Romans Chapter 15:3-5

Not only should we be reading the Word of God, but the Word of God should be changing us.

Because every time I open the Bible, every time, and I spend any time in it, I see something that the Word speaks to me about. It's like, well, I'm not doing that. I need to do that. I'm doing that. I should stop that.

Well, I could be doing this better. That's what the Word of God does. It's powerful.

It's life changing. Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. Many of us are in the habit of reading God's Word and we know it's important, but are we allowing God's Word to truly change us? Find out more as Pastor David continues in Romans 15 with his teaching, Hope.

Here's David McGee. Open with me your Bibles to Romans chapter 15. Let's look at verse 3. It says, For even Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. Let's admit in all things, Jesus is the model. Jesus is the model. I think we need to do that as a church.

I think we need to do that as individuals. This verse does that. It says, Hey, even Christ did not please himself. Even Christ. Why even Christ?

Why does it put it like that? Because Christ was the son of God. He was God himself incarnate or in the flesh.

100% God, 100% man. If anybody ever walked this earth, there's only one that walked this earth that deserved to be worshiped. That was Jesus. Yet did he show up and go, Hey, you guys need to worship me.

I'm God. That's not what he did. Even in the way he came to the earth was in humility.

He came to the earth through a teenage girl who was not yet married. What a weird way to make his entrance. I'm sure the angels were confused as he described the plan. They went, what?

No, no, no, no. We need to do it in Jerusalem, in the temple, lots of trumpets, lots of fanfare. We'll get CNN there and you know, different, you know, and Jesus said, no, it's not the plan. Little manger in Bethlehem.

I'm sure they said, God, why, why are you doing it like this? And I'm sure Jesus, his answer was, I want to be one of them. All the terms Jesus uses to describe himself. You know the one he uses the most? Son of man, 76 times in the gospels.

I'm one of you guys. And he came to serve. And the second part of this verse, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. The people that fussed at him, fussed about God, fussed about Christ. Do you understand that Jesus in his ministry had people telling him what to do?

I want you to think that through for a sec. Even the disciples, when he started out laying out the plan to go to Jerusalem to die, what he was going to do. The big reason why he came to sacrifice his life and Peter, who was a leader among the disciples and no, no, no, no, no, no, not so Lord. He was going to instruct Jesus on how ministry should go. It's kind of interesting, isn't it?

Jesus, God himself. It's encouraging to me to understand that people did that to Jesus. You know why? Because they do that. They do that to me. They probably do that to you.

If you're doing any sort of ministry, there's people you're doing it all wrong. It kind of reminds me of the, I don't know if you've ever heard the term armchair quarterback. That's when you watch a football game and the quarterback does something, you go, oh no, that's not what he should have done. He should have done it like this. Of course, we're watching a television. We have the benefit of standing back and being able to think through a situation and maybe the decision we came to was a good one. Maybe even perhaps a better one, but see, we didn't have like eight 400 pound guys barreling down on us at that moment. I don't know if you saw that commercial.

I thought it was hilarious, but the quarterbacks were, they were hanging out on the street, you know, and like a guy came out of a store and he dropped his grocery bag and like Dan Marino, a quarterback run up and said, you know, if you'd have been holding your hand up under the bag, it wouldn't have dropped like that. And the grocery, you know, armchair quarterbacks, there's armchair pastors, there's armchair elders, armchair deacons, all sorts of things. If we're following Christ at some point, we will be reproached. And again, you know, what we have to do in this passage is, is connecting all these is we have to allow one another to hear from the Lord because when God speaks to somebody, changes will begin to happen in that person. Usually a lot of times when we say something and the spirit hadn't really told us to say something, it's not going to be good. So I have to pray for one another. And again, you know, that, that brings us all to the point that we're, we're very dependent upon God.

We're very dependent upon the Holy Spirit because there's a lot of things in the Bible that are real, real plain. There's a lot of stuff that isn't. Some of the questions, well, what do we do about this? What do we do about work, car to drive, house to live in, all these sorts. And we have that, God, what do you want us to do? And then of course, whatever decisions we make, we feel like everybody else should make the exact same decision, right? Have you ever noticed that? It's okay for, if you've got a nice car, it's okay for you to have a nice car, but if your neighbor gets a newer car, oh, he's all about the world, like a materialism, materialism, you know, if somebody has a house bigger than yours, oh, they're just greedy for the gain of the world. You know, while your house is blessing from God. See this discontent at the media advertising, multi-billion dollar section of business wants you to be discontent with what you have and envious of what other people have. It creates a big problem in Christendom. Okay, so we recognize we're all different.

