Romans 1:28-31 Every Kind of Wickedness!

Romans 1:28-31  Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.  They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.  They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.  They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;  they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.  Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

In the above passage, Paul continues his exposition on the state of mankind since abandoning God as Creator and Lord.  Since the beginning of time, humans failed to honor God, choosing their own gods, making them in their own image.  Likewise, they chose to worship heavenly bodies or other creatures.  They even made grotesque images to worship from their own imaginations.  Because of this rejection of the Creator, Paul writes, they became filled with every kind of wickedness.  We call this wickedness sin, a willingness to obey the authority of self-will over the will of God.  They suppressed the truth of life by delving into all kinds of evil, greed and depravity.  Of course this self-oriented, wayward life brings judgment from our Father God, for sin brings disharmony and destruction to his creation.  Death is the product of sin.  The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  (Romans 1:18-19)  In the previous breakfast, we wrote about the resulting disharmony of sin to the point of suppressing the natural use of man’s sexuality for unnatural behaviors.  Of course, such an act of sexuality, intercourse with ones own gender, if carried out to its fullest extent, challenges the perpetuation of the human specie.  Perhaps this kind of self-will, self-love, can be considered the pinnacle of man going his own way, choosing his own lifestyle rather than God’s intentions.  But in today’s focus, we can see other challenges that man has ingrained into his own existence, challenges that threaten his welfare, even the survival of his race.  Not only are humans full of all kinds of wickedness, They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.  They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;  they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.  Man’s willingness to follow his own way, his own gods, indicates giving himself over to a depraved mind.  His father is not only Adam, who forsook God’s will and authority in his life, his father is also the Evil One.  As Jesus said to the self-righteous Pharisees, If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God.  I have not come on my own; God sent me.  Why is my language not clear to you?  Because you are unable to hear what I say.  You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.  (John 8:42-44)  Of course, the Pharisees wanted to kill Jesus at that time.  We might say that we would not want to kill Jesus, but mankind in general has that spirit of destruction within him.  Inherent in man’s nature is a self-willed spirit that rejects God’s spirit, bringing death and disharmony into life.  This is a cancer on man’s soul, brought into his very existence by the sin of Adam, a cancer eventually contaminating all things with death, even nature.  Later in Romans we will read that the whole creation groans to be delivered from this bondage to sin.

Paul’s explicit description of man’s lack of being right with God paints a picture of gloom and darkness without God in the scene.  Obviously, Paul wants the Romans to understand that they need a Savior, someone who can redeem the nature of man, making people right with God the Creator.  Of course, we know who that is: Jesus, the Christ, the Lord.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.  (John 3:17)  Jesus came to bring light to that picture of gloom and darkness.   When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”  (John 8:12)  We who are IN CHRIST JESUS will never walk in darkness because we will always have the light of life in us.  We will always know who the Creator is; and because of our faith in Jesus’ life and work, we will always be right with God.  As followers of Christ, we have the righteousness of God within us.  Yes, we have all sinned and we still struggle with fleshly waywardness in our lives, but we have a righteousness within us that does not come from our works, but from Christ’s works.   There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.  (Romans 3:22-23)  We are justified before God; we do have right standing with him.  As Paul said, we do have the nature of Adam embedded within our lives, but we are not without hope, for Christ has come to redeem us, not to condemn us.  Therefore, whosoever believes in him, will have life eternal, for Jesus has come to bring life and to terminate the cancer of sin.  And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.  If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.  (Philippians 3:9-11)

