Resolution

Have you ever had someone correct you or reprimand you with words, but they didn't really have a relationship with you? Isn't it fascinating that God did not deliver the Gospel to mankind by simply writing propositional truth in the sky and saying, read it, follow the directions. He didn't just give us propositions. He sent us a person. God did not just send us words alone.

He sent us the Word, Allah. Have you ever made plans that completely fell apart? You had everything set, every detail worked out, and then one by one, your plans crumbled.

It's frustrating, right? Today, you'll learn how even the Apostle Paul faced frustrations when his godly intentions were blocked. He longed to visit the Christians in Rome, but time after time, something stopped him.

Why would God allow that? We'll explore how Paul's unfulfilled plans didn't mean failure. Instead, they were part of God's greater purpose for his life. I happen to believe that one of the greatest revelations of our character is discovered in the decisions we make, those earnest resolutions that we desire to keep.

Not a list of things that can come and go, but earnest, life-directing, life-altering decisions. I have been and continue this morning to speak specifically to men, though truth knows no boundaries of gender or age. We have observed thus far in the life of Paul the affections of a godly man determine his ultimate desires. He struggles to kneel and pray for those in his world. We discovered through Paul's letter to the Roman believers that a godly man desires to give the best gifts in life, gifts that support the cause and name of Jesus Christ, gifts that strengthen the spiritual walk of others, gifts that speak encouragement to the hearts of people, gifts that stretch the faith of others.

A godly man longs not so much for things from God, but he longs for God. And he has an affection for God, and that leads to an affection for God's people, and that leads to an affection for God's purposes. And we have seen all of that thus far in Paul's very tender, very affectionate words that he has used in introducing this letter to the believers living in Rome, really. Now in the next verse of our ongoing exposition through chapter one, we actually discover an earnest decision of Paul's.

We could call it a resolution that marked Paul's thinking and praying and his planning. Romans chapter one, verse 13. I do not want you to be unaware, brethren.

Now stop for a moment. That's a phrase Paul used many times in his letters to emphasize something he was about to write. I don't want you, your translation may read, to be ignorant.

I don't want you to be in the dark. There is something really important that I want you to be aware of. He used the phrase in 1 Corinthians 12. He said I want you to be aware of how gifts operate in the body, in the church. In 2 Corinthians 1, he said I don't want you to be unaware of the struggle in Asia and how God spared my life.

Important that I want you to know. Look, I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, but often I have planned to come to you and have been prevented thus far in order that I might obtain some fruit among you also, even as among the rest of the Gentiles. Two life principles emerge from verse 13. First is Paul's deep desire and godly affection for personal contact. Second is Paul's godly, earnest resolution of making a permanent impact. You remember in verse 11 that Paul said I long to see you in order that I may impart some spiritual gift to you. You may remember in verse 9, Paul's affection and devotion for the believers in Rome as he reveals for God whom I serve in my spirit in the preaching of the gospel of his son is my witness as to how unceasingly I make mention of you always in my prayers making requests. And then he says if perhaps now at last by the will of God I may succeed in coming to you. He had a longing to be with them. He had a longing to teach and lead them. He had a longing to impact their lives for the glory of God.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are the affections of a godly man. Let's go back to the first desire of Paul, the principle of personal contact. He writes in verse 13, often I have planned to come to you. It's interesting to me that Paul didn't say, listen, I'd like to come to Rome, but here's my letter. It'll do just as well.

Read it and follow the directions and you'll do fine. No, Paul wanted personal face-to-face contact with these who were in effect his spiritual children. He knew that his life would add to his letter. And I believe that one of the missing ingredients today with men developing relationships with their wives and their children is this ingredient of personal face-to-face life impacting contact. I shared with you several weeks ago this startling statistic to me, and I know it was to you that the average father, based on extensive research that has been validated, spends less than 37 seconds a day interacting on a personal level with his children. Let me add that that doesn't mean sitting beside them on the way to school silently. It doesn't mean sitting next to them on the couch watching a football game. 37 seconds of face-to-face, one-on-one investment in their lives. One of the elders in our church told me a little later that after they had gotten home from church, his little six or seven-year-old daughter had been in that service, and you wonder what they're hearing, but he had heard that statistic said to him that afternoon, okay, Daddy, I'm ready for my 37 seconds. You cannot buy your way out of personal contact, oh, here's a lollipop, honey, run along.

You can't give things that are more important than yourself. I will never forget, and I have shared with you, I believe, in the past, those two little girls that were swinging on their swings next to me as I pushed my little girl. They'd just gotten off the van with a bunch of other little kids, and they were swinging and playing, and I was pushing mine, and one looked at the other. They were probably no older than five or six and said to her friend, aren't you lonely?

