Saturated Words (Part B)

Could you imagine singing worship songs to the Lord without any feeling?

Well, maybe sometimes you're in that place in life, and that's the case. Sometimes I wish I could just sing in the congregation with all my heart and soul, but I can't. I start weeping and crying. Oh man, it's just this outpouring.

On one hand I love it, and on the other hand it's so embarrassing I can't stand it. The Puritans would say, pray for the gift of tears. Passion must belong to the things that we preach. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Romans. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick in the Book of Romans Chapter 9 with today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. You come across people, you tell them about Christ.

They're not going to investigate the facts because they don't want it to be true. They think that the only life they have is in the pleasures they are enjoying or indulging in. But there's more to life than that, and there's an indulgent in the faith. We call it being filled with the Spirit. It is not random, this Christianity.

It is not man-made. It is right on schedule. Jesus of Nazareth is not the false Messiah, but the only Messiah. There is no other, and it's too late. All the prophecies have closed it up. He's either come or He's not coming, and they don't want to look at it that way. It is not a new religion, this new track of experience that God has opened to believers. It is just as God printed in His Word. Now remember, and this is important, at the time Paul's writing this letter, it's all the Old Testament Scripture for the Christians. The letters of the apostles were really not yet embraced as Scripture. They were on their way to being embraced, even in the lifetime of Paul, but not just yet. They were not against the Old Testament, and neither are we. Judaism and the Old Testament are not the same thing.

And if you don't see that, you're going to get tripped up a little bit. No Jew or Gentile can stop God from doing what He is doing in His truth and His care for people. Can you see how vital to understanding as much of your Bible as you can is? Can you see the value of not just understanding God's plan for salvation?

There's so much more for our life, the hardships that we face in life. You know, some people come to church, they only want the pastor to talk about their hardship. Tell them it's going to be all right. Tell them how much God loves them. Any lesson you get from the Scripture is God telling you, He is sovereign, so it will be all right. He is a God of love, so it will be all right. And the hits that you take, take them.

That's called endurance. Again, I always say it, because I always mean it, I don't like it any more than you. When I'm in pain, I want to be out of pain, but not to the point where I'm going to turn on my Lord.

May that never happen. So He affirms His passionate love for His own people. Those who chased Him, those who beat Him, those who went behind Him to undo His work and plotted His death, He still loves them. Sometimes you'll meet a Christian, they're bitter. Somebody's done them wrong. Maybe 30, 40 years later, they're bitter. They are not looking to forgive.

That is not who we are supposed to be. You can hurt, you can feel it, but you can also say, you can also say, I have a bitterness that I hate and I'm going to fight it to my death. I will not give in to it. You could do that much. You have a stomach for that.

You have what it takes to do that. It will get worse for Paul once this Roman letter is circulated in that ancient world. That's when we come to the book of Acts, when they come at Him at the temple and He is arrested by the Roman soldiers. And then they plot, they take a vow to kill Him.

That's not happened chronologically yet, but it's coming. He's kind of, I don't care, I'm sharing the truth. The future's going to do what the future's going to do. The Spirit of God in me is going to do what He's going to do. This is what this man was committed to. And his words are saturated with a genuine passion for lost souls, not only the Jews, but the Gentiles also. Even some of the Christian Jewish people worked to undermine his teachings.

He still loved them. In his day, he was hounded by bloodthirsty zealots who declared him an apostate for simply saying, hey, look, this part of the Scripture's fulfilled right in front of our eyes in our lifetime. It's like you saying, hey, I've got one of these too. The Bible says there's going to be a cashless society. I mean, isn't it getting harder and harder to find cash, to use cash in some places? We're moving in that direction. You can look the other way, bury your head in the sand, pretend it isn't so, or you can line up with the things that God has published in Scripture. But they muted the prophecies. They did not want them to fit Jesus because he would not conform. Our hearts ache over how close they were to the truth. And it ached for Jesus, and it ached for Paul, looking back at Romans chapter 3, verse 2, chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God. They had the Scripture. How could they miss it? He's going to say this again when we get next session to chapter 6.

I'll read it now. But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect, for they are not all Israel who are of Israel. Well, how do you determine who is governed by God and who is not? Faith. Belief in what the Scripture says. An earnest approach to Scripture, without which, how could we ever confess our own sins? If we were dishonest when we looked at Scripture, we'd hide them.

We'd do like Adam and Eve, try to hide from God. What kind of damage theology is that? He's not sovereign to you if you think you can get away with something. The truth should have been easily recognized by them and received by them, and it was not.

I don't know that any of them easily received it, even as Christ was doing miracles. He says, My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit. This is now integrity. Integrity should mean something. What's the opposite of integrity?

Answer, fill in that blank. Next time you drive over a bridge, ask yourself, what if the integrity of this structure weren't there? Integrity should be, as in many places of our lives, that we can get it. Earlier, he had written to the Corinthians, he says, We have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God, which is the Old Testament as he meant it, deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Conscience is awareness. It's a deep awareness. And Paul was saying to those Corinthians, My integrity in ministry is intact. And we, hopefully, can say the same thing, because what is the antithesis? What happens to you without integrity? Well, one of the first signs that you're becoming an apostate is you stop using your turn signal. I mean, I don't know if it's in the Bible, but it should be. And we have the fluid in the chapel store.