How wonderful it is to know Christ and the joy He brings to our lives.  Walking with him in the power of the Holy Spirit should put a governor on our flesh.  We should no longer let our fleshly desires rule our lives, not that we are saved by works, but that we honor Christ and the Creator of our lives by avoiding the excesses of the flesh.  Sinfulness, waywardness, unthankfulness lead to sorrow and finally death.  God’s children are not of that mode.  We are those with faith in God and a song in our hearts.  We are those who sing the song of the thankfulness of the redeemed.  I waited patiently for the Lord;  And He inclined to me,  And heard my cry.  He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, Out of the miry clay, And set my feet upon a rock, And established my steps.  He has put a new song in my mouth—Praise to our God; Many will see it and fear, And will trust in the Lord.  (Psalm 40:1-3)  As we hold fast to Christ, we live his life the best we can as ambassadors for God to this world.  When the weaknesses of the flesh penetrate our thoughts and behaviors, we look to Jesus.  We give him our temptations, our inappropriate actions.  Life should be joyous because of whom we serve.  He brings harmony in life; He brings creation in life, not destruction.  Jesus came to give life.  Jesus is the truth of life.  Jesus said, The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.  I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.  (John 10:10)  The world hates him as a Savior, for it wants to save itself.  As a wayward child, the world says: “I am in control, I do not need your help Jesus.  I reject your description of our lives.  We can please God by our own efforts.”  The Pharisee spirit is resplendent in the world’s system.  Yet, as we look around, what do we see?  Wars, rumors of wars, poverty, slavery, wickedness of all kinds.  For thousands of years, this kind of activity has gone on, but the world will not repent and turn to the Creator.  Instead, through their own gods, their own activities, their imaginations, they tell God through their words and their deeds, “We do not need your help, your righteousness, your Son.  WE CAN DO IT!”  If you see any of this self-willed attitude in yourself, turn to Jesus, repent, and yield the reins to him.  Jesus will lead you on the path to peace and joy in the Lord.  It is a good thing to return to the joy of your salvation.   

Romans 1:24-27 Worship the Creator!

Romans 1:24-27 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.  They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.  Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.  Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.  Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Man’s desire to serve himself, to please himself, rather than God placed him in the position of gratifying his flesh.  This gratification took on many forms, but one easily identified form is the sin of sexual licentiousness.  Men and women started to lust after their own gender, creating confusion in the basic desire of any being to procreate its own specie.  The main point Paul addresses here and wants the people to consider is sexual impurity and the concept of not relying upon God’s truth.  He is pointing to the tendency of people to turn from worshipping their Creator God to bowing down to the things of this earth.  When we lose sight of our Lord and stop praising him with our lives, this idol worship that we discussed in the last breakfast permeates every area of our lives.  Of course sin spreads throughout our choices and our actions, and soon we see the effects of man’s moral degeneration in his sexual behaviors.  As we will read next week, Paul will go on to say, They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.  (Romans 1:29)  The pathway that leads us away from God is a slippery downhill slope.  We do not fall by inches but by leaps and bounds as we give ourselves over to the world’s way of living, for the temptations are many.  As the Bible says, For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.  (1 John 2:16)  Just as the Children of Israel quickly lost sight of God and built a golden calf to worship in the wilderness, Paul could see that the nature of men was to stray easily into hedonistic pursuits without God as their focus for living.

