Romans – Day 45
30 Nov 2009 | Karl Martin | Posted in RomansNo Comments
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [Romans 5:6-8]
I know that you have only recently had a verse to commit to heart but here is another memory verse that really ought to be in our minds and hearts. So how about it?
As you hold this verse , remember that Father God loves you. Whilst you were in open rebellion towards him, he sent his son to die. His love is incredible!
His primary orientation towards you is love. One of my earthly father’s favorite verses of scripture is found in Zephaniah 3: 17 ‘The Lord your God is with you, the mighty warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.’
I don’t know if you ever do this — but today why not set aside 20 minutes. Put on some gentle worship music, lie down in the presence of your heavenly father and allow him to sing over you. Just enjoy his love for you.
- Karl
Romans – Day 44
27 Nov 2009 | Karl Martin | Posted in RomansNo Comments
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. [Romans 5:6]
Christ died for sinners – he died for ungodly people. I wonder, do you know any sinners?
Jesus died for sinners. The Father’s love is for messed up people – the Spirit longs to touch ungodly people.
Spend today praying for ‘ungodly’ people – that they will come to know our incredible God.
Pray for family, friends, neighbours, colleagues and enemies.
Perhaps the Lord is leading you to pray daily for three people, asking your Father that in his timing you might even be the answer to your own prayer, and they would come to know Him.
- Karl
Romans – Day 43
26 Nov 2009 | Karl Martin | Posted in RomansNo Comments
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. [Romans 5:6]
When playing any kind of sport you are well aware of the fact that timing is everything. How the ball comes off the bat or racket, how it is released from the hand, whether the free-kick swerves the right amount or has the correct power – is all down to timing! Whether a comedian is good or great is all down to timing.
You don’t have to walk with your heavenly Father for long to recognise that he has perfect timing. He is never too early and certainly he is not too late. This passage encourages us to understand that Christ came and died at just the right time.
The pivotal point of all history - the incarnation, the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus Christ – that short period – happened at just the right time. Father God had his hand on all of history. Jesus came as the answer and the fulfillment of the Creation story and the Exodus story and the Priestly story and the Exile story — he came to die AT JUST THE RIGHT TIME.
If we can trust that his timing was right then – can we trust that his timing is right now and will be in the future?
He holds your life and he holds your future. His timing for your life may not appear right now to be perfect, but it is! He will fulfill his promises and his plans are good!
All you have to do is position yourself for God’s timing. Wait on him!
- Karl
Romans – Day 42
25 Nov 2009 | Karl Martin | Posted in RomansNo Comments
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. [Romans 5:3-5]
I’m not sure that many or any of us actually enjoy suffering? Any-one? Yet here is a passage that seems to suggest that just as we rejoice in the glory we experience – we can also experience joy in suffering – we can ‘glory’ in our sufferings!
How can this be? I mean it can actually sound offensive to someone experiencing suffering.
I think that here Paul is suggesting it is not just true that as we suffer we identify with the suffering of our Lord (although this is in part true).
It is not just that in our suffering – we as ‘little Christs’ are broken for the healing of the world – we become ‘eucharist’ (although this is undoubtedly our calling).
No, here Paul wants to go further – He implies that in and through suffering, God’s incredible objective for our lives is also being worked out. He wants to conform us to the person of Jesus Christ – he wants us to look and act more like his son. It is the suffering that produces perseverance, character and HOPE.
And this Hope is wonderful: we get to live out of the Father’s love – with the Spirit’s power as little Jesus’s in this broken world.
Today, perhaps identify someone who is suffering – and ask for God’s strength and peace and healing for them. It may be that you are even able to look back at a time when you suffered and reflecting on that experience, thank Father God for it.
- Karl
Romans – Day 41
24 Nov 2009 | Karl Martin | Posted in RomansNo Comments
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. [Romans 5:1-2]
This is the memory verse of the week – get this in your heads and your hearts. We (you and I) have been aligned correctly with God (we are right with our heavenly father). Through believing and trusting in Jesus – who is Lord (the ultimate one – master) – and Christ (the expected – anointed one of God – promised from way back). We have peace with God (we can know him and relate to him and live out of his love). We have gained access (not just to the throne room of heaven) to this incredible commodity and culture of GRACE, we have experienced the grace of God and now live in it. It is the air we breath – it is the place and status in which we now stand. So we have real Joy and rejoice in the hope we have (of the restoration of all things – of heaven assured) of the glory of God, that we can somehow bring glory to God.