I wonder if her daddy will ever catch on before she's grown and gone, before she seeks to satisfy her loneliness. Isn't it fascinating that God did not deliver the Gospel to mankind by simply writing propositional truth in the sky and saying, read it, follow the directions, and you'll get in. He didn't just give us propositions. He sent us a person, the incarnation of the Gospel in a person. The Savior came, not to simply tell us even in his coming how to live, but to show us how. God did not just send us words alone. He sent us the Word alive. He became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory.

Glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. What was Paul's incentive for coming? Why risk the hardship? Why make the effort? What was his motive? There are a lot of motives, by the way, for serving God, for looking religious, for even being here.

Let me give you several of them. Some serve God because of family. They are pressured and they are manipulated into walking the walk and talking the talk. It's something they would rather not do, but the family is watching, and maybe you're here this morning and that is the only reason you are here, and it is because your family is watching. Some serve God, in addition to that, because of their friends.

In order to be accepted and admired by those they love, they get on the team and they go along and they say the words and they try to fit in because their friends are there and motivating them. Some try to appear religious for financial gain. There are dead men in pulpits around our land today and in our own community today.

They go through the motions because it is a nice job and they like the thought of helping people and it has a good pension. You turn on the television and you'll see other religious salesmen who are peddling religion. They are doing what Peter called merchandising the Gospel.

They are selling the things of God. In other words, you pay them money and you will see your life be blessed. You will watch your faith grow. You will watch your health return.

You will watch your debt disappear. Jesus is their product and they are selling him and getting rich off of naive and deceived followers. Others try to serve God for the sake of forgiveness. That is they try to keep a list of do's and don'ts hoping that somehow the do's outweigh the don'ts.

Somehow the good things outweigh the bad things and when the tape is reached and the scales are balanced, the good outweighs the bad and they get in. They attempt to earn forgiveness by God. Others serve God out of fear, not motivated by love for him but motivated out of fear of him. Still others try to live for God for the sake of fame. You know, going to church is good for business. It is good for your reputation to be known as a religious man. It is good for things in your own life to be seen as a righteous person.

Paul says in effect that my incentive for serving God by coming to believers in Rome is not fame. It is not friends. It is not family. It is not forgiveness. It is not financial gain or any of those things. It is the incentive of fruit.

That's the second incentive. It's the principle of permanent impact. Look back at the last part of verse 13. I have planned to come to you in order that I might obtain some fruit among you also even as among the rest of the Gentiles. Now what is Paul referring to when he says I want to reap fruit?

Well the word is used a number of different ways in the New Testament. In fact in the letters of Paul he wrote to the Galatian believers and he said the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace and on down the list. That is the outworking of the Spirit in your character. By submitting to the Spirit can be described as fruit and these qualities of life are those fruits. Galatians 5 22.

He also wrote in Romans 16 5 of a man by the name of Epinatus whom he called the fruit of Asia. And so he referred then not only to qualities that exist in a believer's life as they submit to the Spirit of God but he also refers to someone who is added to the church who comes from darkness to light by means of redemption. That person is the fruit as it were of the Gospel. So redemption brings fruit and then living for him or what we call sanctification by means of submission to the Spirit produces fruit. The fruit of redemption deals with who you are. The fruit of sanctification deals with how you live. Through redemption you become a child of God.

Through sanctification you behave like a child of God and both of those things are considered fruit. I believe that Paul's incentive for coming to Rome was to see both things occur. On the one hand to see the Romans develop the fruit of the Spirit and on the other hand to see people come to faith in Jesus Christ added to the church in Rome. I do believe that it would revolutionize our lives not only as men but as women if these two principles played out, the principle of personal contact, face-to-face investment and the principle of permanent impact, to long for, to have an earnest affection for, to have an earnest resolution, an earnest decision to see people in your world develop the fruit of the Spirit and to see people in your world who are not believers brought from darkness to light. Most men are happy if their kids come home with a good report card. Most would be happy if they just stay out of trouble.

Most would be happy if the job sort of left them alone and let them get on with the things that they wanted to get on with. But how many men will long for and pray for their families and believing friends to develop the fruit of the Spirit? How many men will long for those who are unbelievers to be brought to faith in Christ? This was Paul's longing. Now we would have never known that Paul was frustrated in his longings if he hadn't slipped that little phrase, that little parenthetical phrase into his letter that, let's look back at verse 13, I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that often I have planned to come to you, here it is, and have been prevented thus far. In other words, Paul informs the church that he has put on his calendar time and time again this trip to Rome and time after time he has had to erase it off his itinerary and move it to a date yet in the future.

