How Much Do I Care? Series

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

ENGAGE

Pastor Ray Stedman once asked a congregation why they had dismissed their pastor. “Well”, they said, “he kept telling us we were all going to hell.” Steadman asked, “What does the new pastor say?” The congregation replied, “He tells us we’re going to hell, too.” “So what’s the difference?” asked Stedman. “The difference is that when the previous pastor said it sounded like he was glad. When the new pastor says it, it sounds like it breaks his heart.”

TENSION

One of the great challenges of our faith – and not just for pastors - is to make sure that as we study the Bible, it impacts our heart and not just our head.

One of my most eye-opening assignments in seminary was when I was required to read and evaluate four articles taken from Christian Scholarly journals as part of my Old Testament class. I actually have one of those here with me this morning. The title of the article I reviewed was “Dream Forms in Genesis 2:4b-3:24: Asleep in the Garden” in which the author Dan E. Burns, claims that this section of Scripture is written in fairly tale form and that it is merely “myth” or “fiction”. That article truly was heart breaking for me because it demonstrated how easily someone who is so well educated could completely miss the heart of God’s Word.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a natural tendency to do the same thing at times, although hopefully not to nearly that degree. It’s not uncommon at all for me to get well into my sermon preparation only to realize that all I’ve done is to create an academic offering that is long on information but lacking in application. And my guess is that if I struggle with that, perhaps some of you do, too.

TRUTH

I think that this could especially become a problem in studying Paul’s letter to the churches in Rome and particularly with the last part of chapter 8 that we’ve been studying for the last several weeks. Paul is dealing with some weighty concepts here – things like predestination, foreknowledge, justification, calling, election, and glorification. These are all important ideas which are well worth the time we have devoted to trying to understand them. But the danger is that this could become merely an academic exercise that only impacts our head and not our heart.

But as chapter 9 opens, Paul is going to prevent us from letting that happen by revealing his heart to us.

There is a noticeable change in Paul’s tone and focus as we move from the end of chapter 8 to the beginning of chapter 9. Romans 9-11 forms a distinct section of Paul’s letter, that seems, on the surface to be out of place. In fact some commentators refer to it as a “parentheses” since the first verse of chapter 12 seems to be a more logical continuation of Paul’s letter than what is found in chapters 9-11.

I discovered this week that there are even some commentators and well-known pastors who completely skip this section of Romans and go right from the end of chapter 8 right to chapter 12. Others just go through these 3 chapters quickly and devote only a few messages to these chapters. While I’ll attempt not to get bogged down here, we are going to give this section of Paul’s letter the attention it deserves.

In the first 8 chapters of his letter, Paul has been explaining in great detail the gospel message of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus. Much of what he has written in that section has been specifically addressed to his fellow Jews to show them why their Jewish heritage was insufficient to make them right with God and why it is only through faith in Jesus that all – both Jews and Gentiles – can come to God.

And Paul ends that first section of his letter with the amazing claim that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. But before He can move on with what most people would consider the “practical application” portion of his letter, he first needs to address the question that is raised by what he has written so far, especially for his fellow Jews.

In spite of Paul’s impassioned ministry and teaching, the reality is that there were very few Jews in the early church. Most of them were not persuaded that Jesus was the Messiah. By the way that is still the case today. And in light of the promises that God made in the Old Testament to bless His chosen people and to bless all the peoples of the earth through them, this raises a huge question that Paul must address.