- Karl
Romans – Day 40
23 Nov 2009 | Karl Martin | Posted in RomansNo Comments
Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead — since he was about a hundred years old — and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness –for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. [Romans 4:18-25]
Paul is trying to show us that it is our faith in the power and faithfulness of God that enables us to be made righteous. We can trust in his power: he gave Abraham and Sarah a child when they were about 100! (verse 19), he raised Jesus from the dead (verse 24). We can also trust in his promises: God had promised Abraham that he would be the Father of many nations and had promised him a child. God delivers on his promise, he always does! Why don’t you spend some time today just writing down the promises of God for you in the Scriptures. Perhaps, beyond the written word, you know that God has also promised other things to you. Thank him that he always does what he says he will do.
Notice that you and I are not to be passive in the process of walking in the promises and power of God. Abraham had to believe although it was ‘against all hope’ (verse 18). Father God is the saving God, he is the faithful one, he has all power and can be relied upon to come through on his promises, BUT you and I are called to FAITH, to trust (sometimes against all hope).
How is this possible? Only when you look at the Father and not at the issue. If Abraham had focused on the physical facts we would probably not be reading about him in Romans. How is this possible? Only when we ask Father God to strengthen our faith. He is the one who calls us – he is the one who sent Jesus – he is the one who ‘credits us with righteousness’. Will he not enable us to have faith that defies human doubts and holds onto divine promises.
Spend some time just asking Father God for the gift of faith and the tenacity to hold on and stand tall in the promises of God.
- Karl
Romans – Day 39
20 Nov 2009 | Tim May | Posted in RomansNo Comments
Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring — not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed — the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not. [Romans 4:16-17]
“The God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.”
What did this mean for Abraham? Answer: Isaac?
Isaac’s name means “he laughs”. Our God brings joy into our lives, actual joy, the fun stuff not the theological stuff - (that is to say, christian Joy often means coming up with a theological reason for why you don’t feel joyful!) My experience is that yes, God resources us to endure and learn from hard things (James 1) but he also brings some bare and simple JOY! A base mark of joy is that it makes you smile rather than grimace. What have Christians done to Joy to make it so complicated and unpleasant?
God wants to birth some new life. He wants to give those who follow him in faith an Isaac experience. Not all of us will have kids, I certainly don’t plan on having sprats anytime soon, but I’m hungry for God to bless me, to bring the things into my life that make me laugh with joy and I want to be open to “things that are not” … yet!
There are, of course, individual experiences of joy that God will bring, but I think he is birthing something new with regards to our church as a whole.
Missional Expressions are part of the trajectory of blessing that started with Abraham > Faith > Covenant > Jesus > Co-mission ……. and now the Church of Christ in Edinburgh 2009 is reconfiguring around missional/blessing opportunities.
He is calling us to imagine “things that are not as though they were”
Just imagine what God might birth through the simple structure of Missional Expression.
Pray today for Missional Expressions.
Have you joined one? Pray for your leaders.
If you haven’t joined one yet, pray about which one to join, with an expectation that God will guide you towards where He wants you to be – like a midwife of this blessing – to where you can contribute?
Thank Him that He is the life that resurrects, the life that overcomes our sin and failure.
Thank God four our church and ask Him for more life. Thank God that He is calling us and equipping us.
Jesus we ask for your life – may we be open to your Isaac, your promise and goodness for our lives. Thank you.
- Tim May
Romans – Day 38
19 Nov 2009 | Tim May | Posted in RomansNo Comments
It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. For if those who live by law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless, because law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression. [Romans 4:13-15]
The universe contains a moral compass; there is law that orientates towards God’s heart. Torah, the Law of Moses that Paul speaks of, was God’s heart communicated for Israel. The question of the place of this law in the life of the follower of Jesus are questions that weave in and out of all of Paul’s teaching as he grapples with implications of the gospel for both Jew and Gentile. We will return to this theme time and time again but today we will look at the difference between ice and water.
Romans 4:13-15 declare that faith is more important than law. Verse 15 shows us that as soon as you make a law, you make a law-breaker. We are sinful and cannot keep laws. The true promise of human freedom was in the bit that we call faith that presupposes law.
The law is ice. It is fixed, static, solid and cold. Keeping the law is like keeping ice on a hot summer’s day – our sin swallows up our desire (see Romans 7).
Israel became tired of its own law breaking, and out of that frustration, God spoke:
The time is coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them, ”
declares the LORD.