You see, we happen to know, ladies and gentlemen, what Paul at this point does not know. He will not arrive in Rome as a pioneer. He will arrive as a prisoner. He will not arrive and personally build the church. He will come to Rome bound in chains.

He doesn't know that yet. If you could pull Paul over to the side of the room and say, hey, Paul, tell me what it's going to be like in Rome. I think he would expand on basically what he has given us here in verse 13. Basically, I can't wait. Listen, we're going to have a harvest of souls for the glory of God.

I can't wait to teach the saints, he said earlier, to invest in their lives to impart spiritual gifts to them by means of teaching. I can't wait. I've done it in Corinth.

I've done it in Ephesus night and day. I can't wait to do it in Rome. I can't wait. I can just see the church gathered with Jews and Gentiles all together worshiping our Redeemer and wonderful Savior.

It's going to happen. I know it's around the corner and that ministry will be unforgettable if I can just get there every time I plan. Something else comes up. But I want you to know, as soon as I drop this money off in Jerusalem, I'm setting sail for Rome and it's going to be wonderful. Let me show you something else.

Turn to Romans chapter 15 and look at verse 22. He talks about this hindrance again, only now with more detail. For this reason, I have often been prevented from coming to you, but now with no further place for me in these regions, literally no further opportunity for me. And since I have had for many years, a longing to come to you whenever I go to Spain for, I hope to see you in passing. Wait a second.

Did you hear that? Let's read it again. Verse 23, but now with no further opportunity for me in these regions. And since I have had for many years, a longing to come to you whenever I go to Spain for, I hope to see you in passing and to be helped on my way there by you. In other words, he wants to be financially supported as he takes this missions trip into Spain. When I first enjoyed your company for a while, verse 28, therefore, when I have finished this, that is the gift to Jerusalem, and have put my seal on this fruit of theirs, I will go on by way of you to Spain. Paul wants to go to Spain. He doesn't just want to go to Rome. Rome is sort of the stopping over place. He wants to go there, and he wants to invest in their lives, and he wants to teach them, and he wants to impart to them his spiritual gift of teaching and leadership in that nucleus of a church that is struggling with Jew and Gentile relations.

He's going to do all of that, but he tells them, but you're a pit stop. I'm on my way to a place I've longed to go for years, Spain. So Paul, what do you, the great apostle, see God preparing you to accomplish? Oh, I see God preparing me to go into unchartered territory, Spain. The gospel hasn't gone there yet. Why did Paul want to go to Spain?

We're never told. Perhaps it was because Spain had produced men like Lucan the poet and Quintilian the master of Roman oratory. Perhaps it was because the current prime minister of the Roman Empire, Seneca, was a man from Spain. Maybe in Paul's thinking, he thought that if the gospel could reach the country that is producing some of the greatest minds in our generation, imagine the impact. Furthermore, Spain was considered in Paul's day to be the end of the world. In fact, the Roman Empire just recently in Paul's day opened up territory in Spain. Paul in effect wanted to take the gospel to the ends of the world and Spain was the end of the world.

I want to be a missionary to Spain. They've never heard, but we know what he didn't know. He'll never make it there. The book of Acts informs us that things didn't go as he planned. He went to Jerusalem, he delivered the money, and then he went to the temple. He was recognized in the temple in a mob form to begin to beat him to death. It was the Roman soldiers who came and rescued him and that began a series of trials before the Jewish authorities and then before the Roman authorities that takes basically the balance of the book of Acts. He will eventually be boarded in chains onto a ship bound for Rome, but even then he's shipwrecked, cast up on an island where they're delayed for a long period of time until finally he arrives in Rome, not to go to the church, not to be delivered to this body of believers that he's longed to see and then on from there to Spain.

He comes hobbled in chains. Life turned out differently than Paul had planned. What about your life?

Do you have that word prevented in your vocabulary? I'm sure you do. If I had asked you a year ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago, tell me what your life is going to be like. I wonder how close you would have been. What were your plans on your wedding day?

How have they changed? What were your plans when you brought your child home from the hospital? What were your earnest decisions? When you arrived on that college campus, what did you think would be in store for you or when you started that business or you enlisted in the service or when you became a Christian?

Oh, let me paint the picture for you. This is what God is going to do. This is my longing and these are godly longings, but then things happened, things not in your control, things you couldn't change, but things that did change.

Maybe you didn't make it to Spain. I want to give you quickly four things that God wants to teach us all in the midst of frustrated intentions that are only right and godly. When doors remain closed, what is God wanting to do in your life?