If you're low on turn signal fluid, just sign up for it. Anyway, verse 2, I'll have more traffic suggestions, things that irritate me on the road for you, because I know you're guilty of it. I can look at you and tell. All right, back to the serious things. Verse 2, That I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. Now, here's the words. Here are the words saturated with passion. There's not a little bit of passion.

It's not like, you know, I have a burden for the Jews. This was intense, going by his words. We've already discussed his integrity. We have no reason to doubt his words, especially when we know the man's background. He bears on his body the marks of Christ.

There are many times he could have escaped those beatings and those whippings and all the other stuff, but he did not. And to miss this is to miss out on frontline ministry. To miss the passion that belongs to our faith when it comes to saving souls is to miss out, is to forfeit. Sometimes you can listen to someone preaching and you just don't like them.

That's never happened to me, but I hear it's happened to others. You just don't like them, and you dislike them more because they're making points that are spot on. You've got to grow out of that kind of stuff. You have to see beyond the speaker and see to the anointer of the speaker.

You have to see the Lord. There were people that didn't care for how Paul talked, his speech. He talks about that. They said he's slow of speech.

He doesn't really have that Gresham language like us. But the man was a firestorm and they were not. Stock up as many Bible truths and facts as you can about every single lesson you can grab hold of because there is your strength. There's weakness in skipping.

I don't need to know about that. I mean, there are some places that deserve more attention than others, but they all deserve attention. This is what Jesus said. Every scribe instructed in the scriptures like a house homeowner that brings out of his treasure things new, all the things that are just excited about.

He's excited about right now. And then Jesus said, and things old because there are some other stuff that he's going to get to that has been time tested, that's old school, and that needs to be kept in circulation. And this comes through our preaching.

Paul pours his heart out in these three chapters 9, 10, and 11. Again, rather than having resentment towards those who harmed him, he grieved on their behalf. Grief is the price we pay for love.

That is a fact. And there are different types of grief. He mourned for their lost state with a supernatural love. What is that? What is a supernatural love? It's agape.

Very simple. It's a love that only comes from the touch of God. That word existed. The Greeks would use it every now and then, but Christ brought it into action in the presence of the throne of God. He put it in God's spotlight. He talked about a different type of love. And then he said to Paul, when you write to the Corinthians, I want you to tell them love is.

And then you read the 13th chapter. It never fails. It does not consider a wrong. It does not rejoice in iniquity. There are so many things about love that we forget as Christians that we need to be reminded of because Paul loved Jesus more than his enemies hated him. He loved Christ more than his enemies hated him, and because of that, he could grieve over their state instead of wanting to get even, instead of hiding the gospel from them. Whatever nobility and self-sacrifice we find in such men as Paul started with Christ comes from him. Without the touch of Christ, none of this would be there. All goodness originates with him. Every good gift is from the Father, James said. Verse 3, For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen, according to the flesh.

This is supernatural love. Accursed in the Greek is anathema, damned, the soul damned. He's echoing the prayer of Moses in Exodus 32, after the Jews had trampled into the golden calf and its idolatry. Moses was showing solidarity with his people.

I'm one of them. I hurt with them. He was willing to die rather than see God cut them off. Well, Paul is taking it to yet a higher level, willing to take their punishment, their condemnation in exchange for their salvation.

This kind of sacrifice is often found in parents for their children, love their children so much, they quickly take a bullet for them, do whatever they could to save their soul, to save their life. As love flows from God, love flows down. As water comes out the mountains, as rain comes from the sky, love comes from God. And then it lifts up.

It flows downward, it lifts upward. But Moses and Paul were unworthy exchanges. They knew that theologically, but they spoke from their heart. And you can become so doctrinally hungry that you starve your passions. Could you imagine singing worship songs to the Lord without any feeling?

Well, maybe sometimes you're in that place in life, and that's the case. Sometimes I wish I could just sing in the congregation with all my heart and soul, but I can't. I start weeping and crying. Oh man, it's just this outpouring.

On one hand I love it, and on the other hand it's so embarrassing I can't stand it. The Puritans would say, pray for the gift of tears. Passion must belong to the things that we preach.

Otherwise, where's the fire? Moses and Paul, unworthy exchanges, Revelation chapter 5. We have a whole section on how unworthy everybody else is when it comes to the very thing Paul is talking about. There in the fifth chapter of Revelation, then I saw a strong angel. There are no weak ones that I've come across in Scripture. Well, there was one that had a hard time, and Gabriel had to come help him out. Anyway, I digress.

Coming back to this. Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals? And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or look at it, Revelation 5.4.

So I wept much because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll or to look at it. What I'm attempting to do is contrast the passion of Paul, and yet, with all that passion, he was still inferior. And yet, that passion and inferiority were the very things God used. Paul said, I will boast in my infirmities because God is made strong when I am weak like this. Then it goes on to the twelfth verse. He heard a loud voice saying, worthy is the Lamb, slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.