“This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
[Jeremiah 31:31-33]
Jesus completed the task of the law; he fulfilled the law by living and dying in perfect harmony between being and believing – he was without sin. His teaching took the external word of the law and gave it heart dimension, an internal dimension. (Matthew 5:17-48)
The ice melts and we can drink. Yes, He gives us a drink of His water! He purchased righteousness apart from the law by fulfilling the law. It is fluid, it is internal, and now we have it in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, in accordance with Jeremiah’s prophecy above. This law of the Spirit, this internal dynamic of the new covenant, is made of the same substance. We are now free to do works that please God (as our sermon series on James has shown us) because he has called to follow in His way. As Martin Luther said “We are free from the law for the law” (The Freedom of a Christian, 1523)
Today – simply pray for this water to refresh you and free you from striving, and free you to please him.
- Tim May
Romans – Day 37
18 Nov 2009 | Tim May | Posted in RomansNo Comments
And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. And he is also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. [Romans 4:11-12]
So Abraham got righteousness before he did the deeds. He was made right with God by his trust and commitment and not his deeds and duties; but he was obedient to that faith. What does that look like?
As a church, we’ve been preaching through the book of James. Paul and James have sometimes been thought to have strongly opposing views. However, here we see how close they actually are, although nevertheless with slightly differing emphases.
Paul highlights that righteousness is apart from what we do; without faith we cannot please God (Romans 3:21-23), but Abraham had faith and acted in a remarkable way as a response. This is what James means when he says, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action is dead faith”. True faith requires response.
Verses 11 and 12 show us that Abraham is our universal example. He’s father of the circumcised and the uncircumcised. However, circumcision is the “seal” of his righteousness. It is the outward sign of an invisible dynamic; it is his response. Our faith must work outwards from our hearts. When we are made righteous, our hearts become like a roaring fire, touched by the grace of the Lord. The fire must come out; it must spread from our hearts to our hands as our actions are transformed by our heart-faith in the God of grace.
This is where James and Paul are really talking about the same thing but from different sides. Paul is showing the folly of deeds without faith and James showing the impotency of faith without deeds.
Is there a disconnection in your life? Where are your hands and heart separated?
Let your heart be ignited by the abundant grace of God and be obedient in letting it spread to your hands.
- Tim May
Romans – Day 36
17 Nov 2009 | Tim May | Posted in RomansNo Comments
Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before! [Romans 4:9-10]
Reading Romans is like climbing a severe cliff face. 3:21 is the handhold by which Paul levers himself upwards. But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify (3.21)
In chapters 1-3, Paul has shown how the epidemic of universal unrighteousness is both an issue for Jew and gentile. In 3:21 a solution is put forward and we can haul our bodies up a bit further. In 4:9 the handhold has become our foothold. It is the foundation for Paul’s discussion till at least chapter 5 as Paul shows that the solution is as universal as the problem. So we find ourselves in 4:9 wrestling with the mechanics of this new righteousness that comes from Jesus. The central question: Did Abraham earn righteousness by circumcision?
In one unanimous motion, the global male population recoils! In immediate response to that word, legs are crossed, faces screwed and a strange inward whistle comes ….…….Ouch! If ever a man deserved a little bit of righteousness, it was Abraham!
Imagine the moment in which God proposes the idea to Abraham…..
Abraham: “You want me to do what?!!!???”
(to see the more authoritative account, please turn to Genesis 17)
The people of God have done some pretty weird, wonderful and sacrificial things for God but I guess not many could compare to what Abraham did. Perhaps the most curious thing I’ve done for God is what I’m doing right now. Of all the things I could have done after university, working for a church wasn’t always the most obvious or by any means always the most favourable thing to do. Sometimes it feels like the greatest joy and privilege to be set apart for this task, sometimes a great sacrifice. If we have experienced a call from God, we probably all know this feeling.
Nevertheless, if even for a moment I think the sacrifice I have made, the things I have done and the things I do today make me righteous in God’s eyes, I am a mug. My sin pervades everything I do, the sin I was born with taints everything. If I can see it, then God indeed sees my sin and it offends Him. How and under what circumstances are we righteous? What about Abraham? Paul makes his view abundantly clear, “Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before!”
What are you doing for God? What is your call? What sacrifices are you making? Why are you doing them?
Faith is the foundation of sacrifice. Which is stronger in your heart?
- The feeling that you ‘ought’ or ‘have’ to do things for things for God?
- That your trust/faith in Father gives you the soaring desire to please God with your life?
Do you feel you have to “do” or, do you feel you want to “be” a perfect Father’s child?
- Tim May