As Christians one of the most miraculous aspects of our salvation remains the Good News that Jesus died to save sinners.  We possess this marvelous knowledge:  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  (Romans 5:8)  This amazing mercy and grace poured out at the cross through the shed blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God demonstrates how greatly we are loved.  We can rejoice and be exceedingly glad.  If we consider the realities of our position in the family of God as joint heirs with Christ, we will remain true to God, following his desires and his will for our lives.  Many scriptures have been set to music because they are an encouragement to our hearts and minds.  As we meditate on the Lord, these songs bring hope and light into our days and nights such as: Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.  (1 John 3:1)  Many times in the chaos and troubles of living, we need reminders of who we are in Christ and who He is in us.  One of the songs we sing at church says, “I am a child of God.”  We need to remember what that means and the price Jesus paid for our position in God’s family.  Our adoption papers were signed with the blood of Jesus.  He willingly went to Mount Calvary and said, “Not my will, but yours be done, Father.”  Today’s verses go far beyond sexual immorality to mankind’s innate abandonment of God from the beginning of time, his desire to follow his own will.  From Adam until the present day, the hearts of people have whored after fleshly desires.  Men and women have shifted their allegiance from honoring God and his authority to promoting their own self-will and power.  In the Old Testament, the people responded to the Law with, “We will do it.  We will follow your laws.”  This is the cry of a stubborn two-year-old, rejecting his mother’s help with a task beyond his grasp: “I can do it?”  As with the unknowing child, we will fail miserably, but we should know better.  We should know we need our God; we should know we cannot fulfill his part of the covenant.  Still we strive to find the answers to life’s problems, to prove to God our knowledge and wisdom are great.  We determine to live in peace and harmony through our own abilities and end up in strife and disharmony.  We have always needed God’s help.  The Law was his help—to bring obedience, but we could not fulfill its demands.  Yet we stood in defiance, saying we could do it ourselves, not understanding our human weaknesses compared with his strength.  Now this foolishness is even greater when the people of God reject the strength of the Lord given to us through Christ by the Holy Spirit, thinking once again, “We will do it.”  We will give God some of our time and some of our money, but in reality we are trying to live through our own intellect, insights, and abilities.  Our only hope is to return to the God of our salvation: All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.  (Isaiah 53:6)

Yes, in Isaiah’s prophecy concerning Jesus, the Bible also tells us that Jesus was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.  (Isaiah 53:3)  Jesus was the perfect Lamb of God, giving all for a lost world.  He was in no way like the false gods of God’s people, the gods they turned to so easily throughout the ages.  They worshipped gods of nature and gods of the sun, moon, and stars.  Continually, they turned back to Baal and Ashtoreth, gods with strong ties to prostitution, deviant sexuality.  The sexual promiscuity in the temples to these gods was seen as a defiant fist raised against God by those who worshipped there.  Yet Jesus prayed over his people saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”  (Matthew 23:37)  We find it hard to believe that God so loved us that He would be willing to offer us redemption given the depth and the breadth of our rebellion against him.  One of the reasons we experience difficulty understanding the love of God for a fallen creation is that we lack the faithfulness we find in his divine nature.  In raising children, how many parents lose patience with minor indiscretions, let alone the major errors committed by their children.  But the Bible tells us, God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.  (1 Corinthians 1:9)  Here again is another aspect of God that enters into many gospel songs:  Great is thy faithfulness!  Song writers through the decades have set to music the faithfulness of God.  God is a good God, and He is good to his children.  As we raised our children, we tried to show them grace instead of judgment.  We prayed with them often and pointed them to Jesus as the answer to life’s problems.  We also made a point of saying we were sorry when we were wrong.  The main foundation for interactions in our home was to try to treat each other as we wanted to be treated.  We were amazed how well that worked in a broad range of situations.  Even a very young child can understand: Is that the way you want to be treated?  If a brother hit a brother, we might say, “Brothers are for loving, not hitting.  Would you want your brother to hit you?  Of course not.  Now talk about what happened and how you could handle it better.”  Real parenting takes time and effort.  You do not bow down to a statue made of stone.  James tells us that if we lack wisdom, we can ask God for wisdom from on high.  He also explains:  But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.  (James 3:17)  We need not throw our hands up in despair when we do not know what to do next.  We have the Holy Spirit within us, the Counselor, our Guide through the exigencies of life.  If you are wandering, tempted, unsure, failing, or falling today because of the sinful and hurtful desires of your heart, turn to Jesus.  He is waiting for you with arms open wide.  Give everything to him, for He cares for you! 

Romans 1:19-23 God Is Made Plain!

