in my

heart.

 

         Here we find the key that unlocks the secret of Paul's soul winning ability. Paul suffered "intense sorrow", words used of people mourning with a pain that is nothing less than agony. He was tormented by "continual anguish." He bore a consuming grief that was unremitting, never ceasing.

         Paul was a good soul winner due to his burden for the lost. A passion to bring others to Christ should be second nature to believers. Pray God will intensify our burden. It is the main thing lacking in our soul winning efforts.

         God's best servants have always been those whose hearts blaze for people outside Christ. John Knox would pray, "Give me Scotland, or I die."

         John Hyde, a missionary, prayed 4 hours a day begging God for souls to be saved in India where he served. David Brainerd, missionary to native Americans, died of TB at age 29, yet his life was so filled with God's power that John Wesley required all Methodist preachers to read Brainerd's diary.

         Brainerd wrote, "I cared not whether or how I lived, or what hardships I went through, so that I could gain souls to Christ. While asleep I dreamed of these things, and when I awoke the first thing I thought of was this good work. All my desire was for the conversion of the heathen, and all my hope was in God." He worked ceaselessly, though suffering constant fever, cold sweats, nausea, and weariness, plus pains in his head, chest, and back.

         Dying of TB, he agonized on his knees in the snow, praying for the Indians. They long remembered the white man who coughed blood on the snow while praying for them. Brainerd preached standing up as long as he could. Then he preached from a chair. Eventually the Indians carried him on a pallet to their meetings and listened while he spoke from a reclining position. When he became too sick to be carried, he had the Indians come to his house to hear him preach from his bed.

         When his voice gave-way, he whispered his sermon in the ear of an Indian who would then convey the message to all. When they took him to Jonathan Edwards' home for treatment, he wrote letters to the Indians. When this failed, he whispered dictation for letters to them.

         When he could only mumble, those attending him said he was praying for the Indians. Near death Brainerd said, "I declare, now I am dying. I would not have spent my life otherwise for the whole world."

"Sorrow" and "anguish" for the lost are missing today, replaced by cold lethargy. We need the Lord to plow through our complacent souls.

         There is a Heaven to be gained, and a Hell to be shunned. We should live all of life as if hearing the woos of Heaven and the woes of Hell.

         Paul knew how wonderful it is to be saved. This made him all the more aware of how terrible it is to be lost. Paul enjoyed so much in Christ that it made him sorrowful over what his own kindred were missing, sorrowful to the point of being willing to say…

 

Romans 9:3 For I could almost wish to be cursed and cut off from the

Messiah for the benefit of my brothers, my own flesh and blood.

 

         Paul communed so closely with Jesus that he ingested compassion similar to what took Jesus to a cross for people. Paul was ready to stand in the place of Jews and endure their heavy punishment. He was willing to be separated forever from Christ if it would cause the salvation of his nation.

         Paul knew his wish could not be fulfilled. He had just said he could not be separated from the love of God in Jesus (Romans 8:38-39).

Paul also knew he could not be a substitute for the sins of Israel. His words were merely a way of strongly expressing what he felt within.

         Love is not bound by cool logic. I like to say illogical things to Ruth. "I love you more today than yesterday, and yesterday was a record day. I will treasure you till death, and then cherish your memory. I want to be your roommate in Heaven." When a heart is full of love, the boldest hyperboles are insufficient. Paul was trying to describe an indescribable emotion.  

         Paul verbalized one of love's strongest traits, a desire to take suffering into one's own self that it might not touch the beloved. All love is in a way substitutionary. Longing to suffer in place of the beloved is a law of love.

         What parents have not stood by a baby's bed and longed to take the children's raging fever into their own body? What parents would not prefer receiving the knife to having to watch their child be taken into surgery?

         Judah, loving his dad Jacob, begged to be a slave in Egypt in place of his baby brother Benjamin (GN 44:33). David cried, "My son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son!" (2 SM 18:33).

         Love peaked in substitution. Moses, Paul, and Jesus are the only 3 men in the Bible who asked God to substitute them to pay for others' sins.

         Moses offered to be forgotten by God if it would keep wrath from falling on Israel. "Now if You would, only forgive their sin. But if not, please erase me from the book You have written" (EX 32:32).

         Paul sensed the nation had again made a deadly error. Israel was once more perched on a precarious precipice. They had again renounced YHWH, this time by building not a golden calf, but a cross. Having rejected God's Son, Hell was gaping before them.

         Moses and Paul understood a need for love expressed in substitution. They wanted to endure the curse that others might escape it, to suffer pain in place of others. Moses and Paul wished to be substitutes, but only One was eligible to do this. The Substitute for our sin had to be pure and spotless; only One fit that description. What Moses and Paul wished to do, Jesus did.

         Focus on Him who did die as our Substitute. May the lost receive His compassion, and may the saved imitate it. Only Jesus can give us the love and salvation we need. Both require a miracle of grace. God grant us a burden that motivates us not only to talk about the lost, but also to the lost.

         We need a heaviness that puts the lost on our prayer list, and us on their doorstep. Love for the lost is soul winning's most effective tool. It drives us to do our duty, and melts the hearts of those we seek to win.

 

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Romans 8:38-39

Romans 8:38-39

Palm Reading and Crystal Balls

Prepared by Dr. John E. Marshall

 

         Spurgeon, seeing "God is love" written on a weather vane, told its owner he felt those words were inappropriate to have on such a changeable thing. The man said Spurgeon had misread the intent. The inscription was on the weather vane, not to demonstrate the fickleness of God's love, but to say, "God is love, whichever way the wind blows."