So keep that in mind before you begin to demand your own way. Now I'm, you know, sometimes I'm in a difficult place of having to make decisions about the church. Did we do this? Do we do that? Should we do this? Should we do that? And, and you know, we've decided on certain ways, certain ways that we have church here and certain things that we're not going to do. And, and we don't have to agree on all that.

If you can agree on 80% of what goes on in this church, praise God, man, we should be able to fellowship together and walk the road together. 90%? Awesome. Awesome. 100%? One of us is lying.

Really? Now, if you're sitting there going, well, no, you know, I agree with everything this church does. Well, I'm glad you've come in the last month, but at some point, let me promise you, there's going to be something that's done, said, they go, I wouldn't do it like that. I understand that. You know, we, we have to decide, and this is not getting the way we do church here. It's not the only way to do church, but it's just what myself and the vision and the calling from God and the leadership feel like the best way for us to have churches. Our service, you probably noticed by this point, if not before, it is longer than most.

Why? Because we want to take time to really pour in the people and, and really teach the Bible. That's different. There's some churches that, you know, their goal is to get you in and out in less than an hour. I, I'm not going to say that's wrong. I'm not pastoring that church as I've grown in the Lord. I, you know, I I've discovered this is a pastor in this church.

Enough for me. I don't need to be trying to pastor other people's churches and say, well, you definitely shouldn't do that. Now, now they start to talk about there's many ways to heaven. Then we got something to argue about too many times.

Again, we get caught up in these small things. Let's look at verse four is important verse for whatever things were written before were written for our learning that we threw the patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Man, an important verse. Book of Romans was written about 57, 58 AD I believe. Paul, a lot of times in this book has referred to scriptures, the Bible. What Bible was Paul referring to? The Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament. When Jesus quoted a Bible in the gospels, what Bible was he quoting? He's quoting Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament. It disturbs me.

I got an email the past week where somebody wrote and they had been here, they're coming back, but they'd been here. They went to another church and the pastor was getting ready to refer to an Old Testament passage and he apologized for using an Old Testament passage. I don't get that. I was reading a doctrinal statement of a church and they said, well, you know, we believe that the word of God, we look to the word of God for all doctrine. We look to the New Testament.

I don't get that. Now we obviously on Sunday morning, we spend our time in the New Testament. Our midweek is dedicated to the Hebrew scriptures and you know, people say, Oh yeah, some of that's really boring. Man, have you read it? Some people say, well, Leviticus man, all that stuff.

No, no, no, no. Leviticus has the gospel in it. And when you go through and you begin to see all the pictures, it's not boring.

It's exciting. And if somebody ever makes those books boring, then you know what? They're not, they're probably not called to teach because every page of those incredible books presents Jesus.

They amplified. It says for whatever was thus written in former days was written for our instruction that by our steadfast and patient endurance and encouragement drawn from the scriptures, we might hold fast to and cherish hope. One of the things that we do here is we spend a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of effort in the Word of God, teaching the Word of God.

It's important. You've been listening to Cross the Bridge. We'll return to David's study in Romans in just a moment. But first I would like to let you know about a new product that we're excited about here at Cross the Bridge. Each year David McGee spends countless hours combing through the Bible in preparation to teach God's Word. This is clearly seen every week as he proclaims the amazing truths found in the Bible to his home church and through the radio ministry. That's why this month we want you to be blessed by some of our favorite teachings from this year with the Cross the Bridge Best of 2013.

These three powerful teachings will help you to live victoriously in Christ through a better understanding of who Jesus really is. The Best of 2013 is our gift to you this month when you give to Cross the Bridge. Your gift will be used to reach countless people with the Gospel while also encouraging other believers to stand firm in the faith. To help us take God's Word to the world, please contact us at 877-458-5508 or visit us online at crossthebridge.com. Friend, do you have a heart for the lost? I invite you to send us the first names of your lost loved ones and we will have hundreds of people praying for them. Just go to crossthebridge.com and click on the prayer button and you'll enter their name and if you put your name and email address in there, I'll send you free resources to equip you to pray and teach you how to reach your lost loved ones.

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The whole book for the whole world. Now let's return to David McGee's verse by verse teaching in the book of Romans. Jesus told this parable of the sower and you can go back and read it, I'm not going to do it here. But when he told the parable of the sower, the seed was the word of God. And in that little story, the enemy came and stole the seed. That's what he was after.