Romans 1:19-23  The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Today's scriptures point out the rebellious nature of mankind.  Even in the beginning when man was close to the initial act of creation, people chose their own way.  They knew creation was a product of God and his nature because God made himself plain to them.  Mankind and all that is was created by God and through God; yet, even from the very start, man chose not to honor God by giving him the respect due The Creator.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.  Even in the Garden, this Spirit of self-will raised its ugly head.  Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made.  He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”  The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”  “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman.  “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."  (Genesis 3:1-5)  To be like God, to replace God in the universe and in existence, entered the heart of man almost from the beginning of creation.  Instead of being subservient to God's authority, man became his own master, placing himself above God, choosing his own path, not God's way.  Of course this decision brought God's immediate judgment, for the cancer of sin entered into existence with man's anti-God choice.  To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.  It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.  By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”  (Genesis 3:17-19)  Our mortal bodies will all return to the ground eventually unless Jesus returns to rapture us to heaven, and even then we will be changed from the mortal to the immortal.  This shroud of flesh will be left here to turn to dust.  The wrath of God, the just response to sin, to rebellion, has been revealed from heaven since the beginning of time.  Man faces the consequences of sin every day: the struggle to exist and then eventually death.  Man is without excuse, For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.  The intricacies of life itself should be testimony enough for us to know that a divine eternal entity created all that we see.  

But as we know, from creation onward, people chose not to respect God's will and authority.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Instead of honoring and respecting THE GOD they could see around them, they chose to honor and revere gods made from their own imaginations.  These gods were chosen to honor their own fallen state.  They begin to honor things God had made such as the sun, moon, stars, men, women, animals, serpents.  They worshipped distorted perversions of God such as gods and goddesses of wind, war, sex, and the like.  The friezes on their temples displayed gargoyles: grotesque human and animal figures, something of their own making for them to fear or worship.  From the beginning, their hearts became so wicked, so anti-God, that they were willing to serve anything except the God of creation.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.  Even the children of Israel were caught up in idol worship.  After God delivered them from slavery in Egypt through mighty supernatural events, they chose to serve their idols rather than God.  When Moses went up Mount Sinai to worship God, the Israelites quickly turned to their own gods, made from their own hands.  They willingly worshipped something they created rather than praising the God of creation, who made all things out of nothing.  They were willing to lift up a golden calf made by Aaron from items they carried out of Egypt, rather than worship the God who allowed them to cross the Red Sea on dry land.  Jesus came to reveal the one true God that delivered the Children of Israel.  He said: Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.  (John 17:3)  Yet the heart of man is desperately wicked.  God will provide miracles in people's lives, and they will know it; but soon, too soon, they will return to something they have created.  This is the curse of man's sinful heart; and for that, God reserves his judgment.  Before God commissioned Noah to build the ark, he saw the sinfulness of the world: And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  (Genesis 6:5) 

In our modern world, most humans do not turn to actual physical idols to worship.  But our lives are filled with idols that we do not recognize as such.  Most of us would not find the meaning of life in some sort of image that we revere.  No, what we consider the essence of life revolves around our involvement with the many diversions in life: work, entertainment, recreation, social activities, our commitment to getting ahead in life.  Our days are busy, our nights are short.  After our overly filled days, television and our electronics devices keep us up far into the night.  We spend our time engrossed in these activities.  Often our souls feel famished, out-of-sorts, empty, despite our hectic existence.  We question the purpose of life: is this all there is?  At times, when we feel a need for something more, we might attend a religious service or read an inspirational book or listen to some guru on public television.  In many ways this is akin to idol worship.  We go somewhere to find God in something.  We go to some temple, church, book, or person to find God.  We hope God or something like him will be there.  We long for food for our souls, manna to satisfy and to comfort, peace in this chaotic world, a reason to live other than participating in the mundane activities of life.  Of course this search to find God in something or in someplace is also idol worship.  The Bible says that those who are new creatures BY FAITH IN CHRIST have a relationship that is INTIMATE and constant.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  (2 Corinthian 5:17)   As new creatures in Christ, we are forever in God's presence.  We are not idol worshippers, those who have to stand or bow before an idol.  We also are not those who have to fill their lives with worldly clutter to find meaning.  No, we have a God who defines the meaning of life by saying to all who are born again, "I am with you always.  You are mine.  I will never leave you."  He gives us this hope with a still small voice.  (I Kings 19:12)  We are not idol worshippers.  We do not fill our lives up to avoid his voice; we do not wander someplace to find him.  No, He is with us always, to comfort, to guide us through life.  Jesus said, "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  (Matthew 28:20)  Since God has made it plain to us that He is God, and He has sent his Son to save us from sin, let us worship him wholeheartedly while it is yet day!