         Amen! No matter what is happening around us, God is love. Our text reminds us, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

 

Romans 8:38a   For I am persuaded…

 

         "Persuaded" is a heart-word. Paul had confidence, a deep-seated personal conviction, about this matter. It was part of his creed. He had committed his whole being to what he said here. He was sure nothing could separate us from the love of God in Christ. We need this persuasion. It gives us a blessed assurance, a deep-seated faith regarding our spiritual security.

 

Romans 8:38b   … that neither death nor life, …

 

         The love of God in Christ for us cannot be affected by our state of being. Once in Christ, neither the living nor ending of this life can sever us from His love. "If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord" (RM 14:8).

         Death can separate us from the world and cut us off from friends, but its scissors break when it tries to separate us from God's love. In fact, God mocks the gloomy separator by turning it into the vehicle that consummates our communion with Him. The divider thereby becomes the uniter.

Death cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ, nor can anything in life separate us from God's love. Many Christians believe if they die while saved, they are secure, yet fear they may yet fall away in this lifetime. Blessed are they who grasp the truth of our text. However numerous our pains, burdens, disappointments, and temptations, they can never separate us in this life from the love of God that is in Christ.

 

Romans 8:38c … nor angels nor rulers,…

 

         This refers to invisible spirits that surround us. Not even supernatural beings can thwart the love of God for us in Christ; neither good angels, who would not if they could, nor bad angels, who would if they could. Evil spirits are powerful, but impotent when it comes to nullifying God's love for us.

         The good spirits, angels that surround God's throne and minister to us, cannot absorb and intercept all of God's love. There is plenty for all. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are nearer the sun and soak in its radiance, but do not keep it from also shining on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

         Angels are close to God, and numerous. However, they cannot keep God's love from passing on to those of us on the outskirts of the throng.

 

Romans 8:38d …nor things present, nor things to come, . . .

 

         Time has no bearing on Jesus' love. God knew all about us before He set His love on us in the first place. No new revelations about our character can surprise Him. He loves us despite our sin; time cannot change this fact.

 

Romans 8:39a … nor powers, nor height nor depth…

 

         Height and depth were astrological terms. The former referred to one's "star" being at its zenith; the latter designated it as at its nadir, preparing to rise. The ancients believed stars tyrannized lives. Astrologers were consulted to foretell the events of one's life. Astrology was normal life to Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, and Arabs.

         Astrology flourished in Europe. Shakespeare appealed to this ancient belief, calling his tragic twosome Romeo and Juliet "star-cross'd lovers."

         People truly believed a person's life was determined by which way the Zodiac was positioned at the time of their birth. Paul rejected all such nonsense. Stars determine nothing. God created them solely to give light.

Sadly, astrology and its sister superstitions refuse to die. People still seek fate in the stars, read palms, check horoscopes, look in crystal balls, and use charms. God forbid that any of His children should consult such things.

         Anathema on petty fears as Friday the 13th, walking under a ladder, crossing the path of a black cat, breaking a mirror, or stepping on a sidewalk crack. Away with charms: horseshoes, throwing salt over the left shoulder, lucky pennies, and four leaf clovers. A woman recently five leaf clover; surely she will win the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. If a rabbit's foot brings good luck, why did the rabbit lose all four of his? If knocking on wood brings good fortune, why isn't a woodpecker King of Beasts?

Such silliness leaves God out of the reckoning, an unspeakable evil. God, not luck or fate, rules Earth. Our life is guarded by God's love in Jesus.

 

Romans 8:39b  … nor any other created thing …

 

         Paul tried to mention every category he could think of: state of being, supernatural beings, time, and astrology. In case he missed something, he added one last catchall phrase. Paul knew human minds are prolific in conjuring up all sorts of imaginary terrors. Our brains conceive all sorts of fanciful disasters, but this phrase gives peace by nullifying all our fantasies.

         Paul won't let doubt gain even the smallest foothold within us. He wants us to be persuaded nothing…

 

Romans 8:39c … will have the power to separate us from the love of

God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!

 

         Paul took pains to clarify his meaning here. God's love flows from an infinite supply, but in a prescribed channel. Only by receiving Jesus can it be appropriated. Universalism is no option. Jesus embodied God's love. We must drink of "a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel's veins."

         Some wish to take the heart out of John 3:16, my favorite Bible verse, and make it read, "For God so loved the world that no one shall perish, and all will have everlasting life." No! The verse contains two all-important clauses. One, God's love is seen in His Son: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." Jesus is the Father's one and only Son.

         Two, God's love can be appropriated only through His Son: "that whosoever believes in Him (Jesus)." Till these two clauses are understood and acted on, we cannot say, "will not perish but have everlasting life."

         We must meet God's conditions, and once we do, our position in His love is secure. Our text brought comfort to the beloved and saintly Robert Bruce of Kinnaird at the time of his death. At breakfast, he asked for his Bible and, his vision being poor, requested that his fingers be placed on Romans 8:38-39. Assured he was touching these words, he quoted them, and said to his family, "God be with you, my children; I have eaten breakfast with you, and shall eat supper with my Lord Jesus Christ tonight." Sure enough, that day he sat at the Lord's table.

Our text provided Robert Bruce assurance. Does it give us the same peace? Do we hear what Paul said? Has our heart embraced his meaning? May God grant us a believing spirit, thereby granting us confident peace.