Romans 15:23-29 Spiritual Blessings!

Romans 15:23-29  But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to visit you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain.  I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while.  Now, however, I am on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the Lord’s people there.  For Macedonia and Achaea were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the Lord’s people in Jerusalem.  They were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them.  For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews’ spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings.  So after I have completed this task and have made sure that they have received this contribution, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way.  I know that when I come to you, I will come in the full measure of the blessing of Christ.

Paul, endangered every day by violence, not knowing from one day to the next if he would survive the next challenge from the Jews who hated his message of Christ and his resurrection, was still planning for future events.  No one really knows if Paul ever made it to Spain.  There is much speculation about whether he ever set foot in Spain, but we do know he made it to Rome.  We do know the Jews caught up with him in Jerusalem and brought him to Governor Felix with the intention of having the Romans kill Paul.  Paul spent two years in prison in Israel before they granted his appeal to Caesar to bring justice to him as a Roman citizen.  Hence, he was sent to Rome, there he died after spending two years ministering to the people while in custody of the Romans.  Paul received his desire of a new work, a new mission field, a land where the people had hardly heard of Jesus Christ and his resurrection.  They replied, “We have not received any letters from Judea concerning you, and none of our people who have come from there has reported or said anything bad about you.  But we want to hear what your views are, for we know that people everywhere are talking against this sect.”  (Acts 28:21-22)  Paul’s imprisonment in Jerusalem and his subsequent imprisonment in Rome consisted of four years of his life.  But in both places he did not stop ministering.  He never quit preaching the gospel, in person or in letters.  His desire of visiting Rome to tell the people there of the Good News was granted by God.  He received his wish, but probably not in the package he had desired.  Surely, he had never thought of going there as a prisoner, but God had other plans for him.  God knew, just as He knew about Joseph’s venture into Egypt as a slave, that Paul would continue to be faithful to him.  He knew Paul’s transformation from death to life was so ingrained into Paul very existence that he would not go back to the secular way of thinking.  Paul was a new creature.  As a new creature, born again, the light of God had entered into Paul’s temple.  The Spirit of God was abiding richly in Paul.  He was a fountain of the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ.  Nothing could keep this fountain from flowing, not even imprisonment, not even the threat of death.  He would endure to the end, believing always that God was with him, that God would never abandon him.  He knew that his biological flesh was just a temporary tent.  He found no permanency in this tent, for someday it would be folded in the shroud of death: he would move on to a new, eternal existence with God himself. 

In the midst of our problems or in the mundaneness of living, do we believe that God and his existence is more real than anything we experience in this world?  Paul believed in God’s reality.  Even though, life in his last four years on Earth threw him a curve, one he did not anticipate, he did not give up his primary purpose for living: the spreading of the Good News to the lost.  He endured to the end in his commission of telling about Jesus and his resurrection.  Are we willing to endure to the end or do we let little things or maybe even big things such as illnesses or troubles detour us from our mission of carrying out the gospel in our lives?  Above all else, do we want to be the image of God on Earth?  Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.  (Ephesians 5:1-2)  In today’s focus scripture, we see Paul’s thinking in his contemporary life was about others.  Now, however, I am on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the Lord’s people there.  For Macedonia and Achaea were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the Lord’s people in Jerusalem.  He lived for Christ every day.  Do we live for Christ every day or do little things, good and bad, get in our way and keep us from doing the will of God?  Are we letting God implement his will in our lives?  Faith is the belief that God is real and that He is real in our lives regardless of our circumstances.  His instructions, his directions, are more important than the will of the flesh.  Faith believes that nothing supersedes the will of the Father and the supernatural existence of our souls; nothing we experience by our senses is as real as God and eternal life.  Jesus emphasizes this when he talks about death and our importance to God.  Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.   And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.  (Matthew 10:28)  He is telling us that there is a more important existence than this biological one: a spiritual reality that comes from God.  Paul believed that truth so much that he allowed his physical body to be in dangerous places, where people wanted to hurt him.  They even tried to kill him several times.  But he was determined to do the will of the Father.  He was determined to carry out the purpose of his life: to live for God regardless of the threats on his life.  He constantly moved his tent from place to place to reach more people for God.  Our tents should be just as mobile.  Every day we should seek out the work God has for us, maybe a new work, a new person to tell of the mercy and grace of God.  We might not move to a different area or a different land as Paul did, but we can move from person to person in our lives, illustrating and telling of the goodness of God and of his salvation plan.

Paul tells the Romans that when he comes to them, he will come with the full measure of the blessing of Christ.  Otherwise, God’s blessing will be upon him so that he might bless the Romans with the same blessing.  We might say, how can Paul bless them with Christ’s blessing if he is in chains.  Would the Romans realize that Paul’s chains are really a blessing?  Of course, we understand two thousand years away from Paul’s life, that the chains he carried to Rome were an indication of God’s purpose in Paul’s life.  God wanted Paul in Rome, and He wanted Paul as a prisoner in Rome, a slave to him.  Paul carried the Good News to the Romans.  What Good News you might say, he is in chains!  But the Good News is that eternal life has come to all people who will place their trust and faith in Jesus Christ and his work on the cross.  The Good News was the resurrection!  The Good News was that God, the Creator of all things, wanted people to be part of his intimate family, known forever as children of God.  What a great message, beyond our finite awareness, beyond our wildest imaginations!  Paul wanted the people to know that God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.  (Ephesians 2:6-7)  Paul was willing to be in chains for the dispersion of this message to the Romans.  Are we willing to endure hardships, to be in chains in our lives?  Will we agree to carrying out God’s purposes no matter how insignificant our lives seem to be, while we feel chained to the mundaneness of everyday pursuits, locked in our houses and jobs.  Yes, we have plans to carry out for God, no matter what we think about our lives, no matter how significant or insignificant they are.  We must remember we are his servants and we are precious to him.  Jesus says that God loves us so much that he has inventory of the hairs on our heads.  How many billions of hairs have fallen from people’s heads in the time it has taken you to read this breakfast.  Our God is that great, greater than any computer, greater than our ability to understand what we are reading about who He is.  He is the one who made the galaxies, the family of stars within each of the galaxies.  He is the one who keeps track of every sparrow that flies through the air.  His greatness, magnitude, eternalness is beyond our comprehension.  This God of magnificence wants you as his child.  Paul understood that message, gave his life for that message.  The message of love that God has for humanity, his plan, is far above our understanding.  He desires children; he desires to adopt us into his family.  We can only be part of his family if we are new creatures: holy, without fault, completely acceptable to a sinless God.  This position as new creatures comes about only through Christ’s work on the cross.  Jesus paid the price for our redemption from sin.  His holiness, his perfection are our holiness and perfection.  As the temple in Jerusalem was built with precise measurements so that God’s Spirit could enter that temple, we, too, because of Christ work in us, are just as precise.  We have the measurements within us that make it possible for God’s Holy Spirit to live in us.  Of course, this measurement is Christ, the perfect one.  God is at home in us, and we are at home with him.  As we read in the Word, For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  (Colossians 3:3)