Romans 1:14-17 Not Ashamed of the Gospel!

Romans 1:14-17  I am obligated both to Greeks and Non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish.  That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.  I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.  For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”  

The above scripture sends the clear message that righteousness exists in God alone and has come to us through faith from first to last.  Faith in what?  Faith in Jesus Christ and his works.  As we will read later in this letter, But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.  This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.  (Romans 3:21-24)  We who are alive in Christ have his holy name written across our lives.  We no longer face the judgment of eternal death, for we have been bought by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.  Now we are his and He is ours.  And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.  He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.  (1 John 5:11-12)  Christ's righteousness covers every part of our lives: every action, thought, and wayward inclination from the beginning of our lives to the ending.  We who are alive to God by faith rest in Christ's work and not our works.  Jesus through his life, death, and resurrection satisfied our need for right standing with God.  On the cross, when Christ's work was completed, done, He said, IT IS FINISHED!  (John 19:30)  Yet, how many of us walk around, trying to complete a work that is FINISHED?  How many of us lead lives of condemnation rather than joy?  Our flesh says: there must be something that I can add to God's work.  Maybe, I should be better today, try harder to be like God.  Maybe if I love better and keep my thoughts within the guardrails of God's thoughts by thinking pure thoughts, I will be more pleasing to God.  Surely, I will please God more and reveal him to the world more clearly if I do good works for him.  These are all good ideas, fine goals, but nothing completes or adds to the work of righteousness that Jesus performed on the cross.  He alone satisfies God.  In every mili-second, Jesus is righteous, completely focused on God, and dedicated to his will.  If you think you line up with God in the way you live your life, think about your thoughts when you pray to him.  Remember, He is the Almighty God, the Creator.  Your life exists only because of him.  He knows every thought that goes through your mind.  Does your mind wander when your pray?  Do you mingle thoughts in your prayers: my knees are hurting; I wonder what I am going to fix for dinner; I do not know if this prayer is going anywhere; maybe I should read the Bible more; and so on.  Would you want anyone addressing you this way if you could read his or her mind?  No, that kind of prayer escapes the definition of holiness or a relationship that is right with God at ALL TIMES.  But, who is right at all times?  Only Jesus!

The gospel is simple but necessary for all people.  The whole Bible leads us to the conclusion that the world needs a Savior.  God had a plan: But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.  (Galatians 4:4-5)  Without God's intimate involvement in their lives, people live the life of Adam, often a destructive life because of the needs of the self.  Cultures, societies, and whole nations have literally disappeared over the centuries because of the self-willed nature of man.  We live in a world where the last tree on an island has been cut down because of a selfish need.  Islands have been depopulated because of such an attitude.  Today we are consuming the natural resources of this planet so fast we do not know what to do with all the garbage accumulated by our excesses.  We are doing what the Bible says: if there is no God, no intimate Savior: eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.  This is the mantra: get as much out of life as you can; live for today for tomorrow you die.  Jesus came for a sick and dying world.  A world that will never find peace.  A world that will destroy itself.  Paul had a mission that he could not set down.  He was driven to bring the world a rescue message, a deliverance, redemption, and eternal life.  I am obligated both to Greeks and Non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish.  That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.  I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.  Paul did not live in a time when a few men would have nuclear power in their hands, enough power to destroy every living thing on this planet.  Peter might have been talking about this age when he wrote:  But the day of the Lord will come like a thief.  The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.  (2 Peter 3:10)  A day in God's dominion is like a thousand years.  Is this day of destruction a twenty-four hour day or is it longer?  Will men destroy their environment or will God destroy the environment?  What we know now is that we have the capabilities to destroy our earth without God's help, and over the millenniums, we have done a pretty good job of destroying our environment slowly.  Man's self-willed, Adamic behavior is destructive and leads to death, but praise God, Jesus brings life, eternal life, to all who put their trust in him.