Number one, God wants to develop your trust in his sovereignty. You know what I find encouraging is that the great apostle, the godly apostle Paul didn't have any more idea of what God had planned for his life then than we do today. We think of Paul as, well, his life was mapped out. I mean, he was the great apostle. You can chart his journeys.

It's as if they were made up before he ever went there. He just followed along. He traced it out of the book of concordances. He knew everything. No, his life changed, but God was at work. His purposes and his plans will be fulfilled. He orders the chaos so that even chaos glorifies him in the end. Even when things are falling apart, he orders and arranges the way they land so that his purposes are fulfilled. That's what we mean when we say that God is sovereign.

We don't understand, but when you say that God is sovereign, that's another way of saying that he does not owe you an explanation. You say, but I want my dreams to come true. I have these longings and these desires, and my intentions are good and godly, and I just want to arrive there.

I want to make it there. You see, to us, arriving is everything. To God, the journey is everything, and the journey reveals that God is sovereign. Secondly, God wants to deepen your understanding of his grace. Third, when the best of your intentions are frustrated, God may want to prepare you for something different. I mean, who would have ever guessed that God didn't want a missionary in Spain? He wanted a martyr in Rome.

We wouldn't have guessed that. Finally, God wants to develop your character in the face of frustration. He wants to develop what he developed in Paul. Paul wanted to come and develop fruit in their lives, and it was through these delays and these longings, and here now for about 10 years, Paul will be under house arrest and bound. He will go through deprivation.

He will go through longing at a distance. He will communicate with the saints through letters. God developed fruit in his life, and you can see it as you read his letters. This past week, I have finished a portion of the biography of William Carey, a fascinating man who opened India with a gospel. He also was involved in so many things. He was the father of modern missions. He was involved in translation work. In fact, he published the first books on science and natural history in all of India. He introduced the steam engine in the early 1800s to India. He was the first to make indigenous paper for the nation. He built what was then the largest printing press in India. He wrote gospel music in the Bengali language.

He wrote the first Sanskrit dictionary. He either translated or published the Bible in 40 different translations. Around 1823, when the printing and translation work was at its height, a devastating fire ravaged the hall that housed their work.

During the day, this hall, which was 200 feet long and 50 feet wide, had housed at least 20 staff working on different translations along with the type founders, compositors, pressmen, binders, and writers. This huge fire had consumed Carey's manuscripts along with his 10 Bible translations with no copies. His project of the Sanskrit dictionary was now ashes, no copies.

Vast quantities of paper, 14 fonts of oriental types, new supplies of Hebrew, Greek, and English type for the printing presses, priceless dictionaries, grammars, steel punches, deeds, and account books of the property were all gone. Carey would later write these words. Listen.

In one short evening, the labors of years were consumed. How unsearchable are the ways of God. The Lord has laid me low.

Now listen. That I may look more simply to him. Frustration?

I can't imagine it. But it's frustration and the sovereignty of God that makes the difference. Do you think Paul came to the end of his life, ladies and gentlemen, a frustrated, bitter man? Do you think if you could have interviewed him before his execution that he would have said, you know, I never did in Rome what I wanted to do, and I never did make it to Spain. Was Paul bitter with God for refusing him one of the greatest longings of his life? Did he consider his life incomplete and unfinished?

No. The last letter he wrote to his son of the faith, Timothy, he said, I have finished my course. Not I did some of it, but I didn't get to do the best of it.

No, I finished my course. I kept the faith. You see, ladies and gentlemen, this godly man who modeled godly manhood for us made an earnest resolution.

And I want you to know it wasn't so much sailing for Rome, and it wasn't so much sailing for Spain. It was in following the Savior. He had learned that when it comes to making plans and resolutions, when it came to dreaming, arriving was not nearly as important as the journey.

That was Stephen Davey and this is Wisdom for the Heart. Today's message is called Resolution. God's plans are always better than our own, even when they don't make sense. Like Paul, trust him through the frustrations, knowing he's working for your good and his glory.

Thanks for listening today. We have a special offer for everyone who makes their first contact with our ministry today. Stephen has taken this message and turned it into a booklet. Sending this resource makes it easy for you to return to it again, and it also provides you with an opportunity to share it with someone else. We're sending a free copy of this resource to everyone who makes their first contact with our ministry today. Give us a call at 866-48-BIBLE. We're going to jot down enough information to be able to mail this to you, and we'll get it out in the mail very soon. So, if you'd like a copy of today's message in booklet form, give us a call and ask for the booklet, Resolution. That number once again is 866-48-BIBLE. Give us a call today, then join us next time for more Wisdom for the heart. Thank you.