It covers everything. We can't die for our own sins or anybody else's. We are not a worthy sacrifice.

Only the debt-free can help those who are indebted when it comes to this. And just Peter said, the precious blood of Christ as of the Lamb, without blemish, without spot. We have no record, though, of Paul offering himself this way to Gentiles.

He doesn't say, I could go to hell for the Gentiles. Doesn't mean he didn't feel it. He repeatedly cast himself into harm's way on their behalf.

Earlier, again, he wrote in his second Corinthian letter, I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls, though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved. If you've been in public ministry, you get it. You pour out yourself to people who don't appreciate it many times. Many times it turns against you when you've done nothing wrong, slander you behind your back.

And yet, that all can happen, and what also can happen is you don't grow bitter over it. You fight to not become jaded. You ask the God, how do I stay in the fight? I have said from this pulpit a few decades ago and in between, I don't intend to have any new Christian out-zeal me.

It may butchers the language a little bit, but you got the point. You see a new Christian come, he's all excited about God, he's in all this energy. I have more than him, just that I've learned how to harness it. I've learned how to apply it, but I'm not going to let him be more excited than me about my salvation in spite of the fact that I've taken many more hits over the decades than some new Christian, and I think all of us should feel that way. I'm not going to let the fires go out.

They may grow dim sometimes, but I'm going to take care of that. I'm going to be passionate about my faith whether I like it or not. You catch that? If you don't learn to talk back to your flesh, he's going to slap you around every chance he gets. You got to stand up to it.

You'll take a lot of hits, you'll get knocked down sometimes, but you'll always get back up. You don't have to take that kind of mess from the cursed part of your being because there's a part of you that is filled with the Holy Spirit and he resides with you, and it's called fighting for that which is worth fighting for. He says here, my countrymen according to the flesh. Well, again, it hurt to see them overrule fact and reason. I don't care about fact.

I don't care about reason. The no condemnation, the no separation stopped appealing to them. It started appealing more to the Gentiles. Verse 4, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises. Now, he's going to go on in verse 5.

We're going to stop here in verse 4 and comment on this because, again, he's at a loss. They have all of this stuff. Why are we having this conversation? Why can't they just see that Christ is their Messiah?

Six benefits he lists here. Rightly belonged to Israel, God's chosen people, because God gave it to them, who are Israelites. That's the adoption governed by God now because of God.

He speaks of their glory. Well, that's the presence of Christ, the Shekinah, or the presence of Yahweh in Old Testament language. Entering into relationship with Yahweh, that's the covenants. Then there is the law, receiving his revelation. The law, the rabbis would say, the fence of the law. Do you know how many people think law is not to be a fence for them? They don't like the law.

Too many rules, too many rules. They're there for a reason. If you've ever been up on a skyscraper while it's under construction, which you probably have not, but if you have, you'd know there's a particular crew, a gang, dedicated to safety because the elevator shafts are killers. Once you put the beams up and you put the corrugated metal decking down, those shafts are still there like booby traps. Those guys are right on it. They weld up the posts and they run the quarter-inch cable through it and they clamp it.

And now you've got a fence that protects you from falling in that shaft. This is the law of God. These are rules that those given authority are supposed to have on behalf of the people, the fence of the law. And it's unfortunate that there are so many Christians that think that lawlessness is somehow a virtue.

It is not. He mentions the service here in verse 4, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God. That would be the temple worship. And then the promises, and I'll come back to these.

We've got time. That is the inherited blessings that they have, the prophetic blessings that they also enjoyed. We would think that these would work together to seal their faith, not fate, faith.

It did for some, but not the majority. You would think with all the Bible has to say against popular behaviors that churches and churchgoers would get it, that they would side against blatant sin. And yet we watch them just one after another cave in, try to make a way for sin to be honorable.

It is a serious deal. You would think there's enough scripture for anyone to read, amend their ways, and synchronize their lifestyle and their behavior with God. I mean, we get the fight.

We understand the resistance. We all stumble and we all look to move, get past these things. But at no time should a Christian who stumbles say, well, that's okay. Yeah, I ran them into the ditch, but they deserved it. Okay, I'm sorry. I had to confess that. No, I didn't do that, and I've not tried to do that.

And I've not even thought about doing that. Anyway, back to this. For the great majority of Paul's people, the investments of God fail to overturn stubbornness. That's the story of Jonah, incidentally, as a reminder. A stubbornness with all the scripture that they have, with all the miracles. You would think after that experience in the fish that a person would say, you know, whatever God says to me from this day forward, I'm doing.

And Jonah did on the outside, but not on the inside. Verse 6 says, don't blame anyone or anything but yourselves. You have the scripture.

What are you going to do with it? And the ancient Jews, they prevailed on those blood-stained battlefields until they became spiritual turncoats. What a lesson is in that. And when they were defeated and sin was raised up before them, they dealt with it.

It was just a story of Ai and Achan and Joshua. Just an incredible, beautiful story fought with lessons. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to CrossReferenceRadio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast, too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross Reference Radio, so make a note of it, CrossReferenceRadio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross Reference Radio.