Today, after partaking of this breakfast, give yourself a chance to praise God.  Be encouraged.  What a wonderful Savior we have!  He has brought us into the very presence of the eternal God.  We are forever pleasing to the Father because of Christ's work on the cross.  Our names are written down in the eternal ledger: The Lamb's Book of Life.  We have nothing to fear, not even our biological death.  Our faith in God and his works through Christ brings us into an existence of peace and joy, an inheritance of adopted sons and daughters in the household of the Eternal One.  Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”  So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.  (Galatians 4:6-7)  Despite our position of grace, we may sometimes fail to manifest God in our lives, but our constant drive is to do better for God's sake with Christ's light and love motivating our actions.  We want him to be praised.  We want him to be glorified.  We want our lives to be an illustration of God's goodness, love, patience, and caring.  Of course, we strive to do better as we allow the Holy Spirit to work in us.  But we do not work for our salvation, for Jesus won that victory at the cross.  We serve because we love Jesus, not out of obligation or fear but in great thankfulness.  We love being with him, hearing his voice.  He has never left us, even when the pain of this world presses in upon us, and the tears will not stop.  He is there.  He constantly speaks to us: "My child, my little one, I am here.  I am with you, and I will never leave or abandon you."  His words comfort us when we view this world that holds nothing for us.  Our inheritance is IN GOD.   Regardless, as Paul says, though the world is not my home,  I am obligated to tell the good news of Christ and his redemption to the whole world.  Let us also share the responsibility to carry the gospel of salvation and reveal Christ to a needy world.  Our prayer for you is Paul's prayer for the Romans: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  (Romans 15:13)  

Romans 1:8-13 A Missionary Heart!

Romans 1:8-13  First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world.  God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.  I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong — that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.  I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles. 

In the above passage, we see the heart of Paul the apostle, the missionary, as he expresses a desire to go to Rome to impart to them some spiritual gift to make them strong in the Lord.  They are new creatures born of the Spirit, alive to God; yet, they needed help to survive in this world.  They required the bread of life and living water to help them travel through life's wilderness.  A man of the Spirit, called by God just as Moses was called by God, Paul carried a commission to spread the Good News to the world.  As with all the prophets, he could not help but speak for the Lord.  A fire burned in his soul to work for the Lord, a mission given to him by Jesus to tell the world that eternal life came through faith in his work on the cross.  Paul desired for all the world to know eternal life came to all who would believe in Christ's death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave.  Paul knew the man Jesus of Nazareth performed many miracles and wonders that only God's Son could have done.  Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.  (Acts 2:22)  The fire and the joy in Paul's heart was to tell the world they could be changed from God's enemies to his friends, from sinfulness to holiness.  This message drove him night and day as he prayed for the Spirit of God to keep him in tune with God's will for his life.  The Spirit was alive in him with this message of deliverance to such a degree that he relates how he prays he would be able to come to them.  What he heard in his ears from the Holy Spirit, he wanted to broadcast to the whole world.  He was compelled by the Spirit of God to travel to other places, including Rome.  As the prophet Joel proclaimed, In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.  Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.  (Acts 2:17-18)   Paul's life fulfilled this prophecy by his inclination to interact with God twenty-four hours a day.  His statement of praying for the Romans seems somewhat redundant: constantly I remember you in prayers at all times.  But it isn't: day and night he was involved with God.  If God gives old men dreams, He surely never leaves us, even in the night; for Christ said, And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.  (Matthew 28:20)   