That's still what he's after. He wants to steal the seed of the word of God. Going back to the book of Genesis, one of the first things he said, why did God really say that?

Friend, we need to understand, and this is a bold statement, but I believe it to be true. We are living in the most scripturally illiterate generation of Christians that has existed in the 2000 year history of the church. I know personally I was a Christian for a long time, 20 years before I sat under an expository teacher. And I was amazed when I did that, how I started growing and understanding more about God and understanding more about being a Christian.

And I was like, man, this is incredible. I know many of you were possibly in churches where there was not the emphasis on the word of God. And I'm sorry, you know, when somebody comes up, Hey, man, we drive like an hour, hour and a half. Some people drive two hours to come to church here. That's encouraging and disturbing. It's encouraging because they are willing to make a drive like that.

It bothers me because I think, man, how many churches that they drive past that aren't doing expository verse by verse teaching? Gang, these things were written, what? For our benefit, for our learning. There's one, you'd recognize the name if I should, one major Christian pastor who said the time for expositional Bible teaching is gone.

It's over. This is the word of God and has everything to do with life and how to figure out how to live it and joy and peace without this lamp and light to our feet, we will stumble. We will fall.

We will not be able to deal with the onslaught of life. Look at these words that they're in some learning for our learning, patience, comfort, encouragement, and hope. That's what this book can give us. We will take the time to get into it. I would encourage you to be in the word every day. Not just on Sunday morning is with me. You come, I'll read it to you, but you should be in it every day.

Well, I just don't have time. Take the time to read because Jesus took the time to believe. Jesus wrote this to us.

This word is from God. And as we read it, I'm telling you, it will begin to change our very lives and give us hope that we might have hope, not, not hope as in wishful thinking, not hope as in why hope it works out, but in confident expectation that it's going to work out. 1 Corinthians 10, 11 says, all these things happened to them as examples for us.

They were written down to warn us who live at the time when this age is drawn to a close. 2 Timothy 3, 16 tells us all scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right. It is God's way of preparing us in every way, fully equipped for every good thing God wants us to do. This book is so important. That's why we dedicate the time and the service to the study of the word of God, because I am convinced it's, it's very important. I'm convinced that it's part of what's missing, if you will, in, in, in churchianity today is the learning of the word of God. And the enemy comes and he goes, oh, don't get in the word of God. You won't be able to understand it.

That's a lie. Now granted before you got saved, if you tried to read it, the spirit of God wasn't in you. You read it and well, I don't know what that means, but it's amazing what God doesn't hear on a Sunday morning. As we sit in this word of God, as we go through the word of God, as, as the spirit of the Lord comes upon me and I teach the word of God, as the spirit of God is in you and you begin to comprehend things you never saw and never got before.

Life changing the life lesson. We should be in the word of God and the word of God should be in us. We should be in the word of God and the word of God should be in us. Let's talk about this hope thing.

Not only should we be reading the word of God, but the word of God should be changing us because you know, every time I open the Bible, every time and I spend any time in it, I see something that the word speaks to me about. It's like, well, I'm not doing that. I need to do that. I'm doing that should stop that.

Well, I could be doing this better. It's what the word of God does. It's powerful. It's life changing and it gives us hope. And if you start to put your hope and other things, you know, God loves you so much.

He's going to dash those hopes because he doesn't want you hoping in something that's so wispy and so weak. And do you remember, friend, if you're here today and you've asked Jesus to forgive you ever since, do you remember what life was like when you didn't have Jesus? When you weren't walking with him? We forget pretty quickly. You remember how life had no meaning? That you woke up every day and it was like, oh, here's another day. See if I can make it through. See if I can survive. Forget living. You were just trying to survive.

Ephesians 2 12 says, for at that time you were without Christ being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the, in the world. You wonder what's wrong with the world. They don't have any hope. Your hope is shaken. If your hope was in the economy, God is saying, no, no, no. Put your hope in me because anywhere else you put your hope, it's going to get dashed.

You're going to be disappointed. But when you put your hope in God, you'll never be disappointed. God's not going to wake up one day and go, oh, I didn't see that coming.

Oh, the stock market's down today. Who knew? God knows everything in advance. And friend, when we come to that place where we're taking our last breaths here, we can trust in one who's been to the grave. And in that moment of despair, don't you want to hold the hand of somebody that's been there? Not only somebody that's been through death, but changed the whole death thing into just like a change in closet. I've pastored over funerals where I wasn't sure the person knew Jesus. I've attended funerals where I wasn't sure if the person knew Jesus. Those are sad occasions.

Why? There's no hope. There's not that confident expectation of he knew Jesus, she knew Jesus. I'm going to see him again. You can have that hope, that hope in Jesus. Verse five, now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded towards one another according to Jesus, the God of patience and comfort. Aren't you glad God's patient?

I am. God's much more patient than I am. I can be, I'll be honest with you, patience is, well, it depends. If I'm really focused on something, I can be very patient with it. But if it's outside of my little sphere of focus, I'm not very patient. I, you know, God's work, he's doing a work in me, you know, and now that I've confessed this, he's going to be doing it in the next week. But, but I tend to, and I have this attention thing.

I, you know, I, I, I think it's, I think it's a gift from God. Some people would question that, but you know, kind of a short attention span. And so you can be grateful that I'm not responsible for your sanctification or for you being drawn closer to God. Why?

Because I'd be like, Oh, what's that? Hang on. Oh, I'm going to miss you this.

Oh, look over there. God is a God of patience. So God isn't going to start this process and you have conforming you to his image and then lose interest. He's an eternal God. He's forever and he'll wait and he'll be patient. And he's a God of comfort. So when you stumble, when you fall, when you're hurting, he's there. And friend, let me tell you this. The world has nothing like that to offer you a God of patience, a God of comfort, a God who loves you, who wants to give you an everlasting hope that's not shaken by the world.

So even in the final moments of your life, as you take your last breath, you can with confidence, know you're going to be in the presence of God. We have that saying, and how are you doing today? Well, I'm good. Every day I wake up is a good day.

Somebody said that to me one day and I said, well, you know what? The day I don't wake up is going to be a far better day than the ones I wake up on. I have that confident hope, not hoping that it's going to work out that confident expectation that my God's a good God. My God has forgiven my sins and my past is pardoned and my future is assured and my present is taken care of because my God is able to lead me through the storms of this life.

Amen. Friend, when I've talked about this hope, if you're sitting in here today and you're thinking, wow, I'm really not sure I have that hope. Friend, you can make sure before you walk out of here today, I'm not talking about, you know, some long religious ceremony. I'm not talking about you getting prepared for you making all kinds of promises to God over what you're not going to do and what you're going to leave behind. Here's the awesome thing about God. God says, come to me. One of the favorite words of Jesus has come, come all you that are heavy laden, come if you need less rest, come and drink from the living water.

Jesus has come. And too often we think, well, I got to, I got to get things straightened out in my life before I come to God. How straight does your life have to be before you come to God?

Because the sad fact is many people go, well, I'm going to straighten this out and straighten that out and I'll quit doing this and quit doing that. And when I leave all these things behind and then I'll come to the Lord and far too often, friend, that day never comes. The wonderful thing about God is we can come to him just as we are. And he takes us just as we are. And he begins to change us from the inside out. What an amazing thing.

What an amazing God. No wonder they call the gospel, the good news. It's not, Hey, you need to jump higher, make more promises or do this or do that. It's no, no, you need to come to God. Ask him to forgive you of your sins and he'll do it. And life will begin to change.

And as you follow Jesus and begin to pour your life out, it's even as Jesus said, you will discover what life is all about. If you're not sure of that today, so much of this has been just for you to give you the opportunity at this moment to respond to him, to the goodness of God, to his offer to forgive you. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking him to help you to live for him. Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me, that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead, that I could have a new life and I've done wrong things. I have sinned and I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer, according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. Jesus said he would not turn anybody away who comes to him. And he came for those people who knew they needed forgiveness.

Those who were sick, not the righteous. So congratulations friend, you just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If this was your first time praying that prayer with Pastor David, we would love to hear from you. You can call us toll free at 877-458-550-008 to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ. Also, if you contact us this month, we will send you the Cross the Bridge Best of 2013 for your gift of any amount. If you've ever wondered how we can walk in the full power of God's Spirit, then this new product is just for you and we'll send it to you as a way of saying thanks for your donation. You can give any time by calling us toll free at 877-458-550-008.

That's 877-458-550-508. Or go online to crossthebridge.com. While there, make sure to sign up for the free email devotional. That's just one more way we can bless you in your walk with Christ. Again that website is crossthebridge.com. Thank you for listening and I pray you'll join us next time as we cross the bridge.