What message do we carry to the world to alleviate hopelessness, darkness, blindness, and pain?  What message will give finite man hope for the future?   We see this message of deliverance in the story of the crippled man that Peter and John met at the temple gate.  One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer — at three in the afternoon.  Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts.  When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money.  Peter looked straight at him, as did John.  Then Peter said, “Look at us!”  So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.  Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you.  In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”  (Acts3:1-6)  We have the story, In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.  There is no other answer for mankind.  Paul knew this.  No one will walk eternally unless he or she has an eternal God and Jesus Christ his son as Savior.  No one can put off the veil of flesh by his or her own efforts.  As Jesus told Nicodemus, You must be born again.  (John 3:7)  All believers need the abiding Holy Spirit to express the will of God at all times, just as Paul was sensitive to the voice and will of God in his life.  Man's natural nature, Adam's nature, opposes God's authority.  When Moses tells the people what God wants of them, he says, we will no longer have every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes.  (Deuteronomy 12:8)  He understood mankind's basic nature was to decide what is right, what should be done, what is best for "me" in every situation.  By following their own desires, people estrange themselves from God's authority.  They shun the first of two royal commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  (Matthew 22:37)  At best, we place God in second place rather than becoming intimately involved with him at all times.  If God is at a distance, people can shelve him in their minds as an afterthought, someone to consider in a convenient place, such as a church service or maybe on a nature walk.  In those cases, we are as idol worshippers, going someplace to find our god.  But as Paul and all the disciples knew, we are not idol worshippers: we have the presence of God with us at all times.  In Paul's case, he was driven to other lands to speak the message of Jesus Christ.  Peter and John had nothing to give except the presence of Jesus Christ in them: Arise and walk in the name of Jesus!

We who are in Jesus Christ are still walking, still driven as Paul was driven to share the Good News.  The Spirit of God in us wants us to keep walking and revealing the Good News in a hurting world.  As Peter wrote: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.  (1 Peter 3:15)  Our choices and our actions should reveal that we are new creatures in Christ.  We are not people who condemn, but we are people who love and forgive, offering deliverance from darkness through Jesus.  In any community, we should be salt and light, not people sitting in judgment, condemnation, fear, or hatred of others.  If we do that, we become just as the people of the world.  Our authority is not God, but ourselves.  If we judge or hate others because of their ideology, religion, philosophy, lifestyle, ethnicity, we are under the control of the Adam spirit, not Jesus' control.  How easy it is to gossip, to find fault, to tell tales; but how hard it is to hear the voice of love when we wander from the Lord.  God is always speaking to us, but do we listen?  The Spirit comes to abide in every Christian.  If we ignore his voice of love and sacrifice, we fight against the Spirit of God, which is a dangerous place for our souls.  Before he met Jesus, Paul thought he was doing God's will by persecuting and killing the Christians.  He had no love for them.  But Jesus stopped him.  As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.  He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”  “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.  “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.  “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”  (Acts 9:3-6)  You might say, "Of course God would stop him.  He was persecuting Christians."  But remember, Christ gave his life for everyone.  Are you persecuting Jesus by not loving others, by avoiding the second royal commandment of loving others as yourself?  Have you picked out an ethnic or religious or political group to hate?  Remember, all humans are made in God's image.  Paul was going to the Romans because they were made in God's image.  He had Good News for the Romans, the Corinthians, the Ephesians, the Galatians, the Jews.  His insights from God might strengthen their faith or bolster their walk in Christ.  In his journeys, Paul collected a harvest of souls.  We also should be so overflowing with God's love that we willingly answer his call: And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.  (Luke 14:23)  Yes, Lord, send us out.  Your servants are willing.